Twenty years

I've lived in Chateau L for over 20 years. A mere blip in the history of such an esteemed residence of course, and who knows what came before, but in this, my 21st year, an important milestone - perhaps the only possible milestone - has finally been reached. 100 birds.

The full garden list is here, and of course normal rules apply. That is to say that this is birds seen or heard from my garden, rather than birds in my garden. Otherwise the list would be about fifteen. It's an important distinction - if I can see it or hear it from within these four walls turrets then on it goes. So mostly it is flyovers, and some birds have flown past just once in those twenty years, or at least just once when I've been here to see it happen. Then again is Osprey a daily occurence? Likely not.

Gratifyingly the 100th bird was one of my top predictions, a Great White Egret. A southern European species that has been steadfastly moving north, it was only a matter of time in my view. It took 14 years to see one at all, but since 2018 I've now seen nine here. Most of them have been seen whilst I've been out birding on Wanstead Flats, elation as still a rare bird by any standard, but often tinged with disappointment knowing that had I been at home the bird would have easily been visible from the battlements.

Finally, this weekend just gone, the inevitable happened. I was at home, or rather back home, having already returned from a pretty mediocre visit to Wanstead Flats. Minding my own business in the kitchen I noted my phone beeping. It was the local birding WhatsApp group, the ever-alert Tony informing us that a GWE was flying west from Alexandra Lake towards Coronation Copse. West is key, it means the bird is coming towards Chateau L. East and it is already too late. 

I grabbed my bins, still on the side from my recent outing, and charged up the stairs like a man half my age. Gazelle-like, possessed, three at a time. How long had it taken him to type the message, should I look out the back or the front? Would it carry on west, would it veer north? Crucial decisions that I've got wrong before, Oystercatcher remains to this day 'heard only'. I threw open the french doors to the balcony. No, it felt wrong. Back to the front, to the tried and tested method that has in the past netted Osprey and Raven, standing on the toilet with my upper body fully out of the velux and thus able to scan 180 degrees unimpeded.

Boom! Perhaps 30 seconds later it actually flew down the street, or at least over the gardens of the houses opposite. Lazy but deliberate, floppy yet controlled. I drank it in as it disappeared north-west towards Walthamstow. It felt like forever but was probably through and gone in a just a few seconds. No time for the camera but that is always a secondary consideration. That  one view is all you need for a garden tick that will remain for time immemorial. Here's what it looked like (though the bill was black on this one), one of my photos from somewhere else entirely. Clearly it would have been wonderful to have had it with local rooftops in the frame, but I'm not fussy, it was still a 'moment'.

Happiness

It is dark. It is wet. It is cold. It is January. I forget exactly when so-called "Blue Monday" is but the whole of 2021 could be described as that so far in my opinion. At some point during the autumn last year I optimistically booked a trip to Cyprus for the spring. Something to look forward to, some warmth and some birds, and at the time Cyprus was one of the few places that wasn't enforcing quarantine at either end. Part of me (the realistic part) knew that I was wasting my time but it didn't matter, it was light at the end of the tunnel, something to focus on, to bring good memories of past visits to life. A week ago it was unapologetically cancelled by the airline. A brief, curt email saying that my card would be refunded. And so the wait goes on.

Situations like this call for drastic action. If home is where it is at for the forseeable future then that needs to be the focus. But what could possibly augment the already sumptuous surroundings of Chateau L? What could possibly be so life-enhancing that all thoughts of sun and Wheatears simply evaporate into nothingness?

This, that's what. A Hoover H-free 500 "Pet". A deep and meaningful relationship is well on the way to developing. Indeed Mrs L has already commented that she expects to find it in her side of the bed quite soon and to be relegated to the spare room. I should have done this years ago. I can now be found vacuuming about 15 times a day, no room is safe. Just a quick two minutes here or there, that is all it takes for the inner glow to arrive. Mood altering, near instant endorphins. It weighs nothing, it has a host of attachments for various cleaning tasks, and as a unit it is incredibly well thought out, for instance you can remove the long tube, extend some bristles, and hey presto you have a hand-held dust-buster. And it is pink! It even has headlights to illuminate those dark corners. I was almost motivated to leave a middle-aged review on the website but have resisted.

There are limits of course. The battery lasts a mere half an hour, under ten minutes if on "turbo" mode, and then takes six hours to recharge. It does not have the same suction as a regular vacuum cleaner, some heavier bits of crud seem to survive repeated onslaught. And the tiny container fills up near instantly, especially when used in the dustier recesses of Chateau L, but actually this a therapeutic advantage for I can then spend five pleasurable minutes disassembling it, emptying it, and then dusting its innards on the balcony as the wind blows the bits across my neighbours. It is every bit as satisfying as removing lint from a tumble dryer.

Needless to say the house is beginning to sparkle. Where before I might have looked at a dirty carpet and unconsciously calculated how long it would take to go and dig out Henry Hoover and lug it to the room in question and back again before going and doing something else, now it is the job of seconds to quickly grab my new toy and give the offending detritus the once over. And of course the container is transparent so you can see the results, you can measure the success! I've owned two Dysons in the past and both died what I felt were expensively premature deaths, but I do have fond memories of being able to see the dirty vortex. Henry has been great but nowhere near as visually satisfying. 

Anyway, that's quite enough of that. I have to go and do something....

A culinary triumph!

It has been a long time since I did any cooking. The odd dabble perhaps, but since the La Fée Magique left for pastures new some years ago my time in front of the stove has been extremely limited. Les résidents du Chateau L believe that they are in the current situation for the long haul. Mid February may have been toted by our glorious leaders but we're thinking longer than that, so in the absence of going anywhere and doing anything we're trying to think of ways to mix it up a bit. As with many households meal times are one of the core familial events, and one idea we had was to take it turns to try and produce something special at weekends. This Sunday I went first, or as Mrs L would describe it, 845,489,271st.

So on Saturday afternoon I dusted off and donned my ceremonial apron. But wait I hear you exclaim! Saturday? I thought you said Sunday? Indeed dear reader you did, but Coq-au-vin is so much better if prepared the day before. So says Delia, and so that's what I did. Now I have probably posted the odd photo of food here before, I recall a post about various vegetarian triumphs last year or the year before that, but I don't think I have ever done a post about cooking a meal, or at least not for many many years. Back when I was a fully enlisted Domestic Goddess I suppose that something like this could have featured, but that is now a decade ago and largely forgotten. The children all survived, that is what matters.

So here goes. Also, to the reader who felt sufficiently moved to complain that my post about the US Capitol Riots strayed too far from the expected bird content, this contains chicken. Ca va? Anyway, apron on and sleeves rolled up. I couldn't find my tiara. Au boulot! By the way the recipe is from Delia's Complete Cookery Course, the one with a photo of her in a red top smiling radiantly on the front cover, before she started wearing yellow and became a football hooligan.

Saturday

You basically need chicken bits, bacon, onions, garlic, mushrooms, butter,  herbs and WINE!

This is it towards the end of day one. The chicken and bacon has been browned off, and the onions are doing the same next door. (NB ideally you should use small button onions of the sort that Mrs L allegedly told me were in the freezer but I allegedly wasn't paying attention). Soon I will add them to the main dish and poor in an entire bottle of cheap red plonk. The white bits are two whole cloves of garlic chopped up and sprinkled into the pan. Delia said to crush it but I couldn't be bothered.

Liberally seasoned with pepper and salt, and with both thyme sprigs and bay leaves added, the next step is to leave it to simmer for half an hour. After that turn the bits of chicken over, let the whole dish cool, and whack it in the fridge overnight.

Sunday

About an hour and a half before the meal haul it out of the fridge and slowly bring the pot back to the boil. After a further fifteen minutes of simmering add all the mushrooms. Again ideally these should be the small button mushrooms on the left, but as we did not have much chicken I elected to bulk it out with the extra ones on the right.

Let it simmer for a further half hour or so. You want those mushrooms to really absorb a lot of the flavour and liquid.

Mmmmm mmmmmmm

Yuck! This is some butter and flour that I had to hand knead into a paste. Unpleasant, but such is the life of a Domestic Goddess. Once this is ready, sieve out all the chicken, bacon, onion and mushroom until all you have is the liquid. Discard the thyme sprigs and bay leaves at this point. Then put this grotesque lump in the liquid and stir it a lot until the sauce thickens.

This is parsley and adds nothing whatsoever to the dish.

When your sauce is nice and thick recombine everything into a suitable serving dish, sprinkle the parsley on the top to make it look posh, and serve to the famished masses. Time how long they take to eat it versus how long it took you to cook it and complain vociferously about the mismatch.

Et voilà! This step requires cutlery and another bottle of wine. Traditionalists would probably say that rice has no place on the table with a dish of this calibre, and that potatoes and only potatoes should be served. And on plates! They are probably right, but in Chateau L we have only ever served this with rice and in bowls and I would urge you not to knock it until you have tried it.

So there you have it. Many compliments were paid to the chef. Children kept appearing in the kitchen on both Saturday and Sunday, attracted by the frankly divine aromas permeating throughout the entire house. Sunday morning appeared to be actual torture for at least one of them, but by about 1pm the five of us were sat down and tucking in. My eldest daughter thanked me profusely for once again eschewing potatoes, and we all wondered aloud why it was that we hadn't had this dish for years and years? A roaring success, and a major contributor to a Sunday afternoon spent doing very little indeed.

Slowing down

Birding locally has been slow to say the least. It is a vicious circle - a rare visit to the patch results in a dreary trudge around seeing very little. Unless you are some kind of masochist outings like this reduce the desire to go and do it all over again. The frequency of birding reduces, you see less, which in turn reinforces the view that the patch is rubbish in November and you go out even less..... I chanced upon a comment on one of my patch year list "pages" the other day, written by a visitor to the blog years and years ago. They asked why my year list appeared to stop in November. Unfortunately I didn't notice their question back then but let me address it now. One, the number of new birds to see on the patch naturally dwindles beyond October. And two, well, see above.

My last visit to the patch, possibly only my third this month, was a case in point. The highlight was a Stonechat. Or maybe the back end of a Snipe as it disappeared into the distance. It's a toss-up and I'm not sure even now which of these two birds I was most pleased with. The Snipe as any wader on the patch is semi-unusual, or the Stonechat as I hadn't seen the species for what seemed like ages and it was good to know that they were still there. I still harbour hopes of them overwintering, although with the weather still so mild this is far from certain at this point and a cold snap could easily see them off.

I suppose this is proof if it were needed that I already have half an eye on January. Most birders probably do. The last few weeks of the year tend to be uneventful, a slow slide into dark mornings and the early onset of evening. If like me you have an office job (or in 2020 a dining room table job) this likely means that you don't see much of the daylight hours, logged on in the half light and with several hours still to go after it gets dark. Weekends become increasingly important, but with such slim pickings locally its hard to get excited by this brief change in routine.

Instead I find myself turning to minor acts of home improvement. Nothing major - I really mean that. For example last weekend I tidied up the two cupboards under the stairs which had become a haven for crap we didn't want to see any more. Out of sight out of mind. I found heaps of things related to small children - a foldable Spiderman chair to fit a six year old (my son, 16, was delighted to see it again), a garden play tent with a tunnel, a bucket and spade, half a toddlers croquet set with mallets approximately eight inches long, some old packed lunch bags, half a kite, some sunglasses to fit a four year old, and twenty-thousand bits of crafting stuff. I also found three dead halogen spotlights, two House Martin nest boxes that I'd thought lost and bought replacements for, parts of the terrace barbeque that I hadn't bothered installing in 2005, about 40 of those long-life yet short-lived spiral light bulbs, some still brand new and long since replaced with LEDs, an old electric heater, a wooden squash racket, and some clips for wall-mounting a torch that I bought in about 2010 and that had been hanging on a nail waiting for the right moment. Ah-ha, DIY!! Excitedly I got the drill out. Back in the day I would have simply used a hammer and a nail to create some guide holes for the screws, but seeing as I had just found the drill at the back of the cupboard I decided to go full on. There is something uniquely satisfying about drilling holes in wood and it didn't disappoint. I didn't manage to get them perfectly straight of course, this is me we're talking about, but the clips are forgiving enough that it didn't matter. A triumph! Then I discovered the torch didn't work. Hopefully it is just the batteries, but as I promptly ordered the wrong size I can't yet say...

The cupboards under the stairs are now a structured haven of common sense and order with loads and loads of room for the next decade's worth of rubbish to accumulate in, albeit that I will fly into an immediate rage for at least the next month if any member of the family sullies my fine work by carelessly chucking something in there and then simply closing the door behind them. Unfortunately I had forgotten that all of the local recycling centres are currently closed so the front hall now looks like somebody reversed a battered Transit van into it and fly-tipped the contents. Mrs L looked at it and said I should go out birding more.

Life-enhancing gadgets

Three new gadgets have recently been introduced to Chateau L, and all three are what I would term life-enhancing. All three are to do with food or drink, which figures.

The first is a fridge-freezer which makes ice. OK so this is really just for me, but the days of the children using up all the ice for some project, or for a drink which they then discard untouched on a table, after which they put the empty ice tray back in the freezer....well those days are over. There is nothing more enraging than mid-preparation of a refreshing and much-needed (alcoholic) drink discovering that there is no ice. Ice cannot be conjured up out of thin air. Except now it can. I simply walk over to the freezer and hold my glass under a slot.  Abracadabra, and my glass fills with ice. It even crushes ice, so mojitos etc are now a breeze. My G and T consumption has increased exponentially. Of all the things to come out of the American desire for extreme convenience this has to be one of the best. I am never going to look back. Plus of course the whole thing is ginormous. Able to store lots of tonic water….

The second is a bread-maker. Let me tell you, this is truly revolutionary. No more plastic bread from the supermarket. No more £4.50 a loaf ‘artisan’ bread from the trendy new bakeries springing up all over the place. Instead we have fresh bread whenever we want it – providing we remember to restock on flour regularly. The thing is a bit of a hulk and takes up a fair bit of counter space, but it is worth its weight in gold and like the fridge we cannot believe we lived without one for so long. It is not quick – if you are immediately desirous of a fresh loaf of bread then you had best think again, but what we (the royal we…) do is to set it off overnight to be ready at 6am. So not only do we have fresh bread for breakfast and packed lunches, we also wake up to the house smelling divine. Initially a loaf would last less than five minutes, but as the magic wears off we are becoming more used to having decent bread constantly available and there is less desperate scoffing. It does not last anywhere near as long as supermarket bread as it has no preservatives in it – two days tops – but this is probably a good thing. It is also simplicity in itself – you (by which I mean Mrs L or a child) just tip all the ingredients in and set it off. There is no mixing, no kneading, no washing up even. At the appointed time you simply tip out a fresh loaf of bread and tuck in. It is brilliant.

The third and most recent is a blender. We already had a cooking blender that buzzes or slices stuff up, an ancient moulinex thing, but this is totally different. This is specifically for soups and smoothies, and is that latter that I bought it for. I was recently on holiday somewhere where fresh fruit grew on trees, and the place we were staying had one of these. I went large on watermelon, banana, pineapple, oranges, pomegranates etc and made some delicious drinks. When I got home I missed it, so I bought one. It was not cheap – all the advice was to get something very robust – but it looks like it will last a long time, and more importantly it works an absolute treat. There is quite a lot of experimentation going on but breakfasts have been transformed. The best one so far is one banana, about one third of a mango, ten frozen blackberries, a few grapes, a few spoons of natural yogurt and about a glass of ice. On-demand ice. The machine makes light work of this and the end result is sensational. I am much in demand from my children, and the aforementioned recipe makes enough for three. I am in the habit of getting up early at this time of year to go out on the patch, so the kids now know to have a quick look in the fridge to see if there is anything scrummy waiting for them. If you want your family to eat fruit, indeed if you yourself want to eat fruit, this is a way to make that happen. 

Fairy dust

Hot news from Chateau L - there is a possibility that the magic fairy may return, at least on a part time basis. We have recently dispensed with the services of our cleaner, it wasn't going well and was one expense too many in the age of austerity - it is not like living is becoming any cheaper. This means that the residents of this fine abode are going to need to pick up the slack, and this includes an opening for the sorely-missed fairy. There have been signs that a return may be imminent. Check this out!

Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall an outrageously long advert for a static floor duster. It went on and on and on, showing every conceivable use of such a duster, with multiple glorious slow-motion sweeps of this thing being dragged across a sea of dust and leaving a gleaming swipe of a frankly unbelievable nature. It then cut to a sparkling blonde supermodel-type housewife looking deeply satisfied with herself as she deposited the used wipe into an immaculate bin. This happened again and again for what seemed like five minutes. It was beyond ridiculous, and I have no clue where I might have seen this as I don’t ever watch television. To cut a long story short I have bought one, mainly because our ailing vacuum cleaner seems to just push dust around rather than actually suck it up. Our ex-cleaner destroyed its predecessor in the autumn, and its replacement arrived right before the building work started. In the face of such a task in all honesty I think we asked this new machine to do things it simply wasn’t capable of. It now emits a suspicious burning smell when used for more than a few minutes, and having attempted to use it on the wooden floor of the loft it seems to make almost no discernible dent in the current dust fest. I cannot bring myself to purchase yet another one so soon, and have instead bought my first ever static floor duster. It arrived yesterday and I spent a couple of minutes putting the handle together and attaching the first wipe to it.

Don’t judge us.

This is from its first use, I simply went up and down the wooden planks in the manner of a lawnmower. I could not believe it. My cynicism of advertisements has perhaps diminished a fraction, for this was almost like the image I had in my mind of the gleaming swipe. I felt like the model as I too dropped my used static wipe in the bin. How it works is beyond me, and it could be that future passes are simply not as satisfying, but given how much our house has wooden or tiled floors this could make a real difference in the never-ending fight with dust and hair. The pink scrubbing brush may be long gone, but the lime green duster could be a worthy successor.

Clearing the clutter

How do the majority of households in the UK keep their houses looking clean? It’s easy, you just chuck stuff up in the loft where you can’t see it and then you forget about it. In the case of Chateau L that’s what we did for over a decade. The interior looked quite nice and I'd made a conscious effort to rid myself of some junk a while back, but that hatch on the upstairs landing told a different story. When you pulled the ladder down and poked your head through all you could see was piles. A spare bed, a high chair, a cot, a crib, a potty, stair gates, baby toys, wooden trains, Lego, three children’s worth of baby clothes, all my childhood books, the boxes for almost every piece of electrical equipment we have ever owned, an old computer, university notes, accountancy books, old sleeping bags, a futon, a rug. It went on and on, eave to eave, wall to hip. Many of the boxes had come with us from our previous house, moving simply from loft to lot. The only things that we actually used were the suitcases (frequently) and the Christmas decorations (infrequently). But what if you want to do a loft extension?

Ah. Decision time. On the one hand there is Big Yellow Storage. On the other hand there is the dump. I know of one person who decided that on the basis they had not opened any boxes in their loft for over ten years that there was nothing in there that they could possibly need and chucked out the lot without opening a single box. Brave, very brave. We could not manage that, but I am pleased to report that nonetheless we cleared nearly the whole lot. We actively sought out people having babies and forced things on them. We gave away the bed, we went to charity shops with the better books and toys, we actually found somebody who genuinely wanted some cut crystal glasses. But largely we went to the dump, load after load, and with increasing ruthlessness. Pleasingly almost none of it went into landfill – the local recycling centre has separate containers for wood (highchair), plastic (potty, toys), fabrics (clothes and towels), small electricals (the computer and loads of other tech antiquity), and paper (books, cardboard and paper). It took longer but was more satisfying. I’d estimate that we divested ourselves of easily 80% of a decade of clutter and laziness, and the resultant catharsis has been amazing. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

What used to take up the entire loft now fits comfortably in a tiny part of the eaves.

Here is a fact. If you undertake any major home improvements that require you to turn parts of your house upside-down, you will gain far more space than you may have thought possibl, far more in fact than the size of whatever extension you are having built. Our efforts did not just stop with the contents of the loft. We packed up our knackered old kitchen in a big hurry, but as we unpacked into our brand new shiny kitchen it became very hard to find places for the two years out of date jar of prunes and the raclette set we had used once in about 1999. Out went all the plastic toddler plates and mouse-themed cutlery. Goodbye to the three jars of crystalized honey and other ancient condiments. The drawer of USB cables, old phones and chargers, old memory chips, dead pens, stubby birthday cake candles and other assorted junk was not lovingly recreated. 

The loft is now Mrs L’s new bedroom, and I get to sleep there too. Similarly to the kitchen we simply could not bring ourselves to cart all of the years worth of stuff up the new stairs. With all of the upheaval our bedroom contained much more than just a bed and clothes – my desk, books, photo albums, my camera stuff, slides, bedding, and I even found a fishing rod that had escaped my previous cull. I’d estimate that only 50% of what had been there moved up. Most of what was left has now left the premises, and the rest will probably soon follow as we pick through it. In short we have had a complete clear out, and given almost every part of the house was exposed during the building work, almost no part of the house has been unscathed. Whilst we have not completely decluttered we feel highly rejuvenated, but without the impetus provided by the huge disruption I doubt we would have done it. It is very easy to find other things to do in the face of the unnecessary effort needed to throw things away, but when you have a team of people arriving on a certain date and the scaffolding going up around you, you find that hitherto missing willpower and just get on with it.

There is a disadvantage to doing work though, which is that any rooms that didn’t feature in the grand remodeling now look far worse than they did before even though nothing has changed. Unfortunately we are now approaching utter destitution and cannot even afford a pot of paint, so at the moment we are simply avoiding all those rooms and all standing in the shiny new kitchen. With satisfaction written all over our tired faces.

News from Chateau L

Throughout the final months of 2017 Chateau L was a living hell (in relative terms, this is not Raqqa). In late August the builders moved in, and we made the mistake of not moving out. In addition to having the moat re-lined and the turrets polished, we had our ancient kitchen replaced, new central heating and a loft extension done. All of this happened concurrently and at one stage we were confined to one half of one room, with a toaster and a slow cooker on the floor, plates on the windowsills and cutlery in an old shoe box. Washing up was done in a bowl filled from the kettle for we had no hot water downstairs - indeed we had no kitchen whatsoever - and Mount Garment (of which I have previously written many times, including here) grew to truly epic proportions as we had no washing machine either.

Day to day life was reduced to one of those square puzzles which has one free space where you have to slide tiles around to create the picture. The contents of the loft went into the bedroom and the front room, the contents of the kitchen (including all the appliances) went into the drawing room, toilet and conservatory. Meanwhile the contents of the drawing room went into the front room, the left hand side of the conservatory went largely to the right hand side and the greenhouse, and we moved the bare essentials into the space this created. Builders tools, materials and new bits of kitchen were slotted in wherever they would fit. Our new fridge for instance lived in the hall for a few days, and then migrated to the front room for a couple of weeks. For what seemed like an age our evenings were spent huddled around a table in an unheated room, eating the same food night after night -  for no matter what you put in a slow cooker it comes out as identical mush. Compounding the misery wine reserves were largely inaccessible during this time, and I quickly went through the Tanqueray. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse it did, just when you thought that you were nearly there you weren’t.

Meanwhile a cold breeze blew in from the hole cut for the new loft stairs, as well as through various holes in the ceiling where the builders had fallen through  - once carrying a bucket of water for added comedy value. When the kitchen ceiling was taken down it was then discovered that the shower above it leaked copiously, so we were reduced to shallow baths once every 2 days. Every move we made involved stepping around a tower of cardboard boxes or plastic sheeting. Wood, pipes, tools and above all dust dominated our lives. The inmates of Stalagluft IV would have felt at home.

And this is with a team of builders that were good, and I mean really good. There was the odd hiccup of course, like creating and fitting a beautiful kitchen counter and then discovering that they had carved the hole for the sink in the wrong place, but largely they were excellent. They worked six days a week for up to 14 hours a day to ensure that it was done by Christmas, and whilst individual elements of the project took longer than anticipated, especially the kitchen, the overall build finished on time just as they said. Looking back it has all been worthwhile, the crocodiles look much happier with the increased water depth in the moat for instance, but whilst it was ongoing it was really hard.

But even though the builders have gone and all the rooms have been restored to their former glory, there is an ongoing legacy that refuses to leave. Dust. Now of course castles are dusty places at the best of times, and back in the days when this blog was interesting I frequently wrote of my ongoing battles with dusting, but this is a whole new level. Which coincidentally is what we now have of course. Anyway, despite the copious use of dust sheets and masking tape, dust has managed to penetrate everywhere and settle on every surface. This includes the vertical inside walls of cupboards that were taped shut and then covered with a dust sheet. And this is not regular grey fluffy dust that blows off, this is a fine white layer of brick and plaster dust that only a damp cloth will remove. My team of domestic staff (i.e. me) have been gamely trying to remove it, but I think it must be in the air as two days after a robust cleaning session you can run your finger over a surface and yet again be coated in a thin film of white powder.

Nearing completion. Yeah right!

It has all been worth it of course. The new kitchen has lights, the cupboards have doors, and the drawers have handles – I think in the previous incarnation we were down to two florescent tubes underneath the wall units and thus could barely see for most of the winter. Drawers were opened with the screws that had used to hold the handles and we had long since given up using gaffer tape to put the cupboard doors back on and simply thrown them away. It was altogether a very down-market experience but one that we were largely reconciled to, but I have to say that the novelty of being able to see what we are doing has yet to wear off! 

There is also another huge and worthwhile change, but this needs a blog post all of its own....

Green fingers, brown plants

I have many interests, even birding allegedly. I have more interests than time, which means that by necessity they ebb and flow, sometimes even getting dropped for a period of time that might be measured in months, possibly years. That's happened to birding at the moment by the looks of things, but it is the summer, a traditionally quiet time of year. Many of my fellow patch-workers have reverted to insects and pan-listing, which is a very frequent summer pursuit for birders. I've instead gone back to my plants, which have been severely neglected over the past few years.

It all started back in Beckton, which is where we lived before we moved to Chateau L in Wanstead. It was a tiny house, two up two down, but it came with a fabulous bespoke conservatory on the back. Gradually I filled this with tropical plants, as well as a small greenhouse at the bottom of the garden, and I tended them all lovingly. When we moved a few years later, there was the small matter of what on earth to do with them all. Some I donated to Kew, for they were fairly rare and specialist in nature, and even today you can walk around the Palm House and see my name on some of the labels. The rest came with me to Wanstead, and frankly they were not the lucky ones, or at least not in the long run.

It started well. I built a huge greenhouse, the kind of greenhouse I had always coveted, and I stuffed it to the gills with amazing things. It had electricity, running water, heating, lights and a radio. It even had a stash of whisky and a tumbler. I spent many happy hours in it pottering away, listening to TMS and drinking illicitly. I raised seedlings, and grew the larger plants bigger. It was a haven, my own private kingdom and a place to retreat to after the craziness of the working day. And then gradually other things came along. Birds for one, and photography. Writing, travel, busier with the kids, busier at work. The interest in plants started to wane, and the plants themselves started to decline. Insect pests started to invade and multiply, and I lost a few specimen plants over a series of hard winters that were impossible to replace. I moved some of the survivors into the conservatory where I could monitor them more closely, but essentially I lost my love for growing plants and things went from bad to worse, a spiral of depression. I had to physically drag myself down to the greenhouse to water them, and the bugs took over. I went there less and less, actively finding reasons to do something else. I didn't set foot in there from October 2015 to February 2016. When in early spring I eventually ventured in it was carnage. Dried and curled foliage, dead plants in pot after pot of bone-dry soil. I sprinkled some water and beat a hasty retreat. I couldn't take it, couldn't cope with it.

 I am hoping these will germinate into some tropical Araucaria pines

Determination finally overcame apathy about six weeks ago. With various other things going on I needed a release that was close to home. Birding the patch would have been a bit radical (and it was June) so I rolled my sleeves up and got going. It was dreadful. I spent an entire weekend making repeated trips to the dump with full loads of what were once my pride and joy. As each bench was sorted through and severely thinned out, things began to take shape. Some plants were still OK, still hanging on. Huge numbers of scale insects, one of my constant scourges, meant that I had to cut off almost every leaf so that I was left with seemingly empty pots. Some plants were spared, cleaned and moved outside to recover, and with the greenhouse now almost empty I got on with the mucky job of cleaning it with the aid of a pressure washer.

Several weekends further on and now it sparkles. Some of the neglected plants have started growing again, and I've repopulated barer areas of it with plants from the house and some new purchases. Once again I enjoy going down there. It's clean and tidy with a sense of order. Remarkably there were still two bottles of whisky down there. Snails have eaten the labels but the spirit seems fine. I still need to replace the light bulb and sort a few bits and pieces out, but overall I am very happy. Last weekend I fixed the drainpipes on it and sawed off some substantial overhanging tree branches. It feels light, airy and positive, a good job done. Getting it sorted out has also spurred me on elsewhere in the garden and around the house. I've repotted a number of plants that had outgrown their containers, divided some that had grown offshoots, and made huge strides on the population of mealy bugs in the conservatory. Stressed plants are generally the first to get diseases or pests, with the new care regime they're flourishing and the bugs are losing the battle, having been winning for many seasons. I've bought new compost, new fertiliser, and the newly weeded and swept terrace now looks like a sub-tropical jungle that is fantastic to sit on and to walk through. Succulents that had withdrawn into themselves are now fleshing back out as they recover their moisture content, and the rustle of palms and bamboo, all pushing through new stems and leaves like nobody's business, is like music to my ears. Herbs have been replanted and the bougainvillea is flowering. I'm loving it.

Rejunevantion

The challenge of course is to keep the momentum going. In the current hot weather many of the plants need daily watering. Many are drought-tolerant, but nonetheless watering properly takes time - I'm getting up earlier to do it, consciously making the time. I do daily rounds looking for bugs, I'm dusting leaves, misting, and generally making sure everything remains good. As autumn starts however, how am I going to make sure that I continue to devote sufficient time? I do still want to go birding, to take photos, and to jump on airplanes. All of these things take time, but for now I'm back in business and I feel like I have all the time in the world.

All change

Big changes are afoot in Chateau L. Tape measures are out, architects and designers have been visiting, and things we have been meaning to do for about a decade are gradually beginning to take shape. The biggest change of all though is that Mrs L has resigned her commission. After nearly 20 years at the coal face she has decided that she has had enough and jacked it in. I know how she feels, most of us probably do, but she has proactively gone and done it. No, not divorce. She has resigned from her accountancy job.

I remember when I stopped working back in 2009 that it was such a wonderful sense of relief, and I'm sure she feels that too. I was of course sacked due to economic woes and had nothing to do (because looking after children is officially worth nothing in this country) whereas she has big plans. Plans that also involve looking after children, for she has decided to become a teacher. Readers of this blog would probably not think that Mrs L has the necessary skills to be a teacher. You need to be fierce and very strict. You need to tell people off all the time without hesitation. You need to bark orders. Oh, wait.....

She's going to teach A-level maths, and has been studiously revising, essentially redoing her exams from all those years ago. The house is full of quadratic equations, calculus and all sorts of other things that mean nothing to me. In the dim and distant past I do vaguely remember being made to do quadratic equations by a fierce maths teacher, but the years have proved me right and that teacher wrong, as in the intervening 25 years I have had no practical need to ever use one. Telling Mr McConkey that cast-iron prediction got me into trouble in 1989, but the truth always prevails. The poor man died actually, very very young and not long after I'd left that school, and without ever having the chance to apologise. I skipped A-level maths and went the languages route, French and German, which I knew would be useful for life within the European Union..... (Gah!). I have of course worked in a bank ever since, but still without recourse to everything being over 2a.

Utterly useless

So, all that begins in September this year, when Mrs L becomes a student teacher and starts to take her first formative steps in how to be bossy and command total respect. Before that it means the summer this year is a lot more relaxed, without the usual conundrum of what to do with the children. This has coincided with a distinct lull in my normally absurd travel pattern, and so we've been having a really rather nice time just relaxing at home. Oh sorry, my mistake. When I say relaxing what I mean is that we've been running around like blue-arsed flies, doing all the things that we've set to one side over the last ten years whilst we've been busy having full time jobs and being parents. When my own parents note (frequently) that we should move, get an extension done, organise x y and z, I retort that this stage of lives is just too busy for any of that. They nod, recall that their late thirties and early forties were equally busy, and then return to hassling us. But finally things are getting done. Mrs L is organising a loft conversion and a functioning kitchen with cupboard doors that don't fall off when you brush against them. I've sorted out the greenhouse, cut down overhanging tree branches, and weeded the terrace. She has steam-cleaned all of the cupboards, drawers and windowsills upstairs, and I've been round the house sorting through hidden corners and clearing out a decade of ill-advised purchases and things I mistakenly thought might be useful one day. Mrs L has in turn moved 4 years of unopened post from the kitchen counter to somewhere I have not found yet, and I got rid of the manky moth-eaten carpet in our guest room in preparation for the arrival of our new au pair.

Yes, the time has come, we need help. I don't even like having relatives to stay for a weekend, so the thought of somebody else in the house for nearly a whole year is currently giving me kittens. It was actually my idea, but a bit like Brexit voters I didn't expect it to genuinely happen. With my family-friendly working hours and Mrs L's new PGCE course starting later this year, the only practical way to ensure our children's continuing education was to enrol them in breakfast and after-school clubs. These are run by enterprising extortionists all over London. S.P.E.C.T.R.E have nothing on these guys, and two kids attending one of these places for an entire academic year came in at somewhere just shy of ten thousand quid. "Ten grand....", I choked as Mrs L broke the news. "We might as well get an au pair!" I didn't really mean that of course, but it was too late. Once again I was labelled a genius by my entire family, and before I knew it a candidate had been found and an arrival date set. She's Spanish, which will be great for the kids languages, and hopefully doesn't know what a quadratic equation is.

This formula generates my expected mental state in September 2016.

But it does mean a certain amount of domestic reorganisation is needed, which includes the loss of my study / the guestroom, the disposal of decrepit carpets, and fixing the bathroom door which one of our friends broke at our house-warming party in late 2004. This is what I mean when I say we've been busy for a while. It's been on the list, but we just haven't quite got round to it. All that is now changing, energy has refocussed on Chateau L, and things are looking noticeably different. Nicer different. Less cluttered different. And once the building work actually gets done, hopefully fantastically different as the adults will be abandoning the pandemonium of the first floor for the peace and tranquillity of loftier realms. It will of course be hell for a number of months, all happening just when we are at our very busiest and least able to deal with it. But we do chaos very well indeed having had years of practice. In many ways it is all we have ever known.