I made soup and risotto tonight, two of my favourite soothing foods.  Soothing to make, that is, lots of chopping and stirring.  I’d made stock yesterday, so wanted to use it up.  I’m quite in the mood for cooking but, as I said yesterday,  the kitchen is too hot at this time of the year to spend very long in there.  I’ve promised to do some cooking for Weeza for the freezer (that rhyme was unintentional) so that she has some easy meals once the baby is born.  Only another five weeks before he is due, she’s glad to have started maternity leave.  She can’t quite believe now that she carried on until three weeks before her due date last time, and was working in London at the time, travelling from Islington to Belgravia every day.

One helpful thing she did before finishing work was to help us register our septic tanks.  This is a new thing brought in by the Environment Agency, we didn’t know about it but she did, because the people she works for own a large country estate in Norfolk and there are a number of houses, none of them on mains drainage.  I suppose they are contacting larger landowners before those with only one or two tanks, but we have got it done early.  Our septic tank is brilliant, it just digests away and doesn’t need any attention at all.  And the water we use, having been duly filtered and so on, returns to the ground and isn’t wasted by being piped away.

The work being done outside here is progressing, although it looks as if not a lot has happened recently.  Trouble is, there’s a lot to do and none of it gets finished.  So the drive hasn’t been touched for a while, because we are waiting for some electrical work (if we fill in then a trench will have to be dug later), part of the paving has been laid but then, because it’s a good time of year to do it, work has been done on the hedges around the fields and there were some fallen trees and branches to deal with.  I hope that has been done mostly and we can finish the paving, at least.  I’m tired of it looking like a work in progress.  Still, at least ‘progress’ is a good sign.              

The school’s Ofsted report is online now if you want to read it.   We’ve had to call an extra governors’ meeting for this week to wrap up final approval for various academy matters and am keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a quorum.  Just another couple of weeks and I can wind right down for the summer.  It will be good.  I rather wish now that I was having a holiday, but there isn’t any time.  I only had a few spare days, and now we’ve arranged a party for one of them – though in fact, it would have been such a rushed break that it wouldn’t really have been a very good idea.  I’d just like to get away completely for a few days, that’s all.

I must spend most of the next few days making cakes and so on, for the festival at the weekend.  The kitchen is too hot for really enjoyable cake-making, but I expect I won’t mind once I get started.  Weeza and Zerlina are going to come and stay for two nights, which will be lovely.  Phil is going to do a bike ride – rather odd, it’s an overnight thing from London to Suffolk.  Dunwich, I think.  I can’t think why one would want to spend the whole night cycling, and I’m not sure how it works out – I think they must be going by bus to London and then be taken back to Norwich again afterwards.

Am I alone in being fed up with special offers?  I can see the point with perishable goods, Al used them sometimes when he had a lot of ripe fruit that would not keep more than a day – but really they are just used to make you buy stuff that you don’t want or need.  I remember some years ago one of the presenters on You And Yours on Radio 4 (I think it was Winifred Robinson, but am not sure) said that they are known, in her family, as Buy One, Throw One Away.

The wine shop chain Threshers had three-for-the-price-of-two offers for almost all their stock for several years.  But of course, they simply raised the price to allow for it, so you paid well over the odds if you just wanted a single bottle – such as champagne for a special occasion, or a bottle of good wine (compared to your usual tipple) as a present – and it was a specious bargain offer.  Of course, Threshers went bust in the end, so I probably wasn’t alone in shopping elsewhere unless I actually wanted several bottles of wine.

I can see why bookshops have to have special offers and why they try to shift as many books as they can – the competition from Amazon and, for bestsellers, major supermarkets, is pretty crippling.  But I still don’t want a buy one, get the second half price, or buy three for the price of two offers when I just want to buy a book.  It’s annoying.  Amazon is still cheaper, after all.  Just give me the discount, even a slightly less ‘generous’ one, and I’ll buy the book if I’m in the mood to buy a book.

If a bookshop is good enough, mind you, I won’t even mind the full price.  I have mentioned before (nearly a year ago) that I visited Topping & Co. in Bath, and it was brilliant.  I didn’t begrudge the full price and I found so many books that I wanted to buy.  I haven’t been to Ely since, but when I do, I’ll go with an open mind and a willing credit card.  I went to another bookshop when I was visiting the area (can’t remember where it was) and it was, though smaller, almost as alluring.  It was also independently owned, which must be a tough way to make a living.

BOGOFs can have their appeal, admittedly.  Before Woolworth’s went out of business, I used to check out their offers if I happened to be near a branch, because they were genuine ones.  It was worth stocking up on kitchenware and so on, if it would have returned to its full price in a week or two.  I thought of another example but the phone rang (for the Sage, as it turned out) and, Coleridge-like, the distraction has made me forget.

I have not forgotten, however, that I meant to finish on a different subject entirely.  While writing this (and doing some cooking and answering the phone and emails) I have been listening to Pick of the Week,  chosen and presented by Graham Seed, late of The Archers.  He is as delightful to listen to as he was when playing Nigel.  And no, I don’t want to start listening to it any more.  It’s just a soap, whose producer doesn’t care about manipulating the audience.  So I opted out.  Bet I’m not the only one.

The day has started unexpectedly well.  Going through some old papers, I found a pamphlet, which turned out to be a project that Ro did at Middle School about Lowestoft china.  It’s spot on and very informative.  I vaguely remember him doing it (fifteen years ago) and he puts both me and the Sage down in the acknowledgements, but he certainly wrote it himself, there’s a piece of information in there that I only picked up myself a few years ago, and the book he got it from is in the bibliography.   Although it was seen by the teacher, as there are ticks at intervals, there is no mark at the end.  I trust he got a good one.  There are several photos, taken straight from our most recent sale, but it’s nearly all writing.  Very like me, that is, I remember feeling quite indignant as a child when I spent ages doing a piece of writing and someone else did a couple of pictures and a drawing with captions and got as high a mark as I did.  I always did prefer words to pictures, and besides it showed that I’d actually done the work.  No real surprise that I loathed ‘projects’.  I would have been useless with examination coursework, I really couldn’t be bothered, I’d have left it all until the last moment, if done it at all.  Nerve-wracking as they were, I preferred proper exams.  A lot of forward reading, memorising and thinking, a couple of intensive hours and you were done.

I was having a meeting the other day with the Head, and we were interrupted several times by messages coming in, all of which needed fairly prompt action by him.  “Always something extra,” or something like that, I said, but he replied that he loves it.  “This job is never the same for two days, there is always something I need to react to and deal with.”  He looked at me.  “You’re the same, you wouldn’t want a predictable job, would you?”

It’s true.  I have a short attention span and need constant stimulation.

I had to have an early night last night, so apologies if you were glaring glumly at the screen at midnight wondering where I was.  Bed by 10.30 didn’t help me sleep, so I probably won’t bother again, however.

In fact, I spent most of the night in the spare room.  The Sage gave the occasional little snore, so I left him to get on with it.  I know I have said it before, it’s sad to say that I sleep better alone nowadays.  It’s more than possible that he does too, he is certainly asleep still now, and it’s after 8 o’clock.

Ro and I were talking about Google+ recently, and he sent me an invitation yesterday.  I suspect that Facebook will up its game in response – the thing is, you can choose how you categorise the people on it, so that they don’t necessarily see everything you post.  This doesn’t particularly matter for me, but there are those who come to regret being so outspoken.

The Sage has just come downstairs.  It seems that the day can begin.

I visited a friend in Norwich this morning for coffee, with two others – we all used to be on the same committee and miss our get-togethers.  Then, dropping my clarinet off on the way for a service, I went and had lunch with Weeza and Zerlina.

It looks as though the whole family will turn up again, first for the village festival on Saturday week and then for our party a fortnight later.  We have invited five other people so far, must crack on and ask more.

I used to find it the most difficult thing, inviting people round.  The Sage had to do the job.  I was so insecure, I was quite sure that no one would really want to come and I’d have the embarrassment of listening to them make an excuse or saying that awfully false “oh, how lovely.”  I’m not sure where that insecurity came from or where it went, but it has gone.  Not that I do assume that everyone is desperate to come and spend time with me, but I am not afraid to ask.  Or, when I am, I do it anyway.

The Sage has had a bonfire of the brambles that were removed from the hedges a week or two ago.  A strong whiff of smoke hangs about him.  I like the smell of a bonfire as much as anyone, but I’m glad he will have a bath before bedtime tonight.

The Sage has a new friend.

Yes, our side door does need painting.

A pair of partridges has nested before in our vegetable garden, but this year they were not lucky.  Magpies were particularly aggressive when the weather was so dry and they got all the babies, and they killed the male bird as well.  We are not fond of magpies.

Anyway, the family had been joining the chickens in their run to be fed, and now that she’s alone, the survivor is becoming very tame.  She actually came into the porch today and the Sage thinks it won’t be long before she feeds from his hand.  He has a way with birds, they always trust him.

This is turning into Party Year.  The Sage is throwing another party, this time to celebrate the car’s 83rd birthday.  Having invited bloggers the first time, and Lowestoft collectors the second, this time we will invite some of our local friends.  Already, the Sage is talking about the next party – not this planned one, but another one.  I’m not sure what has come over us.  I’m also not sure what I’m going to do about food this time, I must start thinking about it.  Although, not this side of the weekend because we are going to yet another party on Saturday, the farmer that Big Pinkie and Whisper (as no. 400 has been named) belong to; that is the son of the farming partnership got married earlier in the year, and this is their wedding bash.  A hog roast, apparently.  Jolly fine.

It’s not, necessarily, that I have any difficulty in spending money, just that it is rarely on clothes.  I’m just not that bothered, and I never have been.  If in the mood or sufficiently desperate for something suitable, I might buy several outfits in one go, but that might not happen for a couple of years at a stretch.

My mother was extremely interested in clothes and took great care of them, always changing as soon as she arrived home, carefully hanging garments up and being quite unbothered by large dry cleaning bills.  When I was a child, she chose my clothes, partly because I didn’t care and partly because she did.  When I was married with young children I had little spare money – I once, unwisely, did a rough calculation of our household income and expenditure and was gratified to find that they matched pretty well, until I noticed that I had allowed nothing for my and the Sage’s clothing.  I allowed for children’s clothes and for books, and this seemed more of a priority.  As a result, I simply didn’t buy anything unless I had to, and was quite relaxed about wearing my mother’s or my sister’s cast-offs.  In fact, the youthful photos I put up of myself a few weeks ago, including ones taken at Miss Fitt’s 100th birthday 28 years ago – the ones I didn’t post of my mother, she was wearing a black and white dress that she later passed on to me: I still wear it once in a while.

It’s not that I don’t care at all what I look like – for that, look to the Sage.  I once, completely exasperated by the dreadful garments he was wearing to a reasonably smart occasion, told him quite snappily that, if I were dressed as scruffily as he was, he would be shocked and not want to be seen with me.  The Sage was quite hurt, although it was quite true, although not hurt enough to mend his ways, or sew on any buttons.  I aim to be appropriately addressed, and am gratified if I seem to have got it right, but I’m not sufficiently interested to spend a minute more time than I must in shopping.

My hair costs me about £5 a week, so I must care enough not just to have a chop twice a year, but I rarely give an opinion on its cut to the hairdresser.  “Whatever you want,” I say to her.  A request not to cut my fringe too short, because I like it to hide my wrinkled forehead, is as far as it goes.  I can’t be bothered to hide the grey, let alone enhance the colour.  Although, actually, that is something I would be fussy about.  If I coloured my hair, I would not let the roots show.  I’d be so rigorous about that, it would be far too much effort.  I seem to have the idea that it’s far better not to go to enough bother and therefore fail, than to go to *too much* bother and it show.

I’m not the only person who thinks a lot of our Headteacher.  I’m going to quote from an email I received today from another governor – “Concerning the very sad news of Aaron – I was with a group of sixth formers on Friday – I felt it was a real testament to the BHS family ethos as they discussed the moving assembly Sean had just delivered and the respect they have for him as Head (‘he’s amazing – he considers every pupil a member of his family’). I understand that the year 11 Prom in the evening celebrated a life with dignity – difficult times.”  It’s hardly any wonder that the staff and pupils are motivated to work so hard.  


I had an email from Ro this morning.  A car had pulled out from a junction on his way to work (he cycles the three miles into Norwich city centre) and, although he had slowed down, knowing that drivers don’t necessarily see  cyclists, the car pulled out right at the last moment and he couldn’t stop.  He is not much hurt, he said, a bruised arm, and he went on to work, leaving his damaged bike for repair.  The driver has agreed it was his or her fault (Ro didn’t say which) and will pay up.  All seems quite civilised.  Ro assured me that he didn’t hit his head (he is very considerate and wouldn’t want me to worry).  Ho hum.  Bus for the next few days, I suppose.  Cycling in the city is fairly hair-raising, although there is a cycle lane along that road, it is also used by buses and there are numerous side roads.  We really aren’t very geared up for bikes in this country.  There is no point in letting myself worry.


We have had some paving laid outside the house – it’s only part done so far, actually, but I moved a table and chairs on to the part that is done and sat there for much of the day, working.  Not working very hard, admittedly, but enough for me to think I’ve got something done.  And it was extremely pleasant.  

The Sage fetched back his car today. It will be 83 years old in a month’s time.

We went for a spin round the village.

And then we went and called on friends.

The car had gone about ten or twelve miles altogether, and was a bit hot and bothered by the time we got back into the drive, and we had cause to call it the Envy of Sisyphus (see end of section 3).  It started again after a rest, however.

On quite another subject, I have been thinking about surnames, specifically fish-related ones.  I’m not sure if it’s because we live near the coast, in an area of the country that used to be a major fishing locality.  I know or have known people called Fish, Trout, Codling, Salmon and, splendidly, Haddock.