STALLED and biting the bullet(s)

Blogging has stalled for a while as I have been in the UK for one of our routine visits this week and before that we were very busy with entertaining, gardening and other stuff.

This visit I have done the usual stuff such as cutting the grass, tidying the garden, tidying the house following our earlier exit in July and, importantly, I have been on a mission to buy myself some new clothes and shoes.  I am desperate for new shoes, most of mine being years old and worn out (or no longer comfortable for my poor old abused feet).  I also need new sandals but they will have to wait until next year as by now there are none in the shops.

I dread going shopping for clothes and shoes but dread even more the hassle of buying them online.  The waiting in for the parcel or having to fetch it from the corner shop, the trying on to find the fabric is nothing like I expected and the shoes don't fit, followed by the packing up and returning using the various methods dictated by the supplier.  Then the checking of my account to make sure the refund arrives.

I had been to one of the retail parks a few miles away and bought a couple of dresses and a jumper in the Weird Fish sale, plus a raincoat from Cotton Traders.  The only shoe shop was Pavers but the only shoes that looked suitable were not available in my size.

So, I bit the bullet and went into town.  First stop M&S who have moved from the town centre into a new store in a retail park on the edge of town.  I queued to get into the inadequately small car park and slid into the only inadequately small parking space I could find, a long way from the shop.  At least the parking was free but limited, of course, to two hours otherwise you risk a hefty fine from the people who own the car park.  You can't visit all the shops on the site in two hours - unless you are very focussed and don't enjoy browsing.

I was lucky to find jeans and trousers in my size plus underwear in stock.  I bit the other bullet of trying them on in the shop, which always seems to be a faff but avoids the inevitable return to the shop if they don't fit when trying them on at home.

I also nipped into the food hall (always a joy) and picked up some small chocolate gifts to take back to France.  When we are invited out to lunch we take some chocs for the hosts and M&S chocs are always well received.

Next I went into the town centre and parked in a central car park.  By then I was hungry so I popped into the Post Office.  The building that used to be the Post Office is now a bar restaurant.  I hesitated but thought how bad can it be?  The décor was a cross between Frankie and Benny and an old railway station caff.  This surprised me as I thought that kind of thing had gone out of fashion now.  Having paid £8.60 for a very dismal bacon sandwich (just two small slices of unbuttered toast and two minute rashers of bacon) and a small bottle of mineral water I ventured out to the shops.  I am out of touch with how much eating out costs in the UK.

There used to be two Clarks shoe shops in town, plus others such as Lilley & Skinner and a huge shoe department in the Co-Op.  The Co-Op, our wonderful department store, closed several years ago and there is now just one Clarks shoe shop and two that seem to sell cheap trainers.  I was out of luck.  

However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed wandering around the town.  The weather was fine which always helps but somehow it didn't feel quite so down at heel as it has felt lately.  There are still plenty of empty shops and too many nail bars* and vape shops for my liking but on the whole I thought I could come to like the place again.

The indulgent wandering around town added time to my car parking fee which was £4.60.  So by now I was £13.20 out of pocket and only a very mean bacon sandwich to show for it.  (We rarely have to pay anything at all for car parking in our part of France.)

My plan was to head to yet another retail park way out of town where there was a Hotter shoe shop, a drive which took forty minues.  If I was unlucky there I would have to go to the dreaded Meadow Hall - the massive shopping centre on the outskirts of Sheffield - which would involve at least a forty minute drive up the M1(depending on the time I hit the motorway and if there had been any "incidents").  In Hotter I hit gold and came away with a selection of shoes, boots and trainers that will see me through several winters.  

Changing the subject, I have been trying to eat very healthily while chez nous uk as all that socialising and enjoying life over the summer chez nous fr has taken its toll on the waistline.  I have had huge success with poached eggs.

You may laugh but poaching eggs is, IMHO,  a black art and over the years I have tried a number of methods with mixed success.  I have tried microwaving them (Nancy Birtwhistle's method) often resulting in exploded egg, the silicone egg poaching pods (eggs stuck like glue to the pods), steaming them in a tea strainer over a pan of simmering water (stuck like Gorilla glue to that), and, most successful so far, sliding them into a large shallow pan of barely simmering water from a small cup (Nigella Lawson's method).  This would produce eggs that varied from perfect little balls of deliciousness to something that looked like a strangled jelly fish (but still tasted good).

More recently I have bit the bullet and done it the old fashioned way with HUGE SUCCESS.  Sliding the egg from a cup into a small but deep saucepan of just simmering water containing a splash of white wine vinegar has worked for me.  I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the freshness of the egg but when the white is just no longer transparent the egg seems to have that oh so perfect runny yolk we all aim for.  A thing of joy without a doubt.

Last but not least, I have just finished reading this book.  I started it on the aeroplane (or rather, while waiting for the one and a half hours delayed flight in the dreadfully uncomfortable and greenhouse-like waiting room at Limoges airport which they euphemistically call the "departure lounge").  Once chez nous uk I couldn't wait to carry on reading it.  Set in the era of coach and horses and parlour maids, it was a bit of a slow start but very worth sticking with it to the end.  If you like a tale with unexpected twists and turns you would enjoy it.

As a post script, Blogger seems to have thrown a wobbly yet again and no longer updates my reading list or the blog list on my sidebar.  Does anybody have any idea how to fix this?

* As a further post script I recently stumbled across an article which refers to the invasion of nail bars into towns all over the world.  The writer refers to the nails as "acrylic claws".  They definitely would not suit my lifestyle and I often wonder how people manage with them!

FOUR DAYS IN WINTER

On Sunday morning we awoke to a deep frost.

It was very pretty but bitterly cold.

The frost clung to everything making beautiful patterns.

On Monday we awoke to snow and an even deeper frost.

Frost upon frost.

It's unusual to have snow that lingers for more than a few hours here.

We're glad to have plenty of food in the freezer and plenty of wood in the woodshed.

More by luck than good management.  

This is the first time we remember such a long spell of frost and snow here.

It is very cold.

We have to keep both wood burning fires going to keep the house warm.

Later in the day on Monday, the sun came out.

It was all very pretty.

The roads were dry and perfectly safe to drive on.

We went for a drive to take some pictures. 

The moat at Le Châtelier was completely frozen.

There seemed to be quite a bit of warmth in the sunshine but not enough for the frost to thaw.

On Monday evening there was a beautiful sunset.

The next day, Tuesday, we braved the cold to go to the supermarket.

We left it until the afternoon when the roads had been used.

They had clearly been salted in most places.

We have been keeping the bird feeders stocked and the bird bath clear of ice.

The birds seem to appreciate it.  There are always plenty of customers.

Today, no pictures.  It's day four and we're glad we went to the shops yesterday.

We awoke to freezing rain.  

The roads were treacherous so we didn't venture out until much later when it all began to thaw, just enough.

During our confinement to indoors we have been tackling a very tricky jigsaw puzzle.

Yvonne is as always on hand to help.

It all brings back not so fond memories of winters in Derbyshire.

Time and again we would wake up to two or three feet of snow and would have to dig our way out in order to try to get to work.

The last person I worked for said that if I didn't get in before lunchtime I would have to take the day as part of my annual leave.

I replied that in that case I would stop digging and retired a few weeks later!

I absolutely do not miss the stress of having to get to work in the snow plus the worry of how on earth I would get home again.

A NEW WASHER, CHEESE, AND A VISITING CAT

Our washing machine had been on the blink for a long time.  Sometimes it would spin normally although noisily, sometimes it struggled and rattled like hell, and sometimes it just refused to spin at all.  It was a good quality Bosch machine but eleven years old and had been great until the last year.  So the question was, whether to try to get someone out to look at it and see if it could be repaired or whether to not risk spending good money on an old machine and buy a new one.  Plus the risk that one day it would simply conk out when full of wet washing, which has happened to other people I know and which complicates the problem no end.

The decision was made when I spotted a bargain in a local branch of SuperU.  700€ is a lot of money but 300€ off made it affordable.  We decided to go for it.  The old machine now resides forlornly at the corner of the déchetterie alongside other discarded machines.  Curiously, the man that mans the déchetterie seemed remarkably thrilled to take it, and didn't swipe our users card (twenty goes a year),  for which there must be an explanation but I can't imagine what.

I am very, very pleased with the new machine.  It hardly seems to use any water and washes things beautifully, spinning them much better than the old one.  RIP.

We recently discovered a number of previously unfamiliar cheeses at the cheese stall on the market.  We were having visitors and lashed out a ridiculous amount of money on an eclectic mix of hard and soft goat and cow's cheeses.  I took photos of them knowing I would never remember what they were otherwise

This one was my favourite.

They all went down well with our visitors who also were not familiar with any of them.

We couldn't resist this one, called Belper Knolle, because Belper is the name of a small town in Derbyshire close to where I grew up and a knowle is another word for a village or hamlet.  It was jolly expensive.  

I wondered how on earth cheese made in a Derbyshire town could end up on the market in the middle of France and was disappointed when the cheese lady told us it was Swiss.  However, it was worth buying as it's delicious.  The idea is to serve it grated like you would a parmesan, on salads, pasta dishes and in soups, and in fact it tastes much like parmesan only better.  I sprinkled it on the soup I served for dinner and it was much appreciated.  

We now covet the wooden cheese grating device that the cheese lady used to give us a taste.  

We have a visiting cat.  We had seen the cat in the field behind the house (once the farmer had cut down the triffid like weeds) occasionally over the last few months.  I wondered how long it would be before it ventured to our house and sure enough, I smelled the tell-tale odour of tomcat in the little barn.

Shortly after that Yvonne appeared one day without her collar and with a scratch on her face.  We found her collar (it's a quick release type) in a flower bed amongst a clump of flattened dahlias so we suppose that's where an encounter took place.  A few times she growled and hissed when looking out of the glass door and once she hurtled into the house via the cat flap and hid under the stairs, eyes like saucers, hissing and spitting.  Then we spotted the cat on the drive and found it on the beams in the little barn.  It's a handsome cat with a fluffy tail and looks nice and clean.

It is nothing like the vicious cat we had visiting before.  That one found its way into the house and terrorised Daisy, attacked both of us and would not go away, returning every night to take food.  This one seems much more friendly, is obviously well used to humans as it came towards us, purring and rolling over on the beams.  So far it has not attempted to get into the house and we therefore presume it's well fed and lives in one of the neighbouring farms, just doing the normal tomcat thing of wandering a fair distance from home every so often.  We haven't seen it for a few days now that the weather has turned and hope that it is in fact well cared for and has somewhere warm and cosy to spend the nights.