Bison Repair Kit

We drove past them the other day: a whole herd of brown, oddly shaped animals, with that distinctive curve where regular cattle don't have one. They were grazing happily in the enclosure and seemed blissfully unaware of the large sign in the driveway next to them indicating that the Bison Grill was situated right next door. An ominous sign if you are a fully grown, healthy bison. It seemed a bit bizarre, here in the midst of the Welsh countryside, amidst rolling, green, Welsh hills and next to the main road. They looked healthy enough, which made me wonder about the need for the Bison Repair Kit which I found in the shed shortly after we had moved to Wales. A number of things turned up in our removal boxes which surprised me a little. They must have been buried in the depths of our previous shed at our last address and we had had no need for them recently. Certainly, I couldn't think of any particular reason why we should have needed to repair bison in the recent past. We have experimented with owning rabbits, guinea pigs, Russian hamsters (which sadly couldn't be repaired after they quickly fell ill), cats and a dog. But no bison.

 

The kit was housed in a small tin and contained nothing which looked at all useful for bison. On asking my longsuffering husband, I eventually discovered that the kit was once used to repair, not bison, but bikes! Silly me, I should have known that.

 

I have a way with words. I love new words and odd configurations of words and we have some wonderfully interesting discussions over breakfast sometimes about words and phrases we have just discovered or suddenly started to look at in a new, inquisitive way. I came across a list on his desk one morning a long time ago, early in our married life. It was about Bill. But I couldn't recall either of us knowing anyone called Bill. Anyway, from the list I discovered that Bill needed to be watered, garaged and serviced! I should have known, really, that this simply entailed putting a few cheques in envelopes, but for some reason I was in a quirky mood that day and misread the information on the list in a new way, which my new husband found quite charming and original. I wonder how he deals with this charming trait now, after 38 years of marriage...

 

 

Right as Rain

Right now in Britain what on earth can be right about rain? I understand that if you live in a drought-stricken nation rain is just the ticket (what does that mean, by the way?), wholly desirable and a God-send when it turns up. However, here in Britain, right now, that's just not the case, is it?

 

Right as rain: the phrase popped out of my mouth the other day and set me thinking, pondering on its meaning and origins. (I'm like that with words.)

 

Right as rain! I looked it up in 'Brewers'. There were a number of entries about rain. Some were more relevant than others.

 

'It never rains but it pours.' True! Very true! An 18th century proverb, apparently. Very shrewd these 18th century guys - and gals.

 

'To put something by for a rainy day.' Well, the day has come! Time for a spending spree!

 

'To rain cats and dogs.' A seafarer might have used the expression 'The cat has a gale of wind in her tail' when a cat is unusually frisky, so Brewer's tells us. The dog, Brewer says, is a signal of wind, like the wolf, which were both attendants of Odin, the storm god. 'So the cat may be a symbol of down-pouring rain and the dog of the strong gusts of wind accompanying a rainstorm.' I thought Brewer said the cat was something to do with wind, not rain... oh, well, never mind. Anyway, we've had plenty of both lately.

 

'Rain check.' This has something to do with a ticket that was given in the USA, entitling one to see another baseball game when the one you had a ticket for was cancelled because of rain. OK. They could be issuing a lot of those these days. But certainly no-one needs to check if it's raining.

 

OK, Brewer's, thanks for the explanations.

 

But 'right as rain'? How can this be? How can rain be 'right' - or 'wrong'? Well, I can see a whole lot more reason for it being wrong right now, especially in Somerset, Berkshire and a few other places. With sodden ground, flooded streets and homes, overflowing gutters and wrecked sea defences, what on earth do we need more rain for? And how can it possibly be 'right'? The only guess I can make is that rain might be described as 'upright', i.e. coming straight down. In the Netherlands rain comes in 'rods', not bedraggled moggies. Again a picture of rain coming down forcefully in straight lines. Although, actually, recently the rain in Wales has been more diagonal or horizontal than vertical. The neighbour opposite has a tall, thin conifer in his front garden which, after being battered by the winds, has finally been left as a long-lasting testimonial of the direction in which both wind and rain came these last few days and weeks. 

 

So the mystery remains. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has let me down for once. Can anybody help?

Flat Spin?

 

My mind is in a state of confusion, it seems. I am imagining, in my mind's eye, a little Mexican in a sombrero, spinning like a top, round and round, almost hidden from view by his enormous hat and gradually disappearing further and further into the ground, soon to be flattened completely beneath his oversized headgear. Once, whilst we lived in the Netherlands, we went to see a wonderful concert by an international youth orchestra in a concert hall in Rotterdam. This must be what I am thinking of. Their party piece, performed with every ounce of their skill and application to the task, was a marvellous rendering of one of my favourite pieces of music: Bolero. Accompanied by a dervish gentleman dressed in a multi-coloured poncho, who twisted and twirled in time to the music until we expected to see him fall, dizzy and exhausted, to the ground, the music was intoxicating. We listened and watched, spellbound, as he whirled on and on, apparently caught up in the music, like we were, and totally oblivious of his audience.

 

Caught up in a frenzy of speculation, my mind moves on to an altogether different image: some kind of revolving apartment, maybe on London's Post Office Tower? Living in London as a child, I remember the excitement when the Post Office Tower Restaurant was first opened and one could spend an enchanting evening up there, revolving slowly over dinner and seeing the lights of London laid out below. Is it this I should be thinking of?

There again, I seem to see, this time from the distant recesses of my childhood memory, a game of cat and mouse, a cat and mouse chase, and a giant hammer wielded by the desperate little mouse, swinging round and round above his head and finally making contact with an annoying and troublesome pussy cat, knocking him clean off his paws, high up into the sky, round and round, spinning down and down until he hits the deck, in an elongated, flattened pussy cat shape on the floor - again. Poor old Tom cat!

It's Christmas! Most of us are rushed off our feet. This probably explains my unstable, confused mental state and the hallucinations which crowd into my overburdened consciousness. Presents to buy, menus to plan, visits to make to meet up with long lost relatives and a Christmas tree to decorate! Each of those fascinating activities we have grown to love since our move here: the art clubs, writers groups, choir, theatre group, ladies groups - the list is growing all the time - each of them has its own festivities for the season and its own pressures. Caught up in a whirl of last minute choir practices, performances in the local churches and nursing homes, buffet lunches where we all 'bring and share', writers groups where we bring not only our scribblings but an offering of food and wine, Christmas dinners, Secret Santa pressies to buy, we scuttle from one to the other in ever-decreasing circles - in a flat spin, in fact! I revel in it all but, as usual, there is too much of it. Flat spin - what on earth does that mean? I paused to wonder the other day and that set off a whole lot of thinking. These phrases do that to me - I just can't help wondering where they originate. Why do we talk of being in a flat spin?

Does anyone want to know? Well, here it is anyway! My faithful copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable reliably informs me that a flat spin is 'when the longitudinal axis of an aircraft inclines downwards at an angle of less than 45 degrees. In the early days this inevitably involved loss of control.' Nowadays, apparently, it is used in air combat as an evasive action. There, mystery solved and a clue to a possible means of escape from all this Christmas razzmatazz, should this be required!

 

Have you seen the little piggies?

What is it with pigs? Have you noticed how they worm their way into everything? "Have you seen the little piggies?" wrote John Lennon (a reputed reference to the law and order brigade - the policeman or 'pig'). Less controversially, we hear of pig-sick and pig-headed! What does this say about the little porkers? Do we malign them? What have they done to deserve all this negativity?

If pigs had wings... pigs might fly! Always said with an air of suspicion. Poor piggies. Probably they would enjoy having wings, floating over the pigsty, zooming over the clover fields and soaring into the blue, dreaming their little piggy dreams and landing headfirst in the mud for a quick wallow. Why not?

One may not be able to fashion a silken purse from a pig's ear, one may not be able to buy a pig in a poke or even a sou'wester, but a pig may roll in the mud after a morning's flying and pamper himself... like a pig in clover, as they say. And at the end of the day, one may buy a fat pig and jiggety jig all the way home again. 'This little piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed at home, this little piggie ate roast beef...' What nonsense we all talk about pigs!

Finally, unless anyone else can think of other piggy references, we may finish by gazing in wonder as red-hot molten iron is poured into moulds and ask ourselves why - why pigs? Did they really resemble pigs? Or piglets? Why pig iron? Or are we just pig-ignorant? No doubt someone will put me straight...

Like A Pig in Clover

Do you remember? Can you recall all those trips to ballet classes, violin lessons, tap dancing and  aerobics for kids? "Just try it, darling and see how you like it". We watched, waited, transported and paid the bill as they tried it out. Eventually all the experiments ceased in favour of the remaining few hobbies that had really passed the test and subsequently became a part of their ongoing lives. As a child I craved ballet lessons. I still don't know where the craving came from but it was there. Maybe I wanted to twirl and pirouette; maybe I just wanted a pair of pink ballet shoes, a frothy net tutu and a fluffy bolero. I don't know. I nagged, pestered, cajoled and persuaded until my mother gave in. Thereafter the craving grew, rather than diminished, until the weekly ballet lesson turned into ballet twice a week, stage dancing once, tap dance another day and finally, 'advanced ballet' too. Our trips (on the bus) to North Chingford where I attended Eileen Langman's School of Dancing became a regular part of the after-school routine. My mother sat with the other mothers in the draughty entrance hall of the big house where we practised, night after night, knitting endless jumpers and fluffy pink boleros. Her long-suffering deserved recognition with a medal or probably a knighthood.

My daughter dutifully tried it out too, just to humour her mother ("Just try it, darling.."). The experiment was an unmitigated disaster. She was not a natural dancer. To give her her due, she stuck it out for a while, whilst her proud mother tried to relive her own childhood pleasures. She even participated in the annual dance show - with her very own white, fluffy tutu, pink tights and pink ballet shoes - and went stiffly through the routine - practised to perfection - to please her mother and satisfy her own high standards. But to no avail. The magic just did not work for her like it had for her mother.

No, riding was the thing. Riding was the dream, the aspiration and the goal. So, regretfully, I adjusted my own dreams, checked them out against reality and signed her up for a course of riding lessons at the local, messy, smelly stables. For what seemed like years we dutifully staggered out of bed early on Saturday mornings to clean the ice from the car windscreen and take her to the icy stables for her longed for day of mucking out, grooming, feeding and watering, attacking the ever-growing muck-heap in the yard with great enthusiasm, and the reward - a free riding lesson! We bundled her up in mountains of jumpers, gloves and a black riding hat and watched proudly whilst she walked, trotted and cantered (eventually) round the huge barn and balanced precariously on the top of enormous, bad-tempered nags whilst they leapt - at the very last minute, it seemed - over bars that seemed to have been raised to ridiculous heights. Oh for a pair of pink ballet shoes and a few harmless pirouettes! But our daughters have ideas of their own.

However, the years have passed and my turn has come round again, it seems! Our daughter is grown up and about to sample the delights of taking her own son to football practice on cold winter's days in a few short years. We ourselves have finished the endless journeys to such a variety of activities and settled down to retirement. Ah, retirement! Time again to sample the delights of the world of hobbies. Recently moved to a new location and at the same time released from the obligations and deadlines of the working life, we are ourselves ready for a bit of experimentation. So it's happening all over again - the experiments, the dabbling in this and that, the trying out new things that we never dreamed of doing. He can dabble in oils and gouache to his heart's content. I can join writing groups, write blogs and experiment with new genres. We can stumble down muddy footpaths with rucksacks and picnic lunches. I can join choirs and warble happily with my reedy voice and poor sight-reading and no-one minds. We can sample amateur dramatics and audition for our local Christmas pantomime or daub paint on stage scenery, sell raffle tickets or greet the audience at the theatre door. We can even sign up for a course to learn to be volunteer train drivers at our local steam railway station if the fancy takes us.

 

The world is our oyster! We are like pigs in clover! We can even indulge ourselves in hours of internet research concerning the fascinating origins of such colourful expressions - oyster? clover? But a pink tutu? Maybe not. Perhaps those days are over.

 

Head over Heels

Such a nice expression for being in love, being full of joy, being passionate about something or someone! It was Valentine´s Day the other day and a good time for being head over heels. However, in addition to all that, right now I´m verging on being heart over head - that´s something different. House hunting is a serious business. When you´ve at least semi-retired (isn´t that all any of us do these days?), sold up your house abroad, left your expat life behind and come home, finding a new home is all important. Serious stuff which requires a lot of thought and careful planning and all the wisdom of age...

So what are we doing? Well, it´s a long story. Years of planning went into this. Months of sitting at the computer screen researching locations, researching houses for sale, canvassing family and friends for their valued opinions... and dreaming. Ah, that´s where the plan breaks down. Dreaming gets you into a load of trouble! It´s good to dream. One should never lose that capacity, for idle day-dreaming, passionate longing, pleasant, lingering thoughts of ideal locations, romantic pastimes...

Until the dream threatens to become reality! Maybe not the whole dream - that´s probably more than anyone can ask for in these days of recession, tough love and doing the right thing. But at least a part of the dream - something which touches the heart whilst not wholly satisfying the head´s stringent list of requirements - might be possible!

So that´s how a sweet little bungalow on the west coast of Wales, close to the beach and set admidst green hills (made green by rather too much rain, it´s true), slipped through the practical net and landed there in the middle of all our planning and refused to go away. Unlike all our other favourite internet properties which we saved on the computer for later when our house had been sold, this one stayed there, tantalisingly real, as a tiny possibility for one day fulfilling those dreams. Naughty really, but nice. It´s a bungalow, after all, and within easy walking distance of shops, health centre and train station. There´s a pharmacy nearby and a library (at the moment) and a flat walk along the seafront to keep us healthy and fit, with a tennis court for gentle exercise, so what could be wrong with that? Well, that´s what we tell ourselves. We´re being careful. Well, that´s it for now. I´m wearing my heart on my sleeve, telling you all this, but it´s uppermost in my mind at the moment...

Except for my other dream come true which is already tugging at my heartstrings (what a lot of wonderful expressions the English language has!). My new grandson! I´m no longer a grandma in waiting (see previous blog!) but a hands-on grandma with  four whole days of experience (almost an expert). So I have one dream in the bag now (and it´s a good one) and another one in process. 2013 has been quite a year so far.
 

It Must Have Been Meant...

Is it my destiny? Was it written in the stars? Was it meant? Or maybe not. “Don’t worry – it didn’t happen this time for you... it couldn’t have been meant. Something better is waiting around the corner...” Modern speaks! A positive slant on life in the midst of uncertainty, in the face of many obstacles and in view of the economic climate... you know how it is these days. Trust in the process.

 

Is it a pro-active way of living? Does it encourage a positive mindset? Or is it maybe a touch too fatalistic? At first sight it appears a very positive way of living. If it works, it was ‘meant’; if it doesn’t work, it wasn’t meant so no-one need worry – a win-win situation. So far, so good. But look a little closer. There’s another dimension to this. Are we saying there’s nothing I can do? Is the future out of my hands? Does someone or something determine or pre-determine my destiny? And if so, who? In this modern world of many choices, how does that work? Our rights are growing every day: women’s rights, father’s rights, children’s rights, animal rights, the unborn child’s rights... but what if they are not ‘meant’? Maybe something else better is around the corner when someone walks over, ignores your rights, disregards, tramples on your liberty, aborts you...

 

Scratch the surface. So much progress. So many changes, many of which we do not like. But we say “there’s no point in complaining – don’t try to go against the flow, it’s not worth it. Anyway, you can’t turn the clock back.” Why not? We do it every autumn. We do it with our fashions – retro, the 60’s look, in dress, in music, in decor, so why not in concepts and lifestyle? If we try something new and find it not to our taste why not rewind, go back, reverse the process and try again? Why not learn from our mistakes – a pro-active lifestyle. We have outlawed the caste system; our status in life is not written in concrete – or in the stars. We are people of choice, we have free will - that is what makes us human – and we can go forward, backwards or side to side. So let’s try some lateral thinking this year. Who knows – maybe this year our New Year’s resolution might be to go backwards again to find something better. Maybe that would be cool.

Pies Are Squared - A Formula for Success

“Here – wrap yourself around that” my dad would say. I liked that expression – so much more picturesque than “Here it is – eat it”. A number of strange expressions filtered into our conversation from my dad. Coming from the midland city of Nottingham, he brought with him a range of words and pronunciations that puzzled us Londoners. “Twitchel” for instance, which turned out to be the little alleyway I walked down every day between the main road and my primary school. The grăss needed mowing, glăsses needed polishing and căstles could be visited on holiday – all with a short ‘ă’ instead of the posh London ‘ar’ sound.

Eventually, after years in the south of England, married to a West-country girl and with two mocking London kids in tow, he lost the short ‘ă’ and reluctantly espoused the Queen’s superior English. But ‘twitchels’ remained (to the confusion of my school friends) and we continued to wrap ourselves around our beans on toast. We ‘knew our onions’ and, when dressed up in our best for a night out, were used to being complimented as ‘bobby dazzlers’. All these phrases stay with you as an adult and continue to bring a sentimental smile of recognition to your lips when occasionally in later life you chance across them.

One of my mum’s puzzlers was her habit, in rare moments of affectionate emotional expression, of referring to her children as ‘chicken skin’. Where that one came from I will never know! Maybe from her Somerset country roots. Her other contribution to the family vocabulary came in the form of ‘square meals’. Meals, in tangible form, were mum’s province. Dad, on occasion, cooked a fine omelette, with almost scientific precision, but in general meals were mum’s department. However, as in many families of that generation, for some reason, meals were always ‘square’. No-one could survive, it seemed, without three square meals a day. Now, when in the 1950’s did you ever see a square dinner plate? So why, oh why, were meals square?

As teenagers in the 60’s we soon learned to refer to our parents, in fact to anyone over 30, as ‘square’ – but never meals! Isn’t language strange? There must be a reason for this, as for all quirks of language, if you dig deep enough, but somehow the idea of a square meal conjured up something wholesome and nutritious that Mrs. Beeton herself would have been proud of. No junk food or hasty snacks earned the name ‘square’ – but a good solid, nourishing plateful (round) that you could wrap yourself around with the certain knowledge that it would do you good (‘looks good, tastes good and by golly, it does you good’!), that was a square meal.

As for the ‘chicken skin’ well, I guess I shall have to hold on to the opinion that it was some kind of a delicacy that she meant – maybe not ‘square’ but tasty and appealing, nevertheless, - a rare and prized morsel. Anyway, ‘sweetheart’ or ‘sweety-pie’ never passed her lips so ‘chicken skin’ – as my fond remembrance of warm parental approval - will just have to do.

Jingle bells, Batman smells!

Parodies! We love 'em! Why do we do that? Why do we take some perfectly innocent song, rhyme or Christmas carol that someone has spent hours lovingly creating and deliberately ruin it - just for fun! We just can't resist, it seems. It has to be something well known in order for others to get the point. It seems it has to rhyme. (So if you don't want anyone to parody your poem make sure it doesn't rhyme!) It is often something poignant, romantic, maybe a little 'naf' and then we have just the material we need to work on. Bing Crosby's 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas' would be eminently suitable...

Christmas carols are the perfect choice. Endowed with centuries of powerful meaning, romantic imagery and the stuff imagination and dreams are made of, Christmas carols provide the perfect medium for us to practise our art or maybe our art-less skills on. You don't have to be quite so artless as 'Jingle bells, Batman smells' but you can if the mood takes you!

One of my favourite parodies of all time is probably the Spinners' rendering of that famous tried and tested carol 'While Shepherds Watched'. At school we giggled and tittered through school singing lessons and assemblies as the most daring amongst us bravely sang out the latest version of this carol, about these rustic chaps washing their socks in the fields at night whilst the angels entertained them with heavenly melodies (tub rhyming with scrub). But the Spinners (in my opinion) did it best when they pictured the shepherds huddling in the wintry fields around a giant television screen (a drive-in movie?) and the angel of the Lord seizing the moral high ground and switching their harmless amusement from ITV to the more educational and cultured BBC (rhyming with ITV) emissions. As far as I know, ITV never won any law suits against them as a result. Sounds a bit tame recounting it like this but to its first audiences it was hilariously funny (really!).

At school in the '70s, parodies featuring the Beatles were the obvious choice. 'We Three Kings' (of Liverpool are) was transformed for us by the substitution of 'John on his scooter, blowing his hooter, Following Ringo Star'! Remember that one? We were simple folk in those days and easily pleased.

Of course, all these reminiscences and ramblings are somewhat culturally defined so probably most of my readers from Russia, Singapore and Nairobi (I wish!) have no clue as to my meaning, but I am sure there are many out there for whom this rings a bell or strikes a chord. More than one music band has made a fortune out of simply parodying someone else's material. They say nothing is original - all creativity stems from something someone else has said, written, painted already so there's no shame and no blame! Plagiarism - no! Parodying - why not?

Clean Slate!

A brand new exercise book! All those fresh, clean, crisp, white pages just waiting to be filled: with new possibilities. At school one of the delights of the new term was the handing out of new books. Full of excitement, I would resolve all over again to fill the pages with neat, beautifully formed letters – my very best handwriting. Unlike my previous book, the covers would stay pristine, the inside full of neat, cleverly written stories, pages of sums (all correct) and lots of red ticks. Halfway down the first page the dream would come apart with my first spelling mistake and crossing out. Never mind, today I’m starting a new one again, so there’s still hope!

A clean slate! Harking back to those days when children sat on stools at high wooden desks, literally writing with sticks of chalk on pieces of grey slate, this phrase is multi-layered, firing our imagination with its multiple meanings and connotations. Visions of Victorian schoolrooms dissolve, giving way to ideas of debts paid, sins forgiven and fresh new starts. “Shall I put it on the slate for you, sir?” probably dates back to a time when shopping credit and the daily pint at my ‘local’ were also recorded on a slate behind the bar or the grocery counter.

For me, my favourite kind of clean slate is a house move! At one and the same time, it gives me the chance to sort through the accumulation of ‘things’, to discard what I no longer want, to pack up my treasures and move on, to clean in all the corners and to start again! I can rearrange the furniture, change the colour schemes, buy new things and do it all differently. It’s a new beginning and a glorious new opportunity. A Dutch friend asked me “in England do you like to do special cleaning in the new year?” ‘Spring cleaning’ she meant. ‘Me – like cleaning?’ I thought. “No” I said, to her amazement. “I like to move house!”

But a new home is also a new phase of life. I can reassess my lifestyle too. I can try new things, meet new people, develop new routines, abandon old ones. We all need a new slate sometimes. I’ve had a lot – I can no longer remember how many houses I have lived in. I love the sense of familiarity that comes with time, but I still get a buzz from that sense of newness and opportunity that beckons to me from the future when it’s time to move on.

Easy as Pie!

It’s been a while since we tried to decipher any brain-teasers, so perhaps it’s time to consider. As I was explaining recently, creativity has taken an interesting and unexpected turn in our household just lately, after a trip to Majorca renewed our gastronomic interest in the good old-fashioned pie. The Spanish seem to be masters of pie making and their empanadas excite all my creative and gastric juices! However, I have found over the years that pie making is by no means straightforward.

As a young ‘newly-wed’, the art of pastry making was a mystery to me. After moving in with my mother- and father-in-law for a while, ‘between houses’, I was forced to upgrade my rather scanty cooking expertise and try and rustle up a few more recipes that would hide my woeful ignorance of the culinary arts. On our arrival, anxious to impress, I had informed my mother-in-law that I would, of course, do my share of the family cooking. It was only later that I realised just what I had signed up for. So far I had a repertoire of just about enough tried and tested menus to last the week before returning to the beginning and starting again. After a while my mother-in-law started tactfully to offer me some hints. We began with pastry! What a struggle! Paddington Bear had fewer mishaps than I did when it came to pastry. It was too wet and stuck to the work surface, my hands, the rolling pin and everything else; it was too dry and fell in pieces before it reached the dish; it was too heavy and tasted like cardboard after I had rolled it out unsuccessfully a dozen times before cooking.

Strangely, one day everything just fell into place – just like Joyce said it would. I did nothing different, as far as I could see, but suddenly the mystery solved itself and although I’m not sure I can lay claim to perfection, or even to have reached mother-in-law’s high standards, I am satisfied with my efforts and so are my family. But ‘easy as pie’? I don’t think so!

Since our visits to Majorcan bakeries I have been experimenting with a few of my own variations on empanadas, inventing recipes and working out what to cook them in and how to cut out the pastry to the right size. Here are the results:

Empanadas (small savoury pies)

I discovered muffin tins make excellent pie tins. For a cutter I used a small round plastic storage box as I had nothing the right size and for the pie lids a round fluted pastry cutter. The larger rounds of pastry have to be eased gently into the muffin tins, filled with meat or vegetables and then covered with a small pastry lid, brushed with milk and baked in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes at no.6 or 200 degrees C. If they begin to bubble and the filling threatens to overflow turn the oven down a bit. The pies can be most easily removed from their tins when cool. It took some trial and error to discover this! The failed experiments still taste good even though their marks for presentation might be a little sub-standard.

Some suggestions for fillings: the amounts of ingredients can be adjusted according to personal taste – this is art not science!

Mediterranean vegetables
Chop onion, courgette, red, green and yellow peppers and aubergine and fry gently in oil. Drain off excess oil and add some chopped tinned or fresh tomatoes, salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme and marjoram and a teaspoon of tomato purée. Simmer gently for a few minutes till most of the liquid has evaporated. Leave to cool before filling the pies and covering with pastry lids.

Chicken, bacon, mushroom and onion
Put chopped bacon in a heated pan and fry gently until some of the fat from the bacon is released into the pan. Add mushrooms and onions. Remove from pan when soft and golden. Fry chicken fillet in remaining oil. Chop everything small and mix together. Make up mushroom sauce from a packet and simmer for a few minutes. Mix together with meat and vegetables. Add seasoning to taste. Allow to cool before filling the pies and covering with pastry lids.

Sausage and onion
Fill pies with sausage meat or strip skin from sausages and use this to fill pies. Chop a small amount of onion and place on top of sausage meat. Season with salt, pepper and mixed herbs. Smear with a little tomato purée. Cover pies with pastry lids.

Now my creativity is back on track – I can diverge into culinary creativity and then translate it into writing again to satisfy the readers! Wow – multi-tasking again!

More Wandering in Wonderland

Isn't feedback wonderful? I love it. I sometimes check the 'stats' for my blog and discover with amazement that someone out there in Russia or the Arab Emirates, Latvia or Finland is reading my blog! Occasionally someone replies or posts a comment... I wonder what they made of my last blog post about mad hatters and mad March hares. Do they read Lewis Carroll? Have they ever heard of Alice? Or am I under surveillance right now, suspected of using 'nonsense' as a code for some kind of illicit political activity? Probably not!!

However, I received some welcome response from my sister and brother-in-law on the subject of mad hatters: "We still read the blogs with interest." (always good to know!) "The latest one amused us and we think we can help you out about the hatter. We looked it up in Brewer (Dictionary of Phrase and Fable), which suggested the answer. Mercurous nitrate was used in the making of felt hats and it was just about impossible for the people making them to avoid ingesting mercury. Mercury is a cumulative poison (like lead) and gathers in the brain doing neurological damage. Sufferers exhibit symptoms similar to those of madness – tremors, ‘St Vitus’s Dance’, confusion etc."

How about that?! Isn't it amazing how much we all know! When you put it together our collective wisdom is awesome - look at Wikipedia. Even if only half of its 'information' is accurate we're a clever lot! So, how about 'daft as a brush'. Where did that come from (see last blog on Wandering in Wonderland) - any answers?

Wandering in Wonderland

Imagine! Big brown hares running wild across the fields, leaping, racing, twisting, turning, lolloping and then up on hind legs, boxing – another of nature’s amazing spectacles! March hares! Why March? Why not! After a long, cold winter, the sap is rising, the sun is shining and it’s mating time again in the Hare Hareem. ‘Mad as a March hare’! Their apparent sense of fun is infectious, as they race across the grass. Their energy and sheer physical strength is something to be envied. I watch, fascinated, as they stand tall on strong back legs and inflict powerful front-paw blows on their boxing partners. Masterful! Not a game for wimps. However, research seems to show that the sparring is actually about unwilling females fending off passionate males, not, as might be supposed, rival males keen to show off their sexual prowess and win their mate. There’s a touch of spring madness in the air and hares seem to be first in line to catch it.

‘Mad as a March hare’? ‘Mad as a Hatter’! There’s another puzzling saying. Have hat makers always had a reputation for madness? Does a hat designer need a little craziness to succeed? Is it something inherent in the artistic temperament? Or is it only Lewis Carroll who envisaged madness in hatters? Were hatters as sane and sensible as the rest of us before Alice? And why do they go to tea parties? Maybe for a spot of networking – to drum up extra business? Top hats, party hats, fancy dress, hats for dormice…? This March madness really seems to be catching…

‘Daft as a brush’! Does anyone really say that? Well, yes they do! I’ve thought and thought about this one. Whilst I can see an argument or two for hares exhibiting a touch of craziness in their springtime behaviour and it’s a possibility that Lewis Carroll may have had some inside information on the psychological make-up of hatters, I find it hard to attribute either sanity or insanity, silliness or common sense to an inanimate object. What kind of a brush might be daft? A hair (hare?) brush? A broom? Perhaps a toothbrush or a toilet brush? A hat brush! What about a paint brush? Perhaps the one that painted the roses red for the Queen of Hearts? That was pretty daft. Even Alice thought so. No, this one defeats me. Any ideas?

For the sake of auld lang syne...

It’s the end of the year again and we all have our funny ways! Nations are no different. Back where I come from, we all send each other sentimental greetings at Christmas or New Year, with bits of updated news about our children, our grandchildren and this year’s holidays. At the end of the year many of us party, linking hands at midnight and singing (drunkenly) a rather peculiar centuries-old song, remembering and honouring old friendships in old-fashioned words nobody really understands. It’s a tradition.

This year, writing the annual Christmas cards got me thinking. Each year the list is subtly changed. A few names are added; a few are crossed off. Life has become very mobile and new acquaintances are many. The list becomes too long and unwieldy and difficult choices must be made. My parents’ Christmas card list seemed to stay the same until the day they died and I still send cards to one or two of those old family friends who seemed to have become almost as close as blood relations. We have a few of those on our list too, friends who were at our wedding or whose children were early friends with ours. But the rest are fluctuating. Some years I feel ruthless. Names are crossed off, because they never get in touch. More names go because we fell out: their children behaved badly in our home; we disagreed about politics or religion; they never even rang us after we moved away but dropped us because we no longer lived round the corner…

This year I am looking at things from a different perspective. I must be getting old! Life is too short, it seems, for those kinds of disagreements to matter. I am busy putting names back on the list. Surely, in view of our common humanity, there are more things to agree on than to dispute? Friends are precious. I am slowly learning that and would like, if it were possible, to retrieve the addresses of former friends, probably long moved on, who we have lost, through differing opinions or just neglect although, realistically, I can’t send cards to them all! Looking back, we’ve had some fun. Some of those friendships were very special, some of those families had children who watched the same firework displays with ours on Bonfire Night and shared the same tricycles in the back garden at weekends; with some of them we spent long nights, with a glass of wine in hand, discussing the nature of God and the universe and putting the world to rights. Of course we fell out – it happens all the time! But they were friends.

Nowadays we live in a temporary community. We are expats. Life is ‘temporary’; we live amongst people who are on temporary contracts, living in temporary houses and, worst of all, sharing temporary friendships. At least, that’s how life could be if we let it. I’m not keen to leave it that way! I have another growing list of friends – we email, we send photos, we forward jokes and thought-provoking anecdotes and one day, hopefully, will meet up again, in England, Turkey or Australia or who knows where? ‘Lest old acquaintance be forgot’, I must look forward to another new year of emails and phone calls, photos and maybe visits one day and I must remember to value those close-at-hand family and friends whilst I have them, ‘for the sake of auld lang syne’.

A very happy blogging New Year to you all!

As pleased as punch

It's one of those phrases! We trot them out, heedlessly, and then sometimes, in reflective mood, we think "Why did I say that? What did it mean?" Where do these sayings originate? Who was the first person to be as pleased as punch - and why?

Back in the days of our youth (not long ago really)... we were famous for the odd lovers' tiff. These we executed with passion and panache, with cries of "what about the neighbours?", followed by "s.. the neighbours!" It was colourful, it was dramatic and then it was over. Making up was fun. Back in those heady days we were once christened 'Punch and Judy' by a group of delightful young people we helped to escort on a youth camp. Hilarious, eh? Well, not at the time...

So am I as pleased as Mr. Punch? Am I happy, like Punch, to entertain the children on seaside proms along with the wife, the dog and Mr. Plod? Was Punch pleased? Did it make him deliriously happy to wield a policeman's truncheon and terrorise the wife, the dog and the policeman and then threaten the audience? And, anyway, whoever allowed a tale of domestic violence, grievious bodily harm and cruelty to animals, let alone acts of aggression against the police force, to become holiday viewing for kids? They seem to have found it good, harmless fun for more than a century - the precursor to 'Home Alone', I guess.

Maybe it has something to do with the current festivities and that innocent little cocktail brewed up with an indeterminate number of bottles of stuff, of varying potency, together with deceptively healthy-looking pieces of fruit floating in it? Pleased as punch? Drunk with punch? Punchdrunk? Drunk as a skunk, perhaps? Now, there's another one...

If pigs had wings...

If pigs had wings
Then other things
Might very different be.
Then money (please),
Might grow on trees
And beggars win the lottery.

If pigs could fly
Then you and I
Might watch our dreams come true.
Then rainy days
And misty greys
Would turn to skies so blue.

If little porkers,
One-time walkers,
Start to fill the air,
Romantic dreams
Fulfilled, it seems,
Would not be quite so rare.

Then all our notions,
Magic potions,
Would come to be at last,
And cynics see,
(Like you and me),
That time for doubt has passed.

So let us strain
Our eyes (in vain?)
To see a piggy fly
And hope and pray
That soon, one day,
It may come floating by.

Snug as a Bug

Last winter was a harsh one. I hate being cold and, in extreme circumstances, am forced to abandon all thoughts of elegance and take avoidance action. My daughter, who lives close to the mountains in Switzerland, once gave me some wise advice: “It’s all about layers, Mum” she said. Last winter I discovered the truth of what she said, as I piled layer upon layer of clothing on my poor, shivering, ill-adapted body until I felt like the old blow-up ‘Michelin man’ who used to adorn delivery lorries for the Michelin rubber company. I re-discovered all about wearing leggings under jeans, piling on vests, T-shirts, sweaters, thermal gloves, snow boots and finally, my piece de résistance, my furry body-warmer. Everyone over the age of 40 needs one of these!

My mother had a gloriously shabby, sheepskin body-warmer which, increasingly, as she got older, she wore almost daily to keep her warm in the small of her back where she complained of feeling the cold. Later, in the nursing home, I grew accustomed to seeing her warmly dressed and tucked up in a blue tartan rug just to make sure and keep out draughts. My body-warmer is rather more fashionable, I like to think, but it does the same job admirably. I have a fine pair of sheepskin-lined slippers too, again reminiscent of what my mother wore in old age, but neatly shaped and threaded with a pretty, pink ribbon to make them a little more suitable to my time of life. My daughter bought them for me for Christmas and as I climbed out of my nice warm bath this morning and slid my feet into them I thought grateful thoughts in her direction and felt, yes, ‘snug as a bug in a rug’ as my old mum would have said.

So why a bug? And why wrapped up in a rug, apart from the obvious rhyming advantages? I try to imagine some shiny little black beetle snugly wrapped up in a blanket, but the blanket is too big and the beetle gets lost. Probably he would get lost in a rug too. I’m not keen on it when bugs get lost – they make me nervous and I like to keep track of them so they don’t disappear and end up climbing up my trouser leg or worse. My husband is well used to climbing on chairs armed with a cup and a piece of card to rescue me from some bug or spider which has crawled up the wall and onto the bedroom ceiling so I can’t rest easy, lying in bed in the dark, without first being rescued from the intruder.

My thoughts trundle on… why do bugs need to feel snug? Aren’t they cold-blooded or do they feel the cold like the rest of us. Perhaps they do, like the mice that find their way into our shed in the winter and end up cuddled up to the back of our freezer to keep warm. Again, not a comforting thought and another strange one because, of course, a freezer is not where you would expect to find a warm place for overwintering.

Still, so many of these sayings we know from childhood run off the tongue without us pausing for thought and then when we do we find it impossible to explain them or their origins. I may have to pursue this train of thought at a later date…