I am just back from Beethovian Concert #1, which went quite well. I consider myself deserving of WINE, and am ravenously hungry. Husband en rouge is cooking veal chops for dinner.
Too bad you missed the last train to Balerno. It left in November 1943 (but it is now a delightful walk for much of the route).
The train took me as far as Haymarket; it was a bus I missed to Balerno.
Despite having to wait, I actually arrived at the Balerno Inn before everyone else (my family are notoriously late for everything), but once they arrived I had a lovely afternoon, with excellent food (I had scampi bites followed by chicken Balmoral), rather too much WINE and they had provided a CAKE in honour of my upcoming birthday, which was lovely.
Then back to my sister's for coffee, watching the second half of the rugby ( ) and home by Uber (well, getting there hadn't cost me much, so I thought, why not?).
The start of the second half showed some signs of hope, but the sad reality is that Scotland were consistently out-performed by Ireland. A tense watch, and a disappointing outcome.
I hope you're feeling better after a visit to the pub @Boogie, and that your headache will soon be gone @Nenya. I used to get headaches that lasted a couple of days, and once had a migraine that lasted a week - a week that I more-or-less lost completely, as I don't remember much about it...
Thank you @Bishops Finger . This is day 3 of the headache and I very much hope to wake up tomorrow morning without it. I used to get migraines and could usually manage them and carry on reasonably well with medication if I caught them early enough. If not the only solution was to go to bed in a darkened room and pray that the medication stayed down for long enough to permit sleep.
Wet, grey and miserable here. I am home-based today and hoping the rain will have stopped by tomorrow, when I am out and about. Mondays are usually the day for domestics, so the washing machine is busy and the vacuum cleaner has had a workout and is now back on charge. Nenlet1 used to work for one of the leading manufacturers of the wand vacuum cleaner so we got a discount on it; being an older one the length of charge is not great. This means there can only be short bursts of vacuuming chez Nen. Seldom a problem.
Having not had our usual Sunday evening roast yesterday we'll be having that this evening.
It sounds like you are on the mend @boogie.
Rain here too, but not too heavy so I walked to the Leisure Centre for my Pilates class. Afterwards I went for a coffee in the cafe next door before joining my husband for a few games of table tennis. Some very close games, but he won all but one of them
We're having an early tea tonight as I have a zoom meeting at 5.30, which seems like a very silly time for a meeting. Then at 8.00 I have my on-line book club, so a rather heavy on-line sort of day.
Usual Monday morning of emails, admin and forum discussions. I’ve just had a cheese omelette and I’m sitting down for a break. Tonight I am teaching another tutorial on youth and inequality, with a key focus on social class and intersectionality.
Grey, dismal, and damp in Arkland the Increasingly Muddy, with the evil Mordor-wind blowing again...
A trip to Tess Coe this afternoon resulted in Embarrassment. I went to a checkout, but the lady in front of me was having difficulties with her debit card(s), until eventually the Engine of Satan froze up completely, and wouldn't even take cash. I dutifully put my Stuff back in the trolley, and went to the next checkout, as directed by the duty manager.
The Nice Checkout Lady packed my bags for me, to even out the weight (I generally manage to overload one of them), and then my card was DECLINED! O! woe, woe, and thrice woe! Of course, I didn't have enough cash on me to complete the transaction, so had to put the neatly-packed items back into the trolley again, so that they could be replaced on the shelves...
This all seemed a bit odd, as I'd used the card with no problem at a petrol station on the way into Town, and at the Farmer See counter in Tess Coe itself. In a spirit of inquiry, I therefore went to the village Co-Op near Arkland, to see if I could get any cash out of the ATM there. This of course worked, and so did the card when I bought some much needed Essentials.
I checked my phone and online account when I got back to the Ark, but there were no warning messages from the bank (who are usually pretty prompt at picking up any misuse of the card), so, by applying Occam's Razor, I deduce that the Engines of Satan at Tess Coe were having a Bad Day...
I could of course have tried the ATM outside Tess Coe, but I was so tired and achy after waiting fretfully at two checkouts that I felt the need to flee Arkwards for restage and Lunch (SALMON FILLETS and BAKED SPUD).
An explanation I was given in similar circumstances was that this can happen if too many transactions are made in quick succession. I have no idea why.
An explanation I was given in similar circumstances was that this can happen if too many transactions are made in quick succession. I have no idea why.
Ah, you may have something there - yes, the abortive transaction was the third in a row, although they were all at least fifteen minutes apart. The fourth transaction was a good twenty minutes later...
I'll need to visit Tess Coe again tomorrow, or on Wednesday, so hopefully all will then be well. I have cash, though, just in case!
If a card doesn’t work on Contactless, it normally does with my pin, I find.
Catching up with myself today mealwise. Lunch was yesterday’s intended cottage pie and there are leftovers for tomorrow, which is normally a fish day.
This afternoon I met a friend for coffee - actually Earl Grey tea- and we both avoided the cakes. She pays £33 per month for an app which acts like her conscience when it comes to sweet stuff. I just eat it or avoid it, according to circumstances. My daughter has just lost 6lb by avoiding sweet stuff- goodness knows why when she is a size 6.
Wet, cold and miserable weather. I wish I didn’t need to go out again but it is a Choir tonight. Small snack needed first as I leave at 6 and get home at 9.30pm.
@Bishops Finger next time that happens you could try inserting your card and putting in your PIN. For some reason the system no longer seems to prompt one to do this but it has always worked for me
I tried both contactless and PIN, but the card was still declined. As it was OK at the Co-Op (ATM and contactless), I think the glitch may have been either as @Stercus Tauri suggested - overuse! - or with the till at Tess Coe.
... My daughter has just lost 6lb by avoiding sweet stuff- goodness knows why when she is a size 6 ...
If someone who's a size 6 lost that much, wouldn't they disappear altogether? 🙃
Sorry to hear about the migraine @Nenya - hope it's clearing up now.
I got a lovely card and a bottle of WINE from my colleagues for my birthday, and had a decently busy but not too demanding day at work.
Supper was a steak, with potatoes, mushrooms and green beans.
Projected Chinese steamed chicken dinner derailed by finding I didn't have a bowl that fitted in the steamer. Rapidly switched out to Thai style chicken in coconut milk.
Have had the result if Friday's blood test. The fortnight of practically no carbs did the trick of reducing my blood glucose enough to avoid being called in for a consultation, but not enough to prevent me being in the pre-diabetic range.
I am now going to have to take this seriously, in spite of the goodies still hanging around from Christmas (including the Christmas pud we never got round to opening). I am struggling with the urge to scoff all the 'naughty' things in one giant binge and then buckle down to good behaviour, but I doubt I will manage to scoff the jar of rhubarb and cardamom jam I was given, and have been looking forward to opening.
Mr RoS is not going to be happy, he gets very sulky if there are no preserves for his toast and the biscuit and cake tins are not kept topped up. I am afraid he will have to make do with shop cake & boring biscuits that I don't like from now on.
Cold, damp and grey here so no change.
A lighter workload today. I put away the weekly shop, went for a walk and then did my emails/admin/forums. I’m about to start reviewing a disability support guidance tool. I might even get time for some studies afterwards.
A relative gave me some eye-wateringly expensive shampoo stuff for Christmas that is supposed to make your hair curly. I liked the idea, but it seemed a faff, so I've been putting off trying it out.
This morning I went for it. My hair is now curly but feels damp, though I think that's just because I'm not used to having gel on my hair.
I think I have a sort of "sexily dishevelled" look but, alas, the NE Man thinks I have a "sticky" look and he's giving me a wide berth in case any of it gets stuck on him. He's also told me I smell like his mother's hairdresser; a smell which makes him expect to be given a comic and told to stay quiet until his mother's hair has finished setting.
I never went to My Old Mum's hairdresser, but I think I know what you mean by the smell...
ION, another grey day in Arkland the Misty, though the Mist is lifting now, never having really amounted to proper Phogg. The Mordor-wind has also abated again, to be replaced by a light breeze from the Ice Bay of Forochel (that is, the north-west). Sn*w is apparently forecast for next week.
A busy day, though, with Pilates (ouch! ), a visit to Madam Sacristan to drop off some CDs I no longer need, and finally a visit to Tess Coe to buy the things I had to leave behind yesterday.
My debit card is behaving itself, and I spotted the Nice Checkout Lady from yesterday's Embarrassing Incident, so was able to thank her properly for being so kind and patient with a Pore Old Man. The NCL seemed pleased that I'd been able to sort out the problem.
A late Luncheon of LAMB CHOPS (heavily minted by Me) and a BAKED SPUD is planned. Nowadays, I prefer to bake the Spud for about 50 minutes in the Dragon, rather than just 10 minutes or so in the popty-ping, as the skin comes out so much crispier.
I'm glad the headache has gone away @nenya.
Today I went and tried out a line-dancing class that a friend recommended. It was fun, and I intend to go when I can. As there wasn't time to get from that home have lunch and then get to my Italian class I had a sandwich in the cafe near the gym. I hadn't been there for a couple of years and it was really busy which was good to see. The vegan sausage sandwich was nice too.
I'm now about to switch to my ipad for a zoom meeting, which hopefully won't last longer than half an hours.
The weather here was absolutely manky this morning: rain, with just enough wind to necessitate holding the hood of my coat to stop it blowing off. But by the time I was coming home it was Quite Nice, if still not exactly warm.
I think I know the odour of which you speak; my granny (who lived with us) used to do a Home Perm every so often, and my dad absolutely hated the pong. He was right - it really wasn't very nice! Because I have hair which would be wavy if left to its own devices, I can't understand why anyone would want curly hair; I'd give my eye-teeth to have lovely, straight, shiny hair that falls into place and does what it's told ... <sigh>
Supper was pasta with pancetta, mushrooms and crème fraîche, and rather good.
If you want a good cheese shop, there’s an excellent one in Hereford, apparently a branch of one in Ludlow. They sell fig and honey cheddar, which is excellent, also some very strong cheddar!
On other news, our boiler decided to give up last weekend and we’re having to have a new one. Not clever with such cold weather 😥😥
I also do a combination of popty-ping and oven with jacket potatoes, for speed and crispiness. We had chick frick this evening, on a Tuesday. Is Outrage (but tasty). The week's meals are out of kilter as I'm away for a few days from tomorrow and it requires some forward planning to leave Mr Nen with plated and ready meals. He has many skills but cooking isn't one of them.
I have straight hair and have worn it straight for the vast majority of my life, apart from a couple of perms when I was a lot younger because I wanted a change. I have, and have had, various curly-haired friends and I can only think of two who actually liked and embraced it - and I'm guessing there are a lot of different types of curliness with various degrees of manageability. Having said that, one friend who straightens her hair every day once showed me a picture of her natural hair - "Look! This is what it looks like when I've been out in the rain and it's gone its own way!" - and I thought it looked very pretty and said so. She was horrified - "Oh, no, Nen - I look absolutely awful!"
Off to bed shortly - an early start for me tomorrow.
Commiserations, Priscilla. Our boiler died during the pandemic in February 2020 when there was snow on the ground. In theory we were supposed to open the windows and let the air flow through the house while they were fitting the new combi-boiler!
I have straight hair long enough to sit on. When I was a teen I attempted several times to have a corkscrew perm but the curls never lasted.
Tea was an unusual concoction of mild lentil curry with partridge breasts, followed by the remains of the Bakewell.
My wife still has her arm in a sling following last week's operation, so can't cook. I had a meeting and knew I wouldn't be home till after 6.30pm. I didn't want to get fish and chips as it's not long since we had them. With amazing forethought I had cooked a double portion of Bolognese last week and froze half of it. I defrosted it overnight so, when I came home, all I had to do was warm it up, cook some pasta, and put out some salad - simples!
I love the sound of the lentil curry with partridge!
Back in the days of my misspent youth I desperately wanted to have jet black hair so, egged-on by an older sister, got a box of some witch's brew that promised the same. The smell 🤢 was bad enough but the result was beyond disappointing: not only did I still have dark brown hair with very obvious red strands, I had gained a blue neck 😱 - and of course it was the day before I went back to school. Matron was ... kind, my friends wept with mirth and my housemaster gated me for the week and gave me a Double (writing lines). 😡
I'm fed up with the cold - I took the grandsons for a stroll in their chariot this morning and returned after 40 minutes sans feeling in feet and hands - not a good thing for an old chap.
I have very straight hair, and always wanted curly hair. I did have a few perms when I was younger, but now have embraced it for what it is.
I’m off to spend the day with a friend. Looking forward to a good catch up.
I have woken up today with hair that is not "sexily dishevelled" but merely "dishevelled."
I think I overdid Stage 3 - curl creme and Stage 4 - gel. I'll try again next week, assuming my usual shampoo / conditioner gets it back to normal in the meantime.
We have a fun afternoon planned, searching for a gravestone. I know it is somewhere in the middle of a very large cemetery. This isn't one of my "elder responsible for the gravestone legacies" wanders round a cemetery, but a gravestone which will be an academic footnote, as the only source for a date of death c 1847.
There's another gravestone I'll like to find there. It's woman who was buried in her family grave in Aberdeen. She was the Head Teacher of a Girls School in the 1860 /70s. Her husband, a doctor, lived, and had his GP practice, thirty miles away. He's buried in his family grave. I think the separate graves suggest the marriage had broken down and they were living apart, rather than being a happily married couple maintaining two homes for career reasons. I suspect she was a remarkable woman, working, raising a family, and maintaining her respectability whilst living apart from her husband.
It's a cemetery I have thought of as "heaven" since my student days when I overheard a conversation on the bus between a small boy and his mother:
Mummy, look, there's Heaven. That's not Heaven. Heaven is in the sky. But you said Grandad was in Heaven!
I’d love to spend today looking at gravestones. Was it not unusual for her to be a female married teacher? I thought many women left teaching on their marriage. Was it different in Scotland? I just wondered if this might explain the living apart.
Another quiet day before the storm arrives tomorrow (30-40 essays on the challenges of implementing policy in end of life care). I have an overlap this evening between a module meeting and a student drop in session so might have to give apologies to the first.
Dull and grey again in Arkland the Gloomy, but some Wash Ing has been done, and is now Dripp Ing onto the deck outside, prior to being brought in to finish Dry Ing off near the Dragon.
A spot of wardrobe Tidy Ing is about to commence, but otherwise a quiet and restful afternoon is planned. I will partake of a light Luncheon soon, once I've had a look in the fridge to see what needs Eat Ing first!
Having discovered a recipe for Janssen's Temptation, tottered to corner shop for cream and rollmops. Will have that tonight with Czech beer and Irish whiskey in lieu of Øl and Aquavit.
I’d love to spend today looking at gravestones. Was it not unusual for her to be a female married teacher? I thought many women left teaching on their marriage. Was it different in Scotland? I just wondered if this might explain the living apart.
It was unusual, but not unheard-of. In the absence of contraception, pregnancy tended to follow on from marriage quickly, and for most women it wasn't feasible to juggle marriage, pregnancies, babies and work. Although one teacher in Aberdeen, who seems to have earned more than her husband, taught through her first eight pregnancies and only stopped when her ninth pregnancy, in her 40s, was difficult. The first eight all survived into adulthood, but the ninth, little William Ambrose, lived for only 6 months.
This particular woman (whose gravestone we found - yay!) gave up teaching on marriage and had five children in the first 9 years of her marriage, one of whom died in infancy. Two years later the 1861 census shows them living apart, with the two eldest boys living with their father, and the two youngest children living with their mother. She was back teaching by this point. Then they had a sixth child, and she carried on teaching. The 1871 census shows the eldest son away from home, and the other four living with their mother.
The records show that she was working as Interim Head at the school, following the death of the previous Headmistress. There were 34 applications for the post of Head Teacher, and she was appointed. Obviously she had the advantage of already doing the job, as Interim Head, but I think if there was any suggestion of impropriety in her lifestyle it would have been easy to appoint one of the other 33.
The NE Man is out for dinner tonight, so no cooking! I'll just graze in the fridge.
Thinking back to the graveyard - would there be someone (a sexton or supervisor type person) who keeps records to show whose graves are where?
Fairly dreich in West Lothian, and although I was kept very busy at work, I couldn't get warm. At lunchtime, I ambled along to the nearest cafe and got myself a carton of very decent lentil SOUP to take back to the office, which warmed the cockles a bit.
Supper was a risotto with prawns, tomatoes and red peppers, because they were what I had to hand, and I couldn't be bothered to go to Tessie's at lunchtime.
Lovely day in Leeds with my friend, not such a lovely journey home. It was not the day to have to spend nearly an hour on Doncaster station waiting for a train.
The Church of my Youth has an extensive graveyard, triangular in plan because of the layout of surrounding roads. The church dates from 1851, so there are no really old graves, but most of the stones were cleared away over seventy years ago. Some remain, and one, which has a small statue of a semi-nude cherub sitting on it, features in one of my wedding photos from 1978...
The other C of E church in the town is a mediaeval building, and has a large graveyard in which many stones are still standing (or leaning). The oldest one dates from 1686, and there are many 18thC stones. too. Alas! most inscriptions are illegible now, but much of the area is at least friendly to wildlife.
The Curator of St Magnus Cathedral does occasional guided tours of the graveyard. I must try and go on one next time I'm home - I think it'd be fascinating. I'm ashamed to admit I don't know how old the oldest gravestones would be.
The article doesn't actually say so, but I assume the stone originally marked an outside grave, and was brought into the Cathedral at some point to prevent it deteriorating.
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Despite having to wait, I actually arrived at the Balerno Inn before everyone else (my family are notoriously late for everything), but once they arrived I had a lovely afternoon, with excellent food (I had scampi bites followed by chicken Balmoral), rather too much WINE and they had provided a CAKE in honour of my upcoming birthday, which was lovely.
Then back to my sister's for coffee, watching the second half of the rugby (
And proved to be the right choice by the final score!!
Wet, grey and miserable here. I am home-based today and hoping the rain will have stopped by tomorrow, when I am out and about. Mondays are usually the day for domestics, so the washing machine is busy and the vacuum cleaner has had a workout and is now back on charge. Nenlet1 used to work for one of the leading manufacturers of the wand vacuum cleaner so we got a discount on it; being an older one the length of charge is not great. This means there can only be short bursts of vacuuming chez Nen. Seldom a problem.
Having not had our usual Sunday evening roast yesterday we'll be having that this evening.
A positive advantage, perhaps?
Ted, the Cavapoo doesn't shed at all, Tatze, the Lab, sheds a storm. So I should say 'because dog' singular.
Rain rain rain here so I made a hearty carrot and sweet potato soup in the slow cooker. Spicy and tasty.
Rain here too, but not too heavy so I walked to the Leisure Centre for my Pilates class. Afterwards I went for a coffee in the cafe next door before joining my husband for a few games of table tennis. Some very close games, but he won all but one of them
We're having an early tea tonight as I have a zoom meeting at 5.30, which seems like a very silly time for a meeting. Then at 8.00 I have my on-line book club, so a rather heavy on-line sort of day.
Definitely. Can't do any more, the vacuum's out of charge. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Still raining here.
A trip to Tess Coe this afternoon resulted in Embarrassment. I went to a checkout, but the lady in front of me was having difficulties with her debit card(s), until eventually the Engine of Satan froze up completely, and wouldn't even take cash. I dutifully put my Stuff back in the trolley, and went to the next checkout, as directed by the duty manager.
The Nice Checkout Lady packed my bags for me, to even out the weight (I generally manage to overload one of them), and then my card was DECLINED! O! woe, woe, and thrice woe! Of course, I didn't have enough cash on me to complete the transaction, so had to put the neatly-packed items back into the trolley again, so that they could be replaced on the shelves...
This all seemed a bit odd, as I'd used the card with no problem at a petrol station on the way into Town, and at the Farmer See counter in Tess Coe itself. In a spirit of inquiry, I therefore went to the village Co-Op near Arkland, to see if I could get any cash out of the ATM there. This of course worked, and so did the card when I bought some much needed Essentials.
I checked my phone and online account when I got back to the Ark, but there were no warning messages from the bank (who are usually pretty prompt at picking up any misuse of the card), so, by applying Occam's Razor, I deduce that the Engines of Satan at Tess Coe were having a Bad Day...
I could of course have tried the ATM outside Tess Coe, but I was so tired and achy after waiting fretfully at two checkouts that I felt the need to flee Arkwards for restage and Lunch (SALMON FILLETS and BAKED SPUD).
A first-world problem and trauma, I know...
Ah, you may have something there - yes, the abortive transaction was the third in a row, although they were all at least fifteen minutes apart. The fourth transaction was a good twenty minutes later...
I'll need to visit Tess Coe again tomorrow, or on Wednesday, so hopefully all will then be well. I have cash, though, just in case!
Catching up with myself today mealwise. Lunch was yesterday’s intended cottage pie and there are leftovers for tomorrow, which is normally a fish day.
This afternoon I met a friend for coffee - actually Earl Grey tea- and we both avoided the cakes. She pays £33 per month for an app which acts like her conscience when it comes to sweet stuff. I just eat it or avoid it, according to circumstances. My daughter has just lost 6lb by avoiding sweet stuff- goodness knows why when she is a size 6.
Wet, cold and miserable weather. I wish I didn’t need to go out again but it is a Choir tonight. Small snack needed first as I leave at 6 and get home at 9.30pm.
Sorry to hear about the migraine @Nenya - hope it's clearing up now.
I got a lovely card and a bottle of WINE from my colleagues for my birthday, and had a decently busy but not too demanding day at work.
Supper was a steak, with potatoes, mushrooms and green beans.
Tomorrow, the safer shores of bobotie.
Stew with dumplings
I am now going to have to take this seriously, in spite of the goodies still hanging around from Christmas (including the Christmas pud we never got round to opening). I am struggling with the urge to scoff all the 'naughty' things in one giant binge and then buckle down to good behaviour, but I doubt I will manage to scoff the jar of rhubarb and cardamom jam I was given, and have been looking forward to opening.
Mr RoS is not going to be happy, he gets very sulky if there are no preserves for his toast and the biscuit and cake tins are not kept topped up. I am afraid he will have to make do with shop cake & boring biscuits that I don't like from now on.
Glad you had a nice day yesterday.
Well done for that, @Roseofsharon . I should do the same really - I've not been for any tests but I know I'm a prime candidate for pre-diabetic-ness.
Been out once today already and out again within the hour. Dull and grey here but at least it's stopped raining.
A lighter workload today. I put away the weekly shop, went for a walk and then did my emails/admin/forums. I’m about to start reviewing a disability support guidance tool. I might even get time for some studies afterwards.
Is that the weather or the meeting?
This morning I went for it. My hair is now curly but feels damp, though I think that's just because I'm not used to having gel on my hair.
I think I have a sort of "sexily dishevelled" look but, alas, the NE Man thinks I have a "sticky" look and he's giving me a wide berth in case any of it gets stuck on him. He's also told me I smell like his mother's hairdresser; a smell which makes him expect to be given a comic and told to stay quiet until his mother's hair has finished setting.
I never went to My Old Mum's hairdresser, but I think I know what you mean by the smell...
ION, another grey day in Arkland the Misty, though the Mist is lifting now, never having really amounted to proper Phogg. The Mordor-wind has also abated again, to be replaced by a light breeze from the Ice Bay of Forochel (that is, the north-west). Sn*w is apparently forecast for next week.
A busy day, though, with Pilates (ouch!
My debit card is behaving itself, and I spotted the Nice Checkout Lady from yesterday's Embarrassing Incident, so was able to thank her properly for being so kind and patient with a Pore Old Man. The NCL seemed pleased that I'd been able to sort out the problem.
A late Luncheon of LAMB CHOPS (heavily minted by Me) and a BAKED SPUD is planned. Nowadays, I prefer to bake the Spud for about 50 minutes in the Dragon, rather than just 10 minutes or so in the popty-ping, as the skin comes out so much crispier.
@Nenya - glad to hear the headache has abated.
Today I went and tried out a line-dancing class that a friend recommended. It was fun, and I intend to go when I can. As there wasn't time to get from that home have lunch and then get to my Italian class I had a sandwich in the cafe near the gym. I hadn't been there for a couple of years and it was really busy which was good to see. The vegan sausage sandwich was nice too.
I'm now about to switch to my ipad for a zoom meeting, which hopefully won't last longer than half an hours.
@Twangist - I was about to ask the same!
The weather here was absolutely manky this morning: rain, with just enough wind to necessitate holding the hood of my coat to stop it blowing off. But by the time I was coming home it was Quite Nice, if still not exactly warm.
I think I know the odour of which you speak; my granny (who lived with us) used to do a Home Perm every so often, and my dad absolutely hated the pong. He was right - it really wasn't very nice! Because I have hair which would be wavy if left to its own devices, I can't understand why anyone would want curly hair; I'd give my eye-teeth to have lovely, straight, shiny hair that falls into place and does what it's told ... <sigh>
Supper was pasta with pancetta, mushrooms and crème fraîche, and rather good.
On other news, our boiler decided to give up last weekend and we’re having to have a new one. Not clever with such cold weather 😥😥
Pork mince bobotie for dinner with a well-matched Gamay.
I have straight hair and have worn it straight for the vast majority of my life, apart from a couple of perms when I was a lot younger because I wanted a change. I have, and have had, various curly-haired friends and I can only think of two who actually liked and embraced it - and I'm guessing there are a lot of different types of curliness with various degrees of manageability. Having said that, one friend who straightens her hair every day once showed me a picture of her natural hair - "Look! This is what it looks like when I've been out in the rain and it's gone its own way!" - and I thought it looked very pretty and said so. She was horrified - "Oh, no, Nen - I look absolutely awful!"
Off to bed shortly - an early start for me tomorrow.
I have straight hair long enough to sit on. When I was a teen I attempted several times to have a corkscrew perm but the curls never lasted.
Tea was an unusual concoction of mild lentil curry with partridge breasts, followed by the remains of the Bakewell.
I love the sound of the lentil curry with partridge!
Back in the days of my misspent youth I desperately wanted to have jet black hair so, egged-on by an older sister, got a box of some witch's brew that promised the same. The smell 🤢 was bad enough but the result was beyond disappointing: not only did I still have dark brown hair with very obvious red strands, I had gained a blue neck 😱 - and of course it was the day before I went back to school. Matron was ... kind, my friends wept with mirth and my housemaster gated me for the week and gave me a Double (writing lines). 😡
I'm fed up with the cold - I took the grandsons for a stroll in their chariot this morning and returned after 40 minutes sans feeling in feet and hands - not a good thing for an old chap.
I’m off to spend the day with a friend. Looking forward to a good catch up.
I think I overdid Stage 3 - curl creme and Stage 4 - gel. I'll try again next week, assuming my usual shampoo / conditioner gets it back to normal in the meantime.
We have a fun afternoon planned, searching for a gravestone. I know it is somewhere in the middle of a very large cemetery. This isn't one of my "elder responsible for the gravestone legacies" wanders round a cemetery, but a gravestone which will be an academic footnote, as the only source for a date of death c 1847.
There's another gravestone I'll like to find there. It's woman who was buried in her family grave in Aberdeen. She was the Head Teacher of a Girls School in the 1860 /70s. Her husband, a doctor, lived, and had his GP practice, thirty miles away. He's buried in his family grave. I think the separate graves suggest the marriage had broken down and they were living apart, rather than being a happily married couple maintaining two homes for career reasons. I suspect she was a remarkable woman, working, raising a family, and maintaining her respectability whilst living apart from her husband.
It's a cemetery I have thought of as "heaven" since my student days when I overheard a conversation on the bus between a small boy and his mother:
Mummy, look, there's Heaven.
That's not Heaven. Heaven is in the sky.
But you said Grandad was in Heaven!
Another quiet day before the storm arrives tomorrow (30-40 essays on the challenges of implementing policy in end of life care). I have an overlap this evening between a module meeting and a student drop in session so might have to give apologies to the first.
A spot of wardrobe Tidy Ing is about to commence, but otherwise a quiet and restful afternoon is planned. I will partake of a light Luncheon soon, once I've had a look in the fridge to see what needs Eat Ing first!
Having discovered a recipe for Janssen's Temptation, tottered to corner shop for cream and rollmops. Will have that tonight with Czech beer and Irish whiskey in lieu of Øl and Aquavit.
My new (to me) T-shirt With Freddie Mercury On has turned up (purchased for the princely sum of €3 on Vinted).
It was unusual, but not unheard-of. In the absence of contraception, pregnancy tended to follow on from marriage quickly, and for most women it wasn't feasible to juggle marriage, pregnancies, babies and work. Although one teacher in Aberdeen, who seems to have earned more than her husband, taught through her first eight pregnancies and only stopped when her ninth pregnancy, in her 40s, was difficult. The first eight all survived into adulthood, but the ninth, little William Ambrose, lived for only 6 months.
This particular woman (whose gravestone we found - yay!) gave up teaching on marriage and had five children in the first 9 years of her marriage, one of whom died in infancy. Two years later the 1861 census shows them living apart, with the two eldest boys living with their father, and the two youngest children living with their mother. She was back teaching by this point. Then they had a sixth child, and she carried on teaching. The 1871 census shows the eldest son away from home, and the other four living with their mother.
The records show that she was working as Interim Head at the school, following the death of the previous Headmistress. There were 34 applications for the post of Head Teacher, and she was appointed. Obviously she had the advantage of already doing the job, as Interim Head, but I think if there was any suggestion of impropriety in her lifestyle it would have been easy to appoint one of the other 33.
The NE Man is out for dinner tonight, so no cooking! I'll just graze in the fridge.
Thinking back to the graveyard - would there be someone (a sexton or supervisor type person) who keeps records to show whose graves are where?
Fairly dreich in West Lothian, and although I was kept very busy at work, I couldn't get warm. At lunchtime, I ambled along to the nearest cafe and got myself a carton of very decent lentil SOUP to take back to the office, which warmed the cockles a bit.
Supper was a risotto with prawns, tomatoes and red peppers, because they were what I had to hand, and I couldn't be bothered to go to Tessie's at lunchtime.
The other C of E church in the town is a mediaeval building, and has a large graveyard in which many stones are still standing (or leaning). The oldest one dates from 1686, and there are many 18thC stones. too. Alas! most inscriptions are illegible now, but much of the area is at least friendly to wildlife.
https://sites.scran.ac.uk/stmagnus/SMC193.htm
AIUI, gravestones outside, in the church grounds, were not really common until later centuries.
The article doesn't actually say so, but I assume the stone originally marked an outside grave, and was brought into the Cathedral at some point to prevent it deteriorating.