ENGLISH MUM: never knowingly undercatered

When our new neighbours (or should that be bah-bours - see what I did there?) appeared, my first concern was obviously Bert.  As you know, he lubs a lamb and these guys, as you can see, are literally the other side of our fence.  He spends happy hours spellbound at the windows, whining quietly to himself about the unfairness of it all, but as long as we keep him on the lead and nobody leaves a door open, it’s all grand. 

 And I’m not saying they’re not entertaining: the little ones are adorable.  They’re kind of like those things you had when you were little with a spring and a sucker: you stuck it to the table then you waited…and waited…and finally it would ping up into the air.  They have enormous ping capacity and get some tremendous air too.  They have a little run around, then realise they’ve lost their Mums and go hurtling back at full speed, using them as a sort of woolly bumper to help them stop.  Their poor mothers get battered and jumped on, and that’s when they’re not breaking up little lamb fights with a quick head-butt to the ear.

We can see them out of the lounge window and I keep finding myself drawn to little pinging white lumps of fluff rather than what’s on the box.  Scarily, as well, they seem to want to watch my telly too, and come right to the fence to have a butcher’s (oops, bad choice of word).  No, my real problem is the noise.  Have you ever heard a whole field of sheep?  They’re the noisiest bloody critters in the world.  The big ones sound like they’re doing the biggest, most revoltingly textured burp imaginable, and the little ones do high pitched machine-gun versions.  Poor little #2, whose bedroom is nearest the field, couldn’t get to sleep last night for all the ‘meurgh’ and ‘beeeuuurrgghh’ going on outside.  It’s worse if you’re in the garden - it seems to set them off, so I’ve taken to going out the back door and round to the other side of the house, both to minimise Bert/lamb contact and to shut the furry buggers up.

Country life, eh?  And you lot worry about noisy hoodies and car alarms?  Pah.

So my brother, Mad Uncle A, sent me an invitation to Facebook.  I’d never bothered to even look before as knowing our spectacularly useless dial-up connection, I would have had to wait half an hour for it to load.  And anyway, Grandad and 73 had both said it was pretty rubbish.  But then when J the erstwhile lodger was here, he was on it and it seemed to work okay, so I took the plunge.

Well, the world and his - my - bloody brother’s on there.  Admittedly I have a slow connection, but I was on there for a good couple of hours, catching up with old friends, looking at photos, saying hi to people.  And blimey, even me Ma’s on Facebook - how out of touch do I feel?!!  I have to say I really enjoyed it - even though my brother said that Bertie’s ugly (the brute) -  and I might be tempted back for more.  Oh no, does that make me a nerd?

Oh, and sorry, I can’t invite you to be my Facebook friend as I’m anonymous.  And no, I’m not on there as English Mum ;0)

A:

Oops.  Sorry, foxy.  I was after a greyhound.  Honest.

 1 pack of new potatoes

1 white cabbage

1 good quality Irish black pudding

Frozen peas

Vegetable stock

Okay so I know some people are repulsed by it, but here in Ireland they do the best black pudding ever.  If you hate the idea of the stuff, do me a favour and just try it before you totally write it off.  It’s lovely stuff.  Otherwise replace it in this recipe with some fat good quality herby sausages, sliced thickly at an angle. 

So get some new potatoes on to boil in some salted water.  I cut them in quarters so they cook quickly.  In another pan, put just an inch or so of water in the bottom and add a slug of liquid stock or a vegetable stock cube (or use home made vegetable stock if you’re a real smarty pants), along with some salt and pepper.  Sling in a couple of handfuls of frozen peas and let it come up to the boil. 

When your potatoes are nearly done, slice your beautiful black pudding into big fat circles and lay them on a baking sheet under the grill.  They should only take four or five minutes to cook, depending on the size of the pud.  Shred your cabbage and add it to the boiling stock and peas with a big knob of butter, then put a lid on for five or ten minutes until it’s tender.

Serve the new potatoes, peas and cabbage in a big, gorgeous pile with the slices of pudding on top.  If you reserve the cabbagey stock, reduce it a bit and whisk in a bit of cream it makes quite a nice light sauce.  I’m not allowed to do this as Hubby doesn’t ‘do’ creamy sauces.  But if you’re in the mood, a nice runny poached egg on top definitely hits the spot.  Oh, and just an aside: this is such a surprisingly nice supper that even my picky eater, #2, woofed this down, cabbage and all.

I love my kids.  I mean, I really really love my kids.  I know I’ve said this before but I don’t care - they’re clever and funny and silly and smart and occasionally irritatingly right and often very annoying, but I still love them.  This doesn’t mean, however, that I’m particularly patient with them and tonight I nearly chewed off my own limbs with the frustration of it all.  This happened, funnily enough, after #1 had offered, very uncharacteristically, to help with something.  Let me explain: Hubby and I have got a really stupid bed.  It’s a wooden kind of sleigh bed and is very irksome as the mattress kind of slots in at one end.  This means that you have to lift a king-sized mattress horizontally and then vertically in order to get at the foot of it to put on a new bottom sheet.  So #1, seeing me struggling with the bloody thing, offered to help.  That’s where it all went wrong.  He pulled when he was meant to be pushing, dropped when he was meant to be holding on, and lifted when I wasn’t ready.  I bit my tongue, after all, he WAS helping, until we got to the duvet.  Have you ever seen a 12 year old trying to put a duvet inside its cover?  Dear sweet Laura Ashley, it’s the most bloody annoyingly teeth grindingly excruciatingly frustrating thing in the world:

Me: ‘Hold the corner of the duvet and push it up into the corner of the cover’

Him (fumbling): ‘I can’t find the corner…’

Me: ‘Get hold of the corner of the cover first then’

Him (fumbling some more): ‘I can’t, I’m holding the corner of the duvet’

Me: No, with the other hand’

Him (clutching the bed linen desperately): ‘If I let go I’ll lose the corner of the duvet though’

Me: ‘Dear god, child, what the hell are you doing?’

Him: (Feeding duvet completely underneath duvet cover and totally missing duvet cover entrance): ‘I’m feeding it through like you told me’

Me (laughing in spite of my frustration): ‘God, you’re a spastic’

Him (in the evil and sarcastic way especially invented by 12 year olds: ‘spastic am I?  Hmm, it must be genetic’.

Christ.  Next time I’ll do it myself.

Okay, so it’s guest speaker day today, as Bertie has been tagged twice - once by Grandad’s lubly doggie Sandy and once by Hails’ cat, er, Kat.  Yes, I know this is bonkers, but what can I do?  I’m the taggee.  So the general gist is thus: share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.  Well, Bert being the quirkmonster extraordinaire, this should be a breeze.  I’ll hand you over to the Bertmeister:

I like lambs.  I’d like a lamb of my own.  I only want to lick it, but for some reason nobody will let me have one.  Instead, I console myself by rushing from one window to the other, watching the lambs springing about and drooling on the windowsill.  People are cruel.

There’s a common misconception that greyhounds rush around all day and do important greyhound stuff like running and chasing things.  Actually, we like to sleep, occasionally breaking off our sleep to eat, poo or have a cuddle.  If we really must go for a walk we’ll get really excited, rush along for the first 100 yards, decide we’ve had enough and sulk for the rest of the walk so we have to be pulled along.  If it’s raining we just sit down and wish we were somewhere else.

Greyhounds like stuff.  And lambs, did I mention lambs?  Oh, okay.  We like to create a little nest and surround ourself with all our stuff .  When I have a little me-time I like to womble around taking shoes and teddies and dishcloths and J-the-sometimes-lodger’s empty cigarette packets and knickers and dusters and, well, just stuff, into my bed.  It makes me feel safe.  When my family comes home they think it’s really good fun to  take all my nesting stuff and hide it away so it’s more fun for me to find next time.  Sometimes they hide things especially to keep me occupied while they’re out - like the time they hid chocolates high up on this big sparkly tree in the lounge.  That took a bit of figuring out. 

I’m a bit bony so I need something very comfy to sleep on.  I’ve found that children are generally quite warm and comfy.  If there are no children to sleep on, an adult will do, or failing that a sofa.  Sometimes they spread themselves out on the sofas so there’s no room but I either just hop on and bend myself into the available space (see photo) or I have to go and sit on this squashy thing on the floor which is so not cool.

Some might say that greyhounds are the supermodels of the canine world.  We’re sleek, tall, beautiful and we like salad and carrots and stuff.  Not that I’m a snob or anything but you don’t often see a labrador begging for carrot peelings, now, do you? Mind you, I’m fond of a bourbon or ten too.  I hate to show off, but it’s my metabolism you see, I can eat anything and not get fat.  Jealous?

Finally, a little secret.  I’ve got this beautiful blue girlfriend.  She hangs around outside when the humans are in bed and blows kisses at me through the window.  One day I’m going to ask her to marry me and we’ll have blue fawn puppies and live happily ever after…pardon?  What do you mean I’ve got no…. aaarrrggghhhh! Where did they go?!

Ladies and gents I give you Bert.  Round of applause, please.  Oh, and can I just add…blimey, I added a picture!  It’s my first one - isn’t it cute?  Look at its little toes…

 OOps, nearly forgot: I’m supposed to tag someone else.  Okay, so, this is for Isit’s gorgeous and slightly evil Kitty and Don’t Bug Me’s beautiful fluffers, Willow and Tess.  Six non-important things/habits/quirks please kittycats.  Bertie sends licks.  Big, bitey ones heh.

So yesterday we finally got the call we’d been waiting for from the terminally unhelpful Dog-Warden-who-doesn’t-actually-do-anything: ‘Still lost yer dog?’ 

‘Well, yes, seeing as it’s terrified of humans, evades any form of capture including perching freezing behind the garage door until 3am and I’ve absolutely no way of catching it.  Oh, and the fact that our dog warden’s about as useless as a chocolate teapot’ (no, of course I didn’t really, but crikey it was tempting).

‘I’ve got a trap’, says he, ‘but you’ll have to come and get it - it’s about the size of an office desk’. 

An office bloody desk?   An enormous sodding huge office desk?  What does he think I drive?  A forklift?  Anyhoo, as it turned out my outrageously pleasant and helpful neighbours (‘lost a hungry dog amongst our sheep that are all in lamb?  Pah, no problem!’) put their heads together and before you could say ‘mint sauce’, a car appeared at the bottom of the drive complete with a friendly driver and a trailer.  Blimey, they’re good.

So it’s in the garden, baited with a pork chop (I know, I’m so desperate I gave up someone’s dinner - no of course it wasn’t mine) and one of those gross, hairy pig’s ear chews that Bertie likes.  Over dinner, we started a book as to what the trap will contain tomorrow morning.  It currently reads something like this:

Hubby: a dog, but not our dog (oh, and if we catch it within 2 days he’ll take us all out to dinner).

#1: a fox

#2: a very cross cat

Me: The dog (ever the optimist).

Anyone else care to join?

Welcome to my new humble abode.  What do you reckon, then?  Pretty snazzy huh??

 I am indebted to the wonderful Grandad for all his hard work, for answering all my ridiculous questions, and for allowing me to have a furry, zebra-striped header.  Remember to change your links and bookmarks to my new site.  Oh, and all your old comments are still here somewhere - just a little technical hitch.  Happy days.

So I finally managed to slot in a visit to Gorgeous G, my yummy hairdresser. Someone fabulous and glamorous once told me that a girl should never allow anyone except a man to cut her hair, and even though I can’t remember who it was (I do remember that they were fantastically well groomed), I’ve stuck by that rule ever since. Gorgeous G is a find. Not only is he friendly, chatty and heterosexual (okay, I suppose that doesn’t really matter, but the whole point is to find someone who will make you look attractive, and if their idea of attractive is Brad Pitt, well, frankly you’re in trouble), he’s also pleasingly easy on the eye. Digressing. So I plonked myself down in the chair, G gave me a quick once over, and the trouble began.

G (shakes head and does the sucking air through teeth thing that plumbers do when your boiler’s going to cost a fortune): ‘Ohhh dear. You’re looking a bit…’
Me: ‘A bit….what?’
G: ‘Well, a bit dull and washed out, and your hair is frazzled’
Me: ‘Frazzled. Okay, that’s not a technical term for fantastic, then?’
G: ‘Er, no. It’s a technical term for: step away from the straighteners, girl’*

Ah. So, basically his solution was a radical one: brown. Now I’ve no objection, in principal, to brown hair. There are plenty of beautiful brunettes in the world, but I came into the world blonde, and even though I’ve darkened over the years, my comfort zone is distinctly blonde-flavoured. Reader, I panicked. I took some persuading, but G explained, in his best ‘I’m the expert and therefore I know best’ voice, that it was either brown or a radical few inches off the length and I look like a boy with short hair. I took some persuading, but after promising faithfully that it would restore some much-needed shine to my over processed locks, I gave in. Two hours later and several Euro lighter, I emerged, like an..erm..hairy butterfly, a glossy brunette. ‘There’, said G, somewhat unconvincingly, ‘it’s lovely’, before quickly adding ‘look, try and live with it and if you really hate it I’ll fix it on Monday’.

So I went home, looking in the rear-view mirror all the way at the shadowy, serious stranger driving my car. When I got in, I did the washing up, staring again at the dark and sombre stranger standing at my sink. I picked the children up from school (wary glances were shot in my direction, but nothing was actually said out loud - I think it was my trembling bottom lip that did it). And finally I phoned Hubby: ‘I hate myself’, I said, ‘I’m dowdy and boring and, well, brown. I haven’t laughed once since I was brown. I can’t even think of anything funny to write on the blog. It’s not me. I’m happy and fun and, well, blonde’. But men don’t GET stuff about hair. They don’t see how important it is. And his reassurances that ‘I bet it’s lovely, and you’ll get used to it’ somehow didn’t hit the spot. This called for the BF. I reached for the pink batphone:

Me: ‘I’ve gone brown’
J: ‘No!’
Me: ‘Yeah’
J: ‘You hate it don’t you’
Me: ‘Yup’
J: ‘Get thee back to the hairdressers. There’s only room for one brunette in this friendship, and that slot’s taken. Get blonde and buy a good treatment. End of.’

So that’s it then. I’ll be loitering outside the hairdresser’s at 9am tomorrow morning, and will pester G like a deranged thing until he promises to restore my sunshiny, happy blondeness and banish this brown forever. Then I’ll make you laugh again. Promise.

*Okay, so that’s not exactly how the conversation went, but you get the picture.

We were trudging around the big field this morning, then; Bert with his fur-lined waterproof coat on (it’s manly, honest), and me with seventeen layers, including thermals, t-shirts, fleeces and two jackets. The snow was coming straight at us as we walked down the slope and the wind was freezing my eyelashes to my very pink cheeks.

Bert started to pull. Usually this is because he’s stopped to have a poo and I haven’t noticed, but this time he was looking up towards Lily The Lovely Lamb Lady’s farm. We were introduced to Lily last week when the little blue greyhound went missing. It was on her land where Hubby hurled himself out of the car at our little escapee, sliding neatly off her rump and landing in a big huffy heap. Lily took pity on us and showed us round all the new lambs that they were feeding by hand, and the ready-to-pop lambs in the field closest to the farmhouse. It was that particular field that was drawing Bert’s attention. Lily The Lovely Lamb Lady’s very fat, pregnant lambs were being chased about their field by a very pingy black dot, moving a whole lot faster than you would expect a heavily pregnant mother to move. I know my eyes are bad but it didn’t look good. Especially when, on closer inspection, the dot was definitely dog shaped. I phoned Hubby on the pink batphone:

Me (slurring through frozen blue mouth): ‘I’m in the field behind the house! I just looked up and there’s a black dog chasing the ewes in Lily the Lovely Lamb Lady’s field!’

Hubby: ‘What?’

Me: ‘There’s a f*cking dog chasing Lily’s sheep!!’

Hubby: ‘Oh shit. Is it ours?’

Me: ‘No, it looks furry’

Hubby: ‘Thank Christ. Do you know her number?’

Me: ‘No, but D next door’s brother in law knows her’

Hubby: ‘I’ll get on the case’

So, while Hubby tried to warn Lily, like the Michelin man in a bad slow-mo movie clip, I ran, dragging a very miffed Bertie, back to the house, hurled myself into the jeep and took off as fast as I could (it’s difficult to drive in wellies, especially with seventeen layers of clothing and frozen extremities) off to Lily’s farm. As I drove up the farm track, the dog, a bedraggled black collie-looking thing, came running towards me. Oh. I hadn’t expected that. I stopped, jumped out, and tried to entice it towards me. It eyed me warily but didn’t come any closer. Instead I opened the back of the jeep and whistled. Amazingly, it hopped in. Slamming the door, I screeched up to the farmhouse to meet a worried-looking Lily at the gate.

Luckily, the sheep weren’t as heavily pregnant as I thought, in fact, that was the ‘kind of possibly maybe could be pregnant’ field, which was good. Having checked her beasties were all well, we retired into the farmhouse for a cup of tea and a mull over what to do with our hairy hostage, now sitting guiltily in the back of the jeep (it’s the Cavan way - a cuppa and a chat can solve any crisis - maybe we should suggest it to NATO as a new strategy).

So the upshot of this very exciting episode was that we drove around a few of the farms, showing off our little furry prisoner, and when nobody recognised him, we drove him to The Dog Lady, who everyone knows takes in dogs, and if someone’s missing a dog, they’re bound to visit. While we were there, we oohed and ahhed at her clutch of rescue puppies (7!, all needing a new home), and were happily chatting when Lily the Lovely Lamb Lady suddenly remembered that she’d got a ham joint boiling on the stove. Back we went to the farm to drop Lily off to her lambs and her ham joint, and I drove back, mulling over the fact that I had single handedly managed to catch a stray dog in about five seconds, but that my own runaway still evades capture over two weeks later.