Finding the chase and cutting to it

Of the holiday season, New Year’s Eve is my favourite day and I still have to wait one whole day for it.

Having had the feast on Christmas Day (turned out really well, despite some miscommunication), and cleared it and the left overs away (final meal today, largely thanks to visiting friends and relatives), I consider what I would like to happen next year.

I don’t make resolutions. I do set targets of what I think I’d like to look back on and think “I did that” this time next year.

This doesn’t mean the plans are unfolded in January – on 31st Dec 2005 I decided I was going to learn to ride a motorbike. It took until April to save up enough to buy a small bike, so that’s when consolidation happened. The next year, I decided to learn the piano (like the motorbike, not something you completely achieve in a year) and started by buying a descant recorder on the basis that was significantly cheaper and if I didn’t stick with it, a piano was not a reasonable thing to get.

I bought my electric piano in June. It cost less than the motorbike and I got to grade 4 over the next 5 years.

It’s very hard not to just focus on clearing the mortgage, because that shouldn’t take the whole of 2024. It’s a notable achievement but a bit empty, if you know what I mean.

I normally try to think of something I’d like to be able to do, somewhere I’d like to travel, and something that would help enrich my life. I appreciate that for many the first two items would do that, but I’m talking more about the day to day things that make life easier or bring a smile to my face.

On New Year’s Eve 2017, we made the decision to put in fitted units to our bedroom and facilitate reorganising our ensuite for example. Thanks to lockdown, the ensuite wasn’t done until 2021, but the task was significantly easier thanks the groundwork undertaken in 2018.

Of course, being in a partnership, it’s not just about me. My husband is looking at building a path to our back fence and inserting a gate so we can walk and get our paper on a Sunday more easily. This should be an easy task but the fence is a little unusual being completely custom. Which may mean completely replacing the fence.

A year long task, perhaps?

BSL has become a GCSE option, so I could do some groundwork on that. Our niece has moved from America to the Netherlands, so that’s somewhere to go… Happy New Year x

Monday all went without a hitch. The bird went in to the second of the right time and came out duly. As my beloved husband was doing the potatoes, he did not feel the need to tell me when, so I did forget to take the foil off at the wrong time and he didn’t put the top (non-fan) oven on the right temperature, but all in all, it went without a hitch.

I know many do not see the point of a turkey, and if it were just my husband and I, I wouldn’t. A small goose or large duck would make a magnificient feast for two. But we had four omnivors and one vegetarian, so it was lovely to have something different.

I even like the left overs, though I work hard to ensure nothing is kept for more than 5 days. Next week, we won’t be eating much, having feasted all week.

And that was the whole point. The midwinter’s feast was the last of the vegetables from summer and the first meat kill from the farm stock. The people alive today are geared towards having periods of fasting – we even geared many of our religious festivals around it. Like Christmas and Easter in Christianity and Ramadan in Isalm.

Modern farming gives us a delemma, as do many cookery programmes and ready meals. We’re not meant to feast once a day, every day.

During a normal week, I eat lean. 20g of carbohydrate for breakfast (either juice or yogurt), 40g for lunch (typically one sandwich and water) and 50g for tea (main meal of the day, a feature starch – pasta, rice, or potatoes and vegetables and protein).

The weekend is typically two meals a day, a snack and a big meal with 60-80g of a starchy carbohydrate, 60-80g of protein source, and sauce and vegetables. Bread for the snack or soup without anything else: my soups are vegetable based, so extra starch is not a necessity.

I don’t know if this is usual, but it works for us. We eat more in the summer, when we’re physically more active and then cut down as mid-winter comes. I like to exercise outside, so the cold and wet is not conducive to building up a sweat! I do belong to a gym, but while I do enjoy the endophin high, getting me and my gear over there is not always going to happen when a 15 minute stroll into town is much more enjoyable, especially with company.

Normally, I don’t take that much time off work at Christmas, preferring to save my leave allowence for a skiing trip in January or early February. This year, we are giving it a miss in favour of taking that money off our remaining mortgage. We’re paying half our take home in order to clear the mortgage early. We were very lucky that mortgage rates only went up when our mortgage was nearly finished, but there is no point frittering money when the end is in sight.

Looking at it a different way, we’re living lean on the food scale and the life scale while it is comfortable to do so without huge scarifice – a winter holiday is not an essential on anyone’s list who doesn’t professionally ski for a living.

The house is warm and well cared for. I have clothes to last for the next couple of years. Once mortgage is paid off, our expenses are only 15% of our earnings – that’s food, land tax (we call that council tax in the UK), transport, heating, water, and electricity for cooking and washing clothes.

We replaced many of our appliances over the past three years and the last two rooms in the house to need major work are the family bathroom and the kitchen. The windows do need replacing. The current plan is windows first, then bathroom, and finally the kitchen.

The hope is we don’t ever have to borrow again.

Which means building up a six month salary savings pot (which should cover 3 years of being unemployed with careful budgeting), then doing the major work for the house off savings. Good grief, that sounds grown up and sensible!

As that’s the plan, I’d better start doing rather than talking. Happy 2024.

Caught up with an old friend today but took a bit of a risk and cooked something relatively new.  Which is always a bit scary not least when you’ve kind of insisted on it (makes my life a bit easier).

To make some much needed space in the fridge, I’d already decided to cook a Spaghetti alla Carbonara before I’d known about my friend coming over, so a quick check on quantities, and the plan is on.

But working out a recipe while being company needs a bit more prep than normal.  Before anyone arrived, I measured out my portions and ingredients and kept things in the fridge.  I filled the pan with water for the pasta, weighed out the butter for the Carbonara and for the brandy butter on Monday and realised that the order I’d picked up on Wednesday for Christmas day was lacking a Christmas pudding.

Get back to the original story!

Sorry, yes, prep.  Having sorted everything out for Monday (my beloved popped out to source a pud), when Jon got back, I started the cooking.

And it did work amazingly well.  I did stop talking, I am not someone who can cook and make interesting conversation, in fact the concentration it requires from me is one of the joys I find in cooking, but I cooked something very edible.

Of course, this is glossing over the fact I screwed up chopping up the bacon, I forgot to put on my apron so Jon helped to dress me.

But food was served that was enjoyed.

So there have been a number of changes in our life, not least the amount of cooking we’re doing at home.

Which opens opportunities. Not least in terms of planning in three big areas: reducing waste, reducing waist, and reducing cost.

I’m 171cm tall as an absolute max – that is first thing in the morning before gravity takes its toll. Largely, I work in an office sitting at a desk, like my husband and son. This means I don’t need more than 1400 calories a day. This is significantly below the 2000 that are recommended for women, but mostly these guidelines are against people having very active lives – but I am a desk jockey, not a racing jockey.

So, how can I ensure I eat enough vitamins and minerals, protein and fat, and carbohydrates without busting that 1400 calories a day?

The trick is measured portions, drinking water if thirsty, and keeping it real. We eat a big meal on a Sunday, so Sunday breakfast and tea or small.

My freezer is invaluable for only cooking what you need – things like pastry is faff to make in smaller doses, taking out half or a quarter and dividing up the remaining lots for use a few weeks later.

Left overs are a big deal. I did a Christmas honeyed ham this lunchtime, 1.6kg of pork is way too much for three people in a sitting, so this evening Jon and I are having fresh bread and ham sandwiches. Our son is doing himself bubble and squeak with cold ham and fried eggs.

Next week, the last of the ham will be combined with left of turkey in vol au vents with peas and sweetcorn. Quick, easy, and delicious.

Commercial ready meals show that a small amount of meat goes a long way in things like combined stews and pies. Vol au vents are a great example of this too. Stir fries combining meat with veggies is the final trick.

We’re (hopefully) getting a small enough turkey to give a great Christmas feast and one meal for four people and two – three meals for three people.

Pastry, pasta, and rice are all friends to consider. And of course, we’ll have some herbs, vegetables, complementary tastes.

Now that’s all coming together as a plan, and the tree is up, I’m wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I love Christmas, but before the glorious 12th, I’m a bit down. This is a little new because I didn’t know my diagnosis date for certain for many, many years, but I knew it was around this time before Christmas.

I know it’s a bit strange because this all happened a long time ago, 46 years this year. For the first time, I’m taking the day off work to attend a charity function – not for type 1, but interesting all the same. I have plans for most of the days that week – keeping my mind off it.

Unusally, this year, it’s actually cold: below freezing, which is notable in the UK. We had snow yesterday.

I’ve downloaded my favourite cooking show, my husband has lit a fire, I’ve closed the curtains, grabbed my oody and I’m settled, while my dough rises to make bread rolls. These will not only complement my carrot and corriander soup later, but serve as lunch material this week with left overs.

Like many, we’ve rolled off our fixed rate mortgage over the past couple of days just as the bite of winter hits the UK. We’ve had plenty of warning is coming – which allowed us to budget, so hopefully, we will not only be able to celebrate midwinters eve but have a happy new year.

Planning is everything, and I am not talking about pre-cooking the veggies on the day.

When you are sick, things happen to you and around you. I’d been to the doctor’s recently and went back home in a slightly worse state than I’d gone in because I still hadn’t been diagnosed. The locum GP thought I “didn’t look diabetic to [them]”.

Some people think you’re too young to remember what happened. This is what I remember.

Before.

I’d got sick in the summer, after finishing my second term at nursey school. School was great. I got sick very soon after the hoiday began. I spent a few days wrapped in blankets propped up on the sofa with my favourite rag doll. Part of me liked being that cocooned, though it was a bit boring.

By the time I went back after the summer, I was quieter and thirsty. The nursery assistant noticed I was now drinking the free milk – before the summer, I hadn’t touched it with a 10′ barge pole, now I was finishing it faster than anyone, even though I’d puked it back up shortly later a few times – I have never liked milk.

The walk to school was getting harder. Christmas was approaching. Father Christmases and mince pies. Sitting down as much as I could. Being asked to hurry up and mum putting me in my brother’s pram because that was quicker on longer walks.

I never wet the bed, I’m pretty good in the dark and the seat was down on the bathroom toilet, but the lid was up. Not a problem. We had a downstairs loo, so at home everything was dandy. A loo was never far away.

I remember sitting quietly a lot of the time but not sleeping. I’ve never been able to sleep when my blood sugar is high. The level where it is possible to sleep is now really quite low since I am in range so long. Over those weeks, the level must have been quite high.

We walked to the GPs. I remember the waiting room from visits for my family. There was a toy room with a rocking horse. That seemed like a lot of faff. I just sat on the big chair with mum while my kid brother played, we watched.

The lady was dark haired not Dr Smith. But the fish tank was there, tropical fish. I felt a bit brighter, a good sit down always helped. I watched the fish with my brother while mum spoke to the doctor. Mum was upset she wouldn’t test me.

Saturday and mum went to work as normal. I played with my brother in my room and went to bed after tea. The next morning, I peed into the beaker. Mum let me watch the colour change in the test tube when my urine was added, 15 drops and the big tablet was added. Then I was allowed to drink something. We had beef for lunch, when we visited my gran we’d get some of the beef my gran and granddad didn’t eat. No potato. Lot’s of gravy. Water only. I don’t remember tea. Normally it would be eggs and bread – my grandparents kept chickens, we ate a lot of boiled eggs for Sunday tea but I don’t remember that. I was hungry and ached, even walking across the lounge seemed like an awful lot of effort. Dad carried me to bed: I’d already had my bath.

The day.

Mum wanted me to wear the green dress I didn’t really like. We were taking dad to work. Then we drove out, away from home.

We parked and walked into the hospital. I just wanted to go home. Mum was a pharmacist, so she’d briefed me. The doctors would test me, then I’d have injections and they would make me better. It would mean injections, for always, but I would be better.

I remember waiting and being hungry and thirsty. Being four, I couldn’t tell the time and didn’t have much clue about the fact we were there all day. My dad didn’t have a telephone for personal use, so when we’d walked to the children’s ward, mum waited then spoke to the nurse – she’d be back and would take my brother so it was less effort, but she’d leave me and come back with my dad.

I was happy sitting. It was nice being quiet on the seat in the corridor between the young children’s rooms with the cribs and the main ward for the older kids. The treatment room was down the corridor, past the loos, I’d been once already.

The nurse asked me to go with her down to the treatment room. There was a picture of Rupert Bear on the door and a few other cut out cartoon figures, Mickey Mouse and Popeye. I don’t hold images in my memory, so I don’t remember if I don’t have the names of them. A filing cabinet and venetian blinds. A few nurses and a doctor, a young man with curly hair and a big moustache. He wanted me to look away while he set up a drip. I wasn’t asked to sit still, I was held.

In my brain, I think I was reasonably stating that wasn’t right, it was supposed to be an injection. My mum remembers it as me wailing. If you’ve ever read Calvin and Hobbes, think Calvin calmly expressing himself to his mum about why something should or shouldn’t be so – mum’s assessment is probably right.

The doctor took mum and dad outside, then mum came back in and said it would be OK. Once the drip was up, mum helped me undress and I wore a hospital gown, mum hadn’t thought I’d be kept in.

I was put in a crib which felt very unfair, I was a big girl and slept in a bed.

I watched the drip for a long while. I think my levels must have come down enough to allow me to sleep, so I did.

I didn’t know what day it was, other than a Monday – two days after mum went to work. I didn’t find out it was the 12th December, 1977. My diagnosis day.

I live in the UK. I grew up in a small town, that like many in the UK has grown beyond all recognition. But I have to say, it has larger places down pat when it comes to celebrating Guy Fawkes night.

The British are weird. When we have an audacious assault (that fails) against our parliament in the early 17th century, we celebrate it by setting off fireworks and lighting bonfires, often with an effigy or guy who is burned a’top the fire. We drink warm drinks and wave sparklers. All while it is dark and cold.

I love it, and remember fireworks being set off at home (small children watched grown-ups light the pyrotechnics from inside the house until we were old enough to like the bangs and bright lights and wave sparklers.

When we were big enough, home displays were replaced by organised ones, primarily at the Museum of East Anglian Life (now the Food Museum?). It has stalls with hot drinks and food, sparklers but most importantly, no Halloween music or indeed any music. It’s lovely.

The last few years in the local displays have all been spoiled by poor sound systems drowning out the crackle of the fires and fireworks (and crowd) with either bad Halloween themed music (that was last week!) or dire pop music. It’s taken the shine off the experience, to say the least. Going back to my home town was a last ditch attempt to see if we could find something more old fashioned and traditional – more of a shared experience.

The fire was lit at 7pm with a good crowd chattering about the burn rate, use of petrol, parents explaining to children about the steam coming off the fire and the grass is was built on. Good paths allowed those in wheelchairs and mobility scooters to get close to the action.

When the fire had diminished, the fireworks were set off. Without the blaring music most displays have, the crowd got all the bangs – including some in the distance, the fire is built on the top of a hill so the view of the surrounding displays is fully appreciated, including the noise.

The crowd ooh and aahed. Favourites were shared. It was perfect. Everyone loved it and babbled just as excitedly leaving the display as they had been queuing up to get it. Definitely making the effort to go there next year 🙂

Wellies and warm clothing are essential, but looking forward to wrapping up for next year!

We are now in British winter time and, as per every year, we get our longest day of the year today as our clocks go back an hour. I have to admit, I spent mine sleeping.

I walked to the local corner shop and got my Sunday newspaper before going back home to cook a pork roast dinner with all the veg I could squeeze into the pot. It should be a good bubble and squeak tonight.

Having had said lunch and cleared the decks, I am sitting watching the drizzle come down onto the already damp leaves. Yep, definitely the start of winter.

Having checked out the met office website, I am reminded that I should check my winter emergency kit and refresh my knowledge on how to drive safely in winter weather. In the south of the UK, we’re relatively unlucky to get caught in unforecasted severe weather but while climate is what you expect, weather is get, it pays to be prepared.

I have to say one thing I do carry in my winter emergency kit is a candle and a means to light it. I love torches for light, but if you get trapped in your car when it’s cold, a candle can heat the small space quite effectively and make the difference between hyperthermia and feeling a little chilly. Ensure there is good ventillation before lighting – a candle burns oxygen and releases carbon dioxide.

When it comes to clearing the snow and ice from your windscreen and windows, a heated ice scrapper can be a boon and more energy efficient than burning fossil fuels to get the car warm.

I also carry a chamois for demisting the windows inside the car – again, rather than having to spend energy from the engine or battery. I do this before the start of a journey.

I’m a big believer in winter tires, but appreciate they can be a bit of a luxury. Do ensure your tread is in good shape – remember, if you aquaplane, do not break, instead gently ease of the accelerator and steer into the skid. When the vehicle gets good grip, proceed gently.

Remember, any patch of road can have a micro-climate, so while the road has been ice free, a dark or sheltered patch may have some lingering ice. Many modern cars with external temperature gauges will beep when the general temperature is 3°C which is when this is more likely – if you vehicle doesn’t have this feature, look out for clues that you may be in a micro-climate (more mosture or moss on the side of the road, for example).

Not always easy to do, but see if you can get skid pan training – my advanced motoring groups arrange these every so often and it really does mean you can learn in a safe and a controlled environment.

If you are planning on a journey in inclement weather, always ask yourself if you have to do the journey. Few things are worth risking life and limb for when you can use video calling or the plain old telephone to be close to people 🙂

I wrote my first programme thanks to my mum asking a basic question having typed out a load of programmes from books so we could all learn how to do computer programming – “what do you want to do next?”.

That was when I really learnt about testing and how to prove something worked. As a kid, these early explorations lead to me wanting to study maths – a large part of which is proving things work as you think they do – and computer science.

Testing your own code is hard. Really hard. Because if you’re not careful, you test it the way you wrote it – as an expert user of that piece of software, you test the happy path.

But my early programming experiments lead me to learn about how numbers really worked, about seeing edge conditions. The code was very naive, very basic. But as a result, liable to end up in trouble.

Of course, as a professional coder, this is not what you do when writing code for selling. You defend the code, you use exception handling to ensure the edge cases do not stop your code from running and get other pieces of code to verify what you’ve done. It’s taken 40 odd years to get to the stage I am now. And largely, I have enjoyed the journey: especially the moment when an end user gets the tool that helps them to achieve more, faster and more effectively.

At the moment I am examining this as part of my day job, how can we test without writing a single piece of code to run the tests – which sounds odd when you consider we’re all looking at automation. How can you automate without doing anything?

This is where the mathematician part of my university education kicks in. In maths we have different ways of proving things. Induction is all about proving a statement is true for 0, and it’s true for 1 – can we say it is true for x+1 where x is any number. We can do this in the reverse order too, if true for x is it true for x-1?

But we can also prove by contradiction. This is all about saying something isn’t true and then proving that isn’t so. That’s really what I am looking at doing at work – I’m testing by getting other tools to analyse various pieces of software I’m writing and saying that the pieces must work if no faults are found by the other tools. QED, so to speak.

And the last chance for meaningful DIY.

For once, I am going beyond the standard painting, weeding, and cleaning.  I’m looking at something a bit different.  Over the past year, we’ve been doing some of the final projects in the house; so it’s the way we want it.  Part of that has been rearranging rooms having learnt how we want to make use of the space.

We also “long term borrowed” some key pieces from my parents many moons ago, and with her house move, some of that is making its way back to the right owner.  That’s allowed some significant moves and the move towards a dream hobby space for me.

There are a couple of issues: the desk I’ve inherited is too big and very damaged.

So that’s my task next weekend.  Replace the damage top so it fits the space better and make something that will allow me to sew without snagging any fabrics.

Boring, why are you making this much fuss!

Well, the table is big – I am making it smaller but I am replacing a skinned frame with solid MDF.  At 1260x800x36mm, this piece will be heavy man!

Because the initial table was relatively light, it had a back brace too.  I’d like to keep this for strength, so that will need to be cut down.  But in many respects, this should be: measure what was there and replicate it.

I’ve measured everything three times and finally bought the replacement top.  It should arrive by Thursday next week.  I’ve already bought the paint for the top – at the thickness I’m looking at, it is difficult to get preveenered MDF and I’m definitely not brave enough for doing that myself!

Yawn…

Alright now.  Apologies, this is my first project of this type and a bit of a fore runner if it is successful.

When we had our bed room fitted, there had been a drawer unit inside a siding door cupboard – we kept the runners and the drawers and these would make a great unit for my hobby room.

That’s my project for spring…