Jamming!

Whod've thought it?! The sophisticated (!?!!) London girl that I once was, is now happy installed in the middle of the beautiful Cotswolds and making jam. I haven't yet sung Jerulsalem but I am sure that is only a matter of time!

@ABerkshireGirl  FB'd this morning that she had picked strawberries from her garden and wanted to make jam. Last night I picked 4lbs from my garden and did just that. This morning I was greeted by rows of shining red jars, full of berries and smelling of summer.  I am sure that many of you do make jam, but in case you don't and want to know how, here is my recipe.  I cannot begin to tell you how easy it is, how cheap it is (especially if you grow your own fruit), and how satisfying it is to spread your own jam on toast in the mornings. They also make great little presents.

Firstly your tools.....I get all mine from  Lakeland they are the best and cheapest.  I spend all year saving up jam jars for the summer glut of fruit, but they have very good ones. I use the small 8oz ones because they make the jam go further.  They also sell the lids - the gingham ones are pretty.  You will also need jam pot covers (waxed circles, cellophane, labels and rubber bands).  I also buy fabrics to cut out in circles for extra prettiness.  You will need a preserving pan, a slotted spoon and a jam funnel.

                                                                    Lakeland.co.uk

Ok. So first of all put two saucers in the deep freeze.

Next wash and rinse all your jars in warm soapy water, place upside down on a baking sheet and put in oven at about 150 degrees.

Ingredients:

2lb Strawberries or Raspberries
1kg of Jam Sugar (in all supermarkets in the sugar aisle with red packaging)
Juice of half a lemon

Hull and rinse the strawberries and put into the preserving pan and add the sugar and lemon juice.  Stir over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Don't get distracted or the sugar will burn at the bottom of the pan! Once the sugar has dissolved, turn the heat up and bring to the boil. Boil steadily for about 4 mins.

Remove one of the saucers from the freezer and put a teaspoon of the jam onto it. If you push it with your finger you will see it thickens - you have reached "setting point".

Turn off heat and remove scum off top of jam with a slotted spoon.

Remove jars from oven.

I use a ladle to spoon the jam into the jars via the jam funnel.

Once filled place a waxed disc in each jar (wax side down).  Leave to cool thoroughly and then cover with the cellophane (dipping it in a bowl of water makes it easier) and tie with a rubber band. Allow the cellophane to tighten over the jars (I usually leave for a couple of hours or overnight). Put the lids and labels on and you are done!

Once you've done it, you will become addicted and will never buy expensive shop bought jam again!

Silent sunday

www.mochabeaniemummy.com/silent-sunday

Silent Sunday

Life Changing Moments

Today I passed another milestone on my way to returning to a full and normal life!!!


Two years ago I was dead! I was on life support having had pancreatitis and a duodenum ulcer that had burst with such force, it blew a hole in my stomach, bowel and duodenum. The surgeon told my sister he would do his best but to say goodbye. The last rites were given.  I had a 5 hour operation. But HA!! They had not counted on the stubborness within me and I wasn't going anywhere. I of course knew nothing of the drama going on around me until I came out of the induced coma a month later. 

                                                                 criticalgamers.com


Being ill is easy. You lie there, morphined to the hilt. The world spins by without you having to do anything. But the road to recovery is hell. Rehabilitation is double hell. To learn to eat, walk, talk, write again. Each minute step taken towards recovery is HUGE. I was in hospital for 5 months, had 2 further operations and a number of smaller "proceedures". Last year I had another major op which went wrong and it has taken another year to begin to recover from that. 


But....there have been huge milestones, full of joy, that have been passed!  I can talk (and how!), I can walk - not long distances, not far, but far enough to please both me and my little dog! I can eat (again, "and how"!) gone are the feeding tubes, gone is the pureed crap. Back are the baked potatoes, steak, chocolate......!!  For two years I've had nursing at home. (God bless the NHS). Because of the wounds on my stomach I was unable to have a bath. In February, the nurses deemed the wound healed enough for me to have one.  I cannot express in words the feelings I had stepping into that bath, filled to the brim with warm, bubbly water, and submerging myself into it!! 3 months on I still get a thrill out of having a bath!! I will never take a bath for granted again.

                                                                   caring4uevents.co.uk


I have also been unable to drive. Firstly because of the wounds, secondly because of all the anaesthetic and thirdly because I have simply been too ill to concentrate on it. This has left me stranded in the village - unable to go to the shops or see friends. (I am 17 miles in each direction from the nearest big shopping town). I have been blessed by having had the unbelievable support and kindness of neighbours and friends who have driven me for the last two years.  Today I drove........whoooooooooooop!! I employed the services of a lady in the village who runs a driving school and off we set. Oh the joy of the freedom of it!! I used to be queen of speed but I have to say I was nervous at 30mph - I am hoping that with more practice that will change.

                                                                          guardian.co.uk


I still have more mountains to climb, but today proved that little by little I AM going to once more conquer the world...........here I come!!!!!!!

Peeping Tom.....First - and only -True Love

Those naughty Tweeters and Bloggers @ManicMum and @SuperAmazingMum have decided on a joint themed "Meme" this week under the subject title of "Peeping Tom - Your First True Love"

Please join in by copying and pasting the above badge picture onto your blog and go over to either of their blogs to get a linky!

OK...so that's the technical bit over and now to the "peeping"

I was 19 when I first laid eyes on him. S. I was working as a receptionist at an audio visual company in London. He was one of the Producers. He was tall, blonde and utterly gorgeous. 34 years on I can still feel the blush on my cheeks when he first said hello to me. We socialised with our colleagues at the pub in the evenings and over time there was no question - we were VERY attracted to each other.

He had a very rich girl friend who's father was a property developer. When she went shopping she bought the whole Mall.....I rented a room in a flat in Kensington, they lived in a house she owned  in Chelsea.

Then she went away for 2 weeks with her parents on safari and he asked me out to dinner. We went to a wonderful Italian restaurant in the Fulham Road and then on to a night club in the Kings Road. (OMG! I've just remembered that THAT evening Prince Charles was in there dancing/smooching with the actress Susan George!!) Anyway back to us.....we went back to his house and after a lot of snogging fell asleep fully clothed on top of the bed. (GOOD girls don't do it on the first date!!!)  Next morning we went for a dreamy walk in Richmond Park where, under the shade of a horse chestnut tree, S kissed me, told me how MUCH he liked me and said he was going leave the girlfriend.  I lost my heart under that tree. Actually, I didn't so much lose it, as give it away. We didn't sleep on top of the bed linen fully clothed that night!!

We had the most wonderful two weeks together (in her house....eeeek!) and of course worked together during the day. She came back and S and I continued our desperately passionate, secret affair. And I waited, and I waited, and I waited.

He travelled a lot round the UK giving presentations to clients and after work (by now I had moved on to a TV company,)  I would leave work at 5.30 catch the 6.15 to...Manchester, Birmingham, Bradford, Oxford, Brighton, and other such exotic locations and sign into the same hotel as him but under the name of Diana Potter. Diane de Poitiers was the mistress of the French King Francois 1.  If the girl friend ever suspected I was with him, she could never have found me. I would return to London on the dawn train and be at my desk at 8.30. 

Three years later he married her. I remember the day their wedding invitation arrived in the post. I wandered aimlessly round London for hours. I gave them an electric carving knife as a wedding present in the hope he would chop her up into little pieces!  He woke up on the morning of his wedding with me. He posted a letter to me on the way to his wedding saying how sorry he was and how much he loved me.  But he still married her..  We agreed that once he was back from honeymoon that was it. No more. 

And for two weeks following his return it was no more. But I loved him. And so when he called did I say "no!"?? Did I heck. And on it went...... I settled into a relaxed mode about it all.  After all, surely it wasn't that he was cheating on me...he was cheating on his wife?!  I would rather have been with him than without him. 10 minutes was worth a whole day. If we had a night together it was worth a whole year. He was lovely to me. We had an amazingly loving relationship. It was just that he was married to someone else. My mother referred to him as "Supershit". He was really, but I loved him. I was his beck and call girl! And I didn't mind. I didn't mind that I cried every day, that I silently sobbed every time he left my house. I was part of his life and for me that was enough.

For 19 years.....................

He then divorced his wife. And went off with a third party. My heart was broken. It has never mended.

Just after Christmas this year, his former business partner and her husband popped into see me on their way through the Cotswolds. She just casually mentioned that  S was living in France now. It was within a sentence about something else. Anyone else wouldn't have even heard it. I did, and the moment she left to go home I rushed to the computer and two hours later via France Yellow Pages and Google Earth I had found him. In a tiny village at the foot of the Alps. I now have his address and phone number. And I have yet to do anything with them.

I have had countless relationships since we parted for the last time 20 years ago, but none came close to my life with S. It was truly True Love. Once you've tasted nectar you don't settle for honey. I am still in love with him. There! I've said it....Holy Moly!!! There is not a day goes by when I don't think about him and hope...........

SILENT SUNDAY

Our wonderful 13th century village church taken from the fields that Crumble and I walk through every day. How lucky are we?

It's all about ME!!!!!!!!!

It's all about ME.....

 

The inexhaustible, serendipitous SuperAmazingMum has tagged me...AGAIN!  I have failed to complete the last "interview" she tagged me in as I found some of the answers needed to bring all my emotions to the fore and I haven't got the time or energy to wallow in self-pity!! So I am going to give this "interview" a go........

 

 

If you could go back in time to relive one moment, what would it be?

That's hard because I have a list of Top 10 Moments in my life and I would repeat them all. Some of them are sporting moments....(Hahaha! NOT MINE!!!) England beating NZ in the Rugby, Chelsea lifting various trophies. But the ONE memory which I relive over and over again is the moment I met my Niece - 21 years ago. My sister and her husband were living in South Africa and my niece was born in the April.  They came back to England for Christmas.  I went to the long-haul arrivals lounge at Heathrow feeling slightly nervous.  I knew there was a chance that, as a small child, she would push me away and want to be back with her Mummy. I need not have worried. They came through the Baggage Hall and my sister handed her over to me across the barrier. We "bonded"(!) immediately. I cried, the total strangers around me cried and so began one of the greatest love affairs of my life. 

 

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

Probably come out of the womb of another Mother!! I wanted a fluffy cookie baking mummy who was proud of everything her children did. Instead I got a socialite whose children were brought out as handbag accessories when small and whose children, no matter how successful, were never good enough.  Anyone seen Mommy Dearest.......?! It was a life long battleground. Bitter??!! ME??!!

What movie or TV character do you think you resemble most in personality?

 

Many years ago someone stopped me in Harrods and asked me for my autograph because they thought I was Victoria Wood!!! I obliged! We had similar haircuts and physique at the time. I like to think I'm funny but I would love to be as brilliantly amusing as she is!

                                                                                            (picture:speaker.com)

Which TV or movie character would you like to be?

Oh that's easy. Pretty Woman. Swept off her feet by a billionaire!

                                                                 (picture: thecriticalcondition.com)

 

If you could push one person in the whole world off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be?

Unlike SuperAmazingMum I have a l-o-n-g list of people I would happily push off a cliff!! However, as I have mentioned in a previous blog:

 http://fastandluce.blogspot.com/2011/03/pet-hates.html I would happily push Katie Price off a cliff. I'm not posting a picture of her.....she's on the front pages of most papers if you want to see her!!!

Name one habit you want to change in yourself.

You see, here I should put "smoking". I know it's bad for me, expensive, blah blah....but I don't want to! Because of serious ill health in the last two years (not smoking related!!) I live a very rigid organised life. Even my dog knows the timings of our day and will whine at 1.30 because it's time to go upstairs for a nap! I would like to change all that one day and run free!!

Describe yourself in one word.

Fluffy-cookie-baking-friend!

Describe the person who named you in this MEME in one word.

You can't possibly describe her in one word!! Oh ok then: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Why do you blog? Answer in one sentence.

It's therapeutic and I pathetically believe others just might enjoy my ramblings and musings!

Name at least 3 people or more to send this MEME, and then inform them.

@ABerkshireGirl 

@AliStarret

@MintyKing

@Helloitsgemma