Forced to Awaken... Can I Go to Bed Now?

What a weekend! OH and I were invited to a 40th birthday party on the theme of Star Wars.

Did I spend a fortune in the fancy dress shop kitting us out? Did I heck!

Behold Senator Leia Organa: I'm wearing my two-piece white Indian paisley bat-wing blouse and skirt combo, bought when I was eighteen for my first formal ball. Well, all debutantes wear white don't they?

And OH was Luke Skywalker in his old re-enactment belt and shoes and my old kimono.

Here he is fiddling with his light saber... or a bubble wand. Two for £1 from Poundland.

A lovely night... our friend's wife had made an impressive feast of Star Wars-themes push-pop cakes.

That was Saturday... and on Sunday I went to the Town Festival on the Racecourse (free entry - just lots of temptation to spend once you're in!). I spent much of the afternoon sitting with friends and watching the balloons.

Wow!!!! And no, you're not having my money, shiny things!

Some kites, teasing a deflated balloon.

Quick, I have a message for Harry Potter!

The produce tent

spot the hoverfly!

A lot of people in Northampton are a bit dismissive of the Town Festival and call it 'Chavfest'; but there are cool things happening if you keep your eye out.
For example, I nearly missed it, but I left the friends I'd been sitting with all afternoon and was about to go home, when I walked past the band's stage and thought... hang on, I know that tune! It was only Misty's Big Adventure (I love them!), so I went towards the stage and discovered even more friends  there and we all had a little boogie before going home.

No Volvo dancing, as the handy blue fella was off on honeymoon!

Yesterday I popped to the allotment, and did a bit of watering and picking.

Better think about making some jam soon, then.

Adventures in Leicester

I was having a bit of a panic earlier in the week, as I had two gigs booked for Leicester and we still have no car. Public transport was fine for getting to both gigs, but getting back from one of them was going to be a bit tricky.

Frugalistas out there may raise an eyebrow... why do I 'need' to do gigs? No one needs to perform, true... but I love it, and this time round I seem to be making a bit of progress, getting through to the finals of a prestigious national competition a month ago (even if the critics hated me!), and getting some amazing opportunities to perform with my heroes. I'm moving slightly away from silly absurdism to more personal, thought-provoking material. My newer material is, I hope, good, and I would like it very much if it could do some good too.

Travelling to gigs is an opportunity for adventure and discovery. You can get to have a mini-explore of somewhere new, and whilst it's great to do that with OH, sometimes it's nice to have a wander by myself.

Leicester might not seem like far enough away to make an adventure of, but I think it is.

I got to go to my first gig on Wednesday by train, £19.40 return (couldn't find how to get it cheaper except by 20p with less flexibility). My little exploration took me past the Art Deco Turkey Café, isn't it pretty?

And of course, the clock tower, where I got my bearings...

Past the pretty shops of The Lanes...

And I paused by this beautiful gilding... and found myself outside an amazing chocolate shop. Just take a look inside. All of a sudden, I was Dame Judi Dench, as I found myself enticed inside for a hot chocolate and found it was the best, best chocolate ever! And had I been Dame Judi, I'd have hung around every day. I mean, look at this... I chose the house dark hot chocolate (£2.50), and it comes on a tray with the chocolate in a pot (one for the milk, one for my mouth...) and you whisk it up how you like it, plus you get a chocolate on the side. I chose Chinese Five Spice. A-ma-zing.

Perfect place for me to sit and scribble prepping for my gig.

Another really old place on Silver Street... a bar called Taps, which one of the Amore lads recommended.

And here is where my gig was... just the other side of the Cathedral, that Tudor building - that's the Guildhall.

And this is me, in front of the performance area in the Lord Mayor's Parlour. Look at that beautiful fireplace! And I don't mean my face.

That gig was to a small and bijou crowd, and was with organiser Ben Ennis, Smurf, Gary O'Donnell and Gareth Richards. I had to leave halfway through Gareth's preview show which was a shame as I was really enjoying it. There was a really lovely atmosphere and lots of joviality. We comics had a great time too.

Three trains home, but managed to make the last train an hour early, so I got to bed at a reasonable hour. This commonly counts as a comedy 'win'.

Last night's gig was out in the wilds of Newbold Verdon. I managed to get there by bus (single X7 £8.40 + 153 £3.10). Who doesn't love a bus adventure!

The bus journey went through Market Harborough and past lots of beautiful countryside.

Finally I arrived in Newbold Verdon and went for a stroll in it's 'Conservation area'... a part of the village that is chocolate box pretty. It's not all like that, but I loved this street, which ends in a farm.

And at that farm there were some cows. Ee-i-ee-i-oooh!

I'm not sure what kind of cows they are... they looked all white, with black noses, and long, curved horns... so I'm thinking White Park??? And yes, that is a cow, not a bull.

Anyway yesterday's gig was in the library, and was me, Smurf, Gary and Ben again, with the fantastic Annette Fagon headlining. It's a lovely place, and the community clearly value it... and yet it was one of the libraries that was 'closed' by the cuts and is now entirely staffed by volunteers. The volunteers I met are all lovely people with big hearts, and they made us feel very welcome indeed, but it absolutely broke my heart that if it weren't for these lovely people (mostly retired ladies and gentlemen) dedicating their time, and occasionally money, to keeping the place going there would be no library. During the comedy, MC Ben chatted about quaint-sounding local villages with only one bus a week, but after the gig one lady was almost in tears as she told me of another village nearby that had no library of its own was going to get its bus service cut... so that's another lot of people going to be totally disenfranchised from opportunities to leave the village to go shopping, or use the library. This makes me so angry.

A beautiful mural

Oh, Micthell... is that your name? I never believe anything on a bus these days.

These wonderful people, they gave us wine and pizza, they organised the room, they put up a stage with a glittery curtain, and then they laughed at our jokes as well. I felt I wanted to contribute something back, so I bought a book from their sale stand... and isn't it awesome?

Golden hands!

It's full of awesome patterns... including stuff I definitely remember wearing in the 70s.

I'd still wear it now.

I'm definitely going to make something from this!

Thank you Ben for the lovely gigs, and to our friend who lent OH a car so he could come and pick me up from here.

Back to Work

Eid Mubarak!

I went back to the office today. I'm feeling loads better, and my appetite is back even if my ability to consume as usual isn't. I only managed a piece of toast for breakfast and half a salad... but did nibble a couple of small pieces of pistachio barfi which someone had brought into the office to celebrate Eid.

I flipping love barfi! So sweet, so pretty!

Anyway, I weighed myself this morning and I have lost a full half stone! Obviously this is too fast and not good at all, but I'm a little bit delighted as I'm now no longer in the red zone. I'm not even in the horrible orange zone. Look at the stars, look how they shine for me, and all the things I wee... cause it is all yellooo!

Well let's see how I go.

I made a healthy sweet treat yesterday. The NHS website said bananas are a good bland food if you're recovering from food poisoning. Really, I thought. So I made banana and raspberry ice cream with crushed strawberries and a square of gingerbread chocolate I was given as a gift.

Honestly, tasted better than it looked, and my belly liked it. We ended up watching Bad Teacher. Oh yeah, it's awful, but in a good way.

Going Rogue

End of the weekend, and I am shattered!

I've been working on my editing today and then I popped to the allotment again. I didn't have a lot of energy as I didn't eat very much yesterday apart from a small bowl of pasta and allotment herb pesto, so fuelled up this morning on an egg sandwich.

So this is what it looks like today:

First raspberries appearing

A glut of blackcurrants, redcurrants and some gooseberries... as much as I could picked, prepped and frozen

The coriander is now all in flower, which means...

coriander seeds!

Planted out and sowed some runners.

I am not sure my aubergines worked, so there's a sneaky pinstripe plant on the end of the row, procured from Asda so at least I'll get some. Our neighbours gave us a load of comfrey today to make plant food, so that's prepped and will be ready in a few weeks.

We have a lot of potatoes growing, but I thought I'd go an find all the rogues... the little bibbly potatoes that sneaked into odd places round the plot and started growing. I got some rogue potatoes for our tea!

Not all of them were good, but hey, free food!

Tonight, I'm planning to relax and watch a film... I recorded Identity Thief and Bad Teacher. Two brainless comedies, just what the doctor ordered. But first I will whip up a quick banana and raspberry ripple ice cream. Need movie snacks!

My crazy year

So this is my first blog post since pretty much a year ago. We've had more elections than that. Yep, let that one sink in.

Unfortunately I wasn't up to blogging much last year. I wanted this blog to be about positivity, and for a while I felt that if I was going to be writing anything it would sound like I was documenting the opposite. I tried to stay chipper through things, hence the two or three spaced out blogs from the year before, but it wasn't really working. That sounds like a repeat of what I might have written before.  Well, yes...

I think we jumped in a bit early with trying to start a new business for OH. He did try, and his friends and I tried to help him, but overall... big loss. I've pretty much felt like I was spinning plates trying to keep things going, and as well, there was all the stress of my dad's TBI.

Now, we are kind of scraping along and are playing catch up with bills and things, but work is going well, OH has a new job and that's also going well.

Time to start finding me again.

So, this is where we are: soon to be a duo-earning household, with a few more debts to chase down, no working vehicles at the moment, no washing machine (!!!) -  my friend is being an angel and taking our big loads while I'm doing a few hand washes between times.

...And my I take a moment here to praise the virtues of Savon de Marseilles - proper French laundry soap, smells lushly clean and is excellent for working on the bits of your clothes that need the most work, you know... pits, collars, crotches 😂. Try to find it online, I bet you'll only find the rustic-looking green and off-white cube-shaped bars, oh so vintage and swanky and expensive. I picked mine up in a French supermarket for about €1. Soap!

Right, Stepford Wife moment over.

I was planning to make my first blog de retour about the journey I was going to be making this weekend. I was off to a friend's 50th party in Gloucestershire, and found that the best way of getting here from Northampton with no vehicle turned out to be your normal bus. Bus! It was going to be quite an adventure... however, I've had a touch of food poisoning this week which has put paid to me travelling anywhere. I put being ill down to: a) the heatwave this week b) my inability to turn down free food. I think it was down to some slightly warm sandwiches I had at my writers group meeting this week.

The irony, this week I said I would go back to being veggie apart from where I had been catered for as a non-veggie. I thought it was ham. Turns out, may have been very wrong prawn...

Instead, I can share with you some progress pics from the allotment. Enjoy!

What a mess!

Herbs in May, looking weedy

The darling spuds of May.

A little bit neater as I plant the peas and aubergines

Strawberries, rhubarb, redcurrants and blackcurrants and some of the herbs. Those spuds look nearly ready too!

A bit less crazy.... still loads to do.

The Bostin' Life Episode 3.

Hello, Here is my audio blog, which I'm calling The Bostin Life. I made a much cleaner version than this with a cool musical intro and outro, but the file size was too big for my host. More's the pity.

Delicious Things That Can Poison or Sting!**

Hello everybody! I'm feeling pretty cheery today as I've managed to get a lot of creative bits and bobs done this weekend: some writing, rehearsals for a show I'm in this month... and these foodie lovelies.

We've been feeling the pinch a bit  as we've launched OH's new career and had to pay out a fair whack for that, just as we've also had to do a lot of travelling to see a family member in hospital. So hey ho, it's June, the sun is shining (oh heck, that's a lie, it's been stormy all day) and we've not got much spare.

Never mind... we've been making the most of what we've got.

In the picture, you see rhubarb liqueur. Made from homegrown rhubarb, stewed and syruped in a slow cooker. We used the stewed fruit used for desserts, and bottled the liquor with about half vodka. This means it's sweeter and a bit less potent than regular rhubarb vodka, so you could have it neat over ice or with a tonic. I think with all the booze and sugar it should keep well, but I've got it in the fridge. Yummy!

And the green stuff is my ever awesome nettle pesto. I gather my nettles from a patch at the nature reserve fringed by triffid-tall thistles and nettles that I think most dog walkers would be scared of. My peasant's pesto is made of  about three fists of mixed blanched nettles, one garlic clove, one slice of wholemeal bread, French-toasted, a lump of leftover French cheese, and whizzed together with rapeseed oil - or regular vegetable oil as it tends to be these days. I stirred it into some veggie spaghetti the other night - the spaghetti was cooked in the nettle stock from blanching the leaves for extra flavour. If you've never eaten nettles, they are more spinach than spinach. Awesome free things!

Talking of free, I'm not really one for dumpster diving, but I procured some overripe bananas by someone who couldn't contemplate using them, as I said it was such a waste to throw good food away. Some went into smoothies, some went into a cake*, but my favourite thing to do with overripe bananas is to make super-healthy ice cream.

How do you do that? Well, chop up the banana into pieces and freeze it. Just before you want to eat the ice cream, take it out of the freezer so it thaws a bit. For 3 medium bananas, I added a dessert spoon of smooth peanut butter for a nice texture and flavour (you can do without if you don't have/don't like/can't eat peanuts). Then whizz it  in the food processor until it looks like soft ice cream! Simple, lovely.

Anyway, thought I'd share those with you.

*the cake was a Hairy Dieters recipe. Got the book from the library. We're still eating said cake, but the recipe calls for waaaay too many bananas, I think. Took ages to cook. Probably the worst cake I've ever made. Will just make the one from my Good Housekeeping book in future.

**Yes, nettles are the stingers. Rhubarb is lovely, but you know never to eat the leaves, right?