Steel Kitten

A nice surprise

The first fermentation 18 months ago

Guess who forgot she had 17 litres of pear cider in the house made in September 2011? Don't ask me how I could so comprehensively wipe out the memories of making the stuff like that. I put it all in a cool dark place under the little table that sits by my stove and promptly forgot all about it. I went under there last night looking for a missing pasta maker and got a shock when I found rows of bottles looking at me.

The surprises didn't stop there.

While hunting for the pasta maker I also found three litres of blackcurrant wine in an advanced state of fermentation hidden underneath a long tablecloth in the conservatory. It appears the wine had continued to ferment after I bottled it (in plastic not glass thank goodness) and the gas produced had nowhere to go. That has a tendency to happen when you absent-mindedly put a normal cap on the bottle instead of an airlock. The two bottles had taken on a distinctly telly-tubby appearance.

Fermentation was further confirmed when I slowly released the cap on one to reduce the straining plastic (as you would do on a bottle of carbonated drink) only to have it shoot off with a massive bang because there was a geyser of wine foam behind it that was desperate to shoot two feet in the air. The bottle continued to shoot foam in a rolling tsunami fashion for a further 20 seconds all over the counter top, all over my skirt, down the front and then the inside of the kitchen cupboards underneath before puddling at my feet.

I now have 2.25 litres of blackberry wine. And a lot of trepidation about approaching the second turgid bottle.

 

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Pea, bacon and mint hot salad

 

Friday night's simple meal

Cook up some peas, new potatoes, shredded spinach and fry some diced bacon. Mix it in a pan with a raw beaten egg until the mixture is coated and cooked. Tip into a dish with a dash of mint sauce, freshly ground black pepper, a little cheese and mix it well.

Yum.

 

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Wearing the chains

It won’t be any surprise to regular readers to know I’ve felt at a crossroads in my life over the last few years. Call it a mid-life career crisis if you will, but something has definitely been off. I’ve started to question exactly what all this life business is about really. What am I striving for? For what purpose?

Apparently this is a very common, especially with women who are 'achievers' (to say I'm a junkie for accomplishing things would be an understatement!). For the first part of your life you strive for the sake of striving because you're trying to prove yourself, but suddenly you realise that you want to strive to make a difference for something outside of yourself – and unfortunately you realise you don’t so you become disillusioned. And then change job.

When I see news stories about how there are too few woman in senior positions and the same old trite reasons are spewed forth such as leaving to take care of family and children now women are marrying and having kids later I think blah, blah, blah, what a crock. Men generally tend to enjoy the sense of accomplishment, power, respect and of course money that comes with climbing the career ladder, embracing it and going with it, whereas I think women do start off this way and somewhere along the way stop and think “what am I doing this for? Who benefits? I want to make a difference and I'm not. In fact I haven’t been for a long time. This isn't who I am.” You suddenly realise that you are disappointed with your job - hell your whole career - that you don’t contribute in any meaningful way. Then you leave and try and find something that will help you contribute. But that job doesn’t cut it either, so you leave and try and find something else. Ad infinitum.

Marcia Reynolds wrote about this in her book Wander Women. We are destined to wander not knowing what we want but every time we start afresh with new hopes we soon know whatever we want isn’t where we’ve just jumped to, and we feel empty because of it. There's an ancient story, a blueprint, that we have in our heads and we don't live up to it.

I am more than the story I and everyone else thinks I’m supposed to be. The qualifications I have achieved so far has positioned me for a ladder I don’t want to climb. I don’t even think my ladder is up against the right tree to be quite frank. And it shows. Right now I’m so happy with my home life, but it is entirely at odds with my work life. I want more of what I have at home because of the feelings it generates and the values it aligns with, and less of what I currently do at work. And I want a way of making money that reflects the former. Either I need to update my story so it aligns with my working life, or I need to let both go and get a different story and working life.

I can remember being 14 and trying to choose my options for GCSE. I remember being interested in social work and child protection, but sadly choosing normal ‘standard’ subjects as I met too much resistance trying to choose a different path. Knowing what I know now I don’t think I’d be happy as a social worker, but I think back then I wanted to feel I was directly involved in changing a life. I should have stuck to my guns. At the time I wanted to work with children, probably because that was what most of the GCSE subjects in this area revolved around, but over the years that’s expanded beyond children to encompass adults, animals and the environment at different times.

I’ve never wanted my own children, and I knew that at 15, but now I’m questioning more deeply why that would be. Did I think I was destined for something else, to use the time not being used for taking care of a family to make a difference in other ways? I’m not saying parents can’t make a difference, they can, but when you have kids your free time is torn between many different tasks caring for them so the time available for doing anything beyond that is limited. Your family unit has to come first before you can care for other things outside the home in a life-changing way. You make a massive life-changing difference to them and the impact of that could last the rest of their life.

So here I sit, trying not to be a Wander Woman because it’s unfair on my employers while the company is in flux, but not knowing what else to do instead because I'm in flux. Two fluxes don't stop the craziness. My job leaves me too far removed from the practical nature of the help I sense I want to offer. Kind of like me being indirectly involved in something that is indirectly involved in directly helping people. I’m two or more levels beyond where I should be. I want to be on the ground doing things not sitting behind a bloody desk all day, but this desk is the culmination of every decision I've made since I was 14 and I wear it like Jacob Marley wears his ghostly chains.

Still don’t know exactly what I want to do though.

[sigh]

It took a year for me to work out this post. I think it’s going to take a while before a pathway presents itself ;-)

On the spur of the moment...

So you have a whole lazy Sunday laid out in from of you. No computer, no TV, no radio, no technology of any kind. Just peace and quiet and a new book to start.

So of course you get out of bed and start wallpapering the landing. Of course. Obviously.

Don't ask me why but decorating fever hit me yesterday morning. After routing through all the decorating cupboard I found I had everything I needed to start wallpapering the landing, stairs and hall. I'd already stashed the wallpaper a few years ago when we found the one we wanted discounted at B&Q. I say discounted, but it was more like being given away at £1 for three rolls! I think we bagged 24 rolls in the end. As our walls are bad, we've accepted there's no way we can have normal thin wallpapers - we have to have textured or vinyls. So our walls tend to be pretty plain, but that's no bad thing. Sometimes you an walk into a wallpapered room full of massive designs and colours, and take an involuntary step back as your senses are overwhelmed.

Anyway, I stopped after I turned an internal corner at the top of the stairs, and next weekend I continue all the way to the base of the stairs up to the front door. Before then I have some paintwork to clean and refresh, but as that is above head height it has remained untouched for years and not been knocked or kicked so it is a simple job with no stripping required.

 

By the way, if you want to see how off-square our house is, check out that doorframe! There's a diference of about an inch between the top and the bottom, which I realised when I was wallpapering and had to line up the doorframe drop with a plumb line.

 

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Technology fasting and veg planting

 

Another vicious feline assault while reading. He really doesn't like it when I'm being quiet.

Well, true to my word I downed all my technological tools last Sunday to give my eyes and brain a rest. I had a nice breakfast, I top coated the door frames, did a ton of washing, and in between read books. Actually I downed tools at around 7pm Saturday evening and went to bed with a book all evening, so really that was my start to the technology fast. I chose to read the Hunger Games trilogy, which was very good. Great story, absorbing plot and interesting characters, so much so I finished the whole trilogy by Tuesday! Now I'm on This Dark Earth by John Horner Jacobs. Gritty is not the word.

I spent today in the garden planting some more veggies and flowers, trying to get the beds in shape with more sheet mulching, and I did get a reasonable amount done. I have three more smaller beds to do and the year's beds are complete bar the planting in them.

I'm trying to create a more diverse habitat and stop planting in rows, although i started off doing that a couple weeks ago without even thinking. Then i caught myself today and started dotting the plants around. In the bed above I have red and white onions, from sets and seed, mange tout, swiss chard, spinach, two brussel sprouts at the back, strawberries, two types of parsley and anenomes.

In this bed i've added another brussel sprout to the back of each bed, two calabrese, marigolds, a strawberry and some more onion sets. I have some leeks to go in here and there too, and I'm thinking about adding nasturtiums round the edges. I have 20 sweetcorn plants to get in the ground next weekend, and they'll go in a block in the bed nearest the patio to act as a windbreak and privacy screen.

Talking of leeks, i harvested the rest of the leeks today ready to chop and freeze. What a nice haul!

 

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