Cookies and ice cream

Tish has been trying to find a decent cookie recipe for ages now, with not much success. Then I went to my sister's house and she had made the most yummy chocolate chip cookies, which she found on the BBC site (so go there and try them). I was craving cookies again last night so invested in a bar of Green and Blacks this morning and made some myself. I had been reading in the New Internationalist recently about the use of child slave labour in cocoa bean production and have since been trying to only buy any chocolate that is fair trade. It is a subject very close to my heart. It seems an easy thing to do; to see a situation that is plainly exploitative and to be able to do something simple and direct about it. I have been drinking the same Tanzanian tea from Traidcraft for about 25 years now. I used to have to go specially to one of their shops to get it, now it is great to see fair trade products on supermarket shelves or to simply order a box online every couple of months.

Anyway the cookies have lasted about five minutes so there is some ice cream gently freezing ready for supper. We had some rhubarb given to us by Dunk's son Haydn last week, which was supposed to become a crumble, but instead has become some ice cream.

So here's what I did:

4/5 big stalks of rhubarb, stewed with a splash of water and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, then cooled and whizzed in the liquidiser.

1/2 pint of custard, not too thick, cooled.

1/2 pint of double cream, whipped with a couple of teaspoons of castor sugar.

Stir it all together. Put in a nice clean old ice cream carton. Whack it in the freezer. I keep putting the timer on for 30 minutes and go back and stir it thoroughly (we don't have a fancy machine for doing this part) for the next few hours. I am guesssing it will probably be 4/5 hours until it is set.

St Leonards Forest

My daughter M and I spent the weekend with my lovely sister Claire, her partner Geoff and her daughter N. In spite of the teenagers not wanting to do anything we dragged them for a walk in St Leonards Forest as it is only a few miles drive from where they live. And it was just so idyllic. We made our own path through the undergrowth, strolled across a bluebell scattered hillside and through sunlight dappled woods. This is not our photo, just a nice picture of some bluebells, as we were completely cut off from the outside world without mobile phone or camera, and amazingly came through the experience unscathed. We did not pass another person for over an hour, in spite of it being a popular spot for locals. It was another nostalgic moment for me as we used to do such walks frequently when the children were small, invariably someone would get wet or muddy, or both, and the trees would be thoroughly climbed. It is a much more civilised exercise with 'nearly grown-ups'.

A message arrived on Facebook from Tish saying:

"highlights so far:

went snorkling and saw coral reef
saw turtle laying eggs
baby turtles are the cutest thing in the world
saw wild orangutan and other monkeys
went in bat caves "

so I think that the trip is living up to expectations!

Tish has gone to Borneo

My daughter Tish has finally gone to Borneo. We dropped her at college on Monday night as they were leaving for the airport at 3.30am. She texted at 3.30 to say they were leaving, and then to say they were getting on the plane and then to say they were in Dubai and then this morning to say they had arrived and that "the toilets are like a hole in the ground", so I don't doubt that this is going to be quite an experience.
And this is the whole gang (including visitors) gathered to see her off. I feel suddenly very conscious of her being on the other side of the world, it's the furthest away she has ever been from me. She has been waiting for this trip for two and a half years. It was the deciding factor in going to Hartpury that they did this trip every year.

Rainbow homespun and camels

I am pleased with how my latest batch of homespun has turned out. It was a blended rainbow roving from Sarah's Texture Crafts (Sarah also runs a felting forum here.). There seemed to be a lot of blue as I spun but from some angles it is more green and yellow dominated. It is the fun of such projects that you are not sure quite how it will turn out. As usual I have a lovely hank of stuff and no idea what I might make with it, probably only enough for a scarf or something small.
When we were at the Cotswold Wildlife Park yesterday we saw a herd of these Bactrian Camels, not the most fascinating of animals ... but they were shedding big lumps of camel hair. If I had been allowed into the enclosure there could have been enough to make a jumper or two but as it was C, little M and I walked the entire periphery of the camel enclosure and collected a large fistful of somewhat grassy camel hair. There is a lovely variety of shades; pale cream through to really dark brown. I am going to have a go at spinning it and see how it turns out, so watch this space.

Cotswold Wildlife Park

Today we had the day out at the Cotswold Wildlife Park. It was pretty busy being a bank holiday but I think we got to see all our favourites. The Meerkats have always been top of the list in my book.

We were going to post a pile of crazily mislabelled photos as the girls found it very funny following people around who were telling their children the wrong names for animals:-)


Tish has blogged about the ring tailed lemurs over on her blog.




And it was so nice to find this: here is a picture of little M and C on a "swing and jump climbing frame" just the same as the one Lewis used to love when he was little.

Rowan Tree and Sophie's World

A variety of thoughts presented themselves this morning and they seemed somewhat linked. I had a moment on Friday when I wanted to have a rant because they had a discussion on the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 talking about yet another proposal by Ed Balls to reduce the school starting age. It got me so irate ... but then that programme always does because it brings out all the bigots and intolerant people (ok sometimes intelligent, reasonable ones too if I am honest). And then I started re-reading Sophie's World last night. I read about half of this book many years ago when it was new out but never finished it, it was probably a bit demanding for someone too taken up with small children. I found it in a charity shop recently so thought I would give it another go. It is so packed with ideas I thought I might write stuff about it as I go along. In the first chapter Sophie is presented with a few of the 'big questions' which immediately grab her interest. It is as if no one has ever talked to her seriously before or challenged her to think about anything real or important. Her immediate reaction to these ideas is that "at school she had trouble concentrating on what the teachers said. They seemed to talk only about unimportant things" and that they are "only concerned with trivialities". "Sophie felt that thinking about them (the questions) was more important than memorizing irregular verbs." You find comments like these scattered through life, literature and politics, and I find it unfathomable that people seem to remain convinced that school has something relevant to do with real growth and understanding and finding meaning.

So here you have this question; who are you? and in reality it is the thing that should concern people, particularly as they are growing their own sense of identity and place in the world. By coincidence I was sent the Rowan Tree newsletter (this comes from an online shop called Beneath the Rowan Tree that sells beautiful stuff for children) and it tells a lovely story about a little girl who thinks she is a fish, and how so often grownups desperately want children to basically 'not be children', often, I think, because it makes them too uncomfortable. But this kind of imagination is so important a part of thinking about 'who are you?'. She then quotes the lyrics of a song, and it is so heartbreaking (sorry, being mawkish) because it encapsulates what children lose in growing up (and it is killed stone dead when they go to school), it comes apparently from Trout Fishing in America:

Back When I Could Fly

I used to be invisible, a shape changing magic kid.
I could move at the speed of thought and frequently I did,
But my greatest accomplishment was a slow and looping glide.
I saw the tops of everything,
back when I could fly.

I'd take my daily nap on the highest leafy branch,
And follow shooting stars on a comet's fiery lance.
I was quite the prodigy, when I owned the sky.
I never thought I'd have to walk,
back when I could fly.

Keep your eye on the ball, your feet on solid ground.
Always sit up straight and tall and never make a sound.
In just a few short years, I learned not to be a child,
And I forgot the things I had when I was wild.

Now, my child, you'll learn arithmetic, coloring and sports.
You'll have a flair for nouns and verbs, and be late with book reports.
But in spite of all the rules that bind your wings so tight,
I hope you won't forget about the days when you could fly.

I'd take my daily nap on the highest leafy branch,
And follow shooting stars on a comet's fiery lance.
I was quite the prodigy, when I owned the sky.
I never thought I'd have to walk,
I never had to try,
Back when I could fly.

Raking the Ashes

Raking the Ashes by Anne Fine. I picked this up in the library the other day because I once read 'Telling Liddy' and really enjoyed it. I did not enjoy this one. Which is a strange thing to say when I started it Thursday and sat up until 11pm last night to finish the book. It only really has two characters, and they are both so awful it became compulsive reading. The comment from the Observer on the front cover says; " there is something terrifyingly recognisable in each of the characters that will have readers looking deep inside their souls", and never was a truer comment made about a book. I kept reading and thinking 'do I do that?' They are not nice people, both weak and selfish and their relationship is just about the worst I have ever read, and you get some pretty dysfunctional relationships in books. Tilly is an engineer who works on oil rigs, she lives her life exactly as it pleases her, coming and going at her own convenience, having lovers and taking her partner, Geoff, totally for granted. Geoff, on the surface, is a wonderful man. He pampers and indulges Tilly, takes care of her, but at the same time remains under the thumb of his ex-wife. He is so desperate for an easy life that he brushes over and refuses to acknowledge any problems or difficulties, thinking that if he ignores them they will go away. But Tilly is right when she says that she is simply a thing on a pedestal, to be adored but never treated as part of his family. His two children come in and out of his life, and to give Tilly her due she does seem to work quite hard to forge a relationship with them, even doing her best to offer care and support when their mother develops cancer. But all through their relationship she is left on the sidelines of his family. It seems out of character, because in reality she has no desire to be 'in' the family, but just seems to resent the exclusion on principle. Geoff meanwhile is frittering away all his assets, his business, his own flat and father's house, all to provide his ex-wife with money for wacky alternative therapies. He is such a doormat you wonder at times why they got divorced in the first place because she still seems to love walking all over him. So they potter through nearly 20 years like this, Tilly planning to leave every time she discovers some new slight, Geoff living in his own little wonderland where nothing bad ever happens, kidding himself that everything will come out all right. I found I hardly cared whether she left or not, because in reality they kind of deserved each other, but I wanted to see what twist she gave to the ending.... and all in all I doubt that Tilly ever felt a moment of remorse.