Cooking for Christmas

I've been in Cornwall for the last ten days, walking and playing with the large number of pets my family possess. Sometimes, this involved danger:

This photo was taken as Tolly was exploding out of his box towards me. I have plenty of scratches, but he had a whale of a time. He LOVES boxes. You only need to point one out to him and he's straight inside, and he'll stay there for AGES. If you torment and tease him, usually all that happens is that he pokes a paw out. He'll rarely be driven to move.

I also reaffirmed my status with my dogs - taking Rocky to beaches makes him one happy spaniel*:

And Cornwall can be breathtaking. Liz was staying with me for the first few days, so I had an excuse to walk the whole way around the Roseland peninsula...

...AND Sennen Cove, right down by Land's End. I think this is the Longships Lighthouse, flung out beyond the end of the peninsula...next stop America, kind of thing:

After Liz went, I had been planning some Get My Life In Order time. That didn't really happen. Cornwall always does this. It's so far removed from all the things I have to think about and plan and organise and sort that planning to get Life Admin stuff when I'm there is a bit hopeless. I was going to write Lists and personal diary entries and book plane tickets and things. In fact, I didn't. I walked the dogs some more and read some trashy novels. I got a break. Sadly, this didn't make anything magically get done before I got back to something approaching the real world here in St Albans.

My mum asked me to do some of the Christmas cooking. I think she thought she was asking me a favour. I love doing this kind of thing, and I had the most marvellous excuse for it. She has some ancient Christmas recipe books, and getting them out is a talisman all by itself. This one has notes in it dated 1984, the year I was born. She was making things from it with a month-old baby in a cradle somewhere. I love the eternity of Christmas. It's reassuring in its regularity and reliability. The traditions are a comforting thing to have nestled in the winter, and it's an excuse for fantastic music which never hurts.  I never do this cooking, my mum does.  Sometimes I've made mincemeat when I know I won't be home for long, but never the things that are so much for the day itself.

Mincemeat is actually a very simple thing. Delia has a peculiar recipe that involves cooking it, which from all reports I've heard doesn't work at all. This one, above, works perfectly. I've actually got a jar of the batch I made last year still left - it'll almost certainly be none the worse for an extra twelve months' maturation, and I'll make a batch of mince pies sometime after Advent actually starts. For the record, mid-November is NOT the time for mince pies.  It's such an ancient thing, dating from the fifteenth century.  It's doesn't involve meat in the same way that it did then, unless you don't use vegetarian suet and the recipe has changed in other ways too, but it's still identifiable.  It's good to feel rooted to something.

I made a Delia Christmas Cake, skipping out glacé pineapple because I don't like it.  That's one of the reasons I love this cooking...  I made Christmas puddings, and hovered around them for the six hours they steamed for.  My hands were sticky with chopping cherries and candied peel.  The kitchen smelled of Calvados.  I even remembered to make a wish while I stirred the pudding mixture.

And so the wheel turns and we carry on...

Even if I wish it would do that more slowly, sometimes. 

*Even if he IS out of focus. We were in a cave - it was raining. It didn't hinder the small dog's enjoyment of sand.

My tomatoes torment me -or- Gardening At Height

I can see them there, outside the bedroom window, ALL THE TIME. I can see the fruit on plants. Green. Not going red, despite my checking on them hourly when I'm home. Dammit. And I don't actually see any more growing, though everytime I go out there to take off the side shoots and feed them, there ARE millions more buried under the leaves. And tomato side shoots can grow 6 inches in a week. WHY not the tomatoes that I can see from the window? It's torture.

I'm growing four sorts. The ones in the first picture are 'Gardener's Delight', available nearly everywhere. When I bought mine they came with a free packet of Marigold seeds. These are those 'companion planting' things that people talk about - something about the tomato pests being kept away by the marigolds, or something about the proximity of the Marigolds encouraging growth in the tomatoes. I have no objection to flowers and the possibility that either of the above is true, so I put them in too. I haven't actually grown tomatoes all the way through by myself before - usually I've had to move house in the middle and leave my half-grown plants with someone - so I don't know if it's made a significant difference to pests or not. I also haven't grown them on a roof away from other plants that might pass the pests over before, so I can't really tell. I've only got one plant of this sort - I gave quite a lot away (can YOU find a way of growing on 18 tomato seedlings), but only one seedling seemed strong enough to warrant planting out. It's a nice plant with the biggest tomatoes on it at present. I reserve judgement on whether I grow it again when I see how it tastes and what the final yield is...

Then there are are the San Marzano and the Striped Tomato. I didn't take pictures of those in my two minutes on the roof this morning in the rain, but they're weird and wonderful shapes already. (It's been gorgeous, for ages. I pick the day to take photos that the sky appears to be trying to wash out the ground...) Another time.



I'm not actually sure of the seeds for the little cherry tomatoes I'm growing - I suspect they might be these ones or something similar. I planted them on a course I did at the Eden Project in March, along with some basil (growing nicely thank you) and some liquorice - one single seedling of which is creeping larger and looking forlorn on a windowsill. It's the cherries that are the biggest plants with the most fruit on them, to the extent that I'm not even worried I broke off a truss by accident last time I was pruning. There are masses*.



Also on the roof are a selection of chilli plants, some of which are getting on for three years old and still producing tiny, firey chillies, some peppers that are still seedlings, really (they're the ones in the champagne box!), some of the basil and the tomatillo plants. And my pride and joy - the one solitary little aubergine plant that's made it through.**

I like the roof. It's an effective place to garden. We water by throwing the hose up there and then climbing out of the window. It gets lots of sun, and it's reasonably sheltered. Except from one direction.



I also share my house with a triffid. This I didn't plant but definitely intend to harvest. I hack it down on a weekly basis but it's trying to take over the world. LOOK at the fruit. Hope it ripens. It's been planted with some thought, the roots outside and the fruiting branches in - vines like cold roots and warm branches.



It means our passage doesn't get too hot most of the time, and the rodent residents of that room don't roast. They're quite keen on vine leaves, which is a good thing because otherwise it would try and eat their cage.



*Provided the ENORMOUS thunderstorm we've been having all morning hasn't knocked them all over. Arg...
**Storm getting worse. Please thunder, don't kill my aubergine. It hasn't had a chance yet!

Good things about today:

• Hovering in bed, slightly hungover having spent the preceding night with a bottle of cider and engaged in tipsy texting, enjoying the fact that I was still in bed and aware that, while I had masses to do when I got up, just then I could do nothing.
• EVERYONE being pleased to see me when I went to tend the menagerie in Royston. Ebony was delighted with food and company and followed me about and purred. The ferrets were sleepy, but came out for a cuddle and watched me to and fro from the house. The rats climbed all over me and the garage, coming straight out of the cage when I opened the doors. Even the fish were attentive, not that I gave them anything. I don't want to interrupt any fish feeding schedules (the fish are Science more than Cuddles). BUGGER. Just realised I forgot to check on the gerbils. Have texted Christian to find out if I need to go back to them... Too many animals in one house. I'm hoping they're ok, I have Christmas 2 to have!
  
• An hour spent wandering around the Chinese supermarket and Al Amin's on Mill Road, looking for bits and pieces for the brothers' Christmas presents while listening to Handel's Messiah very loudly on the ipod in order to learn the bit I was singing this afternoon. Those places are Aladdin's caves, and the peculiar juxtaposition with one of the most iconic pieces of Baroque English choral music in existence made me happy.
  
• Turning up at Michaelhouse to sing a service one-to-a-part, with me singing soprano - and actually pulling it off in a way I was pleased with. We did the aforementioned bit of the Messiah ('And the glory of the Lord', for those interested in such things), 'O Magnum Mysterium' by Victoria and the final chorale ('Gloria sei dir gesungen') from Bach's Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme. Nothing particularly hard, though the Victoria's a bit awkward for this kind of thing - polyphonic and C16th and requiring a little bit of thought. I was really pleased with myself though - only cock up (that I count...) in the choral stuff was a bit I knew I'd fail at in the 'Alleluias' in the Victoria, which was rhythmically odd and I plain hadn't had time to get under my belt. I did accidentally start singing alto in the choir-only verse of 'O Little Town', which was embarrassing, though. I did it out of habit - almost ANY time I've sung that carol I've been singing alto in that verse, even at school because I sang that part when we did it choir only. Bah. That was silly. Fun descants and playing about though. AND Sam intimated that it might have been a money gig. Being paid for something that you'd have jumped at the chance to do anyway is the icing on the cake. It won't be much, but singing for money gives my very unstable singing self-esteem a huge boost.
• Cycling home with the most magnificent sunset behind me all the way. I had to stop just to admire it at one point, in order to avoid getting run over as I peered over my shoulder. The sky was striped blue and pink from the towers in town to straight up above my head, and even further. Flourescent. It was amazing. The one day I didn't have my camera in my bag (I always have my camera in my bag). And it was barely visible by the time I got back to my western edge of Cambridge. It's a sort of sunset I've never seen anywhere except this little bit of the country. Something to do with the flatness and the coldness and the easterliness. Sublime, in the true sense of the word.
• Coming back to the most amazing smell of goose and roast dinner across the whole street. Apparently, the answer to 'how does one cook roast geese for 15 in one oven' is not to, but to use next door's oven too. Martin's doing the thing properly, it's brilliant. Very impressive indeed - and I'm STARVING now, because I haven't actually eaten any of this yet. I won't know anyone tonight except my housemates, but having sat and chatted to early arrival Jen while peeling sprouts, I'm actually feeling positive about a party. Usually, I'm excited until the actual day, and then I hate the idea, hate the getting dressed and have to march myself out of the house telling myself I'll enjoy it in the end, and how can I not go by this point?

How good a day is that?! I mean, really. Busy as, and I didn't finish everything on the list of things to do, but I got most of the way there. But sometimes it's worth it in order to have a day like this one. And tomorrow looks pretty exciting, too. If I wake up in time, I have the option of singing up to twice tomorrow morning, then a break for lunch, in which I'm hoping to cook Graham-the-GSM-tenor a cake because it's his birthday, then a rehearsal, then a spend-it-in-a-coffee-shop-type break before the climax of all the carol services at 6:30. (Come, if you haven't got anything else to do - it really will be worth it. Be early though - the church will be packed!).

Deep South

I'm in Cornwall, in the middle of nowhere again. The weather's not that pleasant, but it's nice to be here. LOVELY to have my pets around too...the kitten has grown even more - proper sausage cat now. Cleo his mother appears to be becoming more relaxed all the time, though she's still hissing and spitting at the dogs. Rocky is friendly and beautiful as always, though he's beginning to show signs that he's not the baby dog any more - big shame, he was a fantastic puppy. The new Labrador (Cassie) is beautiful and such a sweet little creature. She's quite shy, but full of love once she gets over that. Full of beans, too. Kiri always was, but I'd forgotten what it was like to have what amounts to a puppy around. There's still the possibility she might have puppies - she escaped with the Jack Russell from up the road on several occasions while in season. I think we're all hoping she might be pregnant...would be SO much fun. Won't know for a few weeks yet.

The blackberries are all ripening, but if the weather continues this wet they'll rot on the branches. I took the dogs walking on Polly Joke and the dunes behind it earlier, and dawdled along eating them. Cassie loves them, too - she was picking them herself! Apparently she's already eaten all of the ones in the garden. I'd like to get out and pick some, but they aren't quite ready down here and I suspect they'll just rot on the branches in Cambridge even if I COULD find time to go out for them in the next couple of weeks.

I've been prepping for my big barbecue tomorrow all day today. I've made The Best Brownies Ever (something arrived at with much taste testing and long suffering work colleagues...), two heat levels of a new caramelised onion tomato relish I'm experimenting with, the rosemary cracker bread from the Smitten Kitchen blog (I have a growing obsession with food blogs...) AND I made mushroom risotto for tea. I'm going to post the risotto recipe, because it the only one that's mostly mine that I've had a chance to taste yet! I love risotto. Simple to make. Comforting to eat. Endlessly variable. Contains rice. I like rice. My recipe has a few nods towards authenticity, but I wouldn't want to serve it to an Italian. They will know better. It's just a nice thing to eat on a weekday evening.

For 3

250g Arborio/Carnaroli risotto rice
Half a cup of dried mushrooms (porcini would be great)
1 glass of white wine
One large red onion, finely diced.
2 sticks celery, finely diced
Butter and olive oil, for frying.
500g dark gilled mushrooms - the better the mushrooms, the better the dish - chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Good vegetable stock - homemade, or a good brand. You can use hot water if required, it would be better than cheap stock, which mostly seems to taste of salt in my experience. If you're less finicky about where your meat comes from than I am, good chicken stock would also work. Make sure it's hot - keep it in a pan on the side, or only mix what you need for each addition with water from the kettle.
Black pepper - you shouldn't need salt because of the cheese
A good handful of grated parmesan. About 2 cubic inches of a block, at a rough guess.

Soak the dried mushrooms in enough boiling water to cover before you start all of your chopping. Gently fry the onion and celery in olive oil until soft but not coloured - this will take a full 10 minutes, so you can chop the mushrooms while it cooks. When the veg is soft, add the a dessertspoonful of butter and allow it to melt, then add the rice and stir to coat. Fry for a few minutes until all the grains are well coated and the pan has heated up again. Add the wine and stir until the rice has sucked it up. Remove the dried mushrooms from the water and squeeze them out. Add the mushroom water to the pan and stir again until the rice has taken it up. Start adding the stock around a ladleful at a time, stirring between additions and only adding the next ladleful when the previous one has been taken up. The stirring massages the starch out of the rice, giving you a creamy sauce. Meanwhile, fry the mushrooms in another dessertspoonful of butter and a slug of oil (oil for heat; butter for flavour!). Allow their juices to run out and then evaporate off, concentrating the flavour. When the dark liquid in the frying pan has more or less gone, sprinkle in the garlic, stir, and turn the heat off. Keep adding stock to the rice until it's around 3 times the volume it was when you started - taste a grain of rice. It should be al dente, with a tiny bit of crunch to the middle. If it's too hard, add more stock and keep on cooking... When you reckon it's done, add about two thirds of the grated parmesan and stir. The sauce that looked a bit watery will magically become silky and slightly gelatinous. Add some good grinds of black pepper. Chop up the now reconstituted dried mushrooms from earlier and stir them in. Stir through the fresh garlic mushrooms and warm through. Serve on warm plates, with more parmesan and black pepper to throw over, the rest of the bottle of wine and a green salad on the side. Ace.

Antivegetarianism.

I think I just managed not to get a job through being semi-vegetarian. Great. Ah well. Just feeling slightly under-valued at work and looking for ways to make them think they have to work harder to keep me. We shall see.

For those that should know these things, I'm single for the first time in years and thoroughly enjoying it. It's much less hard work than being in a relationship. I'm thinking about getting a cat and using men as playthings when required. But I'm ALWAYS thinking about getting a cat. It'll be a Siamese, with a silly name. But I need to (a) find somewhere to live/work that I don't intend to move from/leave in the foreseeable future, (b) a cat-friendly landlord, (c) cat-friendly housemates and (d) money.

Bah. Right. Time to go to work.

So it's been a while...

I've been busy...sorry. Not sure doing what exactly. Stuff. Turning the garden into a garden. Looking after the fish and the rats. Going to Cornwall. Seeing the last of my beautiful beautiful Kiri dog, who died suddenly last week, aged only 9. That kind of thing.

Job's going quite well, actually. Been in Southend today for a meeting, which was really good fun. I'm just debating whether or not working in an industry I'm quite interested in with people who are lovely makes up for the fact that it's really not very well paid. The arts are great and everything, but the things I enjoy about this job are nothing to do with the arts - they're the data analysis and the solving problems for people. So I don't know. I'm certainly going to stay here for a year or two, because less than that would be silly, but I'm really not convinced I'll be staying. Who knows.

I'm off to Ireland in a couple of weeks with Elaine and Carl and Christian and some other friends of mine and Carl's...looking forward to it. Might head down to Cornwall for the Bank Holiday at the end of May, but that just depends.

I'm also rediscovering how much I adore crime dramas. Especially the old ones where the slightly crooked but good hearted copper beats crime to the annoyance of authority. So excuse me, I have Frost to watch.

Cornwall is far.

Llamas are awesome, kitten vicious but gorgeous, cat vicious and nervous but coming round, little dog wonderful, big dog poorly, family all alive, accidents on the A303 irritating. Going to bed in a sulk. Possibly with sitcoms. Maybe I'll update sometime soon. Probably good for me.

Cats.

This is probably Graham's fault. The one of Cleo's less good, but I quite like the shapes. Too dark and too far away.

Never rains but

I'm fed up now. I'm ill, and on killer antibiotics that make me feel sick. In fact, I just managed to put them through the washing machine, but they appear to have survived. I've had a mare of a week anyway, with moving house and trying to organise Christmas and see everyone and everything - half of Christian's present got lost in the post, so I had to chase up the people I ordered it from and get a refund, and I had to chase up O2 who appeared to have over-charged me, for them to tell me that in fact they hadn't and they were reclaiming money I owe them because of some mistake they made. I've just been out to replace the rest of Christian's present, and discovered I've lost my wallet. I know I had it yesterday, but it could be ANYWHERE. I've just rung work and got them to look for it in the cupboard where I put my bag - it's not there. I'm really, REALLY hoping it's in St Albans somewhere or I'm screwed - Fish is going to look for me later. We like Fish. I've got money to tide me over, thanks to being paid in cash which wasn't in it, but there are some things in that wallet that will be bloody difficult, and bloody expensive, to replace. Fuck fuck fuck. :-( So I'm fed up now. And the arguing's already started at home and I've been here 17 hours.

Kitten's grown, but has essentially grown bigger claws.

Not Briar, Ivy, Apple or Berry.

See here.

Been a while.

Things have happened. I just haven't updated, for several reasons, none of which I'm going into. I'm sad about several of them, but they had to happen.

I have rats now. The black baby (with ordinary ears, not dumbo ones) in the last post is actually one of them - now called Briar and considerably larger. I also have Ivy, who's a bit older and also black, Berry, who's agouti (ordinary wild rat colour - imagine the colour of wild rabbits), and Apple, who's chocolate agouti (that's the same, pretty much, but a bit lighter - the technical definition is apparently that she has brown rather than black hairs in her coat).

Ivy's definitely the most sedate, quite happy just to sit in the hood of the hoodie and watch the world go by. Having said that, I just had to extract her from the bowels of my printer, from whence I didn't manage to prevent her entry. She was very good, and didn't chew anything. Good rat. Berry is slightly more irritating to hold, in that she wants to be INSIDE your clothes...she climbs up my arm to my neck and then struggles down it. This can involve a lot of sharp claws. Once inside, she'll crawl about for as long as you can stand. This is quite a while if she ends up between clothing layers, but if she's against the skin involves sharp feet and INCREDIBLY tickly whiskers. Silly rat. Apple's berserk. Won't sit still at all. Holding her requires the most attention of all of them, since she's desperately keen to be everywhere at once. Briar's a bit of everybody. She tends to be the most scaredyrat - everything makes her jump and run and hide in the tube, which is about the one place I can't catch her from, as she's well aware. I haven't managed to teach them their names yet. I have only had them a week though. I'm not sure quite how to go about it is part of the problem. Dogs have an eagerness to please, which makes them very easy to train - you're just teaching them that you'll reward their attention, to start with. I don't think rats really pay you attention like a dog does. A reward system hasn't yet been set up. I need to teach them the word 'nuts' I think. They LOVE nuts. Hmm.

Other news, I got a Real Job (tm). I'm moving back to Cambridge, though. Stumo pointed out I made 6 months in the Real World before chickening out and moving back to the Bubble. *sigh*. To be honest, if this job had been in London, I'd have still taken it. It's essentially data analysis, as far as I can tell - the job title's 'research and admin assistant'...which doesn't mean anything. It's for a company called Baker Richards, who do arts marketing consultancy. Means I should get a look in at pricing and business strategy in the arts - which ought to bode well for theatre management type jobs, if not producing ones. It also bodes well for marketing in a lot of other businesses, which should mean I have a reasonable chance of career progression of some sort in some direction. Theatre is a bit more one dimensional than that. Essentially, I'm putting off decisions, while doing something that combines maths, presentations and reports with the arts. All boxes I'll quite happily tick in an ideal job.

Fyi, I'm moving back into the Victoria Road flat. Will's living in it these days, and my old room's vacant. The only problem's the rats. Need to pester the landlord, and move.

Rat-tat-tat-tat...

Went to the hopera on Friday, with Christian, Joy, Michael Nabarro and Anna, whom I didn't know beforehand - very exciting! Was Carmen at the Coliseum, which is a good sort of thing to start with if, like me, you're not that familiar with the genre. It was in English, which I hadn't been expecting, but which was actually fine apart from the occasional cringe-worthy pieces of translation. I did slightly object to having it in English AND with subtitles, though - entirely unnecessary, given that the diction was superb. I found them rather distracting, truth be told, though that was probably partly to do with the fact that they were set at the top of the pros, and we because we were in the cheap seats were looking down, with them effectively between us and the show.

The performance itself was sung very well, and there were some lovely design touches, like the bar scene that Fish blogged about, however there were a lot of things that didn't quite hang together. There were random touches like a couple of girls in flamenco dresses stuck in that bar for no apparent reason. It felt like they'd suddenly remembered it was supposed to be in Spain and wanted to remind us - it felt awkward and director-ish and silly. The other thing that made it a bit frustrating to watch was the sheer lack of energy in the physical performances - there wasn't any electricity between the lead performers. I wanted passion and power and to feel the love and the tragedy and I just didn't. It's possible that that's perennial failure of the genre, but if so it bothers me, especially as this company represents the cream of the talent in this country. I don't know. Maybe we were just too far away - right in the very back row at the top of the theatre. We could hear beautifully, and had full stage view, but it was just a bit far away.

I had Hugh and Lara and Carl round on Sunday to have food and watch a film and stuff. Was fantastic to see everyone, it really was. I felt afterwards that it might actually begin to turn this place into home, if I can have my friends around and make it feel like a location in our lives, then I'll feel less cut off from everyone. I don't know. If I get the job I went for an interview for today (internship at the Gate in Nottinghill - nice, but unpaid...), I won't be moving to Cambridge. I hope I get it, because it's the answer to my job worries, even if I'm going to be very poor by the end of it, but I really would like to be able to go back to my friends in Cambridge if I can.

I went to see some rats today. They're awesome - behave like mini dogs, loving to explore and playing with their humans and everything. I'd love to have some. Parents aren't keen though at the moment. I'm trying to persuade them. My mum's gone so far as to suggest I get a CAT, which she was really against before. Apparently she's said that I could get a cat and lend it to them if I have to live somewhere I cannot have a cat. This would be awesome, though it would make life difficult in other ways. I do live in a flat, for a start. It's odd, because getting a cat would mean I'd have to have a litter tray, which would be smelly to a certain extent, which is currently the worry about rats, as far as I can tell. The thing about rats, pragmatically, is that they only live a couple of years and therefore the commitment is that much less than a cat. I'm not sure what to do now. I'm going to talk to my mum and see what it really is she doesn't like about them. I really don't want gerbils or anything - the rats have personalities and everything in the way that other small animals just haven't. Bah. Decisions. Anyway. It appears that today has been a good day. :-).

Colin

Colin 1
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

This is (a bad photo of) Colin. He's Azrael, Boris and the snails' newest friend. I wanted to call him Simon, because he has amazing whiskers and is equally difficult to find, but Colin fitted better with my naming scheme (guess my naming scheme). He's decided the back of the filter's a good home, and has gone black because that's a good colour to be on the filter. He can CHANGE COLOUR though. Yay. He's one of these, specifically Ancistrus spinosus or a bristle or bush nosed ancistrus. Mostly, he's awesome. There's a picture of an albino version on wikipedia.

My birthday was lovely, though a little stressful what with one thing and another, and being ill. Thanks for all the good wishes though! I had curry on Brick Lane, and went to the theatre. Was nice.

I had second birthday in Cambridge on Sunday night - sang in Robinson and then went for dinner in Pizza Express. Robinson Choir is now HUGE - it's expanded way beyond anyone's wildest dreams of last year. Granted it's got a lot of non-Binsonites in it, but it's THIRTY odd strong, and just sounding great. We went expecting to be singing stuff in two parts that bored us stupid, but we sang Rachmaninov (Bogoroditsye Dyevo, or Hail Mary to you and me), and Locus Iste (by Bruckner). AND all the graduation hymns. It was fantastic. Came out on a complete high, augmented by the new organ scholar saying nice things after the service. He's someone drafted in from Sidney because we didn't have one. He's a composition student, and is clearly very musical and has a great rapport with the choir, but his conducting's a bit crap. That, though, he can learn. All in all, things look great for them this year, and I definitely intend to be singing up there plenty.

I came home to a heap of job rejections. Pleasant. Meh. Ah well. Hanna and I had a good bitch about job stuff at the weekend. Today I went into Cafe Roma and handed them a CV. Advantages to working there: I can fall out of bed and into work. Disadvantages: Chance of serving a former teacher = pretty damn high. Bah. I really had better get that job. I'm likely to feel myself utterly and completely without hope or point if I don't. Will mean that I don't have to feel so desperate for a job though.

Mists and mellow fruitfulness?

Well, maybe fruitful in the very tentative sense that I remembered today that I had £250 of cheques to pay in, and discovered that I had £100 in another account I'd forgotten about. Necessary, that. It's misty in that there is mist. And if you want to metaphorical about it, in the sense that I still have NO CLUE what I'm doing and anything. Not sure about the mellow, really. Of the £250, only about £5 is new money, which I subsequently spent on the new Radiohead album, deciding that a fiver was a sensible price to pay for a recording that they weren't paying the record company for, weren't really publicising, and weren't pressing CDs for. Sal still owes me petrol money from last weekend, but when that's in, I'm going to be back to sinking into the overdraught. Meh. I know I should get some temping, but I know if I do that I'm really not very likely to apply for real jobs, and anyway I frankly don't want to do it. I've done my fair share of shoddy little jobs, and I'm bored of them. I want to get paid to do something I'm actually interested in now. I've done enough working for the money. I appreciate that I'm young and naive and that that's never, in reality, going to happen, but I want to TRY at least. Even if the job's not difficult, I want to be involved in something that I can be vaguely entertained by. I do not want to be responsible for paying other people's bills, serving customers food I don't like and they complain about, or filing exam papers, to name but a few.

I appreciate it's not a position I can keep up for long, but probably another month won't destroy me utterly. Meh. Probably not that long, really. In two weeks time, I will go back to the agencies and get some proper work. No actually genuinely I will. I suppose it might not be agencies - shop work, part-time/shift would do me. In some ways that'd be better, except I'd probably find myself working Saturdays. It also works if I get the job I had the interview for yesterday, actually - that's part-time, so I could keep the two jobs going together in a way that would make one full-time job. Perfect. Yesterday did actually go quite well - I came out on a high, and then recalled I'd not mentioned ANYTHING about PGP, which is one of the biggest parts of my work experience. Dumb. Meh. Anyway. I got on quite well with the two women interviewing me, and I didn't feel it went too badly. It was first round interview, anyway, so if I get a second round one I can make up for that. And if I don't, well, I know what to think about next time around and I'll be better prepared. It's a really very pretty job. I'd really like to do it. It's SUCH a shame it's part-time, but I think that's mostly to do with money on their end. I did mention that the part-time bothered me, but they also said there was potential for it to expand to a full-time job of for me to be able to get some more part-time stuff through their partners. Yay. I should hear how they thought it went sometime today if I'm lucky.

I went to Oxford on Wednesday to see Eleanor. She's in a pretty bad way because her Dad, who is almost exactly one year younger than my Dad, had a stroke 10 days ago. It's a funny type of stroke, in that it was a bleed into the space between two of the membranes between the brain and the skull, rather than a more conventional clot inside the brain tissue itself. I think she almost knows too much for her own good at the moment, as a medical student. She knows what all the consequences are and the likelihoods and so on. I can't work out whether it's helpful to her to be that well prepared or more painful than not knowing. Anyway, she's understandably jumpy, nervous, and unable to concentrate. They've let her postpone the latest set of exams, which is definitely a good thing, but she's flitting between Oxford, the Royal Free Hospital in London, and her home in Knebworth. We went walking somewhere west of Oxford on Wednesday because she needed to get out of town and out of the familiar for a bit. I'm trying to persuade her that she should come and stay with me for a while, too. There's a vague (very vague) possibility that I'll head to Cornwall for a weekend at some stage in the next while and if I do I'll take her with me if I can, for both our sanities. But it was nice out. There was mist and greyness and all sorts, and completely no wind, so I could take pictures like the ones in this post (although not like them, because I've been playing with these...). Lots of cows and labradors and that kind of thing. Then we headed back to her house in the evening for dinner, and then I came back down to St Albans so I could be here in time to faff about what I was going to wear to this interview all of yesterday.

I need to see more London theatre, like shows at some of the places I've been applying. Should really do that. I'm going to see something on my birthday now (more because it's the only day possible than specifically because it's my birthday), and I really ought to organise that Royal Court trip to see The Arsonists that I mentioned on the DVD list. I'm feeling poor and lazy, so haven't done it. Bah. I am in the process of organising a viewing of the Return to the Forbidden Planet DVD that I haven't seen yet. Sadly, this doesn't really count. Bah.

My weekend is filling up - I'm meeting Pete McDonald at the Tate Modern on Saturday afternoon, then watching a film and eating with Melissa on Saturday night at hers and Kate's new flat, and going out with Mel, Kate and Graham on Sunday to do something. Don't think we've worked out what yet. Back here Sunday night to feed the cat. I like having a cat, she's lovely. And pleased to see me when I come in and EVERYTHING. The only downside is cleaning out the litter tray, but I suppose nothing's perfect.

I need a new top post.

minack 2
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

Besides, I need to talk about Minack. I don't think I ever explained what I was going to be doing with myself this week - maybe I did, but it must have been a while ago. The Minack, as you can see from the picture, is an outdoor theatre perched on the cliffs on the South Cornish coast, between Penzance and Land's End. It's a funny venue in many ways in that the scenery is so spectacular that whatever you put on the stage is more or less dwarfed by it. Design is difficult because the setting intrudes itself onto your piece - in an ordinary theatre, you have a black box which is effectively a blank canvas for whatever you choose to do with it. Here, that's just not the case. They get a lot of Shakespeare, because it's the sort of space that can lend itself very well to that sort of show. G&S, like we were doing, fits equally well. I'm not sure that anything postmodern would have much in the way of success - it would need one hell of a designer to make it work.

This time around, for a change, I was being a sound minion. Was good fun, actually, though it rapidly became clear that I'd picked the most labour intensive of positions for this show. Obviously, because it's outside, we have to bring in our equipment every day. It's also open to tourists in the daytime, so we can't leave things like microphones out because they'll get nicked. This meant that we had about 45 minutes moderate to heavy lifting every day, before we moved onto the lighter but more time consuming task of changing all the radio mic batteries and testing transmitters, receivers and capsules. The latter was quite fun actually - as the single singing noise person (Tamsin and I vetoed the term 'noise boys'. Half of us were girls.) I got to sing into the mics from the desk, confusing tourists who heard me coming out of the band speaker and couldn't work out where I was, or standing on the stage belting. It's REALLY hard to pick something to sing when someone just says 'sing something'. Quite entertaining though. Salvador accused me of never singing anything that's not in a minor key. I realised that I don't really KNOW anything not in a minor key. To cap it all, the Minack opens the house TWO AND A HALF HOURS before the show starts, because a lot of people bring picnics and watch the sun on the sea before the show starts. This means that for a show that starts at 8, the house opens at 6:30. In order to get our prep done in time for a soundcheck, our call was 3pm. For the matinees (2.30pm), our call was 9am. This was a little painful, since on matinee days we got in at 9 and left at around 11, since we had to do a get out every day as well. Madness.

Having moaned a lot so far, it was actually awesome. My back won't recover from its unaccustomed heavy lifting for a while, but it was still awesome. I now have a reasonable idea of how sound works and how you achieve what you're trying to achieve. I'd like to do some more minioning, but I'm not sure when I'll next get the chance - unlikely in St Albans, anyway. If I don't use what I've learnt this week I'll forget it, which will be annoying.

The show itself was pretty good, even given it was G&S - really well sung from both principals and chorus. The violins (viledins) were a little ropey, but the rest of the orchestra was damn good, too. Full and appreciative houses is always a nice touch. No major disasters from anyone's point of view, I think. There were a few quibbles about direction before show week, but when aren't there. It was a first class cast and they pulled it off.

It was a great group of people in general, actually. It was nice to get to know a crowd of the techies I didn't really know before, and to catch up with the ones I've not seen for ages. This year saw a lot of entertaining breakdowns, like the one that involved the towing of Pete's car from Bodmin and the Breaking of the Tow Rope. The Mills van that had been towing Pete's car also suffered, on the switchback bend near the theatre. Nice. Dominic's car also went. I suppose you could even count the petrol/diesel debacle and the Clio's bustness that affected MY car situation, too. Christian managed to run his battery down by running his laptop off it for too long, and ended up stranded in a field until he got hold of some jump leads and a handy person to give him a boost. We laughed though...

Anyway. I drove back up on Sunday in convoy with Christian, so we could share the Tamsin and it could keep us awake. We'd checked into a youth hostel after the get out in the hope of getting enough sleep to cope, but it was still a bit touch and go. That drive has to be one of my less favourite driving experiences. Since I got back, I've mainly been sleeping - a very necessary activity. I have boiled three pans of gravel to fill the big aqarium I'm transferring Azrael and Boris to and bought a new filter for that. I've asked my brother if his boss could give me a job and sent them a CV. I've just sent the brother the CV to print off at work, since I haven't got space to set up my printer until he moves out, and anyway it's in the roof. This will mean I can take that around the agencies this afternoon. I've decided I need to buy that mac pretty damn soon because my external hard-drive has started playing silly buggers and I want to get stuff off it asap. I need a tame student for that, though. I will see if I can mail order it via Andy later in the week, I think.

Long list of stuff. I'll stop procrastinating about the spec letters to random people in random theatres of the 'give me a job please' type. Has anyone got a copy of yesterday's Guardian?

Busyness, sort of.

Well. Much chaos. Excuse the messy desk - it's tidier now, but Tolly was trying to help me type. Cleo had her op, which went fine, though she's less than impressed at having to wear a lampshade and take pills. Tolly's been the funny one though; he's been absolutely all over us, demanding attention and playing and all sorts. I think he's been quite lonely, especially to begin with when Cleo would only hiss at him any time he came near her. He's been chasing down newspaper and flies and all sorts of things, not to mention my leg and my fingers. The one I like best is below (though they're all much of a muchness), but there are more here, here, here and here. He's a silly kitten. Sorry about the messy room - I was busy tidying at the time, and Tolly was assisting, by deconstructing the newspaper.



We went to see the LLAMAS on Friday night! They're SO COOL. The two we're probably getting are called Pepper and Brandy - Pepper's dark brown, and Brandy's a mix of ginger and cream with a skewbald face. They're boys, and will be somewhere over 18 months old when we get them. That won't be til Autumn/Spring, because we need to fence the place properly and build them a shed and the like. YAY LLAMAS. We'll need to do a fair amount of handling of them, and train them to take a head collar properly so we can walk them in the woods. LLAMA WALKS. YAY!!!!

I've been staying at the Village Hall in Paul with the Pinafore cast for the last couple of nights. I went with them to the Meadery in Penzance on Friday night, post llamas. (People have been asking me about whether I was REALLY late because I was at a llama farm. I could say yes. How cool is THAT??) This was a very silly evening all round - films again here and here. This was not the half of the debauchery that went on. Very entertaining.

I spent Saturday making Becky Thomas a birthday cake, of which I'm actually quite proud - large and pink and filled with strawberries and butter-cream. Excessively sickly and very pink, but that was the specification. I sang with them in church in Paul this morning, too. Nothing MASSIVELY exciting - Stainer's I Saw The Lord - but it was really nice to be singing with a big group of big voices. I didn't stick out! Yay! And so many men, and I didn't have to sing tenor, though I did sing second alto, which is actually pretty similar, because there were more sops than altos. Nice. I'm heading back with them tomorrow to see Twelfth Night at the Minack, and then to deliver timps on Tuesday, and then to see the talent night and cook ANOTHER cake on Wednesday. Lots of drifting about Cornish roads. I'm beginning to think I should just stay there all this week, but it seems a bit harsh on my family and I do want to see my animals.

Erk. I'm SO tired, despite all I've done today was the service this morning and lying on a beach reading all afternoon...

True Cornish.

Hemmick sunglasses
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

True Cornish lazing, that is. I went walking with my dad on bank holiday Monday, with the dogs, while my mum went diving from Hemmick beach. This picture is taken from somewhere along the South Coast Path above Hemmick beach, through my sunglasses. The sun wasn't low enough to take it without, even at the fastest shutter speed. It's an odd effect - when I look through the glasses, the colour doesn't all leach out like this. If anything, the glasses intensify it. The sepia's quite pretty, but I could have done that with a filter on the camera itself, I think. Also note the awesome spider web we found. They put ponies out to graze the cliffs at quite a lot of places round the cliffs, but this was the first time I've actually seen them.

Cornwall's not a happy place to be on a sunny bank holiday though - everywhere was rammed. Hemmick is down a very steep hill and on a road where the wing mirrors of an average car touch on BOTH sides. When people park in all the passing places and you have to reverse straight up a very steep hill and the road is that narrow, it's an issue. People are dumb.

I went to see the Minack crowd yesterday. I pootled around watching them rehearse for a bit, and then took Salvador to Tescos. I ended up staying for dinner and catching up with people, and then in the pub playing silly card games. Hopefully this time I'll remember the rules of mafia - I really should, it's awesome. Had a great evening all round, even if I did feel a bit spare part-y. I'm going down again tomorrow, on commission from Becky Thomas to bring her ingredients for a birthday cake.

I finally got the eye test today I've been needing to get for ages. I'm entirely unsurprised to be given a prescription for glasses for driving - short-sightedness is usefully hereditary. Grr. Ah well. TV and driving only, as yet, so could be worse. My right eye still feels weird, I think from the glaucoma test where they puff air at you. Anyway. I'm stupendously poor at the moment, so had to talk nicely to my dad to get him to pay for them. Meh. I have to work harder at getting a job...I just can't bear to. I have sent a few emails to a few people about work experience/placement type things, but I've not really looked very hard and I haven't sent the begging letters I need to. I'll try and get a Stage when I'm in town tomorrow, though I'm not sure where to look. I do know that the other person who went for the Donmar job didn't get it either...which I'm not exactly pleased about because it was an equally perfect job for her as it was for me and I would have been pleased for her if a little jealous, but it did make me feel slightly less inadequate. Meh.

Took the cats to the vet today - Cleo has a lump on her stomach which the vet pronounced to be a massive umbilical hernia and which needs almost immediate operation. She's apparently extremely lucky that it's not caused her any problems as yet, especially considering she's been living wild. The kitten has a gender...definitely male, as I was fairly sure. The family seem to have accepted my naming of him as 'Tolly', short for Ptolemy, which goes nicely with Cleo. And Tolly is a perfect slightly silly name for a truly bananas cat. I'm sure he's getting bigger already, and we've only had him since Friday. He was completely unfazed by the vet - he was contentedly playing catch with my fingers through the bars of the box when his mother was being examined, and wanted desperately to explore when it was his turn. He did squeak very indignantly when she stuck a needle in him though, but who wouldn't?

I think Cleo will hate us again tomorrow when she has to go back to have her operation; hopefully it'll blow over soon enough. It's hard to reconstruct her history. She plainly understands and is comfortable around humans, because if you catch her in the right mood she'll play and sit on your lap and generally be very friendly. At the same time, you couldn't look after that cat as a pet and love her as she appears to have been loved without doing something about that great lump on her tummy that's been there since she was a kitten...can you? And surely people in this country and in this day and age don't just put a cared-for pet out to starve if they can't afford or don't want to be bothered with doing anything about it? I think when she finally calms down, she'll be a truly lovely animal, which makes it even harder to understand how anyone could do anything like that to her.

Anyway. I need to sleep. Meh.

Snuffles...

I'm in Cornwall now, having driven down from Cambridge yesterday. The drive was actually fine, in that the traffic wasn't too bad and neither was the weather, but I was pretty dead by the time I got here. This cold is turning out to be a pretty nasty one, though I suspect that anyone other than me who hasn't been running around so much or sitting in any damp caves in wet clothes would probably not find it so icky. Davina and her boyfriend Neill (Davina's an English student who sings in choirs and does theatre...we have connections) stayed last night before heading down to Minack today to see the Philip Pullman plays, which was nice. Davina played the piano for a couple of songs for me for a bit, which was awesome - I don't get the chance to have them accompanied that often. We then moved over to the CD player and sang along to Handel's Messiah...I like THIS sort of karaoke...stuff just has to be at least 70 years old, and then I'm in with a fighting chance.

The dogs have been all over me since I got back, which is always lovely...I miss them SO much when I'm not here. Rocky especially won't leave me alone - he nearly slept on me yesterday. Quite hard sleeping when you have what feels like half a ton of very solid spaniel on your feet. Kiri's a bit more sedate most of the time, but even she's really affectionate when you just come home. She's trying to make us believe she's getting on for an old lady, which she entirely isn't, she's all of 8 and a border collie. YAY dogs.

Today's excitement, though, was new cats! We went to the Cats Protection shelter and had a look at what they had, but nothing really fitted exactly what we wanted. They did, though, have on their waiting list a mother and her kitten. The mother had been a pregnant stray, and the rest of the kittens had already gone to homes, but the general idea was that these two would go together. Our last pair of cats was a mother and her kitten, and they cordially hated each other, so we're not sure these two will really get on in a year or two, when mum decides baby should have found its own patch. We've got room enough that it's unlikely to be a problem though. We don't know the sex of the kitten, so haven't named him yet, but mum's called Cleo. The smart money's on the baby being a boy though, so I want to call him Tolly, short for Ptolemy (yes, I'm an English student. Ptolemy Philadelphus was Cleopatra's son. He wasn't the famous one (there are getting on for 20 of them), and he was never a Pharaoh, though.). Not sure for a girl. Looking it up, Cleopatra's daughter by Anthony was Cleopatra Selene, so maybe Selene would be the answer. That will depend on what the family think.

What photos there are, are here, but they're not great as yet. The kitten's a nutter, chasing around and hunting people's fingers and mum's tail and generally making use of the many excessively sharp points at his disposal. He's (I can't say 'it's'...) adorable though. Cleo has spent most of the afternoon that she's been sat on the windowsill in the study staring outside, desperate to go out, or growling at the dogs when they knock on the door. She's purred tentatively when someone's caught her at the right moment, but she's not really keen yet. Hopefully she will get used to the idea that we're OK when we feed her enough, but at present it's pretty clear that she's been a stray long enough to HATE being cooped up inside. Sadly it has to be, at the moment. She's absolutely beautiful, though - my pictures don't do her justice at all. I'll have a go with the SLR at some stage and see if I can do better. She's a real dark tortoiseshell, the complete opposite, really, of Tiggy, though Tiggy did have a kitten with very similar markings. Kitten's pretty too, with a little white bib and belly, white socks at the back and little white bits on his front paws. YAY CATS.

The other news is that the man who owns the llama farm came down this evening to look at our space and tell us what he thought before we get llamas. Apparently, he's thrilled with the space (I was asleep through this...evil coldy illness), but we need to sort the fencing. I think the general idea is that we'll eventually have four, but we'll start off with two probably in about six or eight months' time. Which means my mum is going to set the island up for ducks sometime in the next few months, probably after she's been to the wildfowl show in November, which means early spring. Menagerie is growing...woohoo!

I uploaded the very few pictures I took in Edinburgh, beyond the statue in the previous post. I was pretty pleased, actually. The evening light in Scotland is lovely because it's so far north, and this particular evening it was so clear you could see the hills on the other side of the Firth of Forth. The skyline lends itself to this kind of picture, too, just in the middle like that. A lot of Edinburgh is big, Georgian, and square, but leaning towards the gothic - so there are lots of turrets and towers like you see here. The stone is also a particularly attractive honey-coloured limestone, with black slate roofing. They whole effect is great!

St Albans.

So. Over the last few days, I have mostly been unpacking. It's been a long term operation. After all, I had to build a bookcase in order to unpack in the first place. In fact, I didn't really build the bookcase, I persuaded the brother to do it. He seemed to enjoy it. I got to watch Heston Blumenthal making Black Forest gateau instead, except during the difficult bits. It's sort of nice to have all my books on a bookcase properly again - it's been a while. I'll bring the rest of them up from Cornwall at some stage; I'd like them to be all together. Besides, the ones that are still at Lanner Mill are mostly the crappy easy-to-read things (not Discworld; that has traveled with me) that I actually WANT now. I actually bought books yesterday, as well, which was bad of me, since I've got loads of stuff to read at present, but I went deliberately for stuff I thought would be good fun to read. As it turned out, I bought Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh) and I, Claudius (Robert Graves), which are proper classics and don't really count as trashy novels, and a historical crime book called Sovereign (C. J. Sansom), which is not and does. Ah well. The first of the three I know as a fantastic television series (Granada, 1981, starring Jeremy Irons, but with cameos from the likes of John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier) , so should be ok. The second is a great TV series too (BBC, 1976, starring Derek Jacobi), but I've not seen it. Maybe I should - Jacobi's great. Will see, anyway.

Had lunch with Katy yesterday. Nice to see her. I've hardly seen her at all over the last few years when we've both been away at uni, so it was good to catch up. Her parents split up in April, so she's been coping with that. She's changed - and I don't think it's to do with her parents. She's much more outgoing than she ever was before, or so she seemed, but then I think I'm probably far more reserved than I was. Hard to tell. That doesn't really interfere with how well we get on; it was just a change. Still feel unsettled about being back here and seeing all these people again - it's all such hard work. The flat feels strange. I know I'm not living with my parents or anything, but it almost feels like I am. I couldn't say why though. I suppose it'll be better when I've found something to do with myself. Must buy a copy of The Stage tomorrow.

I had to buy a new air pump for the fish tank yesterday, because the one I was using died completely. I inadvertently bought a huge one, designed for a vastly bigger tank than mine. Until I figured how to limit the flow, Boris and Azrael were a little non-plussed at the jacuzzi that appeared to a come into being in a corner of their tank. I was debating taking it back, but it's only a matter of time before I DO get a bigger tank - albeit still one where I don't need so enormous a pump - so I've decided to keep it for the time being. I was admiring the fish they had though. I think I'll buy a thing called a 'butterfly ghost koi' when I get the bigger tank. I can't find a picture at the moment, but they're mostly black with gold sheen and scale tips, with beautiful long feathery fins. That is, if I can get a guarantee they won't grow too big - the smallest ones I saw were about 3 inches, but they're koi, and can end up a good foot long. I was admiring the big koi as well - the largest they have there (Hertfordshire Fisheries) are about 18 inches long and sell for about £500. I was talking to the guy, who said they'd sold one in two years. It's such a shame - they're beautiful fish and they're trapped in a completely bare tank not big enough for them. It would be great if they could have a proper pond, but these days they're an insurance risk, beside the fact that you need a pretty much a country house to keep them in. Bah.

Off to Cam today, hopefully til Saturday morning, when I head to London to see Graham. Really looking forward to having a few days up there, even if I'm going to be camping on a series of floors.