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Saturday 24 August 2019

Dog days.

Old term for August, kind of sleepy times although we seem to have been busy with medical, dental and optician appointments, all of which have yielded good news. Well Ian has to have a tooth out next week, my teeth were fine especially after a visit to the hygienist as well. Ian’s annual blood tests came back showing all was good, my visits to the Royal Brompton Hospital will become an annual event, so much better than twice a year.

Yesterday found me at Specsavers, hadn’t had an eye test for a couple of years, my two pairs of varifocal glasses are four years old, reading glasses are five years old so with a slight change to prescription new specs were chosen. I did select to have new prescription lenses put into my sunglasses, love the frames, sorry no photo of me wearing them. Today is bright sunlight and I have no sunglasses. Very complicated ‘deals’, discounts for age, for two for one, aggravated by my wish to have best quality lenses. Pleased to say my eyes are very healthy so no worries there.

Lat weekend whilst in Dorset visited The Walled Garden in Moreton, couldn’t resist photographing the sweet peas, for me the flower of the year and a reminder I must crochet the border of the sweet Pea blanket. Ian’s socks have taken priority, my first toe up pair, picture below taken whilst knitting in the garden.

Now to add photographs, also  I need to practice readings for tomorrow, Jeremiah and Hebrews, at least no unpronounceable names!





Tuesday 13 August 2019

Eating the cake.

Not always but much of the time I make a cake to pop into the cake tin, especially when the grandchildren are visiting but also just for us. Knowing we have some damson jam I decided to make a Victoria sponge, usual imperial measurement of  6+6+6 for butter, sugar and flour. I had a blank for which gas mark to use, daft really I’ve been making these sponges since I was about 11 years old, have used gas, Fahrenheit and centigrade and gas again since then.  Of course I consulted ‘Aunty’ Delia as she’s known at Pixie Towers, whilst doing so noticed her recipe for a sponge using the all-in-one method. In the heat the  butter was very soft, she recommends soft margarine but we don’t buy margarine, also the new fancy pants kitchen scales meant I could weigh the ingredients straight into the mixing bowl, I so love the revert to zero button for this. The extra magic ingredient was baking powder added to the self raising flour, wow, what a difference it made, the cake is so light and rose so much more. No more creaming method, this was so much lighter. Delia’s recipe was 4+4+4 so I upped it to usual 6 ounces to fit the tins.


Now can anyone tell me why the media is using the word “decades” instead of say 10 years or 20 years? ITN uses imperial measurement still, BBC has reports in metric, most annoying I can visualise  miles but am confused by kilometres. I accept in Europe distances are metric, here it was my understanding that miles and pints were to be retained. The milkman delivers still in glass pint bottles.

Now a coincidence that amused me, today I was working at our Local Studies, the photographs I was indexing were from the Richmond & Twickenham Times for Friday 13th August 1971. I’m blogging this exactly 48 years later yet so many of the reports were topical, including one on environmental issues from The Ecology journal. The quality of the microfilm for the issue was too poor to photograph this.




Thursday 1 August 2019

It is just a little thing but .....

Yes, it is a little thing but I’m feeling very jolly and happy this evening, it was a good day, Pilates class at 7.30 am, both of us had our hair cut, we took decluttering stuff to the Kingston British Heart Foundation Shop, it occupies the ground floor of what was British Home Stores.  Very humid and muggy in Kingston, it was good to come home, sit in the garden from about 6.30, complete the Metro easy and moderate sudoku and then, joy upon joys succeed with the “Difficult rating challenging” sudoku. What was unusual though was Ian had been defeated by the challenging, first time this has happened so this pupil has beaten her teacher.

Time spent puzzling out the pattern means less time for knitting, the toe up sock is well up the leg and not too far off the cuff and rib. Picture will be posted at end of blog.

Just a thought, nothing to do with anything else I’ve posted, out and about I’ve noticed lots of summer dresses this year, shirt styles and pretty floaty dresses yet many are worn with trainers, heavy clunky lace ups or ankle boots. Perhaps I’m contrasting them with the Dior dresses in the V & A exhibition with such elegant footwear and today’s practical yet clumsy looking shoes.