Just Enjoying A Little September Sun (For A Change!)

See you in October!

Hx

Stew Monday And An Award

As the weather turns a little more chilly, don't your thoughts start turning to comfort food and one-pot meals?  There's something about ladling out great spoonfuls of a homemade stew crammed with vegetables that is so fulfilling and heart warming.♥

(Image actually chicken stock - I didn't have a photo of stew!)

I was watching River Cottage Autumn last night and LOVED Hugh's idea of a 'Stew Club' so immediately started planning my own version - 'Stew Monday'.  I am going to invite four couples of our lovely neighbours to join (that includes you Jane!).  The idea is that each couple takes weekly turns to cook a stew large enough to generously serve ten people and then delivers it to the others for them to reheat for Monday night's supper.  How exciting is that?!  I'll let you know if they tell me to get knotted! :-)

Now, I want to thank the lovely Lynda at Hookin' With LaaLaa for considering me worthy of this fabulous award.

Lynda is one of the warmest and most honest bloggers I've come across so I thoroughly recommend you pay her a visit.

A condition of accepting this award is to tell you seven facts about myself.

1.  I currently seem to have a big crush on David Cameron!

♥

2.  I don't mind blood and can watch the most gruesome of operations or horror movies but sick, bogies and poo all make me heave.  Even talking about them makes me feel queasy so I shall move swiftly on ..!

♥

3.  On a similar theme, I cannot bear people who spit.  If someone walking in front of me spits on the ground (or 'flobs' as we used to call it), I tap them on the shoulder and politely say "excuse me, I think you've dropped something".  It can invite a variety of reactions!

♥

4.  I absolutely love cryptic crosswords and all word games especially Scrabble.

♥

5.  I wasn't very good at being pregnant.  I'd love to be able to report that I floated serenely around in pretty ditsy floral maternity clothes with a self-satisfied glow on both occasions but the truth was that I was tired, ratty, emotional and wore dungarees for the whole nine months.  I did however thoroughly enjoy childbirth!  Two natural births with just gas and air, twenty-five and seventeen hours respectively.

♥

6.  I am petrified of spiders.  I was held hostage in my own house just last week by a spider the size of a hand lurking outside the front door.  Thankfully my wonderful postman came to the rescue and removed it with somebody else's letter.

♥

7.   I am very much a summer person and really don't like the cold and short days of winter.  Give me Easter and its promise of spring and summer over Christmas any day.  Bah humbug.

♥

I get so much pleasure from all the blogs I follow and I truly mean that.  The five blogs I nominate for this award however are:-

The English Writer

Ramblings Of An Everyday Mummy

Julia Crossland

Scented Sweetpeas

Fondant Kiss

They are all wonderful so do go and have a peek.

Have a super weekend.

Hx

A Change Is As Good As A Rest x

Goodness me, is it really that long since I last posted?  It's not that I've been away.  Au contraire, I've been here doing normal me, mummy and wifey things.  Since the blondies went back to school two weeks ago, I've been quite happy pottering, sprucing and preparing my little nest ready for the colder weather.  I've also had a stinky head cold and spluttery cough for the last few days so have been feeling a bit bleurgh.

Anyway, one of my favourite Cath Kidston summer dresses got perhaps it's last 2010 outing yesterday ...

Mum and I went to London for the day on the train.  It was wonderfully warm and sunny.  We browsed around Camden Market (you'd love the vintage clothes shops) and then sat with a huuuge glass of wine in Covent Garden and indulged in another of my favourite pastimes - people-watching.

I was a very good girl and, other than a couple of little birthday pressies, only had a teeny fritter on some new fridge magnets from Paperchase ...

Other than slightly tired feet and a croaky voice from too much talking and laughing, I feel positively recharged today.

Must pop off to the Post Office now to post a few parcels.  I'm heaping a lot of my clothes on eBay in an attempt to justify buying a couple of new items for the winter get a little nearer my goal of a capsule wardrobe! :-)

Hx

PS.  Thanks so much for your fab book suggestions - I'll keep you posted! x

Sunday's Thought For The Day

What to do when your child's new teacher looks like a creepy weeble, has a chip on his shoulder and stares at your bosoms while talking to you?

a)  Stop being so immature as to take people at face value; as long as he is a good teacher.

b)  Give him a shove and see if, in fact, weebles really do wobble but they don't fall down.

c)  Fashion a brooch saying "I'm up here" and pin to said not-even-very-big bosoms.

Hmmm ...

Enjoy your day!

Hugs, Hx

Best Book Ever?

(image courtesy of www.weheartit.com)

I've not read a book for ages.

Sure, I pick through magazines, the odd newspaper, reference books and, of course, blogs but I can't remember the last time I got lost in a novel.

I always had my nose in a book when I was younger.  I would find a writer whose style I really enjoyed and then devour anything and everything I could find that they had ever written.  I would read four or five books a week, every week.

When I was very young, I read every Enid Blyton book in existence.  The Enchanted Wood and The Magic Faraway Tree were favourites, along with the Mallory Towers series.

I then progressed to Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy.  As for Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie, well, it remains my favourite book of all time.  I remember sitting on a bus in near tearful meltdown as I read Watership Down.  Unfortunately, we had to drag our way through several of Chaucer's painful Canterbury Tales at A' Level which I think, with hindsight, put an end to any further interest in the classics.

When I had the children, my concentration levels took a bit of a nose dive so I turned to Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher.  Catherine Alliot, Cathy Kelly and Sophie Kinsella seemed the natural progression and then I don't know what happened really.  Perhaps I was all chick-litted out.

I miss reading but I think I've sort of gotten out of the habit.  Do you know what I mean?

As a starting point, I had a browse through the BBC Big Read's 100 Greatest Books Ever Written and rather fancy picking a couple ...

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis

10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks

14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling

23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling

24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling

25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

27. Middlemarch, George Eliot

28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck

30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett

34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

38. Persuasion, Jane Austen

39. Dune, Frank Herbert

40. Emma, Jane Austen

41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

42. Watership Down, Richard Adams

43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

46. Animal Farm, George Orwell

47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck

53. The Stand, Stephen King

54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman

62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden

63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding

71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl

75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins

78. Ulysses, James Joyce (does Homer's The Odyssey count?)

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl

82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

83. Holes, Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist

90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

For a start, I can't believe Cider With Rosie isn't included!!!

Anyway, I've highlighted those that I have already read in pink.  Is your favourite book of all time in the list?  Have you just read a fabulous book you can recommend?  I know we each have different tastes but I'd love to know what you think.

Hx

Old Spice

It's one of those little 'jobs' that you just fancy doing now and again.

It's not THAT long since I had a little herbs and spices sort out.

Surely?

February?  Oops.

January 2009?  Yikes!  So ashamed!

How DOES that happen?

Hx

Why Wait?

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go

Or only bread and pickle for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph

xxx