One for the birds

This week seems to have been one for the birds. On Saturday Harry and I went for our regular rugby stroll down to Polridmouth beach and along the cliffs, half way down I began to hear a shooting party coming from the Menabilly estate area. I wasn’t that bothered as Harry is unaffected by loud bangs, fireworks don’t faze him, two screaming boys don’t faze him so why should some distant guns. As we got closer to the beach he hared off into the undergrowth and came back proud as punch carrying a dead pheasant.  Nothing for it now but to head towards the guns and return one of their birds, it was so funny watching Harry trot past the Labs and proudly drop his find at the feet of the shooters.  It’s a strange way to see birds up close when they’ve just been shot but I’m afraid I’m not sentimental about it, I eat them and they taste great.

Which is just as well because on Monday, Dave dropped in a brace of pheasants and partridges to the shop. Oh good I thought as I eyed their splendid plumage, how the hell do I prepare a whole bird. In the end I chickened out and just removed the breasts. I know it was a bit wasteful and I had some great casserole and roast recipes in front of me, but one of the birds still had grain in its gullet and it was all a bit too much. When I was younger I couldn’t enter a butchers because the smell of blood would make me very queasy but like most things you just learn to suck it up. Not the blood, that would just be gross, in fact I’m making myself queasy again so I’ll move on.

 Having dealt with the birds I had to dash off to get the boys so I wrapped the 4 birds in newspaper, popped them in a bag and dashed off.  It would be hard to describe the slaughter house scene that greeted me and the boys on my return.  In a rare show of co-operation the cats and Harry had got the bag off the table onto the floor and then opened it up.  Blood, feathers and body parts lay all over the floor, table and chairs, three living animals looked very pleased with themselves and four dead ones looked even deader.  My boys just stood there looking on in shock! Harry tried to look nonchalant but was unable to pull the look off properly as he had feathers sticking out of his ear, the cats just looked at me as if to say “and?”

Moving away from game triumphs and disasters I’ve also had a great week bird spotting. This is a great time for it as there are no leaves on the trees and branches and so the birds can’t hide so easily. Obviously bird spotting isn’t so easy with Harry, I usually just see the backs of birds as they fly away in alarm but sometimes I get lucky.  On Tuesday morning a walker told me to keep an eye out for a kingfisher, the man had seen it every day for the last week at this spot.  I have to say I haven’t seen it once! I have seen lots of others though, chaffinches, goldfinches, curlews, chiffchaffs, pipits, turnstones, stonechats and maybe a cirl bunting – this last one is unlikely as they’re not supposed to be around here but it really didn’t look like a yellow hammer which is the next closest thing it could have been. So there we go, if I haven’t been massacring or inventing them I’ve been spotting or eating them.  Hope you enjoy our feathered friends as much as I do.

Hands up, how many of you became astronauts?

What did I want to be when I grew up?  Being a barrister seemed to be on the cards for a while, it turned out that people would pay me a lot of money to be an argumentative, smart arse and my grandfather was a judge so it seemed like a logical choice.  However, a marine archaeologist seemed more glamorous, it would be really cool to discover Atlantis and lots of sunken gold. I then moved on to travel and figured foreign correspondent / photographer was where my calling was. Just so long as I had regular running water and room service.  So it came as a shock to me when I had my interview with my career’s advisor to discover that I was apparently best suited to being a hairdresser on a cruise liner. Anyone who has ever met me knows I don’t care too much for my own appearance let alone anyone else’s and as for making small talk with strangers that’s a no no, an even bigger no no is being stuck with a bunch of strangers that I can’t get away from so the cruise liner idea is my idea of hell.

Now, the same ridiculous questions are being posed to my eldest,  the best I can say to him are that his GCSEs will not set him up for life, they will not shape the rest of his existence and that he is not to freak out if he chooses the wrong options. There’s  just so much more pressure for him than there was for me, nowadays he has to get at least 30 A levels, they must all be A stars and he must then go to University and accrue more debt that he can contemplate, if his life is to mean anything. And he’s only 12.

 Of course a good education is important but it’s not essential that you know what you are going to do when you grow up.  I mean which of us is actually doing the job we wanted when we were 12? I’ll bet it’s only a tiny handful. There just aren’t enough train driver jobs to go around anyway.  Then of course these days no one is in a job for life, unless he goes into one of the professions, so he’s bound to jump around a bit. 

Last year he was going to be an outdoors instructor. He’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie so I can see the appeal but he got it into his head that he can earn £40K a year doing that and I’m not so sure.  Then he decided that being an architect was the way to go, however he thinks the Royal Albert Hall would look better with a smooth white render finish to “bring it up to date” so I hope for the sake of this country’s heritage that he doesn’t pursue this career path.  His most recent decision has brought me out in a cold sweat.  He wants to join the army, maybe the paras, maybe an officer. I am very calmly nodding and saying the right things whilst inwardly swearing that if I ever lay my hands on Bear Grylls it may be an encounter that he fails to survive.

For what it’s worth I became a librarian, didn’t see that coming, a mother, really didn’t see that coming and then started my own business.  Being in charge and bossy, surrounded by books? I think my family saw that coming from a very early age.  Whatever children grow up to be, the important thing is that they have the opportunities to experiment, change their minds, jump tracks and never ever listen to their careers advisor!

Burn's Night! Black tie and wallpaper paste.

Oh dear God. So there I was, it was 5pm and I had almost finished a very challenging day of wallpapering when my phone rang. “Hi, tonight’s do, turns out it’s going to be black tie and we’re picking you up at 6.30. Sorry. See you in a bit. Bye.”  So now I had 90 minutes to finish the walls, wash and find a suitable outfit. Right now I know what you’re thinking, if you’re a lady you’re wondering if I had my party frocks back from the dry cleaners, how was I going to style my hair with wallpaper paste in it and that 90 minutes was going to be cutting it fine. If you’re a gentleman you’re wondering if I hung the paper with a plumb line.  Gentlemen, I will address your concerns in a minute but more important things were afoot.  Even if my frocks were back from the imaginary cleaners (oh how I would love to have that many dresses) they still wouldn’t fit after a wonderfully indulgent Christmas.

Panicking, I finished the walls (a wee bit slap dash) ran for the bathroom and then attacked my wardrobe.  The joy of having no clothes is that it doesn’t take you long to realise that you truly have nothing to wear. Finally, I went for a full length skirt in brown silk and a matching top. Top was a wraparound and skirt had a drawstring waist; gentleman you may be all at sea with these descriptions but the ladies will appreciate the expandable natures of these garment.  I wasn’t hugely confident of the outfit though because the last time I wore it Steve said I looked like a Tudor milkmaid. And not the Benny Hill sort but the pestilence and poverty sort.  Hey ho.  I had just enough time to get a face on, look at the wallpaper, wince a bit at some of the edgings , kiss Steve and children goodnight before my ride whisked me away to a Burns Night party held at Pentewan Sands.

I relaxed back into the car thinking all my problems were solved when one of the girls in the car asked “Do you reel?” Seemed a bit of a personal question and quite frankly I only start reeling after the third bottle’s been open and I wasn’t going to tell her that but then the horror dawned on me, she meant highland dancing, that sort of reel.  Maybe my choice of 3 inch heels was not such a good wardrobe call after all.

I’ve got to say though I had a fabulous time, my friend’s husband hates dancing whilst she is fabulous at it so we spent lot of time dashing off to the loos or bar at the start of each dance.  He was clearly more practiced at avoidance than I was as I kept being encouraged to join in. Impressively, the men on our table were exceptional dancers and I have never spent an evening apologising so much.  I can dance, but I don’t quite get left, right and clockwise so once I’ve learnt a thing I’m fine but for the first few movements of every piece I was joining wrong sets, going backwards when I should have gone forward and stripping the willow with the wrong partner, I have to say it was a far more sedate Strip the Willow than I remember.  At school it seemed to be a contest to see who could swing the girls the furthest or make them fall over or show their knickers.  And on the subject of knicker showing, some of the gentlemen last night needed to wear their sporrans a bit lower. We didn’t know where to look when those kilts started flying!

All in all I met a lovely group of people, made a fool of myself in public, ate great food, I do like haggis and raised many a happy dram to the man himself.  As for the wallpaper, well I’m tidying that up today.

Does it make sense to ignore the old?

I’ve been thinking about people who are a generation or two older than me. I can’t call them the elderly because I may get a clip around the ear and also because, as time is a one way conveyor belt, I too, will one day become old and I don’t wish to be described as elderly.  Age of course is all relative, my sons already think I’m ancient and see little distinction between someone in their 40s and someone in their  70s, even 30 year olds are looking a bit over the hill to them but from my point of view, I see old as being retired, to keep this clear I also view middle aged as retired.

The reason for my ponderings is because I’ve been watching how older people get spoken to. I know dementia is an issue for some but it’s not something that gets handed out with the bus pass, so why do I keep hearing younger people speaking to older people as though they are dim foreigners. Slowly, loudly and in words of few syllables. People in their seventies grew up with rationing still in place, they saw society structures fall apart and reshape themself through the 50s. In the 60s they exploded. They decided that liberation was something that everyone should benefit from. They do owe us an apology for the awful fashions of the seventies. They have lived through lots of wars, strikes and recessions, massive technological breakthroughs, they witnessed man first leaving the planet, so if they don’t know who Cheryl Cole is and don’t consider Robbie Williams as a tortured individual let’s not assume that they are senile old duffers eh?

On one occasion I accompanied my mother whilst she was house hunting, the agent kept talking to me, saying “your mother will find it’s nice and close to the shops.” In front of her! When we left I asked mum if that was normal. Apparently it’s completely run of the mill.  Now what I don’t get is that as you retire and become “invisible”, it must really hack a person off. So why don’t they do something about it?  They are the baby boomers after all and we know there’s a lot of them about and they were pretty militant in their time. As they look forward to tiny pensions, and extortionate fuel bills why don’t they get together and rise up? Imagine if a political party was formed solely to address the needs of the retiring population, I bet they’d do well in the elections.  Even the concept of retiring is undergoing a massive shift. It used to mean stop working and live for another 10 or 20 years. Now we seem to go on for another 40. Forty years of retirement?  That’s bonkers.  We have a burgeoning post 60 population who really need to be addressed head on. As a society we just can’t afford it but we’re going to have to do something.  My bet is that if politicians stopped ignoring them and starting talking to them we might be able to shake things up a bit.

In this culture we seem to venerate the young and the money-makers. I see nothing wrong with that in moderation but it seems daft to ignore the experience gained from knocking about over the decades. It also seems massively disrespectful to assume that because someone can’t open their e-mail that they must have lost their IQ along with their last haircut. But what do I know I’m just a whipper snapper. Honest.

A review of the Cornish Guardian.

I don’t know much about you, in fact I know just about nothing about you but the one thing that I do know is that you enjoy reading the Cornish Guardian. This Christmas I got the chance to actually sit down and read the whole thing cover to cover and really enjoyed myself.  It’s always a shame though that the property section of the Christmas edition is so light.  If there is one thing I love about the paper it’s flicking through the property pages and choosing my next dream house, in a sense I’m glad I’m not rich because I’d be spoilt for choice, how would I decide between 20 acres of moorland or beach frontage?

The Christmas paper is also unusual in that we get to read the writings of the other local columnists. I think the people of Bodmin, Lostwithiel and Looe are well served with their columnists and it’s nice to see the standard I have to try to keep up to, it’s also nice to see what is going on in the other areas beyond the standard news stories.  One place that is great to find out what is going on is the letters page.  This is the section that I always turn to first because it makes sense of the news stories and also has the bonus of some days making me laugh out loud. Last week we had the treat of a councillor getting in a huff because praise for some scheme hadn’t been duly allocated to him but to a fellow councillor. His letter was full of “me, me, me” and outraged indignation, this week was even better when the second councillor retaliated saying that the first councillor was misguided and that HE was the one who did all the work, in a rare case of one-upmanship the councillor backdated his claim of interest to when he was a “young lad”. I have never read two letters more full of their own self-importance. I’m looking forward to a letter in next week’s paper from a councillor claiming to be Spartacus.  It is funny but really guys you’re councillors. Is this seemly? Is it helpful? Does it matter?  Surely the bigger picture is that the event was a success? Like their letters, I often find that I’m at odds with the political columns none more so than Dick Cole.  He always writes eloquently and persuasively but I generally find myself disagreeing – not this week though – how could George Osborne suggest creating “low pay zones” for public service workers.  The only decent wages in Cornwall tend to be in the public service, we should be trying to raise everyone up to their pay and working conditions not pull them down.

Another letter that struck a chord was from Keeley Allen, who volunteers at a local animal shelter. They want to employ her but have no funding, she wants to work for them and stop claiming benefits so the pair of them have written in asking if anyone knows where they may get funding for £5K a year. I don’t know the ins and outs of this story but it comes across as one of those situations where you think the system just isn’t working.  By the same token Keeley is trying to fix it, so good luck to her and I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for Marna who is still waiting to have her furniture fumigated. Her letter was informative, polite and nicely ironic, I have no doubt that the people at Ocean who really do care about their residents will have sorted out the glitch by now.  So that’s my review of last week’s paper I hope you enjoyed it (the paper) as much as I did.

Minor niggles and petty minded ejits.

Well it’s been a week of little frustrations.   I ordered some books for a birthday present for one of my son’s friends. I ordered a special next day delivery so that they would arrive in time. Ordering books is something that I’m pretty good at. I’m used to it.  What I’m not used to is delivery companies failing to deliver. I would say that 98% of my deliveries arrive without fuss or fanfare but the 2% that don’t turn up when you want to? Well, you can guarantee that they are the ones that are time sensitive.  So of course these books failed to turn up on day one, day two or day three, the party came and went and there’s me, a bookseller, unable to provide books for a birthday present. Only mildly annoying then.

Talking about the shop our scaffolding is still up, not the end of the world and it does mean that the work is getting done.  Well our work is all done but our neighbour has bigger problems so we just have to wait.  Hardly his fault and it needs to be done properly but you know how it is.  It still irks. I want to show off my newly painted shop to everyone. Which leads me to my next frustration, my scaffolding is up but my Christmas decorations at home still aren’t.  A leak in the house has meant that our sitting room ceiling is sagging.  We got a plasterer to have a quick look, he took a quick look and then he left telling us that what I thought was a quick dot and dab job was actually going to involve taking down the coving as well as a good portion of the ceiling and to call our insurers.

So now I am waiting for the loss adjuster, talk about spirally out of control.  And whilst I wait we can’t put up the decorations, well what’s the point if we have to take it all down again. We can’t dress the tree or deck the hall and our fa la la la la is definitely out of tune. Little things really can grind you down and then in amongst all the stupid minor inconveniences comes an act of a utter pettiness  and you wonder why they bothered.

My mother  went to catch the bus into town the day after her birthday.  Now it may shock you to discover my mother has a bus pass, well it does me as it means I’m not 18 anymore but that’s one of my other minor frustrations. Anyway, she got on the bus, handed over her bus pass and was told it had expired yesterday and had to be withheld. Furthermore if she wished to travel into town she had to pay. As she didn’t have her purse on her she had to step off.  Now I ask you?  What was the point in that?  It’s not as if her birthday made her a year younger and no longer eligible for a bus pass.  Why couldn’t the driver simply have told her that it had expired and that she needed to refresh it?  Why treat her like some sort of fare dodger?  My mother wasn’t bothered, she just brushed him off as a jumped up jobs worth but I got annoyed on her behalf.

So there we go a week of niggles and frustrations. Next week will be a doddle. Ho ho ho!

Killing each other over the Christmas Cake.

Once again cooking the Christmas cake led to family rows and it was all my fault.   For some reason I expect my family to all gather round as we chop the peel and tell jokes, Bing Crosby hands out the sherry and Clare College, Cambridge join in on the songs.  Snow gently falls against the window panes and we warm our hands by the fire. I know I’m raising my expectations too high and I have no issue with high standards, it’s just that when they unsurprisingly fail to deliver I’m disappointed.  I may be able, somehow, to get one of the most beautiful choirs in Britain to squeeze into my kitchen, I may even be able to raise crooners from the grave but snow? In November? In Cornwall?  Some miracles even I can’t perform.  The other miracle I can’t perform is to get my boys to stay in the same room for longer than 30 minutes without fighting, then I get crabby and then they get crabbier and Bing Crosby is grabbing his coat and high tailing it out into the rain.

Anyway, by the time the cake was ready to bake I had left it too late, of course that didn’t stop me and in the oven it went. A potentially huge mistake as 2 hours later I really needed to go to sleep and the cake still had a good hour to go.  In desperation, I turned the oven down to .5 and went to sleep wondering what I would come down to in the morning.    Sometimes though life is on your side, we all woke up to a house smelling of brandy and cloves, fruits and nuts and just the very essence of Christmas.

The reason I’m waffling on about the cake is how important cooking is in a family. My youngest son’s school had a baking day last week.  Virtually the whole day was set aside to make bread.  In the morning they looked at grains and considered the role of grain within an economy and looked at the historical development of different grains around the world.  Then they set to grinding some and then they started baking. Baking was treated as a science lesson, they experimented with chemical reactions and learnt about live cultures and how they work, they also experimented with the physical properties of an oven and temperature and they looked at the biological impact of bread as a food source upon the body.  All day long the top three year groups worked together, mixing, kneeding and baking and every child brought home their own loaf of bread.  It was so delicious that it barely lasted till tea time.  This was in a primary school where they have greater flexibility with how they run their school day or their curriculum.

Contrast it with my older son in secondary school. In the first year his cookery lessons seemed to be all about assemblage. Create a salad, create a fruit salad, design a sandwich. It was not edifying. This year he has been allowed to approach the ovens but not for long.  Every offering that the poor boy has brought home has been undercooked. You can see his frustration as he comes in and tells us not to bother eating it as he had to take it out before it was ready.  It’s maddening but the way I look at it is that at least he knows it’s undercooked. I’m not impressed with the current education system and the fact that my sons are currently having to go through it makes me even more unimpressed which is why I try to get them involved in as much cookery as possible at home.  The problem is I may end up killing them first.