3 July 2022: Carlsberg don't do weekends

Mrs L

Jul 3

When I came to note Friday's highlight in my journal, I found I couldn't remember one. All I knew was that it had been a perfect day. I paid more attention yesterday.

Perfect Saturdays aren't often rainy but I have a fairly low bar here and I thought it was a good day. Kit and I went into Rugby together, with a short to-do list. This started with a visit to Rugby Theatre so Kit could hand in his "expression of interest" form. He has decided he needs a hobby; I thought I'd suggested Rugby Theatre to him ages ago, but apparently not. Anyway, while he was inside chatting, I was outside looking at the posters, and I noticed a film showing that very evening which looked like one we'd both enjoy. I popped my head inside to say this, and found that Kit was already discussing it with the staff but thought I wouldn't want to see a war film.

I had just checked the reviews for Operation Mincemeat and had the impression it was the sort of war film I like, ie, one which doesn't involve a lot of people trying to kill each other; plus, Colin Firth and Penelope Wilton, so we booked tickets. A spontaneous night out! Immediately this placed the entire weekend into a category of its own.

Tickets safely in Kit's wallet, we had a nice potter around Rugby's charity shops, picking up a new sugar dispenser – a beautiful glass globe, much nicer than the last one – and various items of clothing. I found a black and white maxi dress and, mindful of the fact that my emerald green one is really now only fit for gardening, invested the £2.99 in spite of the fact that the straps looked as though they were about to fall off and the whole thing looked unlikely to cover the sort of chest scaffolding that a size 20 lady requires. When we got home I found I was correct in both of these misgivings. Well, I have plenty of spare t-shirt fabric, a lot of which is not yet cut into strips, so I thought I could probably manufacture new straps…

… or maybe a pair of wider, under-straps…

… which would be really easy to do if I cut them straight from an old t-shirt. Black or white, it didn't really matter, let's have a rootle around…

… oh! A brand new black vest, which will completely blend in with the top and straps of the dress! Let's see what it will look like by just popping on the vest, and then the dress on over the top…

And it looks perfect. I know it doesn't sound perfect, wearing a vest under a strappy dress, but trust me, the blend is so good that it's difficult to tell that's what's going on. Problem solved with zero cutting out or stitching. I was very happy.

This was later, though. We had a Greggs lunch and I had failed to find a new jug anywhere (the lovely jug which Mrs Best gave me many years ago has chipped its spout and become a pouring disaster, so I'm on the lookout for a new one, but I have a very specific set of demands), and then left Rugby to collect the Esquire from work. After I'd sorted my dress, and we'd decided we'd eat out before seeing the film, I ignored all the housework, and all the gardening jobs, and sat and read a book. It was by Monty and Sarah Don and was the story of how the Jewel Garden came into being. This involved a delve back into their years as jewellery manufacturers, and a hard look at Monty's mental health, as well as a load of gardening info, so it was an interesting way to pass a couple of hours. I liked the book enough that I've just put it onto the bookshelf, which nowadays only happens with books I think I will want to read again.

In the evening we decided to go for a McDonald's, as part of our fast food assessment project (for guilt-free fast food, just turn it into a project #TopTip) and getting there involved driving past a retail park.

"DAMN!" I said. "Flea spray! That was the other thing I meant to get this morning!"

(I had 2 bites last week, and sprayed the house last weekend, but another bite this week means I need to spray again.)

"There are loads of cans on top of the fridge," said Kit.

"I know. But they're just dribs and drabs. We need a new can. OK, well, I'll use up all the dribs and drabs tomorrow and then we can buy a new can next weekend… Oh! Pets At Home is still open!"

And what makes it perfect is that the entrance to the car park for Pets At Home comes after you've driven past the store and seen that it's open. We turned in.

"Puppy grooming," read Kit; and then, switching to a growly voice, "Hey, puppies, d'you wanna see some children?"

I was still laughing at this when we got back to the car, having bought a massive can of spray, and a smaller tube of flea-killing shake'n'vac.

McDonalds was busy and we were slightly unnerved by this. All those people. But it goes into first place for the actual fast food. I mean we probably won't have another takeaway burger for a year or so but at least we'll know where to go.

The film itself was excellent – I think I enjoyed it more than Kit did – although we agreed that the whole "But we know they know we know they know we know" is exhausting (we are neither of us cut out to be spooks), and that it was all very well saving 130,000 lives by this deception but what about when they got to Monte Cassino?

There was a viral tweet a couple of years ago which Penny and Rose tagged for each other with hollow laughter:

I am not saying I am that mum. But we did have 3 roast dinners within the Esquire's first week home.

To be fair, Rose was there for 2 of them, and only one was a proper roast with potatoes and veg – the pork we ate as hot pork rolls, and the ham we had with egg, chips and peas, and then cold in sandwiches (and then I combined the leftover meat from all 3 roasts into cold meat pies). But maybe I do spoil him a tiny bit. There was a reason why, 20 years ago, I was saying that if it was a boy we would probably have a 4^th baby.

He's not completely spoiled though, because I still made our current favourite vegan lentil curry this week and forced him to try it. It's not a spicy curry, it's just warm and tasty. But the Esquire picked through it and pointed out the bits he didn't like. These turned out to be the lentils, which is a bit of a drawback in a lentil curry.

I have some sympathy with him on this. I have put off cooking lentils for years, because I grew up understanding that their key function was as a collage material. And when, at a young age, you have been firmly told Do Not Eat Lentils by the grown-ups in charge, it's hard to shake this conviction. I originally only cooked this curry at all because I had some coconut milk left over from the vegan tiramisu, needed a recipe to use it up, and all the recipes I found were vegan. But it instantly became a weekly staple, although obviously, given my inability to stick to any recipe, I make it slightly differently now.

I have also made 2 batches of rhubarb and ginger jam, again without actually using a recipe. I thought you weren't supposed to harvest rhubarb in June and doing so has been a revelation, because this late in the season the sticks are bright pink inside. This makes a jam which is a joy to spread, because it is such a glorious colour. Jam sandwiches are my new favourite snack.

It's also possible my life is a bit more joyful at the moment because I have curated my Twitter feed (I think that's the correct expression). I have unfollowed a lot of accounts, and muted almost all the others (muting means I don't see their tweets but they can contact me by direct message). This leaves me with just the retro accounts of old ads and catalogues, the Women's Art feed, Peanuts, and the World Cup of English Words, a massive undertaking which I can't abandon while we're still working through the 1,024 first round matches. Overall, it now takes me just 10 minutes to catch up at the end of the day, and means my Twitter experience is a peaceful and happy one. This does mean I'll need to start listening to the 6 o'clock news again to keep up with current affairs, but it's still a net saving of time, and much, much, better for my mental health.

This is, of course, the best time of year, because of the roses. They are looking fantastic this year. My favourite is 'my' rose, Champagne Moments, which is just beautiful:

Most evenings, I am out there deadheading in warm sunshine. It's my favourite gardening job, cutting back, done very simply. Each plant looks better when I've finished than it did when I started, it only takes about 10 minutes to do the entire garden (11 rose bushes), and the fragrance is amazing. What's not to like?

Watering, however, takes considerably longer than 10 minutes each evening. My jubilee hanging baskets have turned out pretty well:

Yes that is goose grass trailing over the side. Sigh.

It's not just the hanging baskets which need watering most days, of course, so this is a job which takes a good half hour, longer if it's the day for doing the weekly feed (which starts tonight) of all the pots. I don't mind the watering – again, the fragrance is amazing in the back garden, this time thanks to the honeysuckle, and it's always nice to be pottering around. But sometimes it requires a bit of an effort to get my butt to the butt, so to speak.

I have more energy than I did a few weeks ago though, because I am sleeping (and waking) better than I've done for years. A couple of times this week I have astonished Kit by being up first. I'm using multiple tactics:

I take my letrazole within 10 minutes of waking up
Rather than waiting until I've had a run of 3 bad nights before I take zopiclone to re-set myself, I think carefully every evening before I take my evening meds about which meds to take. And if I know I have to be up at a certain time the next day (which appears to be the main trigger now for struggling to get to sleep), I take the zopiclone. This means I've taken it once in the past fortnight. It also means that every night bar one, I've fallen asleep fairly quickly…
…. And thanks to my new wake-up alarm at 7.18, this one night didn't completely bugger everything up.
I read for an hour before trying to settle to sleep
Lavender drops on the pillow.

So it seems the only medical problems I have at the moment are (a) Something Going On in my upper right jaw – I'm hoping it's my sinuses making my teeth twinge (it usually is) but it could be an abscess, who knows? And (b) my hands.

I frequently get contact dermatitis on my hands and the main culprit is Other People's Soap (although it has in the past also been caused by cleaning products and even my mousemat – I now have an aluminium one). At some indeterminate point after I have come into contact with the trigger, I develop little monkey-pox-like blisters:

But they don't pop and weep. They harden off:

And then eventually the skin peels off.

This leaves me with hands which feel rough and sore. For a period of several weeks this year I had no contact dermatitis at all, so my hands were lovely and smooth, and I was so pleased. And then quite suddenly, they weren't.

Working out what has caused the outbreak is always a challenge. When it was my mousemat, I tracked it down as the cause because the rash was confined to the heel of my right hand. Nowadays I can usually spot if the cause was some sort of soap or handwash, because (thanks to Covid handwashing practices) the rash will include my knuckles and thumbs; and if the rash is worse in the centre of my palm, the problem probably originated with a pump-action handwash, because it's worse where the undiluted handwash landed on my hand.

I have, attached to my handbag, a little bar of soap in a waterproof zip-up carrier, and all I have to do is remember to take my handbag with me into the loo, and then I don't need to use other people's evil, scab-inducing handwash. But sometimes I'm out and about without my handbag.

So I can trace the start of the current outbreak to the day I used some washroom soap. I'm also fairly sure that the next wave of spots was triggered by my failure to wear rubber gloves when I was wiping down the kitchen surfaces – the rash was mostly confined to my right, cloth-wielding hand. But then the outbreak continued, and my painful split knuckles and thumbs suggest it's a soap. The fact that I'm still getting new spots suggests it's a soap I use frequently – which means it's one I use at home.

This bewildered me. In my own home I have at both sinks soap which I know my hands are OK with: Faith in Nature Aloe Vera.

Although, I finished the upstairs bar last week, and replaced it with an olive oil soap from the Little Soap Company.

Uh oh.

I am kicking myself. I thought I'd had this soap before and it had been OK. And I do live in fear that one day Faith in Nature will stop making their soap, or my handbag soap (which is round) will run out, so I need alternatives. But for the time being I have swapped out the Little Soap Company in favour of Faith in Nature and let's see if that does the trick.

Luckily, I don't think shaking hands has come back into vogue. I'm thankful for this because on Tuesday I'm finally travelling to London to meet my work colleagues, and I don't want people flinching from my hideously scabby, pox-ridden, medieval hands.

Travelling to London will involve getting up at 6.30 and you know what? I'm not stressing about it. Mind you, I'm generally OK with an early start when I've got a train to catch, because I reassure myself I can sleep on the train. This is a lie – modern trains are too bleepy and the seats are too uncomfortable for sleep. But I believe it when I'm only half awake.

Next weekend I'm off down south for a school reunion (a small informal one) and to catch up with people and places I haven't seen properly for years. I've booked myself into a hotel (I was staggered to find a Premier Inn where I thought the Pitch and Putt course was) so I can do this properly instead of cruising the residential streets at midnight to see my former homes, presumably alarming the local neighbourhood watch. It's getting on for 30 years since I had a real wander around my old home turf and I'm looking forward to it – especially now my foot is cured.

Cured?! Indeed. The new insert is in my trainers; but at this time of year, I like to wear sandals. The podiatrist said my primary pair of sandals – and these are proper sandals, mind, marketed as walking sandals – didn't provide enough arch support and needed a slight uplift at the front to aid walking. Several months ago I eagerly measured my feet for a pair of Birkenstocks, but their website then said they didn't make footwear for feet with my dimensions (YOU BASTARDS), so last weekend I googled arch support sandals and found a good-looking pair made by Skechers, called "Archfit". I blanched slightly at the price (plus postage) on the Skechers website so I then googled just that brand and style, and found a shoe shop in Wolverhampton selling the exact same pair £25 cheaper (including postage). This is my new #TopTip for sandal purchases.

Anyway, they arrived, and they are brilliant, and I have thrown out the old pair. I've also started wearing my Clark's sandals. And my feet – which started hurting when I started wearing the original walking sandals about a year ago – have stopped hurting. Who knew?!

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