Take one with Water.

Some days I manage to wriggle out of cooking even though I find it relaxing, because feeling obliged to prepare a healthy balanced meal every day is the pits. Many women are just too tired coping with a job and or children, and struggling with all the other essential household chores that can’t be left.

Healthy eating takes a big chunk of your time if you’re trying to use fresh vegetables and fruit rather than face the shame of being a freezer to microwave speed freak. Or maybe they simply can’t cook, although there’s no shame in that, especially now that schools don’t have regular basic cookery lessons for either girls or boys. Anyway, there is enough pre-prepared and pre-cooked food in a supermarket to tempt a saint.
Whose hand wouldn’t stray to a packet of sausage rolls rather than a cauliflower after a hard day at the office?
With hungry children waiting to be fed why shouldn’t you decide a quiche and a tub of pasta salad boasting no added colours or flavouring looks far superior to anything you could produce? Never mind that it’s chock full of preservatives to keep it looking so delicious.

Every day, there are programmes and articles about eating correctly, and television channels devoted to showing in graphic detail what happens to your insides and your outsides, if you eat nothing but processed foods. Bad skin, fatty livers, diseased toenails and worse are shown in all their glory. And then, the wafer slim presenter clad in disposable gloves that have just been prodding a particularly horrible liver, self righteously glares at us and says, ‘this is what happens if you don’t eat the right food!’ No wonder there are so many problems with comfort eating. It’s enough to drive the saint in the supermarket to chocolate éclairs.

We used to have a whole day every week in cookery class when I was at school. We took the raw ingredients in with us in the morning, and in the afternoon carried the cooked after effects proudly home for the family to sample.
My dad was very impressed with the loaf I made, and my Christmas cake was so good we ate it for tea when I got home, although I was supposed to take it back to school the following week to learn how to put marzipan and icing on it.
Sad to say, a lot of my efforts, especially if they’d had a long bus ride home on a freezing cold day, were pretty horrible.
By the time I opened our front door, already unhappy sponges had collapsed to the thickness of a dinner plate, casseroles were a discoloured lump in the bottom of the dish, and even Peg our border collie, who would eat anything and looked forward to my regular Thursday disasters, turned her nose up when I made pancakes.
On the other hand, over four years I finally grasped the general rules of what to do with a lump of raw meat, or a bag of flour and I haven’t poisoned anyone yet.

All those years ago, when the moon missions began and we watched open mouthed as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, food that was nourishing but small in bulk, had been formulated for the astronauts.
Nowadays half a dozen men and women sit in space for weeks on end, so I assume the same principle of a little in and a little out still applies. That begs the question why after all these years haven’t the scientists moved on from whatever it was they did in the first place and taken another giant step for mankind and harassed housewives in particular, by finally shrinking a full meal down to tablet size thus earning our eternal gratitude?

Imagine walking into a chemist and seeing hundreds of bottles of pills with labels saying for example: Chicken Casserole. One to be taken with water four times a day. Just imagine the joy as you check out a wide selection boasting every taste under the sun for when you burp, in order not to forget the taste of food entirely? And right on eye level, a choice of once a day, low sugar, low fat, medium sugar, medium fat, or off the scale but who cares dessert pills, in pretty coloured bottles.

Junk food would be a thing of the past and we’d all be disgustingly healthy - unless you had an endless supply of cash and a trusted contact to provide you with illegal containers of McDonalds.
The biggest bonus would be loads more leisure time having waved goodbye, not only to cooking, but the washing up and the weekly trek to a supermarket. I can’t wait.

Bummer!

As if it wasn't bad enough having to fork out for new glasses, the optician tells me I have cataracts! It'll be a year before he'll check them again which is a bummer, because it means reading and working on the computer will be getting a lot more difficult than it is now.
I'm not worried about having them removed; just thankful that these days they don't try to dislodge them with a sharp blow to the head as the Romans did.

Last year I spent weeks working out the household budget and ways to save, especially on our utilities.
After all we’d just had a summer of drought. I’d watched some of my favourite plants shrivel up and die, been public spirited and cut back drastically on our water usage, but begrudged paying for something I hadn’t been using.
Consequently in April 2007 we had a water meter installed. Within a few weeks it began to rain. And it rained and rained. And it’s never really stopped.
But yes, as long as you carry on being careful with usage, you do save money.

Just when did February sneak up on me?
It was an advert for pancake mixture that jolted me into the present.
Mentally I’m still brushing Christmas glitter out of my hair because I’ve been living in the past updating my family tree.
I’ve had a total brain block when it comes to writing, haven’t felt up to making decisions about whether to splash out on a new kitchen and certainly didn’t want to waste precious time on housework.
No – computer orientated genealogy is an ideal winter past-time, so going through old notebooks and trawling the internet fitting more names on my family tree is the ideal way to coast through to spring.

This weekend though saw my tree as up to date as I can get it at present, so what to do now? The effort of trying to come up with new ideas for writing is literally making my brain hurt and I still don’t want to do housework - when do I ever - which leaves me with what to do about the kitchen.
It’s the expense that’s putting me off. At night I toss and turn asking myself if [a] I really need a dishwasher and [b] would an eye level oven save burns to my arms and wrists as I struggle to pull sizzling pans of comfort food from my posh, not very old, but with knee level oven cooker?
The answer to [a] is yes, yes, yes, I hate washing up. I want one and [b] my knees are knackered. Of course it would. Watch this space.

Flashback: Musical Interludes.

Whatever the weather, on Saturday mornings, Dad made a tour of every antique and junk shop in the town.
An avid collector of old brass, coins and hand blown glass, he also loved to discover musical instruments, although they were usually battered and sadly in need of TLC by the time he could afford them.
When he came home with his latest find and sat in the living room admiring it, mum would stalk out to the scullery and crash saucepans around while she muttered things like…That would buy four loaves of bread - and - sees him coming!

During the great depression of the nineteen thirties, while he was growing up, all he normally found in his sock on Christmas morning was a shiny penny and an orange. Then, one year to his absolute joy, it disgorged a penny whistle, and another year, a Jews harp. Those two cheap instruments fostered a life long ambition to play a musical instrument properly, but music lessons were way beyond his family’s means and sadly he lacked the ability to play competently by ear.
Undaunted he would sneak into his grandmothers bedroom at the top of the house where, bedridden with arthritis and too weak to shout loudly enough for his mother to take him away, granny Ann Elderfield, trapped in her high brass bed, was obliged to be the audience as he played away to his hearts content.

As a teenager he joined the Territorial Army purely because they would teach him to play the side drums and he spent many hours marching with the band.
The drum, which belonged to the army, had to be left behind when he enlisted in the Navy just before the outbreak of war, but he never lost the habit of tapping rhythms on any flat surface he could find, especially when he was thinking.
Mum found it really irritating at mealtimes when he beat out fast marches using two forks on anything metal that happened to be on the table at the time; pickle jars being a particular favourite

Sometimes when it was dark and wet outside and we were a captive audience, he gave us an impromptu performance on the spoons. Explaining that he should really be using two smooth, specially cut bones, his favourite song as he enthusiastically rapped two of mum’s dessert spoons up and down his body and legs, was Way down upon the Swanee River.
And then one day he came home with a zither. With rusted and missing strings and little jagged holes where mother of pearl insets had once gleamed, it still rang out sweetly when dad strummed it.
He gave us a lecture on its origins, and as he ran his fingers lovingly over it I pictured Heidi like girls, snow capped mountains and cows with large bells clanging musically around their necks.
He spent weeks replacing the missing mother of pearl inlay and polishing it until it looked like glass, and then Christmas was looming and we were always hard up, so he sold it to another antique shop and gave mum the money.

When he brought an electric steel guitar home, we had a lesson on the Hawaiian Islands, grass skirts, and hula girls. Dad said his ambition was to learn the romantic Hawaiian Wedding Song and serenade mum. But even though he was an electrician by trade, he never managed to get it working properly and mum certainly wasn’t in the mood for romantic love songs after half an hour of hazardous buzzing and wrong chords, so dad swopped it for a Victorian brass candlestick.

His next find was an acoustic guitar. It was in good condition compared to the zither and steel guitar and when mum crashed about in the kitchen he followed her out there. We could hear him protesting it had been dead cheap and was a bargain, but wise to his ways, the more he protested the less mum believed him and every time he tried to tune it and began to strum and sing, she would shut herself in the scullery.

Dad liked cowboy songs. Every night after he’d eaten his tea, he would pick up the guitar and give us a couple of verses of Home, Home on the Range, which was one of his favourites and the only song he knew all the words to.
If there had been a spare room it wouldn’t have mattered so much, but there wasn’t. Our little two bedroomed terrace house was bursting at the seams with Gran using the small front room as a bed sitting room.

Mum said he was too heavy handed, and one day when she had a headache her temper finally snapped and she told him to put a sock in it – or words to that effect. Whereupon, dad stormed out into the garden and shouting up the back bricks that he hoped she was satisfied, threw the guitar down onto the path, and stamped on it!
He left it on the path as a stark reminder every time mum had to walk past it to reach the clothes line, but she was just as stubborn as he, and pointedly ignored it on her countless journeys up and down the garden path. But then, one day he sneaked the guitar back indoors and with the aid of a couple of wood clamps and a large quantity of extra strong glue, stuck the neck of the guitar back on.
Mum swore he’d deliberately broken it so that it could easily be repaired and shouted that she couldn’t stand any more of it – mind you, it never sounded the same after he’d glued it up – so that time he took it outside and reduced it to matchwood.

One day he came in from work and announced he’d bought a piano. That too was a bargain!
My sister and I were thrilled to bits. We’d play it and put on musical shows for mum and gran. It was a timely arrival because we were down to our last 78. The few other records we’d owned had been broken or melted down in hot water to make fruit bowls and by now we were all sick of the The Bluebells of Scotland.
For once we tried not to look at the expression on mum’s face, which was enough to make the bravest person quake in their shoes. Dad as usual, when he came up with a new idea or craze became deaf and blind and told her it was too late, he’d paid for it, and it was on its way.

Mum had to re-arrange the furniture in our living room to make way for the piano, because once it was through the front door it was obviously far too big for the tiny room. The only place it would fit was up against the party wall, but Mum said he couldn’t leave it there, it would disturb the neighbours.
Dad said sod ‘em. They turned their radio up full blast to cover the racket when they rowed and chucked things at each other, especially on peaceful Sunday afternoons, now it was their turn to suffer.

Our enthusiasm didn’t last for long. Unable to knock out even a simple tune after a few weeks, and far too impatient to take lessons, Elaine and I quickly lost interest, but dad swore that coming home from work every night to play a tune or three, helped him unwind

It was unfortunate that he only seemed to bang out sombre, doom laden tunes like the Death March with his foot firmly on the loud pedal. Even Home on the Range would have been better - but he was never quick to catch on to the mechanics of leading a quiet life.
And then one fateful day, mum looked very concerned when she told him the piano had to go. She’d been giving it a polish and discovered it had woodworm.
Dad didn’t believe her and said he’d checked before he bought it, but she pulled it out and showed him loads of little holes in the frame at the back.
The piano was disposed of the next day, donated I believe to a boys club, although dad didn’t mention the woodworm.

When we were older and less likely to give her away, mum revealed she’d spent a whole morning making realistic woodworm holes with a drawing pin.
She reckoned it was either that or murder, although she swore she’d have got off on a plea of self defence if the jury had ever heard our dad play.

Christmas Trivia.

[a]Is the scary sight of Victoria Bekham's skinny, leather clad legs and wildly gyrating buttocks going to make me chaff at the bit to do my Christmas shopping at Tesco?
[b]If you had her sort of money would you really be spending it in Tesco?
[c]She doesn’t really walk like that - does she?

And;
[1]When cooking the turkey, how many of us have:
(a) Forgotten to remove the giblets in their sturdy plastic bag.
(b) Not allowed enough time to defrost it.
(c) Undercooked it.
(d) Overcooked it.
(e) Forgotten to stuff it.
[2]Spent Christmas day constantly dressing and undressing Action Man or a doll,
because the manufacturers made the ends of the sleeves too small to go over the
stupid things hands.
[3]Listened to howls of frustration for the whole of Christmas morning because
side clips on a pram cover, or a catch on a bag was too stiff for her little
fingers and she wanted to do it HERSELF!
[4]How many of you have:
(a) Discovered a leak in a water pipe as you’re about to eat Christmas dinner.
(b) Had a row about a water leak.
(c) Chucked the Christmas dinner in the bin.
(d) Torn down the decorations.
(e) Retired to bed for the rest of the day.
[5]Spent Boxing Day propping up a ceiling that’s collapsed due to a water leak.
[6]Spent the afternoon and a chunk of Boxing Day evening in Casualty waiting for
all the nuts, fruit, chocolate, lunch plus pudding your off spring has tucked
away to digest, because he fell off his new roller skates and needs an
anaesthetic to set his fractured arm.