Busy doing nothing

Apart from an interview to record in the evening we had nothing planned for Saturday. There was a time when we should have been helping at the District Training Day but with current restrictions, that got cancelled 😞

I demanded that the alarm clock be turned off. I have to get up at 6am for work, so I was going to take this rare opportunity for a lay in. Still wide awake at 6am though. Didn’t get out of bed until nearer 8am but couldn’t get back to sleep properly.

Once up and showered Mr presented me with coffee and a bacon sandwich for breakfast. Blessed. Then I just sat playing games on my tablet until he’d showered and dressed.

We wandered into town for nothing in particular but still managed to spend money on not a lot. I did buy a new pair of work shoes and Mr spotted a poster in the shoe shop of someone bearing the same surname as my family. Random.

Spent the afternoon back home reading and generally not doing much. Mr made dinner and we watched TV for a bit.

I recorded a #bellringing interview later on, then back to the sofa for more of doing nothing in particular.

Part of me thinks that I’ve wasted a day, but then there’s nothing wrong with having some solid “do nothong” time to recharge the old batteries.

Back on it tomorrow.

Cake magazine week 2

As you know I’ve decided that all these cake magazines I’ve been collecting over the years actually need to be used, so this was week 2. Of the morsels on offer to create in this weeks mag was sponge squares covered in water icing with piped lines and dots.

The recipe called for an 8inch square madeira cake, cut into squares then an apricot glaze, followed by some lovely pastel shades of water icing, then some uniformed, delicately piped lines and dots in a contrasting colour.

Having just jumped on the bandwagon and purchased a silicone mould that looks like individual cake slices, I decided that would be fun rather than making plain old boring squares. So far so good.

Once cooled, the recipe says to apply a glaze of apricot jam. Open the fridge. Raspberry it is then. Slap it on. Then, to make the coloured icing more vibrant, add a thin layer of white fondant. Hmmm, rummage, rummage. White chocolate modelling paste it is then.

The suggested water icing was delicate pastel shades of lime green, yellow, baby blue and orange. I had deep red and blue to hand! That’ll do.

The magazine went on to describe how to pipe the perfect straight line, and perfectly rounded dots. Sod it, I’ve got a pot of sprinkles that need using up. On ya go. Bosh, and done.

Not pretty. Not as advertised. But edible. As its only for me and Mr, it’ll go down just fine with a cuppa. ☕

Learning from experience

On Wednesday evening a select few of us gathered on a video conference as a dress rehearsal for our #bellringing Association AGM which takes place on Saturday, again by video conference. The event is being hosted as a webinar so that only the active participants are visible but other means are available for members to be able to communicate. Having had the experience of a similar event the weekend before I was able to suggest some changes to our plans to avoid any pitfall this time around. Learning from that previous experience will hopefully mean it all goes smoothly.

Early(ish) Friday morning a different select few gathered on the virtual #bellringing platform and video conference to try to ring a quarter peal of Cambridge Surprise Minor. The ringing itself was rather good, very few hesitations. However the technology wasn’t going to play nicely. Before we’d barely started the conductor’s internet had thrown him out and he had to log back on. That happened twice. Things then went along reasonably well until everything just froze. None of the bells rang and the video conference just hung for a few seconds before springing back to life. By then of course it was too late and we had to stop. However, attempting these longer lengths of ringing really does help cement the method into your brain, so if nothing else, we’re a bit more experienced now.

Then, as I mentioned yesterday, I was going to bake some biscuits from a magazine that I’ve had kicking around for yonks. The pic above is the result.

Making the biscuits was simple enough and being the piggies that we are I doubled the qualities. Then came making royal icing from scratch. Something I’d never done before. Well, I got in a right mess. Icing sugar all over place, then the mixture was too stiff for the runouts so improvised which meant that you could no longer see the outline definition. In the end I just chucked it on, added a few sprinkly bits et voila! Something vaguely resembling royal iced butterfly biscuits. At least they’re edible. I learned something new. I also learned that I’m not going to make royal icing from scratch again. I’m sure you must be able to buy it ready made in a tub!

Something for the weekend

We’re somewhat creatures of habit in our house. Since our daughter attended Rainbows and Brownies then Guides when she was younger, I used to squeeze the food shopping in in between dropping her off and picking her up again every Thursday. She gave up Guides when the unit folded when she was about 12 or 13. She’s 23 now. But we still do the food shop on a Thursday. And what’s even more ridiculous is that my husband retired (early) 2 years ago so could do the food shop during the day and on any day of the week he wanted. Yet it still happens on a Thursday.

That means the shopping list has to be created on Wednesday evenings. We are currently loosely following a well known diet club food menu, although we don’t actually belong to the club. It helps us make healthier food choices and gives better variety to meal times. So I go through the recipe books and decide which dishes we’ll have in the coming week. He then goes back over them to check what he actually needs to buy and what’s already in stock and writes the list. Then we add on anything else that we need in addition to food items. I always end it “and something nice”!

Over the years I have collected many, many, many #baking magazines for inspiration and the “oh, that looks nice, I’ll try making that” only never to get around to it. This last week I have decided that I need to devote more time to #baking. I’ve put the magazines in order with the intention of making something each week until I’ve got through all the magazines.

In addition to the usual food shopping I have added some extra items to this weeks list in order to create some royal icing covered biscuits, magazine 1. My plan is to make them on my day off on Friday or at the latest on Saturday, depending on what else is going on.

I find #baking and cake decorating very therapeutic as I have to concentrate on what I’m doing. It helps me zone out of other stuff for a bit. And you get something (hopefully) edible at the end of it. So much the better.

I shall look forward to creating our little something for the weekend 😋

That was the week that was

Well, here we are at Sunday already. I’ve had a fantastic week off and feel that I’ve achieved quite a lot really and managed some down time as well. However, I do feel a little anxious about returning to the office tomorrow.

I know that in my diary for Monday morning is interviewing for new staff and I’ve done that so many times, so that’s not going to be a problem. I know that there can’t have been any disasters as I haven’t had any phone calls and I have every confidence in my number two. I know my email in box will have about 500 emails, most of which will be circular stuff that can quickly filtered out. I know that Monday will whizz by pretty quickly as I catch up with things.

I think my real anxiousness actually surrounds the things I still want to do at home and then not having the time during the day and having to rush things in the evenings, not spend quality time with C etc. I do wish sometimes that I could give up work and spend more time on the things I want to do.

However, go to work I must for now so I’ll try and make the best of my last day at home. Albeit housework and lunch preparations for the week ahead. Maybe I’ll get some time later to make a start on reading a new book. Ho hum. 😁

The gift of cake and the 6 people in your corner

I’m going visiting today. A former colleague who I haven’t worked with directly for about 10 years now and who retired to Cambridgeshire a couple of years ago.

I have a lot to thank her for over my career. She has rescued me from tedious roles on a couple of occasions by promoting what I can do to other senior leaders in the Trust. She got me back involved in the PFI project when it started getting interesting again, after I’d taken a sideways tour into Reseach & Development for a few years. Whilst on the project I’d started of as the Admin for all the Project Managers and by the end I was one of the Project Managers having been supported by her all the way through.

When the project ended I was head hunted for a role in Estates & Facilities, something which I would never have applied for just by looking at the job description. All through that time we kept in touch, meeting for coffee and as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I continued to be her personal IT support.

When I needed to move on from that after 6 years, for my sanity, she was the one who had a chat with another senior manager and suggested I might be a good candidate to fill the managers role in their team. And that’s where I am today.

I used to have a picture on my office wall of the six people you should have in your corner: the instigator, the cheerleader, the doubters, the taskmaster, the connector and the example. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/07/17/the-6-people-you-need-in-your-corner/

I used to think about who I would put in each of those positions and then it occurred to me that they didn’t have to be different people. The same person could take on several of these roles. Then I figured that actually one person could be all of them.

I’m really looking forward to seeing her and if by way of a simple thank you for all she has done, a raspberry ripple cake will make her smile, then I’m a very lucky person.

The healing power of chocolate

Sometimes I can go for weeks without feeling like I need chocolate, other times I crave it every day for a fortnight.

According to https://experiencelife.com/article/the-healing-powers-of-dark-chocolate/ “cocoa, has triple the antioxidants of green tea, helps reduce cholesterol and blood pressure, and improves insulin sensitivity.” So why isn’t it available on prescription?

For many reason yesterday was a lazy day for me. I had to record an interview in the morning but then had nothing planned for the rest of the day. We didn’t need to go into town for anything, we didn’t need to be anywhere. I took full advantage of this by doing nothing. I sat down to read, trying desperately to finish Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light which has been going on far too long. At last my e-reader registered 100%. To be honest considering how large the book is, I felt the ending was a bit rushed.

Anyway, this allowed me to start my next book Alison Weir’s latest offering in the Six Tudor Queens set, Katheryn Howard, the Tainted Queen. Already on the first sit down I’d romped through 12 chapters.

Early afternoon I started to get pangs of guilt. Was I wasting the day? There were so many things that I could and should be doing. Haven’t finished sorting through photos, need to write a presentation, need to edit a survey before release, need to arrange another virtual #bellringing session. Just couldn’t bring myself to get started on any of it.

I know, I’ll make myself feel busy by #baking something. Nothing too complicated, I don’t want to spend ages in the kitchen. A bit of a rummage through the cupboards and I’d landed on deciding to make chocolate brownies. A little while later and the kitchen starts to smell of chocolate as the brownies are baking. When I went back into the kitchen to check on them I just stood there for a moment taking deep lung fulls of chocolatey smell letting it permeate every sense. Just that annoying length of time to wait for them to cool down sufficiently sp you don’t burn your mouth.

Bizarrely I didn’t think about wasting the day any more. I went back to reading my new book with a sense of comfort and calmness. I thoroughly enjoyed my lazy day thanks to the smell of chocolate 🍫 😋