Giving Me My Life Back

More random archive photos.....missing the sun ....missing all things sweet as I've started my no sugar/fruit/dairy/tea/coffee/ no fun/ diet. But did have wonderful green beans, and mange tout peas and courgettes for supper with a side order of cumin spiked hummus.

 No photos but highlights from the weekend...

New mattress delivered.....new sleep experience.....it feels firmer than it did in the shop though.

Dancing with Robin at our friends' wedding ceilidh.

The faces of 15 amazing people gathered in a circle..... sharing love, thoughts, experience, feelings......sharing chocolate cake and lemon cake......raising glasses of prosecco.....listening to me ..........giving me my life back..... the one I didn't know I could have.

Comfort Sorted

Random sea photos - Portugal 2008

Chilly tonight after rain all day - want comfort food - only mashed potato will do.  This is my new favourite version.

Cook white/red skinned old potatoes till soft and translucent. Mash up with several glugs of olive oil and sea salt. Give in and add more butter than you really need. Chop fresh basil leaves and curly parsley and stir in to melted buttery mash with black pepper grindings. Serve with a dollop of sun-dried tomato pesto on top, a golden yolked Parmesan cheese omelette, fine green beans and ruby chard.

Comfort sorted.

The Mattress And The Moons On This Thursday

Before lunch we buy a new mattress. At Dreams - half price sale. Lovely, helpful non pushy salesman. We lie on three beds - 5 minutes. Choose one. Paperwork - 10 minutes. Delivery on Saturday. Job done in 15 minutes - can't believe I've been putting off getting a new mattress for at least 2 years thinking it would be a long and difficult process. Timing perfect though - springs finally gone. Takes longer to get home through rain and heavy Exeter traffic than it does to buy a mattress.

After lunch more traffic and rain on way to Exmouth - drop off wedding present for friends on way. Robin wants to go to Poundland in Exmouth but rain so torrential we don't even get out of the car. Drive home via post office, yawing, through long rush hour queues -  explaining to Robin where Mexico is, that an Andrew isn't a thing, it's a person's name, what pollution means, what a boatyard is, and yes, I do know where I'm going and no, I don't know yet what we are doing on Saturday morning.

At home he makes coffee.  Briefly I lose the will to live. Can't face dealing with the post and the claim forms from Devon County Council that need filling in. Think I just want to lie down and sleep for a week. But I start making supper instead. Dice an onion. Mince up garlic. Slice fresh tomatoes. Make the kitchen into a fragrant fug. Douse sweet potato wedges in olive oil and sea salt and bake them in the oven. Scrub tiny carrots and scoot them into the chunky green melange of beans, broccoli and courgettes.

By the time I've chopped a fan of peppery flat-leaved parsley to stir into the steaming tomato sauce I've started to come back to myself......remember who I am in this moment, even in this ordeal....feel my feet on the sticky kitchen floor that needs cleaning.... but not now, not today.

Now I'll call Robin to lay the table and we'll have our Thursday supper. And then I'll look past his beaming face into the garden and let the beauty of the white ball heads of the agapanthus shining like pale, washed moons in the dusk be everything I need for now.

A Baking Swan Song

It was biscuit week on The Great British Bake Off ( watched by millions now apparently - even more than a football final - could that be true.....). The contestants made Biscotti. These are the ones Robin and I made almost exactly to the day last year. Tonight I leant a lot about about why ours break up,   and burn on the second baking and are rock hard. Even though that's how he likes them, I think the Bake Off ones looked much better.

I'm feeling a bit sad about biscuits -  today I visited a Kineseologist who said I needed treatment for my spleen and gut and giving up sugar/fruit and dairy products for a while is part of the treatment. While I'm getting used to the idea..... planning to start next week.....  this afternoon I made a chocolate almond cake and sesame cheese biscuits. A  bit of a baking swan song.

As Robin has a nasty bug and doesn't want to eat much at all I'll keep them for him till he feels better.

Our Different Paths

 At Killerton Estate this afternoon. We are walking along a higher shady track but I'm drawn irresistibly to this wide grass path beckoning me down the hill into a flood of sunlight. My 'road less travelled.' 

A different path for Robin - sunlit also.

The horse chestnuts not ready yet to break open and release their shiny conker cargo.

We share a slice of Bakewell tart at the courtyard cafe before heading home together where our different paths will criss cross all evening.

The Road Not Taken

BY ROBERT FROST

        

      

 

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 

And having perhaps the better claim, 

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 

Though as for that the passing there 

Had worn them really about the same, 

And both that morning equally lay 

In leaves no step had trodden black. 

Oh, I kept the first for another day! 

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 

I took the one less traveled by, 

And that has made all the difference.

Resisting Happiness

On Saturday we set out for picnic at Barrington Court ( NT) up the A303 in  Somerset. Seeing the traffic ahead at almost a standstill we took a diversion outside Honiton and ended up at Wolford Chapel set in secluded green glade of peacefulness. Not a soul around to disturb our picnic on a bench in the shade, which seemed to be waiting for us, and us alone. I didn't want to leave this still small oasis of calm.

 

On Sunday we set out with our picnic to visit Compton Castle ( NT) near Paington in South Devon. A  mad idea to travel to the English  Riviera of the South on a Sunday in the middle of August. Traffic terrible. When we finally got there it was closed - only open 3 days a week.

So we took a detour via Shinner's Bridge at Dartington and had our picnic in the grounds of The Cider Press Centre on a bench overlooking the kitchen at Cranks Restaurant where I worked as a cook 36 years ago. Such a very odd feeling to remember the woman I was then. Even odder to sit at the same wooden table where I had my interview for the job with the then manager, sharing a slice of carrot cake with my husband. The recipe hasn't changed for 36 years - I'd recognise it anywhere - coconutty, cinnamony. I've had better carrot cakes since.

Afterwards we walked along the river path towards Totnes and past these curious Jersey cows,

munching on green blackberries.

I wondered at the hardiness of her mouth to cope with the brambles.

The first tomato crop from the greenhouse at the allotment this evening.

I used them up in a chunky avocado salsa which we had for supper -  fragrant with the last of the basil leaves - still warm from the sun - spread on garlicky toasted crostinni.

The poppies are over.....

storing their seed in their heads.....

and the carrots tops going to flower....

 and a bed of globe artichokes on someone else's allotment ....

also left to go grow mauve tufted hair.

At the hospital this afternoon I was expecting Robin to have an MRI scan for his head. I'm sure that's what the physiotherapist referred him for. But it was for a shoulder and neck X-ray instead.  So the journey to uncover the source of his arm and hand weakness continues. 

We make a detour on the way home to Sainsbury's to see if we can find caramel coated cashew nuts.  He  bought some in the market in Honiton on Saturday from the Nut Man, and keeps asking if we can make some. I'm resisting it - all that sugar. Luckily we find something similar in the supermarket and so I give in. How can I resist his happiness..... why am I trying to anyway.....so little else for him to be happy about.

My Life Full Of Angels

This afternoon we visit my sweet great niece in her recently moved into new home just outside Plymouth.

This is the view of the estuary......

practically at the end of their road......

you could be in the country. 

Although we didn't bump into him, the Prime Minster was also in Plymouth  today- talking to the dairy farmers of the South West who are protesting that the supermarkets are giving them a rubbish price for their milk - less than it costs to produce it. What to do?

This morning I drive out of Exeter for a family constellation session....discover on arrival that I am double booked.....so  I drive home again, on the seat beside me a gorgeous homemade dark chocolate and a huge bunch of sweet peas which I cut from her beautiful rambling vegetable garden, filling the hot car with heavenly perfume.

This evening  I roast my sister's just dug red-skinned potatoes for supper. They are so deliciously moreish that when Robin finishes off the poached apricots in elderflower syrup for his dessert, I finish off the left over roast potatoes sprinkled with more salt and eaten in my fingers - much better than pudding....unless your'e talking coconut ice-cream of course.

Tonight, Robin says his left foot hurts..... I massage it...he winces at a place on the top of his foot by his toes.....I wonder if it's tendenitis....I notice his nails need cutting.....he says he can't do it now because he can't use his right hand properly.....like he can't hold his knife properly when he's eating.....no strength in it ....the muscle wasting in his shoulder. I don't want to cut his toe nails though.

He's having an MRI scan on Monday. More change coming. Just when I was getting used to this stage....silly really expecting things to stay the same....don't know why I resist it every time....slip into  despair every time.....climb out again every time....always helping hands buoying me up....my life full of angels.