A peculiar week; nonetheless enjoyable. Enjoyable being AT HOME quite a lot as this is something I do increasingly relish. Includes some baking, a group of wriggly youngsters, the “committee” meeting and not keeping up with our neighbours, yet again.
To start with, something of my health. I am proactive in looking after myself, especially after the battering my health had a few years ago. On one level, to be told when and from what I am most likely to die of, it is a sobering thought (don’t panic, nothing imminent). And yet my Christian faith reminds me those things have always been in God’s plan for me; I don’t need to hear it or see it written in a letter and besides, the prediction in the letter is probably wrong. The official letter, in all its coldness, doesn’t say anything about Heaven and yet the Bible provides fleeting glimpses of what is surely there for eternity.
You may have gathered from the above photograph, I have been causing havoc and chaos in the kitchen. I seem to go through little phases where I am making jams, preserves and marmalades. Then curries, followed by having a hopeless go at biscuits (yet to be mastered) and now I’m playing with our bread machine more and more.
Making pizza dough is dead easy. Strong, white bread flour, water, olive oil, salt, yeast and water is all you need. Oh and don’t forget the 45 minutes in the machine while it whirrs away with the odd clanking and the occasional wobble on the work top.
I have also experimented with some other recipes which includes bread with ground nuts, sunflower seeds and flaxseeds in order to boost my intake of those healthy omega oils. It might sound a bit heavy-going but with the right amount of yeast and flour improver it is pleasantly light and fluffy. Compare this to the regular cotton wool crap which his peddled as bread in supermarkets and I know which I prefer!
The changing seasons
Never have I appreciated the changing seasons as I do now. While I suppose I will always enjoy the summer most of all, I do love the sliding sensation into autumn with the shortening days and changing colours out there. There is a certain beauty to it which mirrors our lives as we move from one period into another.
For now our travels this year are still fresh in my mind; I revel in the excitement of Manhattan and the sense of adventure in South Africa. My new passport arrived a few days ago and instantly I was thinking where it will take me first of all, somewhere new, somewhere warm, somewhere cool and darker, somewhere…. I don’t know but it’s a lovely thing to allow those thoughts of wanderlust to swirl around in my mind.
A few days ago I found myself having one of those “are you ready for winter?” conversations with a neighbour. We have our firewood lined up and happily use the central heating where and when we need it. We have our secondary double glazing in place and the freezer, stock cupboard and kitchen would keep us sustained for ages before shopping was needed.
Then I was, yet again, outclassed by “we’ve just had a diesel generator installed. We can use it to boil a kettle, keep the broadband and so on running when the power cuts come”.
I suggested a cable could be run across to our house as well, in exchange for pumping water up from the well in our cellar. For a moment that seemed attractive as potentially water supplies could be cut in the event of power cuts. After all, it’s not that there’s a hospital or a secret military base anywhere near us. We smiled and joked about it and I realised I was more relaxed and easy-going about pending black-outs than my neighbour.
The youth group which I have astonishingly found myself involved with is lovely. Yes, me of all people! Nevertheless I do enjoy it and it brings back memories of when our own two daughters were at that stage in asking the same funny ~ but quite sincere ~ questions. And then there’s the wriggling around! I never realised how much young children wriggle around. Even when they think they’re sitting still they wriggle and fidget – talk about high energy levels! So naturally we have sugary snacks on offer which only fuels them into a turbo charged wriggle mode.
And finally the committee. Yes those committee meetings, or more correctly a board of trustees. I decided the latest meeting would be more informal with no agenda and minutes would not be taken. The conversations were far easier, more natural, everyone had their point of view heard and we still finished on time! Once again, this is all evidence of feeling so easily accepted here in the village and it is surprising how different it is to life in Dunstable; there really is something in this.