Not Quite So Strange Times Week 14

Slowly, slowly some things are getting back to normal. People who like buying new stuff in shops are happy, and I'm sure I saw on the news some even fighting to get in! and many queueing for hours and we're all being encouraged to go out and spend. I shan't say what I think about that.
But then a bit of news that was more exciting to me and that's the smaller more local-to-me car boot sale is hoping to re start in July - strict rules and I think it will be very busy because the big Needham Market boot sale is cancelled for the rest of the year.

This week was going well. At the weekend I had a socially distanced coffee with Col's sister, her husband and my niece. They have been seriously shielding as BiL has a debilitating condition that really wouldn't mix with Covid 19. It was so good to catch up. They've found their garden again after not having time to do much for several years, it's looking lovely and productive.

Then Monday  I went to visit the nearest Grandchildren, sat on the floor to play with Youngest Granddaughter but then moved wrong and the blasted knee went clunk and I was stuck on the floor. Poor DiL had to haul me up to the settee! I managed to drive home OK but it put paid to other plans (not that I had any!) for most of the week. I had been so careful not to twist it since the first time -  last December- but will now need to be even more careful.

On Tuesday I delivered Polly cat to the vets. Do you know how much it costs for a cat to have a tooth removed? BIG MONEY! They reckoned it might have set off an infection if it was left wobbly so was better out.

There's been a couple of spells of good rain during the week but not the thunderstorms some parts of the country have suffered. I hope the rain has helped the fruit trees as it looks like a bumper apple crop this year, it certainly plumped up the raspberries.


Food from the garden so far this year

• 9 small lettuces (I now have a gap because the next sowing took ages to get going)
• 5 Cucumbers - and 6 more given away
• a few asparagus spears
• lots of rhubarb
• Few strawberries.
• 2lb of gooseberries
• First raspberries
• 3 teeny courgettes, one had been pecked by birds so I took off these tiny ones and covered the plants with a net. Then one more decent size courgette later in the week.

.

Then lots more raspberries and a few more strawberries

and
 

• The first potatoes. I wouldn't normally have dug them up this early but two plants seemed to have died so I wanted to see if there was an ants nest underneath. No ants but so, so dry under the ground. Not many potatoes from 2 roots. I made potato salad.

One pound of gooseberries are in the freezer, ready to make Gooseberry and Date chutney sometime.

Oh, I found out where the Mystery Parcel came from - someone in the family - for research because they are planning to do something similar but better value and all ethically sourced. I was able to give an honest account of what I thought of it.

This week I'm grateful for

1. My wonderful children and grandchildren
2. Fruit from the garden

Hope you have a good weekend. Nothing planned here except for popping out for the Saturday local paper. I might go through books again to see what I can send off to sell and then there is more cross stitch to get done. I'm making the scissor keepers to to go with the two owl scissor cases made so far.

Back Monday
Sue

Stuck in WWII Reading

My recent reading has all been about or set in WWII.

First N or M

Agatha Christie - N or M. Crime Fiction (Published 1941). This is one of her Tommy and Tuppence Mysteries, which for some reason I didn't read back in the 70's when I read dozens of her other books. I've had a copy on my shelves for more than 5 years so about time it was read and sold.
It is WWII and Britain faces a threat from "the enemy within". The intelligence service appoint Tommy Beresford - a very unlikely spy- to find out what connection a boarding house in the fictional Leahampton has with Germany. His wife Tuppence overhears the discussion and decides to be part of the investigation too.  A light quick read.

From my shelves I pulled this book which I've had for a couple of years  (there are a few for sale under £1 if you are interested - even less than I paid.)
 Fighting Fit; The Wartime Battle for Britain's Health

The blurb says......................

At the beginning of the Second World War, medical experts predicted epidemics of physical and mental illness on the home front. Rationing would decimate the nation's health, they warned; drugs, blood and medical resources would be in short supply; air raid shelters and evacuation would spread diseases; and the psychological effects of bombing raids would leave mental hospitals overflowing. Yet, astonishingly, Britain ended the war in better health than ever before.
Based on original archival research and written with wit and verve, FIGHTING FIT reveals an extraordinary, forgotten story of medical triumph against the odds. Through a combination of meticulous planning and last-minute scrambling, Britain succeeded in averting, in Churchill's phrase, the 'dark curse' on the nation's health. It was thanks to the pioneering efforts of countless individuals - doctors, nurses, social workers, boy scouts, tea ladies, Nobel Prize winners, air raid wardens, housewives, nutritionists and psychologists - who battled to keep the nation fit and well in wartime. As Laura Dawes shows, these men and women not only helped to win the war, they paved the way for the birth of the NHS and the development of the welfare state.
I really enjoyed this book and much of it seemed so apt for our present times. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of how the country prepared or not and how everyone worked to solve the problems when imports had to stop. The story about the lack of laboratories for testing seemed familiar and the chapter on lice made me itch!

Next.............Carola Oman - Somewhere in England. First published in 1943.

This is the second of two books I had for my birthday by this author published in the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint by Dean Street Press. I read the first

a few weeks ago and didn't give it a glowing report and promptly forgot the whole story and characters. So with all the time in the world for reading I decided to re-read Nothing to Report before starting Somewhere in England and I'm glad I did as it was much better second time around. I would compare them to a cross between Angela Thirkell and DE Stevenson - so quite light and enjoyable.
At the end of the first book the main character  had just resumed her nursing career at the beginning of WWII and in the second we join her again 2 years later when she has just married and her new husband (who she knew when she was much younger but lost touch with for many years) has bought her old country home to turn it into a cottage hospital for injured soldiers which she is running with the help of a nasty Matron and several young nurses.

Then finally  I sent for this from Waterstones with the last bit of the £50 shop4all voucher I got when I changed my house insurance......it was a big disappointment.

The author writes about her Lent experience of living on war rations - except she doesn't! It could have been so much better. She doesn't say what she ate each week - except for including a few recipes. There is only half a page of each weeks diary looking back at wartime rations and there seems to be a lot of breathing, feeling grounded and thinking. That's all fine if the book had been called "changing the way we think about food in a global market".

I'm sure some people will have read it and enjoyed it - but in my opinion it ought to have had a different title.

I've got no posts in drafts at the moment and as I've injured my knee again ( like last December but not quite as bad) I can't do anything to write about so I'm taking a few days off the blog.

Back in a while
Sue

Ticking Boxes or........

................how a blog post can be made out of almost everything!

A questionnaire arrived in the post last week addressed to the occupier. From Ipsos MORI , the market research company, on behalf of Suffolk County Council Highways Department - Col's employer for 35 years.

Most of it seemed very irrelevant to me here - Pavements - what pavements? Street lights - none, bus services - Ha!

But then there was a section asking if things had improved or not in the last year and I thought - that's interesting, maybe they are not happy with the big private company that currently do all the repairs......or not......on Suffolks roads.

It must be 10 years since the men who had been used to working for the council, knew their area, were based locally suddenly found they were working for a huge private company who had no idea of the area, sent people from the east of the county to work in the west and vise-versa and then found they had days with no work......we heard it all from the men that Col used to supervise.

So I was able to put my tick in the Very Dissatisfied boxes. There are potholes everywhere, road markings have vanished in many places, never see a road sweeper or a gully-sucker now and road signs are filthy, falling to bits and never repaired.

Hope it helps - everything was so much better when it was done 'in house'.

I did wonder why I'd been selected to receive a questionnaire, but maybe it was because I contacted the Rights of Way department when a tree came down blocking the footpath.


Back Tomorrow
Sue