10 things

• I baked some strawberry buns with lemon buttercream icing - just because I'd spotted the Cadbury's mini eggs in the supermarket and thought some little buns with mini eggs on top were just what I needed to bake to celebrate the arrival of spring.

• As well as mini eggs we have many large hen's eggs at the minute.  Bertha, Adelaide and Ethel are all laying an egg a day, and 8 year old Queenie is thinking about laying again (8 years old is an epic age for a hen).

• Cam sits his first two GCSE papers on the same day in May as Olivia's Year 6 SATS test; and later that same evening, Olivia is playing in a music festival.  I have written it all in the calendar and am trying not to think too much about the collective stress levels that day.
• Cam then has a three and a half week gap before he sits his final paper.  GCSE timetables are insane.
• My geraniums loved the mild, wet winter and are all blooming again.
• Working in A&E has been by far the best part of my course.  I have loved every, single minute of it and am so sad it comes to an end next week.  I have arranged to go back for another 5 week placement this autumn.
• When I work a long day shift, Olivia stays up so that she can ask me, as soon as I walk through the door, "What were your most exciting patients today? Did the helicopter bring in anything dramatic?" - she's all about the blood and guts, this one. 

• I have re-arranged the bookshelves downstairs, and am slightly startled to note that I have five whole shelves of cookery books.  I always considered myself to be very picky about which cookbooks I own; only the really good ones, which I use regularly, are bought.  Turns out there are more great cookbooks out there than I realised.

• I am knitting myself a pinky-orangey-red beanie hat.  I anticipate this being worn very often.
• I am no longer the tallest in the family.  Cam has overtaken me.

Seen on the streets

Seen on the streets of Soho, in central London, on the first sunny Saturday afternoon of spring:

•  Hundreds of people, standing outside pubs, drinking wine and pints and turning their faces towards the sky, like sunflowers.
• Two little girls, pony-galloping up Carnaby Street doing a complicated hand-clapping game together.
• Three young dudes, zooming past on longboards.
• A pretty young lady, wrapped in a gold pashmina, photographing her boyfriend's pint of beer with the biggest Nikon camera I've ever seen.
• Three teenage girls, all wearing very high-heeled turquoise pumps, and with huge Primark bags hooked over their arms, teetering along the road singing Abba tunes together.
• Three German tourists, wondering how many millilitres were in a pint.  Nobody could tell them.
• Bubbles in my prosecco, as I enjoyed an afternoon out with some of my nursing friends.

 

Springtime in London

The sock spring

I sat outside in the sunshine, on the last day of my holidays.  I finished knitting one pair of socks, and started another pair.

 

I reflected on a great day spent with my sister yesterday, and then a lovely phone call with my brother.  It doesn't take much to keep me happy - socks, siblings and some sunshine. 

It feels as though spring finally came to East London today.

Influences

I often don't realise the level of influence I have over my children.  On a quiet afternoon this week, Olivia pottered into the kitchen with her arms full of fabric scraps and said in her typically quiet way, "I thought I'd make some bunting for my room - can you show me how?"

 

On the other hand, when Moss Stitch and I took all our children on a longish walk in Epping Forest a few days later, we had to bribe them into participating with moderate enthusiasm and not moaning, by lugging along heavy bags full of chocolate biscuits and flasks of mocha coffee in order to keep them stoked up with sugar and caffeine at all times.

 

My love of long walks and being in amongst the trees has clearly not had as much influence on them as my love of fabric and cake.  

When we got back home, I said to Olivia, "You know, in years to come I bet you take your children on walks like that."  She looked me straight in the eye and replied, "I would never be so cruel."

 

Breaktime

Changing footwear, in the car park

Gill and I took a break from our usual routines to meet back up in Epping Forest for a lunchtime walk and picnic.  Oh, we have missed this - so much.

We were surrounded by green - oak trees and beech trees, thick grass, nettles, caterpillars and brambles.  Epping Forest is lush, thick and sumptuous at this time of year.

We strolled, chatted, laughed, ate lunch, compared sunburn, reminisced and swapped stories.  And when we left we both promised each other we would do this again - very soon.

Extreme

I've never known a year when I've thought more about the weather, talked more about the weather, or watched the weather forecasts more closely, than 2012.  Everything about the weather has seemed so extreme this year - in a part of the country, and indeed the world, that generally has such very unremarkable middle-of-the-road weather.

After a dry, bitingly cold winter which triggered an official drought, we moved into record-breaking high temperatures in March, followed by some of the most persistant and heavy rain I have ever experienced in April.  May started off very cold indeed; just last week I still had the central heating on once a day, and Olivia was going to school in thick black tights and her winter uniform.

And now...now it seems to be set fair.  There is sunshine all day long, and the temperatures are soaring towards the high 20s.  Olivia is wearing summer dresses to school and the hens lie panting in their dust baths.  The flowers in the garden are burning with colour.

Bee lavender

Fuschia

Geraniums

It is these prolonged extremes of weather that I find so un-British.  Most of the time in East London we bumble along with mild, dry-ish weather, punctuated by occasional scorching days in summer and icy days in winter.  The distinct, and extreme, phases to the weather that we've had this year feel new. 

Mostly I suspect that these extremes are the result of climate change.  But then I look at the children, and they just don't care about the weather in the same way I do.  Cam moans when it's hot and his hayfever is bad, and Olivia likes being able to wear hats that Granny has knitted her when it's cold - but mostly they just ignore it.  Could it be that rather than climate change I am just getting middle-aged and like nothing more than a good chat about the weather?

Set fair

Appeasement cakes

I put too much smoked paprika in the bean and squash stew.

Cakes cooling, butter softening and stew simmering

I know that come tea time tonight, the paprika will be even more pungent and the children will moan and sigh because they do not like spicy food.  And then I will moan and sigh because I do like spicy food, and I cooked it for tea, and so please just eat it without complaining, just this once.  You know how it goes.

So I decided that it might be a good tactic to make something more crowd-pleasing for pudding.  I made some fairy cakes.  You can see the production line above: cakes cooling, butter softening to make the icing, and spicy stew simmering very gently.

I iced the cakes with rosewater buttercream, and decorated them with pink chocolate buttons.  Double pink appeasement cakes; hidden away in a tin for now, until everyone has eaten their veg.

Pink crowd pleasers

Summer sundress minus the summer

I finished the second of my summer blue tops last night, and this morning balanced precariously on another chair in front of another mirror to take photos.

This is made from the same pattern as my last top, but at full length.  This version has lovely deep pockets, and a sweet A-line shape which I adore.

There's still nor much sign of summer warmth here in London, so it will be a while before I can wear it without a pashmina around my shoulders and leggings and a jersey top underneath.

 *A special Thank You to my friend Kristina, for so generously giving me the fabric, which is a really calming Amy Butler print from a few years back. I am delighted to find it matches my favourite blue pashmina so perfectly! xx*

Outrageous flirting

In Kew Gardens this morning, this peacock was doing some outrageous flirting.  I couldn't see any peahens in the area, so maybe it was all for my benefit? (more likely he was keeping the other males in the area away from his territory). 

It was a damp and gloomy day in West London today, and this peacock was a welcome splash of colour. I inched towards him, as close as I dared, and he shimmied his behind to shake out his tail feathers just a little bit more.  I'm sure he was posing for the camera.  He turned this way and that, and let me take more than a dozen pictures.

And then, when he'd had enough of me, he just turned around and strutted away.  I think I like his tail even more from behind, as a black, white and sepia version of the more common front view.

Some harmless flirting is always enjoyable - thank you Mr Peacock, for making me smile on a grey day.

Spring greens

It is raining outside.  A constant drip-drip-drip for pretty much the past ten days.  Living in East London this is a novelty because we haven't had any significant rainfall all winter, and we are now officially in drought.  I am rather excited about the rain, because I haven't seen it for so long.

The garden is green and lush - I'm not allowed to use a hosepipe any more because of the water shortage, but I don't need to at the moment.  I've been buying geraniums, herbs and lavenders for the garden, and potting them up a few at a time, when the rain eases to a drizzle.  The vivid pinks of the geranium flowers, mixed in with the bright, wet greens of all the grass and shrubbery, is very pleasing to the eye.

And when the rain gets too heavy, I come back inside and pick up my knitting, which is in the same shade of vivid spring green. 

French spring green shawl

I am knitting myself another shawl from this pattern, but instead of the multicoloured sock yarn version I did last time, I am making this one from a green linen and wool handspun yarn that I bought with Mum in France over Easter. 

Walking through Bruniquel to the castle.  We filled Mum's basket with yarn.

A poster for Bruniquel's textile fair

We heard that there was a textile fair at a local castle, and went along on a cool, wet day much like today, not really knowing what to expect.  What we found was the most amazing selection of hand spun and hand dyed yarns and knitted and felted garments from right across the South of France.  Mum dived in to the mohairs, alpacas and angoras, and I was captivated by the linen blends and the bright colours.  We filled Mum's basket with yarn - a modest three skeins each - and came home with hastily scribbled notes about needle size and yarn blends stuffed into our pockets.

The colour of this green yarn was exactly the same shade as the new oak leaves bursting forth in the French forests while we were there, and now it is the exact same shade as the geranium leaves in London.  Perfect.

Municipal planting

I drove O to school this morning, and although Epping Forest was bursting into green leaf all around me, I still thought wistfully of the banks of wild cowslips and orchids which ran alongside almost all the roads in France this Easter.  Green and lush is lovely, but spring flowers lift my spirit in a way that no amount of oak foliage can.

Then at lunchtime, while I was walking through Walthamstow, out of the corner of my eye I spotted something very startling.

A snake's head fritillary sunning itself calmly in a corner of a municipal flowerbed.

For a moment I thought I might have made the urban wildflower discovery of the decade, but then I remembered that you can actually buy cultivated snake's head bulbs these days.  I still crouched down to take photos and admire it though, and the mad, purple checked petals were a delight.  Sometime in my life I want to own a pair of trousers made from fabric just like this - they would be fabulous. 

It turns out that London has spring flowers at the side of the road after all - I just had to spot them.  They may not often be wild, but they still make me smile.

Dix choses

• C's favourite French pudding is Iles Flottantes, but he also enjoys a caramel ice cream.

• Mum and I found orchids in the village after all - they are sneaky, and like to hide down steep banks and amongst the other undergrowth.  They have just come into flower this week.

• I love orchids - they are just too weird for words.
• The cowslips are still out, and I love them too.  Rural France is full of flowers at the moment.
• We have bought some local Gaillac wine to bring home.  When I say 'some', I actually mean 'quite a bit'.  The children will be more cramped in the back of the car on the journey home than they were on the journey down.
• I found some lichen which matches my hat.  It is now known as The Lichen Hat, rather than The Mustard Hat.

• France has Presidential elections coming up in a couple of weeks.  The boards for political posters have been erected in the village, but so far only one candidate has put up a poster.

• It has been a wet and blustery couple of weeks, but we haven't cared at all.  This is still a wonderful part of the world to be in - perhaps especially when there is thunder and heavy rain in the sky.  Even the clouds are gorgeous here.

• G and I have done some good long hikes together, and we love going for a stroll around the village before supper, with Mum and Dad.  The children prefer to stay at home with a glass of orangina and the tele.


• I love France.  I'm not ready to come home.

Cowslips

Last year I was obsessing about all the orchids in South-West France, but this year we are here a couple of weeks earlier, and this part of France has had a very harsh winter, so there are no orchids about yet.

Instead, I am obsessing about cowslips.  These beautiful spring flowers are endangered in the wild in the UK nowadays, because of the loss of their habitat.  I don't know if they are officially endangered in France too, but they are certainly thriving right here in Tarn-et-Garonne.  Along all the verges, and in all the fields up the sides of the mountains, there are big patches of these acid yellow-green flowers.

They look shy, and bashful, as they raise their little flowers just ever so slightly towards the sun.

They are bright, jolly, sweet little flowers - the essence of springtime.

Spring jobs

South-West France in springtime is lush and rampant. 

We have been helping my parents clear up the dead autumn leaves and stalks, and get everything neat and tidy for spring.

We raked, swept, tidied, lifted, wheeled barrows, dug, sorted and carried.  We burnt probably 40 barrow loads of leaves on a big bonfire.

Meanwhile, C has been baking again - he made us an enormous black forest gateau from the Hairy Bikers Bakeation book, which was just the thing to put back some of the calories we had worked off in the garden.