Bird feeding

Like a good wildlife friendly eco person, with delusional tendencies, I decided to feed the birds during the winter.  Last winter they just got a few fat balls hung up outside the kitchen window.  This year I decided to buy 3 feeders and a bag of wild bird food.  After banging in a couple of poles and putting a washing line up, I pegged the feeders out and now have a somewhat saggy, though artistically pleasing (delusional remember!), bird feeding line.  I congratulate myself on unaccustomed foresight when putting this line over the flower bed.  There is now a whole 5kg bag worth of husks scattered over the ground and I can now dig them into the bed!  Result.  I admit that the idea was more for home delivery guano, but I'll take what I can get.
What I didn't reckon on was the fussiness of the birds.  At first I bought Wild Bird Food.  As I would be feeding wild birds...  So they went through it with a fine tooth comb tossing out any wheat/barley seed, keeping the hemp for later and scarfing the sunflower seeds.  Obviously they aren't doing the Caveman Diet and I have less of a flower bed, more a cereal field, though we shall see how many sunflower seeds survived.
Now I just buy Sunflower Seeds for Birds, though I haven't yet got to the stage of getting the ready husked ones!
Think I'll plant sunflowers in the bed this year, they'll look nice above the barley...

Spring (?) Walk

First sunny day in ages today!  Yes, we've seen the sun for more than 2 hours today, I think that this deserves several exclaimation marks - !!!!  In fact, I went for a walk for the first time since, oooh, about November.

See - sunshine!

It was so lovely to got off the path and step into the forest with moss on the ground and a gentle breeze in the tree tops, and no ice to slip on, no snow to hide holes.  I'm becoming such an old woman, it's a disgrace.

On the way home.

The ground ice is beginning to melt and this path will be extremely boggy in a few weeks, but now it's just perfect.  I just need to change my route and revisit my rock.

Big town barista

Yesterday I trotted (well drove carefully and steadily) along to Göteborg (Gothenburg) to have my course in baristaship.  So I don't just thrown things at the coffee machine and hope for the best. I did want to take the train, but they don't run after 8.30pm (WHAT!!) and the course finished at 9.

I thought I'd go a bit earlier so I could do some art galleries and some shops, as I was visiting the 'city'.  Managed to find a parking space, after a bit of getting lostness brought on by G being so small (compared to London).  I overshot my turning off the motorway, thought I'd gone miles out of my way, turned down a street in roughly the right direction (Karin's guide to finding your way - point the nose of the car/bike/human sort of the right way and be prepared to wander a bit).  And there I was! Amazing - I think I'll get an invoice for the congestion charge in a day or two and parking cost 190SEK, though...

Anyway, I mooched around the National Gallery, had lunch in the restaurant there (ha! they think they were pretentious! Pah, come to London if you want to see pretentious!) , wandered the streets and visited a couple of cafes (study visits, of course).  Only just got to the time of the course and I wanted to go back to the forest.  Enough of the city already.   It was sort of 'been there, done that' and near enough everything after London is a village anyway, so I might as well be in a real one.   Don't get me wrong, I love Göteborg, (more than Stockholm, sorry), and it would be interesting to visit megacity other than London, but I'm done with the people and the traffic and need to wear hats and beards inside. 

The course was fab.  Interesting and fun, I'm really good at lattes but need more practice with my froth for cappuccinos.  I'm also looking forward to making an elk out of the foam for when I enter the next national barista competition (NOT!).  

The way home was not so much fun, though I still drove carefully and steadily, also, in addition, very, very slowly.  It started snowing and I've never driving on a motorway, when it was impossible to see where there was a road, let alone where the road markings were.  There was no way I was overtaking anything, especially as it was getting worse and worse, so I was very glad when I lodged behind another slow car and then another came in behind me etc etc, so we convoyed at 45km/h, whilst being roared past by lorries and idiot volvo owners.  It was fun seeing the skid marks further up the way.  Snow stopped completely when the motorway stopped in a roundabout and the road was perfectly clear.

Next step - buying a machine.

Holidays

Hello, we've been on a holiday.  To those of you who want to point out that the whole of my life is a holiday, I say 'pah!' This is the first time in 5 years when the most responsibility I've had is to choose a white or red wine with the lovely sizzling skewer of meat and vegetables on the table before me.  We fetched up in a little hotel in a little bay in the south of Gran Canaria, chosen mainly because there were no white plastic chairs in publicity.

This doesn't mean to say that I haven't been learning, of course.

1) 4 books were almost not enough.  Unfortunately, I got a humdinger of a cold from the Danes, so books by Nobel prize winning scientists were not going to cut it in that situation.  If you're interested: Ragnarok - AS Byatt (fab), Dead Man in Depford- Anthony Burgess (very good writing, but didn't like), Thinking fast and slow - Daniel Kahneman, (excellent),  Act of Creation - Koestler (didn't finish cos of virus infiltration)
2) White Rioja is really, really good on a hot day.
3) The 80:20 rule really does work.  If you are at all body conscious, do NOT go to a resort with lots of Swedes. 80% will look and dress better than you. If they are Danes, 80% will be better dressed than you, but dumpier.  If you go to a resort patronised by Brits, 80% will be dumpier and worse dressed, so best to do that.
4) There is a Marks and Spencers in Las Palmas!!  Hurrah and lots of t shirts and ready meals.  Saved us a fortune cos there was a microwave in our hotel room.  Marvellous idea, a mini-kitchen in a wardrobe.
5) We are officially middle-aged.  We went on THREE coach trips, yes, three... We did redeem ourselves slightly with two local bus trips, but still.... all we needed was a thermos flask....
6) I absolutely LOVE Gran Canaria.  We are seriously considering moving to Teror, because one has to live in terror....  No but seriously, I may close the cafe for a month next January and move to the south of Gran Canaria, possibly Mogan or Porto del Mogan and write.  Graham can bring me tapas and white rioja at regular intervals, so he'll have something to do.

Ahhh, holidays....

The view from 'our' sunbeds

 

Groaning Boards

This anniversary Graham gave me quite a treat.  Usually I get taken to sample the gastronomic delights of MacDonalds, or, as a special treat, for our 25th I had fish and chips at the English pub in town here.  However, this year, we booked at a lovely, little, hotel in Mullsjö to sample their famous Julbord.  The Christmas table is very popular here and people go with their workmates, families, friends etc several times to several places in the run up to Christmas Eve. Then everyone talks about how it's all gone downhill since last year and they'll never go again and they can never look a meatball in the face again.  It's traditional.
Every Julbord has the same basic ingredients: several million types of pickled dill, smoked cold meats, several different ways of doing salmon, mackerel, herring and cod, cold sauces by the thousand, beetroot salad and mimosa salad, then hot stuff - meatballs, small hot dogs, spareribs, ham, brown beans, red cabbage, janssons temptation, lutfisk (cod preserved in quicklime), boiled potatoes and dop (bread dipped in broth), a cheese board, a sweet table with sweets, a pudding table with traditional cheesecake, fruit, creams of various sorts and biscuit type things.
At Björkhagan, it was all beautifully prepared and very well cooked and there were piles of people all queueing politely.  I'm so pleased I booked in the family name and so we got in early and first (yay for using what you've got!).  There were also piles of food, with chefs running in and out, 10 sorts of pickled herring, 5 sorts of salmon, assorted mackerel, smoked elk, lamb, wild boar, turkey, etc etc.  juicy spareribs and meatballs, etc.  However after looking at the alleged cheddar, I feel that trip to Neals Yard should be mandatory for all Swedes and tinned mandarins and pineapple rings on the pudding table were bizarre, but hey, why not! Graham had a big bowlful and felt quite nostalgic for the 70s.  Apart from a small amount of boiled peas for the lutfisk and lettuce garnish for the eggs, mayo and caviar, there were no vegetables or salad.  Lots of sauces, and cream etc.
After 5 sorts salmon, and some hot stuff I was groaning gently in a corner and was persuaded to try a melon slice before I threw in the towel.  How people pack it all in I have no idea.  We didn't drink anything but a small bottle of Julmust (a cola type drink) and normal water, but people were stuffing their faces with glogg, aquavit and beers as well as all that food.  Now I have to go back and try the cold meats, pickled herrings, breads, sweets and puddings.  May be it'll have to be another 2 goes!

The Joy of DIY

For 25 years I've had a dining set of handmade Arts and Crafts chairs, table, dresser, sofa, serving table and two plant stands. The set was made for my grandmother's parents as a wedding present, came to my grandparents as a wedding present and then to Graham and me and are lovely. Oak, carved with apples.  Apples are unusual as the most common motif is pear, and this sort of furniture is two a penny around here, if you want some. My grandmother had had the dining chairs recovered in the 1970s. Fair enough, they were in constant use.... re-covered in brown vinyl.  This has been on them, wearing extremely well, being extremely practical and looking foul, until this summer.  I've been meaning to reupholster them for years, but never got around to doing it/finding suitable material etc.  And then, a pile of material samples came into the Second Hand shop where I've been volunteering.  Well!  strike whilst the iron is hot, so to speak.  All you need is a heavy duty stapler and you can go from dark brown vinyl to this.

Really, it is that simple!

Jar o'whisky o

"wine makes life merry" according to Ecclesiastes, but getting hold of it over here is an, errrmmm, interesting experience.  Take Graham for example.  For years didn't touch a drop, had a few beers on occasion and a glass of wine on special occasions, but definitely no more than 2 and was perfectly happy with that state of affairs.  You would have thought that he would do well in a country with a huge history of alcoholism and hence very strict alcohol controls.

You can only buy alcohol over about 3% from the state controlled shops "System Bolaget", no delivery and if you buy a lot, they quiz you, age of consent is 20 years old and there are posters about drinking too much all over the place.  The choice is OK, but limited really and the prices are about 1/3 more expensive than the UK.  There is also far, far too much cheap (?) Riesling available.  As you go around, you get increasingly furtive, your nose starts swelling and going red and the tendency to go 'hic' increased exponentially.  It has improved though, when I was a child, you had to place your order in advance, go round the back alleys to a hatch and have your brown paper bag passed through, cash only.  It was easier to buy hard drugs.

Sunday dinner came around this week and we had a glass of wine (chardonnay, yes, I know!!) with the chicken.  He sat contemplating it, sipped it, sighed with appreciation and said 'it's so nice to have a glass of wine, it feels so sophisticated, I'll have another thanks....... [pauses] the system alone here is enough to turn you into an alcoholic'.

Before he was quite happy to not drink, but the sheer disapproval rating here is enough to make you want to go 'nahhhh' and drink a bottle of vodka at one go. Terribly teenagerish, I know, but there it is.  I long for the days when I could go into Majestic and buy 12 bottles, to have a G&T to relax after a hard day's work a couple of times a week.  Here I'm filled with a terrible urge to explain myself after buying 3 bottles, I sup furtive glasses of wine from a box at night and no G&Ts (cos of no Plymouth Gin, just stuff I've never heard of, allegedly from London) and no one I know goes out for a drink.  If I do they get completely rat-arsed within 10 minutes, which is not fun.

Pricing does work though, we buy much less, but then, we never had a drinking problem...