Still here and happier than ever in 2015!

Well here we are nearly half the way through 2015 and not a single blog post to be seen from me.
 Well really - what a very poor show!!!  ;-D
Back at the start of this year I made one single resolution (that's one more than normal) and it was to be more selfish.  More selfish with my time where it concerned people who sapped the life from you, more selfish with myself round people whose endless negativity drags you down, and more selfish in pursuit of a lasting happiness for me.
That is not to say I immediately set off on some sort of hedonistic crusade and forsook all my friends.  In reality only a few things changed, but key was deciding I deserved more of my time.  So to that end; and this is all a bit of a roundabout way of saying it, blogging has taken a backseat along with a few other things.
So what have I been doing?  Applying for work, a little bit of temping, some sorting out of the house, and (this is the biggy) telling the man I fell in love with 22 years ago how I feel!!!  Now that was somewhat scary, but it was a gamble that paid off.  Turns out he feels the same, right down to liking me back 22 years ago.  Who knew??!  (We were both far too shy to do anything about it then.)

The Scotsman on the ancient
clapper style bridge at
Postbridge on Dartmoor.

Now the practicalities of this are not exactly straight forward, which is why I've never admitted it to myself before, let alone him.  He's in Aberdeen.  I'm in Exeter.  These are more than the Proclaimers famed 500 miles of walking apart.  Doh!
He came to visit for a week and with that time together we both realised we were more sure of this than anything before, so we will make it work.
We had a fab week, even though the weather wasn't all it could be, and his friends have already been asking when he's transferring down here!  That's all for the future though.  In the meantime I'm just as happy as I could possibly be, and it's truly wonderful.

So in other news; I have been doing some more temping and am currently on a 2 week assignment as a telephone receptionist.  In between calls though they are happy for me to potter around on the t'internet hence me taking the time to write this post.  Pretty decent of them I'd say.  :-)
On Friday I attended 2 interviews through a different temping agency and, (wait for it) have definitely secured at least one of the positions!  The lady from the agency is calling me back with full details later but apparently they came back with a big 'yes' to me after my interview.  Which is nice considering I'm very out of practice and was physically shaking going into it!  Perhaps a little more faith in myself wouldn't go amiss!  This may mean that I can't get up to Aberdeen as soon as I might have wished to but I will have to wait and find out as the company in question was advertising both 6 month fixed term contracts and permanent positions.  Exciting stuff though, none the less!
One of the other major decisions I have taken is to give up the allotment.  The friend I was helping bowed out at the start of the year and I have come to realise that a full plot on my own is just too much.  Instead I want to concentrate on the much neglected back garden at home.  Although small it's plenty of space just for me and has the advantage of not requiring me to tramp along the road with tools or a wheelbarrow en route to do a bit of digging.

Unsliced bamboo shoots

Otherwise I've been busy in the kitchen - a lot of noodles have been consumed recently as I've been getting right into the Cheung Fun (flat rice noodles in rolls) they sell fresh in my favourite Chinese
supermarket.  I also discovered recently what bamboo shoots look like before they're sliced - crazy huh!
My family came to visit for the annual Exeter Festival of South West Food and Drink.  Saw many lovely things, sampled some of them and bought some cheese.  A lovely time had by all.

#100HAPPYDAYS Set 3: 32 - 45

Time for the next installment of my #100HAPPYDAYS photos.  If anyone missed it first time round or wants a refresher the premise is summed up on their website.

"We live in times when super-busy schedules have become something to boast about. While the speed of life increases, there is less and less time to enjoy the moment that you are in. The ability to appreciate the moment, the environment and yourself in it, is the base for the bridge towards long term happiness of any human being."

You take the time to notice something that makes you happy each day; no matter how big or small.  This in turn should start help to train your brain to notice the things each day which make you happy.  So helping us to stop focusing on the negatives so much. Huff Post have a good explanatory article here.

Day 32: The Dr has brought me free range eggs. Good eh? 

Day 33: I finally got round to acquiring (ahem), a cutting of the most gorgeous and fragrant rambling rose that I've been walking past on my way to and from work for the last 7 years. Yay! 

Day 34: After a friend alerted me by text (thank you!) I managed to snag these couple of bargains at the local Co-op. Smoked salmon is my favourite!!!  

Day 35: Running around with my favourite small person and her pink bunny. (Confusingly called Little Kitty.) She is an absolute joy. 

Day 36: Unexpected catch up with good friends whilst trying out a different pub. 

Day 37: Day 1 of Exeter Festival of South West Food & Drink; with my ma. A favourite cheese of mine but I did make the comment (based on it's looks) 'That's a cheese you wouldn't want to meet down a dark alley' - luckily the owner chap found it pretty funny. 

Any TP fans will know what I mean when I say I think it looks like Horace might. Awesome tasting ewe's milk cheese though - get some from the good folks at Wootton Dairy. 

Day 38: The most gorgeous cider ever tasted by mere mortals. The limited edition Maverick from The Orchard Pig at the food festy. Cider with ginger and a subtle hint of chilli. HOW frigging good is it? And I have 4 pints all my own stashed at home. 

Day 39 (Sunday): Food fest haul. 6 lovely cheeses, mushroom and stilton pie, yummy olives, brilliant The Potted Fish Company bits. (YUM!!) Best cider, Elderflower cordial (try it in your G&T) and my yearly stock up on Cornish Sea Salt. More potted fish loveliness - all those on the top left were free at the end of the fest. Result! 

Day 40: My lovely friend donated me this for my spatzle frolics. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi cariad. 

Day 41: Getting home from a trying day at work to find food delivery accompanied by this note. 

Day 42: The smell of spring, and hope, and new beginnings.  

Day 43: The beauty of the sky never fails to inspire and awe me. Truly I live in a wonderful place. 

Day 44: Making new friends. Bigger jug than me!!  

Day 45: Sleepy kitty. Being very caring and loving... and hardly biting my hand much at all...

I have a full post about the food festy to get up sometime soon.  If you're ever in the area at this time of year it's well worth a visit.
I'm hoping for another happy picture later today - Chiefs have their last home game of the season today vs Harlequins.  Could be a hard game...

Pics, seaside and graffiti

Once more there’s been a little while between my last post and this one.  Here in the UK it’s hot hot hot at present.  I'm sure you’ll be well aware of that though so there’s really no point me utilising extraneous words to portray the nastiness of an office that’s 27⁰ at 8.30am and has climbed to 29+⁰ by lunchtime, or the unpleasant feeling when you get up and know your skirt has stuck to the backs of your legs in some sort of nasty take on the embarrassing tucking it into your knickers theme, or the constant watering needed of any plant in a pot or, or or…&c &c.

 In fact I like watering the plants as it enforces a little reflective time and the cool water in the warm evening is very pleasant when accidentally spilt on your feet.  J

Anyway, no particular thing to post but thought I’d share a few pics taken recently of things I found interesting.  Excuse the quality of some; they came from my (very old) 2mp phone.

Shortly after the last post I saw the cygnets out of the water, grazing up on the banks.  Here they are looking lovely.  They’re a fair bit bigger than this now!

Speaking about the plants (I was you know – do try and pay attention…) you can see our flourishing fig here, this was just a 3” high twig when we got this from the Eden project 2 years ago.  Not doing too badly huh?  You can see one of the chillies in the window behind.  We have 3 others in the plastic plant house thing out the back having cheated and got 4 plants from the food fest in April as we (I) were a bit late with the seed planting this year.  All this hot weather is doing them wonders too.

As the Chap has been working continuously it seems like – or all days, every evening and mostly all weekends, my friend took pity on me last Saturday and invited me along to the beach with her, her husband, his sister and her husband and their 2 kids.  We took the train to Teignmouth – a great piece of line that runs right along the sea, then the little ferry boat across the estuary to Shaldon on the opposite side.  I had a lovely paddle – here’s your proof!  This is looking back over to the ‘back beach’ at Teignmouth, with the harbour entrance on the right.  As previously mentioned, apols for the quality but I took this on my phone to send it to the Chap.  Show him what he was missing!  (Was that mean?)

Over the last few months I've noticed a rash of graffiti around that all seems to be done by the same hand.  Now I'm not averse to writings that make you pause for thought or well executed street art but this person is starting to annoy me.  You see their idealistic anarchy 'A' symbols all over the place including where it really does detract from the environs.  And I'm sorry my child, but anarchy would never work as unfortunately someone has to make sure the bins are emptied and the water keeps running &c.  

Anyway - see what you think of this little lot.  I'm not entirely sure what Brian Eno has to do with anything though...  :-)

Cygnets

There doesn't seem to be very many this year.  :-(   These two are delightful though!

First forage of the year

 As the sun made a rare appearance today the Chap and I went for little bimble along the river before heading for a lovely roast for National Potato Day.  (Really.)
I wanted to take a certain route to see if there was any sign of the wild garlic yet and we were super pleased to spot some sprouting through the mud in our favourite spot.  Due to all the rain and melted snow the river's rather higher than is the norm so the most advanced plants were on the sunny bank that was also most nearly flooded - here's yours truly harvesting, pretty much 'in' the river!  Nearer the camera and behind me you can see the thin sprouts where the plants in a little more shade are still just pushing through the earth.

As we didn't get too much garlic (it's still early in the year after all) I also picked a handful of nettle tops and I'll pop them all in a soup/stew with some beans, veg and whatever comes to hand later. 

Very pleasing to know that even in January we can get some free tasty food with the minimum of effort walking and rummaging in the undergrowth.  It was a thoroughly pleasurable amble in the sun so I wouldn't really count it as effort myself.  Also nice to see that it looks like a healthy year for the wild garlic as we want to make masses more pesto from it this year.  Top stuff - we ran out far too fast last year! 

We finished the afternoon by going for the aforementioned roast at The Mill on The Exe, a riverside pub near us where they have the distinct advantage of doing a veggie option on the carvery.  Being right on the river they do have somewhat tenuous boundaries to their garden area!

& the storms continue unabated...

Ok, ok, that isn't technically correct as we did have a day off (mostly) from the rain on Friday.  The river fell so you could nigh on see the paths, if not actually pass along them without dipping your toes in but yesterday was a return to form with heavy rains battering us along with some high winds and up went the water again.  Here's a daytime shot from about the same viewpoint as the night shot in the last post. 

The water's actually slightly higher this time. 

Anyone for a nice relaxing bike ride on a Sunday?  No??!  (Look at the size of that log!  If only we had a wood burner.  I'd be out after every flood scavenging the river banks for free fuel.)
'Welcome to soggy Exeter' that should perhaps read. 
I think this little chap is wondering where his home's gone.  Along with a lot of unfortunate people in these floods.  Sadly a woman also lost her life locally when a tree fell which in turn took a wall down on top of where she was living in a tent.  Another example that if we as a society could take better care of all members rather than worrying about sh-t like what we'll be sitting on come crapmas day we'd perhaps all be a little bit richer human beings.  (What is it with this pressure of supposedly needing a new sofa for chrimble?  Will my old one spontaneously give up the ghost in shame at it's non-newness?  I somehow doubt it - it's managed to tough it out each year so far.  Piss off ad-men.)
I didn't intend this to be a ranty post so excuse the slight tangent; though I am asking no excuses at all for the content.
Anyway - a whistle round blog-land this morning has appraised me of 2 things.  Firstly, in a slightly suspicious coincidental way Blogger has apparently told several of the blogs I perused that they've run out of space and would they like to pay for the privilege of uploading photos?  It just gave me this message too.  Now, I know that the finite space they give you will fill up but the fact that they've all gone at the same time makes me think it's a ploy.  Plus someone had put a comment somewhere saying it's Blogger wanting to shift us all to another provider or something.  :-(  Anyway, no, I do not want to pay, especially to an online company that can't tell I'm in the UK and would therefore use a corresponding unit of currency so I am using Flickr instead from now on and uploading from there.  Or at least I am if there are images in this post.  If it's a bit lacking on the image front then I evidently failed to get it to work!  Hmm - you seem to have to add it as html code otherwise if you use the 'share' to blogger option it makes it a new post.  Slightly more longwinded but I'll cope with it.

The second fact I quickly caught on to is that it's 'stir-up Sunday' - traditionally the day when chrimble puddings are made.  (Having just skim read the wiki article I've linked there it actually appears to be a religous thing that has become associated and overtaken by the pudding thing.  Shows how much of a heathen I am that I had no idea of that I guess!)  Now, being somewhat lackadaisical in some areas I have yet to make our chrimble cake (having been inspired to by both Being Penny Wise and Frugal Living UK's frugal based versions) so I figured that with a month to go perhaps I'd better worry about that first.  Although when I think about it I probably prefer a very small pud rather than cake.  Never made pud though and it strikes me as something one ought to have at least a little forward planning for so it shall have to wait for next year, or the year after, or...you get the picture.  I'm slightly alarmed by the reminder that both those blog authors soaked their fruit for a week - mine shall have overnight and be grateful for it I think. 

Given that I'm stealing some of the dying-from-man-flu (that I gave him) Chap's medicinal brandy to soak the fruit in, along with a mix of some in which he steeped spiced baked apple, a freebie single malt whisky and possibly some of this chrimble mead (though I'm not sure that at 13% it's up to the job.  Anyone?) I don't think I can really nick enough off him to last a full week! 

Anyway, in keeping with their Frugal theme but with a slightly different bent I decided to make my cake only utilising what is in the cupboards already.  IE no new purchases.  Hence the theft of the Chap's brandy and slightly idiosyncratic line up of ingredients / booze that will be utilised.  That's another post though - right now I really must get the fruit and brandy in the bowl before he finishes drinking it all.  If that comes to pass I'll have to sacrifice some of the sloe gin instead.....  Noooooooo.........  :-D

My beautiful Exeter

I've been thinking recently that I really should share a little more of the beauty of the place I live with the world. Exeter is a lovely city; small enough to still be friendly and fairly safe and dating back to pre-Roman times.  Extensively bombed in the second world war it was lucky enough to escape significant damage to the cathedral and some of the old buildings in the city centre remain there to this day.
Anyway - to start (not being that well planned) I have a couple of images of the river.  I walk along and then cross this river every day on my way to and from work so I see it in all moods; swollen and brown with the mud-laden run off from the moors after heavy storms, shallow and burbling gently in the summer sun when you can spot a little fish through it's lucid ripples, partly iced over in the harshest part of winter or just reflecting serenely the sky above on a still and calm evening.
This first image then (and I am well aware that you will have seen numerous images of the river before this if you are a regular visitor here) was from a couple of mornings ago when we had one of the (so far) very few frosty starts to the day this winter.  Although the frost laid heavy on every grass stalk the sun shone down and glinted such sparkles off the river it made me want to run to the hills for the day rather than go to work.  Or at least get down the allotment for some digging!

This second image is from my journey home last night when the river was in one of it's languid moods and showed me such a perfect reflection of the trees' bare branches above I had to capture the image; although these dimpsey lighting conditions aren't the best for photography.  I hope however, that the image manages to convey some of the serenity the river regularly gives me, and some of the beauty it is capable of.