Norwich: Preparations for the weekend

Friday is the start of the school Easter Holiday...and the first night of Passover...and my birthday!  The family is descending in full force.   There will be 11 of us.   Not such a big gathering compared to some I've heard about, but a houseful for several days.

So I'm getting ahead on the food preparation.  So far I have made:

Chicken soup (what else!)
Mushroom Soup
Ham hock terrine
Chicken liver paté
Roasted beetroot cooled and ready to be dressed for a salad
I've slashed two shoulders of lamb and slathered them in harissa ready for slow cooking on Friday. 

Am just about to start:

Smoked mackerel paté

Tomorrow (Thursday) I shall make Baba Ganoush, apple cake, and maybe matzo balls ready for the chicken soup on Friday.  Then I'll poach some pears to go with ice cream and chocolate sauce and marinade some chickens for a tray bake for Saturday night.

Still to be prepared at some stage:  fresh fruit salad and compote for breakfasts.  

I've written down all the food I've prepared so I won't find things we haven't eaten at the back of the fridge when the family leaves.  What's the betting?

Norwich: And now the turn of the back garden...

This week it was the turn of the back garden to get a makeover. The lovely John Sigsworth who is my friend Gill's gardener and who helps us with the vegetable plot came over with his tree uprooting tools!   Out came very large bay tree which was dominating the bed and masking sun from one of the garden seats.  I have a small bay tree in a corner of the garden so won't be short of bay leaves.    Also turfed out where a large acanthus and various other plants that had got overgrown and tangled.  All the good plants have been carefully laid aside and just one remains in the ground, a Euphorbia which has a lovely honey scent.   It's been cut hard back so hopefully it will grow back into a better shape.  The rest of the bed is now empty and John will return this week to dig it over and remove all the little roots. 

So, a bare bed and a lot of decisions to be made about a new planting plan!  Exciting!

Southwold: Some progress in the utility room

Skirting board - with mitred corner!

The progress in transforming the utilithy room from gloomy yellow to sparkling white is all down to Peter...as are the hold ups!   When this man starts a job, he does it well.  Forever seeking refinements.   Currently he is working on making skirting boards to protect the bottom of the not very good walls.  This part of the house was probably the last edition and acted as a kind of store room, possibly accessed from the outside.   Consequently the construction isn't great and the plaster at the bottom of the walls is a little friable.   Peter has done a good job filling and stabilising and now he's protecting the walls from the ravages of the mop with his skirting boards.   Some of the corners he has to go into are not easy.   However, he is a very dedicated and persistent DIY-er. 

And a notice board

Freshly painted walls and window

Just the pipes to finish

Now we have to finish covering up the yellow pipe work, clean up the sink and draining board, put the door handles back on and re-install the dryer.  And hey-presto, one utility room to be proud of! 

Baby, it's cold outside

Sunday morning in Southwold.  It's -1°C and feels like -8°C.  The heating has been on for the last hour but the house is still cold and the wind is whistling!  Practically howling!

What happened to Spring?   The plants in the garden here look positively shocked.   I'm looking pretty shocked myself!

Porridge for breakfast I think...

Major work on front garden...major back ache!

This is pretty much what the front garden in Norwich has been looking like for a while.  This is the right side before work started this week (seen rather obscurely through the bedroom window) A rather amorphous jumble of plants, overgrown and crowded and soil that hadn't had anything put back in it for a long while. 

Before

I hired a gardener called Lindsey to come on Wednesday and Thursday and help me dig out almost all the plants and put on them on one side for sorting out.  Lindsey is probably somewhere between 35 and 40 and very fit!   The weather was perfect on day 1 and a bit drizzly on day 2. She dug away for two whole days, then forked the garden over and spread organic fertilizer.   I was running back and forth making her very strong coffee and trying to get the plants sorted into two piles - chuck and keep.  Unfortunately Lindsey worked so fast that my plan to keep everything organised went slightly astray, and some plants were put in neat piles near the house on plastic sheets and others were put down on the edge of the road.   She heaved out all the flnts that make the edging and piled them up and left me with a bare garden of beautifully turned soil and a row of plants and quite a lot of wet, sticky mud on the paving and the edge of the road.   Not her fault that it drizzled all afternoon and I was thrilled with the blank canvas and began to think about a new planting plan. 

The blank canvas

Then I looked at the weather forecast and realised that snow and very low temperatures were coming on Friday, so despite a rather sore back and no help (Peter was away at a meeting) I had to cancel my pottery class and set to and get all the plants back in.   I worked from 8.30 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon.  Picking up plants, separating them and putting them in with a little encouraging bone meal.   Bend and bend and bend!   By the time I had finished I could hardly move!  

Just as I was putting in the last few plants, straightening up and scraping some mud from my glasses and face,  the neighbours' gardener arrived and came over for a chat.  She was checking their garden for what to do next.  Apparently they have a colour scheme...I was waiting for her to ask me about my 'colour scheme' instead she asked me why I hadn't cut back my epimediums*...I could tell straight away that she was a woman totally devoid of any sign reading skills.  Did I look as though I was in the mood for advice and gardening one-upmanship?  I smiled, but not with my eyes!

All the plants back in! 

So this is the picture at the end of the day.  Just a few plants left on the side of the road on the right.  The flints still in piles (need a strong man for that) and the mud still to be cleared away, but all the plants safely in before the freezing weather descends.    Not that you can really see them in this picture as they have all been split up and are rather small at this time of the year.  There are lots of buds though, so watch out for the 'after' pictures.    Should be a real change in a couple of months.

*Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop's hat, fairy wings, horny goat weed, or yin yang huo, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.

John Lewis is going down the tubes...

Yesterday I experienced a retail nightmare!  Alright, not quite a nightmare, but a very, very annoying and exasperating experience.   And all due to John Lewis cutting back on customer service to the point where it hardly exists at all.

We have been faithful John Lewis shoppers for as long as we can remember.   Our mothers used to shop in John Lewis.  Maybe our grandmothers shopped in John Lewis, although I can't verify that now.   John Lewis was always first port of call for curtain fabric, bedding, china, kitchen equipment, washing machines, dryers, fridges...I could go on.   You get the picture.  Practically a religion!

So, when we needed a new carpet we naturally went to John Lewis.  We chose the carpet and got the estimator to come and measure and a couple of days after his visit, went along to our local branch (a 25 minute walk away) to sign the contract.   We were told that we'd be contacted for a payment.  No, we couldn't pay in the store, all the admin had been centralised.  Nothing is handled in-store.  We should have smelled the rat then.

A week goes by without any contact so we present ourselves once more in person at the carpet department.  The same apologetic sales person explains that since admin has been centralised, they are having difficulty keeping up with the volume of work.  Which, translated, means that nothing has happened with our order.   Peter decides we will pay on the spot, in the hope that this will speed things up.  The weary salesman doesn't think this will make any difference but takes our money to keep Peter happy! 

Then I begin to realise that sitting around waiting for them to get through their backlog isn't our only choice.   I pick up the phone to a local business.  The phone is answered in 2 rings.  Yes, they can get the carpet. Yes the estimator will call that afternoon.  Yes, they will get a sample sent by post.  The estimator comes, measures, goes back to the office and phones through an estimate.  Within £14 of the John Lewis price.  The carpet will be laid within two weeks.

Then I try to call John Lewis to cancel our order.   No reply from the centralised carpet and flooring administration hub.  High volume of calls.  I wait on the line 15 minutes without getting through.  I phone the store  and press the number for carpets and floorings...the phone rings and rings.  "A lot of people are trying to call us at present".  I bet they are!   Another 20 minutes listening to the holding music.   In the end I throw on my coat and stomp the 25 minutes to the branch.  In the EMPTY carpet department a young man is titivating a display.  He is oblivious of the dangerous rise in my blood pressure.  I point to the phone on his desk.  "Is that for decorative purposes only?"  I know it was rude, but really!   They can't even route phone calls to an empty department within the store. I cancelled the order and got our money back.  That's £500 worth of business they threw away.

Phew.  I feel better now!

The good citizen

An interesting scene was played out in front of me this lunch time as I dragged my weary way back from pottery.   (It's downhill all the way from my house to King Street and then, unsurprisingly uphill all the way back!)

I was crossing Chapelfield Gardens.  
Coming towards me was a young man carrying an orange Sainsbury's shopping bag.  Behind him and closing fast on him was an older man on a bike.  Careful cycling is permitted in the park but I thought the older man was getting very close to the bag carrier.   Suddenly he slowed the bike almost to a stop and bent down and made to grab the shopping bag.   Before I had time to react another young man who had been following the bike pushed forward with his arms up and stepped in front of the bike to stop what he (and I) thought was a bag snatch in progress. 

Before he had time to say anything the old man smiled and said "He's a friend of mine.   It's alright!" and the bag carrier smiled to confirm.  The other young man backed off and started to move away.  The old man called after him.  "Thank you!   You're a good citizen."  

I thought the incident did them both credit and wondered how that would have played out in another park in another city.   Norwich is still a decent place to live.