(C)locks go back!

We coped perfectly alright with the change in the hour - normally on a Sunday this wouldn't matter, but with David having to catch his train back to London, we did need to be on top of it today.

Everything was going swimmingly, till we came to lock the house up and head for the station...

"Darling, have you got the front door key?"

"No!"

Oops!

Actually, that should probably read:

Aaaarrgghhh!

Ordinarily, not a problem: lose the house keys, one of us would go to B&Q/Homebase, buy some more locks, change the locks, voila!

Once my head had calmed down - I had a spare key in the car, so we could lock the house before leaving it, and luckily, I have three spare locks [with one key that operates them all] in the house - it was OK, but a few heart-stopping moments before logic reignited!

Needless to say, in this part of the world, NOTHING opens on Sunday apart from bakers and restaurants, so no chance of buying new locks.

Lucky I'd only just replaced them then, and kept the old set!

We're hoping that the key was dropped in the bakery, or that someone hands it to Stephanie in the Mairie, but at least I'm sitting here knowing that with different locks on all the doors if someone picked up the key with bad intent, at least they can't get into the house.

Now all I'm trying to do is NOT remember how much I spent on lovely new pick-proof locks with matching padlock and in a colour that matched the door furniture, and admiring my "new" contrasting brass locks & quite frankly weedy-looking padlock [and also trying to forget how much I've just spent on eBay purchasing a complete set of Agatha Christie books; ouch]!

An expensive day - but I've had those before [and no doubt will have them again!], and given just a little time it will not even be a distant memory...

I am very good at forgetting!

Oh, in case you're wondering, we got to the station just as the train was pulling onto the platform; we we're both very glad that it was the near platform (you cross the tracks to get to the other one, so once the train has arrived there is no way to get to the far platform), and that there were no obstacles like turnstiles to get through before David ran onto the train.

And once I'd got home and changed the locks I started to calm down!

First frost

Yesterday was cold enough that I put the heating on again (high of 10ºC and low of 4ºC - just like the last time), and left it on overnight...

Was I glad I did that?

When I looked out at my drooping 'flower meadow' and saw the frost on the grass in the field, it felt like the right call!

At 8.30am the temperature in the sun was 2ºC, but in the shade it had only risen to -1ºC (it had been -2ºC overnight).

Which prompted a lot of rummaging around upstairs looking for hats/scarves/gloves and big thick socks...

Success on the big-thick-socks front, but less so with the rest.

I've found two hats (one was one of my dad's old work hats - designed to keep dust off his head, but not long enough to cover the ears [not his winter work hat] - and a skiing hat whose elastic is too tight!), so I'm OK for now, if not comfortable...

Every time my ears have got totally "frozen", that's when I've gone down with the 'flu (real influenza, not "man-flu") - coincidence? Almost certainly, BUT I don't want to risk it!

Found a couple of mohair scarves (nice, but scratchy!), and a lightweight one (OK, but not big enough), but no gloves or mittens.

Hmmm, go for the "Royal" look - wander round with hands in pockets?

It's a glorious day, so I shall go for a walk looking like a bag lady & keep my hands tucked in the warm!

Ooh, it is nice, being able to type without worrying my fingers will drop off!!

David's on his way!

I'm really looking forward to seeing him again, but why must he send the "English weather" (as it's known here) along ahead of him?!

I might have worked out why my back sometimes goes 'wrong'

Occasionally, I think I might have a 'faulty' chromosome - I wonder whether one of the "legs" is missing from one of my 'exes'...Why else [when I have a shedload of legitimate jobs to do!] would I go and spend a couple of hours digging up the drive?
Mindless physical activity as therapy?


Next I'll be going and hiding in a "cave". [A martian one, naturally!]

Oh, well, at least I don't play golf!!


Sadly, wonky wheel & flat tyre stopped play. [Our sack barrow was another thing the workmen used, broke & didn't replace or say sorry!!]

Having turned the heating on...

...The first thing I had to do yesterday was turn it off again...

NOT complaining: '20°C & balmy' beats '11°C & shivering' any day of the week!

If only I could have lasted; my self-image wouldn't have taken the massive 'ding'; oh, well.

And obviously: '27°C in the shade' trumps all!

Oooh, I'm so happy.

In case you haven't guessed: I'm in a t-shirt, thanking my lucky stars and the weather gods.

David buys me the nicest presents...

A chainsaw...

AND a sawhorse!!

I'm delighted - I spent over an hour sawing up my beautiful [in my eyes, anyway] old floorboards, creating enough firewood for about two evenings, I suspect.

Now I'll be able to do a week's worth in that time!

He is really kind, and I'm so glad he buys the sort of presents I would like to buy for myself (just think: he could be the type of bloke to buy perfume!).

I caved...

Awww! "Hard" image shattered; boo

After a couple of nights when it went down to 4ºC outside (11ºC inside; in the room with the fire) I was contemplating turning on the central heating...

Pros:

• It would be warm! Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, I've got lots of warm-making activities to be getting on with, but I'm feeling a bit below par, and have allowed myself to be persuaded to take another day off;
• I would have to close the doors & windows (so wouldn't be sitting in an increasingly cold draught);
• It wouldn't be cold;
• Did I mention it would be warm?!

Cons:

• I would feel like a wuss for not waiting till the temperature was in single figures!
• I haven't read the instruction manual (despite David chasing Schwartz many, many times after they promised to supply one in English). Which wouldn't matter, except for:
• I haven't a clue what the buttons on the control panel mean!
• I would have to keep the doors & windows closed (so wouldn't be having fresh air circulating to dry the insulation out)

Well, having woken up for the second day feeling quite ropey and not up to doing much (with the exception of going to saw some more fire-wood; I'm going to combat the weakness in my limbs for that worthwhile venture!), I let David talk me into turning the heating on.

His rationale was that I may have picked up a bug (I think it might be a chill from sitting in a cold draught!) - normally I don't get ill just from sitting in a cold house, otherwise I'd have been quite poorly 2 years ago!

But I think I'm still winding down after all our property-related "excitement"...

And if one kind friend is to be believed, these things can take ages to get over: he said his sister took a couple of years to fully recover from her house building experience!

I'm hoping it will wear off faster than that, but am also plotting an afternoon in front of the fire with an Agatha Christie (always solace in times of 'wobbliness')...

Just as soon as I've sawn some more fire-wood!

Ahhh! 15º, no "wind chill" - I'm feeling better already!

Perhaps I'm up to hefting the axe...

Sloe Gin 2

You may have guessed that I overcame my reluctance to go back to the supermarket & buy more gin!

Yup, I felt pretty bad standing there at the checkout with my four litres of gin & 2 kilos of sugar...

[If I knew the French for "after 2 ½ years of being teetotal, yes I celebrated both the ridding of our house from builders, and the sale of our home in Brixton (and had a few glasses in between!), but I'm back on the wagon now. And it's for making liqueurs" - sounds like protesting too much, doesn't it? Better that I just brazen it out...]

If I make up my mind about the damson schnapps (or still contemplating some prunelle eau-de-vie), I'm going to shop in another town!

It was very satisfying to make so many different jars of liqueur-in-waiting, and I now have [what I privately think of as] my "secret gin cupboard".

Oh, that looks so much worse than it sounds!!

[And in my head it does sound pretty bad]

The reason it's secret is that I want the results to be a surprise, and unless anyone reads this & rats on me to David, there's no way he will notice that I'm building up stocks of "goodies"...

Well, if I die, in a couple years time he might wonder what's in that cupboard.

But I reckon it's pretty safe till then!

So why is a teetotaller making litres of flavoured digestifs?

Well, I guess it's a combination of an instinct to put stuff by in times of plenty for when times are hard (country background), liking to make things to please other people (that's surely the reason we cook for friends?), and liking the magic of the process...

The fascination with alchemy is still as strong in the 21st century, otherwise why would people spend so much money on "cures" for everything from weight loss to stopping smoking (to making yourself irresistible to women!)?

And quoting from Fiona Neville's friend Gilbert:

“Remember that the combination of gin, sloes and sugar is always better than the separate ingredients, no matter what you do.”

Oh, and I'd always heard that sloe gin makes a great alternative to cassis in a kir royale!

Sloe Gin...

...Only it isn't!

I was doing fine - just getting over the hectic last six weeks [mum & Dot came to stay at the gîte round the corner for a week, then we hurtled back to England to move house - if you're remotely interested, I shall post about this on my other blog - fitting in a van trip to dump a load of stuff here in the process, not to mention the dozen or so calls to BT ("what, when you asked us a fortnight before you moved, to move your broadband with your phone , you actually wanted to take your broadband with you to your new home? Oh, that will take another five days...". Internet finally connected: "Oh, you wanted to take your 'Broadband Talk' as well?" Guess what, yup, the usual efficiency! And another five days). Did I mention the dentist visit - tooth extraction(s?) to take both halves of my fractured tooth out?]...

So, I went to look for the blackthorn bushes to see if I was in time for sloe gin.

The plants I'd been eyeing up two years ago (when I didn't have time to harvest the magnificent crop), had been hacked back, and all the other ones I found only had a few sloes in the upper branches; too few to be worth taking the step ladder out in the car!

And then I came a different way home & found the perfect bush - covered in the little blue-black beauties, almost all at grabbing height.

So, no problem there then...

Till I started Googling to check the recipe!

Having gone out yesterday to buy a litre of gin & a kilo of sugar, I knew I'd be fine, till I came across at least one different recipe on each site I looked at.

No problem, just pick one, and do it!

But then I got caught up in the comments on whether freezing the sloes was better/necessary on the Cottage Smallholder page...

The short of it was: 'if you make different recipes, you can compare which you like the best' [make notes on the bottle at the time of making], and 'keeping the gin improves the flavour - compare different vintages' [someone was the lucky possessor of a bottle of 30 year old sloe gin].

So, guess what?

Instead of enough berries to fill one bottle, I went out yesterday evening and picked a decent sized bag, and not being sure whether we'd had a frost, cleaned them and froze them. About 4 pounds of them - enough for four bottles...

Still "so far, so good", but the page I'd clicked on the get to the "sloe gin challenge" page had a recipe for wild damson gin...

Having walked past the damson sapling in the hedgerow earlier in the week, and noticing that the damsons I couldn't reach last visit were still there, I was now thinking "hmm, sloes will be ok in the freezer, let's harvest those damsons & make a bottle of damson gin".

The "few" damsons turned into more than two pounds, and thus two jars of damson-gin-in-waiting (thankfully a small bottle of gin was nestling in the cellar in case of "emergencies" - sorry, David!).

So, now I'm off to town to buy more gin (and sugar), and hopefully avoid being branded as one of those alcohol-fuelled Brits who go abroad to make trouble...

Or an alcoholic!