Rainy Days and Mondays.....!

Picture this.......

Last Monday morning, just home after a wonderful week of camping. The wash basket is full. There are two sets of sheets from the house, a weeks clothing from camping, plus bedding, towels and washing-up cloths from the caravan......and it is raining!

Don't get me wrong, the rain was not a problem. This was, read on....

I looked down the bed to see who was still lying with us feline or canine wise, and saw, near my toes, a pile of something. Something suspicious. A lorry act!*

Now, let me explain *.

When I was teaching last century (scary thought that), we used, among other schemes, a wonderful reading scheme called 'Gay Way'. These were first published in the '50's and updated with new covers and pictures as time went by. The Red Books were the starter readers, then came the Green books and so on until the Violet books. They were lovely, and the children enjoyed the easy wording and the funny stories. They met Fat Pig, Sam the Fox, Meg the Hen, Deb the Rat, Ben the Dog, Jip the Cat and Tod the Giant and the stories were simple and the updated illustrations were just lovely. (I always felt sad for Fat Pig because he had no name, so my classes used to choose a name for him to make him feel better!)

Sam, Fat Pig, Meg and Deb!

Bread and Baby Sitting!

Here I am, home again after my cat-sitting weekend! I must say that they were all very well-behaved, they came when they were called, ate all their meals without (too much) fuss and allowed me to sit around reading and relaxing and really enjoying myself. The views from the house are spectacular, the mountains are majestic and the vines covering the slopes look like a patchwork quilt joined together with farm roads.

The view from the patio, vines in the far distance.

'Mum' drove home on Sunday and from then until Thursday morning when I left to come home, Catherine and I explored and found a few new places to eat, and returned to a few favourite places that had impressed us the first time around!

The little squirrel didn't have pizza though!

While I was there, Catherine showed me a cast-iron bread pan that Stu had bought to bake his amazing 'no-knead' bread. I have tried this once before, but the combination of wrong flour and wrong-size baking pan, put me off trying again! But, being a person who loves cooking and baking and getting it right no matter how many times I have to do it (ja right!) I was keen to try again, especially when we found the exact bread pan in their local Builders Warehouse! Add to that the fact that I got a really nice pensioner discount, and I was hooked!

K1.....P1....

We have had a wonderful week of mist, fog and..........rain! Beautiful damp days that force you to stay in and loll around in front of the fire, reading or knitting!

It's funny, but cold, wet, inside days always turn my thoughts to knitting. I love knitting and in my time I have turned out hundreds of different things, some successful and some not! (Sorry kids for those ghastly orange and yellow jerseys and tank tops that came out of the cupboard with horrifying regularity!)

I remember my mum and my Aunty Julia knitting up a storm every weekend in the winter months when I was growing up. Because their knitting was so similar, they would share the task of knitting a jersey or jumper, one would tackle the sleeves and the other would do the front and back. They bought the wool in skeins and then needed to wind it into balls, so either my sister or I would sit with our arms out and our hands stiff, thumbs up and fingers straight out while they hooked the skein round our outstretched hands and wound it into balls. (And our arms ached with the effort!) My aunt had a way of winding the wool round her thumb somehow, and the ball would end up with a neat hole in the middle. I tried that a few times and was thrilled when the skeins were phased out and the ball arrived, ready rolled!

But, I digress!!

Ground Hog Morning!

Do you ever have days where you think that you should go back to bed re-play the day properly tomorrow? Like that wonderful Bill Murray movie called 'Ground Hog Day'?

I had one on Tuesday!

It started like any normal day, slow wake up, roll out of bed, straighten slowly and with much grunting, shuffle downstairs, feed the birds/cats/dog, make coffee, clamber back into bed and plan the day! Rob was away, he was swanning around in the Kruger Park with people, so I was keeping Alfie's spirits up by singing to him and spoiling him and that sort of thing.

My Tuesday was planned and went something like this: Nip to the Post Office and post a parcel to my sister, then pop into the Bank and organise some money movement ready for my trip next week (yes, it's stomach churn time again as I fly to Spain on the 14 April!!! And I can't wait!) Then another nip to the Pharmacy to collect a month's supply of my tablets, up the road to have my hair cut (so I look fabulous for said trip), a leisurely stroll through the local mall to gather the last minute things for everybody to take with me. And home.

Menta de Gato!

You didn't know that I was fluent in Spanish did you?

Well, I am not actually, but I just love the phrase above. In French it is 'Herbe a chat', and I think the Italian is 'Herba Gatera'

And in English? 'Catnip'!

And the reason I am writing about Catnip? (Nepeta Cataria). I have two cats with dilated pupils who are drooling and rolling on the floor. And it is all thanks to my sister who sent them a little gift in the shape of two felt fish stuffed with dried catnip. The fish arrived in a parcel that contained two books for me, as Dizz regularly sends me super books from the SPCA in Pietermaritzburg, and once I have read them, I pass them on to a small nursery in St Helena Bay as they sell them for Animal Welfare. In that way the proceeds are still going to the animals who so badly need it.

The fish, still looking fishy!

A Little Doom But No Gloom!

We have had a very pleasant week, uneventful, thank goodness!! Our Military Operations began with 'pops' rather than 'bangs'. We could hear the distant sounds of gunfire, but so distant that Alfie didn't hear them at all! And in fact, with the building going on down the road and the generator running at full tilt to enable them to get through the solid rock below, we hardly heard it either! One week down, two to go!

So, no gloom!

Now to get to the 'little Doom' part!

Rob has a 'mature' figure, like me, he is a little rotund around the stomach area, so anything that flings itself off his fork tends to hit clothing on the way down! A lot. And yesterday, as he lifted the olive oil jug after pouring some onto the salad, a huge glob blooped out of the spout and ended up................yes you guessed it.

I have tried everything that I can think of to remove stains from clothing, I have used Sunlight soap, Dettol (excellent in removing ball-point ink), and ordinary washing powder, but there is always a little mark left behind. So as I was bemoaning the fact to Emma next door, she said I must try Doom! As the name implies, it is a fly spray, a well known and popular brand, and because we have mosquitoes and Rob often uses it, we just happened to have a tin in the house.

This morning I Doomed his shirt, it is now on the line and I am waiting to see if it has worked!

And, who knows, it may just keep the mozzies away too!!

And if it doesn't work, does anyone out there have any ideas for me?

Winter's Coming!

There's a lovely saying that goes something like this: 'You can tell the warmth of the day by the length of the cat' That being so, our cats are now becoming curled up like hedgehogs in a sunny patch as the days cool down and the autumn chill sets in! Basil tucks up so firmly that it's hard to tell where he starts and stops!

Dopey last week.

In fact, two nights ago Rob lit our little stove for the first time this season, a fact that is now recorded on our chalk board in the kitchen. Originally put up as a shopping reminder, it now records the facts that we need to remember, like the last rain figures, or when we defrosted the freezer or last but not least, when the 'Honeysucker' last came to empty the tank! More important than a simple shopping list, it's easy to go without milk, but it's impossible to survive with a loo that refuses to empty!

Yes, Another Cook Book!

I am one of those strange people who hate cooking but love cook books! I have a vast collection (I think I have mentioned this before) and regularly page through them to find exciting things to make, that is if I was going to make anything exciting!

The first recipe (or is that 'cook') book I really remember well was one that was given to my mum by her close friend when we left England, way back in the middle of the last century! (That sounds scary, but it is true!) It was written in 1960 by an American lady called Peg Bracken and was called 'The I Hate to Cook Book'. Mum regularly made a particular chicken dish called 'Saturday Chicken', an easy and delicious recipe that calls for a tin of mushroom soup, cream and chicken pieces and that's basically it! She made it for special occasions and when (if) people came for dinner, and she usually made a lovely cream cheese tart to follow. It became a favourite of mine too and I cannot remember how many times I have made it and shared the recipe with friends over the years. Funnily enough, I think that the first time I ever made it on a Saturday was just the other day!! Even Rob commented! There is a 'Sunday Chicken' too, that's a curry version of Saturday!

The book has been well used obviously!

Aloe, Aloe, Aloe!

I love this time of year! The days are calm and still, the sky is that pale blue that heralds the start of winter, the mornings are still dark at 7 a.m and twilight starts at 5.45 p.m and it's dark by 6 p.m!! The fire is lit after our late afternoon walk with Alfie, and the soup pot takes its place on top ready for supper. We are ready and waiting for winter now, the garden is holding its breath for the rain that is becoming really necessary! As I write this the sun has gone, the fingers of mist are swirling and creeping between the houses but inside is warm and cosy!

One of the aloes in my garde.

Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me!

We are really lucky here. We have very few flies! We may have scorpions and the odd snake. Or two. But apart from a short season when the Manatoka trees are flowering and we get a lot of small flies that seem to blow into the house if the doors are left open, we are really fly-free!

Until we decide to have a braai! (Or barbecue.)

Isn't it funny, there must be one on sentry duty, keeping a look-out for the whiff of braai smoke, because the minute the meat arrives at the table, so do five or six large buzzing flies, or brommer as we call them. Alfie hates them as much as we do because Rob often grabs the trusty fly swat and that sends Alfie into complete decline! We have never, ever used the fly swat on him and we never would, but maybe his previous people did. Anyway, it's very difficult to swat a plate or a glass, so there is much waving of hands above the food while we eat! And a quick uncovering of salad or meat long enough to grab another piece of wors.

What's for Supper?

Although I do not enjoy cooking, I love cook books! Odd I know, but I can spend hours paging through them and looking at the pictures. I spend ages looking up and printing recipes from the internet, exotic dishes that I have seen done on the cooking channels on the telly. I tear pages out of magazines and once I sat in a doctor’s waiting room and copied a broccoli soup recipe down on the back of an old ATM slip. A couple of years ago I took part in one of those email chain letter things that promise you umpteen recipes if you simply send one recipe to the top name and then delete said name, add yours at the bottom and send off to ten friends. Within a few days, a week at the most, the recipes would be flying in, jamming cyberspace and guaranteeing easy, tried-and-tested, home-made, granny’s finest, mouthwatering ideas.

Right. Easy. I copied out my favourite chicken recipe (‘Saturday Chicken’ for those who know me and have tasted it), sent it off, managed to find ten friends, and waited for the recipes to arrive in my mail box. No such luck. What did happen was this: three friends came back and said that they couldn't find ten people, one said that they had tried this before and good luck, one was concerned about catching a virus, a couple ignored it completely and hopefully the rest did oblige. I finally got two recipes back, one was a lovely face cream using aqueous cream and rosewater and other things, and the other one was a chicken recipe that I swear was mine, simply copied and pasted back to me! And that was it! So, when a friend sent the same email to me a while ago, I sent back saying thanks but no thanks and.....good luck!

Facelift for an 'Old Girl'!

No, I am not the 'old girl' in the title, although I really feel that I could do with some sort of re-vamp, having had my 65th birthday last week! At the time we were away in Gemsquash, as we were last year, so we have started another family tradition, let's hope there are lots of birthdays ahead to carry it on. But, as usual I digress, and my next blog will be all about the wonderful time we had.

The 'old girl' is actually our dear old Gemsquash herself. She is a vintage caravan really, (or is that veteran? Or classic? Or simply old?), as she first hit the road in 1981. So, we decided to do a couple of things to spruce her up. I had already made new blue and white striped curtains for her, cleverly made from a huge, quilted bed cover that we brought with us when we moved and had never used! After much unpicking and measuring and cutting and sewing, voila, brand new curtains. And they made a huge difference in brightening up the interior. So, our thoughts turned to the walls which were plain marine ply. Sturdy and brown and  boring! Off to the paint shop where we chose the palest of grey for the final coat, and armed with sandpaper, undercoat, rollers, brushes and paint tray, we headed home to tackle the job!

Still smiling at this stage!

Alfie was horrified as we literally stripped everything from inside and he refused point blank to return until the cushions were replaced and the bed was made!

Alfie left soon after this picture was taken.

The bed has gone!

Suddenly we were faced with acres of wall to paint and what seemed a good idea at the time started to fade a little as we strained our shoulders and neck sanding every piece of wall and getting into and under all the nooks and crannies that a caravan has. Plus, a caravan is not the largest of spaces anyway and Rob and I were doing soft shoe shuffles every time we wanted to change ends! I was doing the twiddly bits around the windows and cupboards and he was in charge of the roller. The undercoat looked ghastly, patchy and thin and I was wondering whether we would manage to cover the wood properly. We left it for two days to dry properly and then we did the first coat of grey. What a difference, we just loved it. The second coat went on the next day and the walls shone with pride! So did we, and aching muscles aside, we were very pleased with the result.

Compare this picture to the 'before' shot!

But, we were not yet finished! The knobs on the cupboard doors needed replacing as there were two different kinds. As the original plastic knobs had broken over the years, they had been replaced with wooden ones, so off they all came and we bought lovely stainless steel ones to match the grey walls! See, we planned it all very carefully!

Alfie approves! See the new knobs?

But, we were still not finished! The curtains had originally been on stretchy wire and although it is practical, it isn't pretty, so Rob bought curtain track instead and we used proper hooks!

But, we were still not finished! Off we went to track down new flooring and found the perfect one, a soft yet tough floor covering in a mock limewashed wood pattern which would bring out the colours of the walls and reflect the new door knobs. It was perfect and we enquired the price of just 3 metres. We gasped, gulped and left!

Who needs a new floor, the old one is perfect for the next 30 years!!

Bread (and Butter) Money!

We have a tiny shop here, it used to be part of the original farm, a separate room like a dormitory where the young men would sleep when they came visiting, and a few years ago it was turned into a little shop rightly called 'Die Winkeltjie', or The Little Shop! When we first arrived here, the shop was dark and a bit of a mess, tins of dog food stood side by side with tins of baked beans and condensed milk, and the fresh milk jostled for space with margarine and fishing bait in the 'fridge. Magazines, buckets and spades (for the holiday makers), bread, potato crisps, sweets and chocolates were haphazardly arranged on the shelves with tomatoes and apples, and the 'shopkeeper' had a television attached to the wall which blared out all day. Having said that, you could buy basically anything you needed, and it saved a trip to town for necessities like biltong or ice cream on a Saturday afternoon!

Die Winkeltjie.

It has recently been taken over by new owners and the difference is like night and day! They hauled everything out, removed the television, washed and painted the walls, had a sale of all the old bits and pieces that had been there for years, replaced the old shelves, and re-stocked the entire shop. Suddenly I noticed not only a fireplace and a chimney, but windows too! They now stock ready-made home-made meals, and serve coffee with home-made cakes and best of all, they have made a little wooden house tucked out of harm's way for the stray tabby that has made the shop her home! Our Dopey looks suspiciously like her, could there be a family thread there I wonder?

Oh to Plough the Fields and Scatter!

We are enjoying lovely hot summer weather, but luckily here on the coast we usually have our 'air conditioning' blowing to keep us cool. The temperature between here and our nearest town, only 12 kms away, varies between 4 and 6 degrees! For instance, on Tuesday I went into town to do my one-afternoon-a-week volunteering in the local Hospice shop. When I left here it was actually quite chilly, 23 degrees with the wind coming off the sea. In town it was 29, with no breeze at all and I was so hot that I had to buy a cooler top to wear! And a couple more just in case! But, I am veering off the topic as usual!
I have always wanted to grow my own vegetables. My dad had an allotment before we left England, and he kept us going with veges almost the whole year round. I dabbled in vege growing over the years when the children were growing up, I sprouted mung beans, had saucers with watercress, and the odd struggling pot with parsley and basil on the kitchen window-sill. I planted old potatoes that had been in the cupboard too long and were enthusiastically sprouting, and like the poem, I dreamed about 'nine bean rows and a hive for the honey bee'. So, when we moved here and I was faced with a garden to plant from scratch, I planned to have a thriving market garden like you see in the shiny magazines!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Yes, well it won't be such a happy one for the elephants, as I heard on the news that over 3,000 were killed in 2011 for their ivory. (23 tons to be more or less precise, the most since 1989 when ivory trading was banned.) My heart sinks again, if it's not rhinos that are slaughtered needlessly, it's elephants. And when they are extinct, along with the rhinos? What then? Well I suppose the poachers will move on to their next victim, for horn, tusk, hoof, hair, whatever, until another species bites the dust. Literally. And all for nothing.

Rob and I sat up last night to see the new year in, hoping that there would be no fireworks, but although there were a few and Alfie went in to panting- shivery-heap mode, I guess it could have been worse. He refused to go and have his last minute ‘emptying’ before bed and slept quite happily for the remainder of the night. He must have a bladder the size of a camel’s as he wasn’t too desperate to go out this morning either!
So, what will 2012 bring? Hopefully some good news for us all, visits to and from my family, the usual wish to lose weight, (oh for some willpower, why am I not addicted to carrots?) I also wish that the aches and pains that are so noticeable in the morning fade away to nothing and stay away! For Rob and Alfie and me, caravan adventures, enough money to live comfortably and that the laughs and fun we have here in our village continue.


On the road again!!


And what more, really, could a person want?

Happy 2012 from us all!! Thanks to John Hilton for the photo.


Happy New Year to you all!

Honeysucker!

It's time I introduced you to the 'Honeysucker'. No, this is not an exotic bird with colourful plumage, this is a machine that quite literally keeps us out of the s**t! A tanker driven and manned by wonderful people and I cannot praise them enough! They must have one of the worst jobs that I can think of, and yet they are cheerful, polite and efficient.

The Honeysucker in position!

Ready, Steady, Cook!

I am really not a person who enjoys cooking. I love eating. The odd thing is that I love to read and buy cookery books and I collect recipes from wherever I can, magazines, family, friends, the internet and of course that wonderful programme 'Masterchef Australia'. Rob and I watch it every day and often download and print the recipes from Masterclass. (Now, for those of you who do not watch the show, this has not made very much sense at all, but bear with me!)

Nicely set marmelade

Wind and washing

Yesterday we woke to wind.

We usually do here on the coast, but there is wind and there is WIND. I think it gusted to about 50 kph just at walk time, so, because it was Sunday and no Eastenders music to excite Alfie, we battened down the hatches, lit the fire and hoped that the roof was nailed on tightly!!

old advert for Hills Hoist Clotheslines (1955) / thanks to Wendy in Tasmania