I don't know how, but it would seem that no matter how much time I have, I'm able to fill every second of it and still have things I want to be doing but haven't had time for. How does that work? I can vaguely remember, back when I was younger and more foolish, spending the afternoons sitting around watching films. Maybe I didn't have anything else to do (or more likely I was too hungover to do much else). Now I've not even got the time to sit down for lunch, let alone waste the afternoon watching TV. Oh, to be able to get some of that time back now! So what have I been up to this week that's keeping me so busy? Well, amongst other things I've made some good progress on project Patio. The weather put pay to a couple of days in the week but we're starting to get somewhere now. The first of the raised beds are complete, which has allowed me to move all the accumulated soil and empty out the old patio tubs, making space for the next steps. As I've said previously, I'm certainly not going to be getting a job as a brickie, but I'm fairly happy with my efforts so far. Hopefully we'll have a few more days of fair weather next week and I can get a bit more done before the weather really turns. Saturday I was up early, on what was a damp, foggy, yet surprisingly warm morning, for a few running miles. Nothing too strenuous by my standards, just a 20 mile jaunt up to Hannington and back, making use of the local footpaths and Bridleways. It's a nice little route this one, I would think that 16 of the 20 miles is off road. Which, when you consider it starts and finishes at my back door, isn't bad going for someone that lives in suburbia and not in the back of beyond. It just goes to show how much countryside is actually out there (and how local it can be) if you go and look for it. Saturday's, main event however was Christmas cake making! Having made the Christmas puddings a couple of weeks ago, there was a load of dates and a few other odds and ends leftover that needed using up. Handily, "The Old Cheese" has got a lovely fruit cake recipe that needs dates and this seemed like the ideal opportunity to get rid of them! Except when I got the recipe out I discovered that it also needed loads of dried mixed fruit, Apricot jam and Sherry. None of which were in the cupboard! This lead to a bit of a dilemma. Do I buy the things we haven't got and then end up trying to find recipes to use them up, leading to a never ending circle of trying to use things up, or should I just do something else? Well, I'm not normally one to follow a recipe, so why should this be any different. We did have; Marmalade, 1/2 a bag of Currents from 2016, lots of Sultanas and the dregs out of the bottom of a Martini bottle plus a splash of Port. As such, this years Christmas cake will be sort of like the recipe "The Old Cheese" lovingly copied me. Oh, alright, it's nothing like the recipe, but it smelled lovely and as it's about 90% fruit and has been liberally doused in Blackberry Liqueur (we've not got any Brandy either) it's bound to taste alright. Well, we'll find out in 4 weeks time won't we! Sunday, was another foggy, grey and miserable day that somehow managed to get colder as the morning progressed. In my never ending quest to squeeze as much into every day as possible, I was out on my bike just as it started to get light. Granted, it was early on a Sunday morning but the roads were absolutely deserted and I had a great couple of hours rolling through the still sleeping countryside before the sensible people stated to get up. Again, nothing too strenuous, heading out from home towards Odiham before turning South for some hilly fun on the edge of the South Downs National Park. I've got this route listed as 55 hilly miles on my Garmin and it certainly lives up to its name. There's nothing too silly or steep, but it's pretty relentlessly up and down. I suspect that Saturdays running efforts didn't help, but my legs certainly knew that they had been out by the time I got back home again! Having seen the weather forecast for the back end of next week, it seemed prudent to get the top net rolled back on the allotment before we have any snow. I know. It never snows in December, except for 2011 (?) when we had loads of snow in the weeks before Christmas! I've been thinking about how to put this away for a while. Most people seem to either fold it up, or push it all back to one side, neither of which seem that easy on your own. After a little bit of thought, I've gone with rolling it around a length of drainpipe. It was a bit of a fiddle due to the cage not being square and having to add more pipe as I worked my way down. But it's rolled up nicely and was easy enough to do on my own. Hopefully it should be easy enough to unroll again come the spring too. While we're talking about the allotment, we might as well have a bit of an update. All the winter veg is looking good, except the Leeks which seem to be rotting off. Leeks normally do really well, happily standing through the worst of the weather and easily seeing us into the Spring. That's not the case this year though. I'm not sure if I've grown a different variety (if only I wrote things down), or if it's just down to the weather, but I'm working hard to get them eaten up before they go to waste and we'll just have to have something else for tea in February instead of Leeks. On the positive side, the Parsnips are doing really well, as is the Kale and Chard, so we're not going to starve. I'm still picking the odd handful of Autumn fruiting Raspberries too which is surprising this late on in the season! And that's about it, another week summerised in a couple of hundred words. It doesn't look like much when you write it down, but I suppose when you add in the boring weekday running, cooking, cleaning, workshop tinkering time (I've got a few secret mini projects on the go, which I'll reveal later) and other pottering around it soon adds up and probably explains why I sleep like a dead man and feel like a 90 year old for the first 1/2 hour of every day until my stiff and aching old muscles warm up!
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
March 2024
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