So the lovely people at RTÉ have asked me to tell you all about their new competition.   They’re looking for amateur cooks with a great recipe or signature dish that they think could make it big in the marketplace.  The more unique or innovative the idea the better.

So if you’ve invented something fahbilis, then click on http://www.rte.ie/tv/recipeforsuccess/ for more information and an application form.  Closing date for applications is 26th September so get cracking!  Oh, and if you win, remember your mates, eh?

So having a leggy blonde model in the house would, you would think, be a bit distracting for Hubby.  But this one does have breath-like-dead-people and a nasty habit of sitting up close to you on the sofa whilst spending unfeasibly amounts of time licking his bits.  Enough said.

Anyhoo, the gorgeous, wondrous, talented, fabulousness that is Coastal Aussie sent me a pressie.  I know!  All the way from Austramalalia!  The parcel was so gorgeous - all covered in sparkly stars and pretty things - that the postie actually loitered in the doorway until I opened it.  And darned jealous he was too.

And so, after a very unseemly bit of ‘handbags’ in which both the children laid claim to my present and tried to wrestle it off me (I won - I’m surprisingly adept at the half nelson) I legged it to my office to try on my prize.  And dashed snazzy it is too.  I shall be wearing it with pride on future walkies down the boat road, feeling very ’snowboardy/surfer chick’ kind of thing.

To preserve my anonymity, Bert ‘agreed’ to model the hat and I think you’ll agree, it’s a thing of beauty.  The hat, not the dog.  Although I suppose he’s not bad either.

Can I just add that our somewhat reluctant model, the beautiful Bert, sulked so dramatically during our photoshoot, that I nearly lost all bladder control.  If the photo is a little dodgy it’s because after the fifty seventh attempt to persuade him not to pull the hat off with his paws I was shaking so hard with laughter that I couldn’t keep the camera level.  He’s still not talking to me.

Sorry Bert.

So what’s your favourite sloppy one, then?  What would you like your Hubby (or bride, natch - we’re not sexist here at English Towers) to whirl you around the dance floor to?  Or if you’re already married, what was your ‘first dance’ song?  I think I’d probably favour this beautiful one from the Cranberries, or maybe ‘If you’re not the one’ by Daniel Bedingfield.

I know.  I’m a romantic sap.

So our anniversary, then.  I knew something was afoot as I told you yesterday when the boys were making vague mutterings about Daddy’s present being so much better than mine.  And yes, okay, he won.

For this to make any sense to you, you’ll need a bit of background information.  When Hubby and I got together, I’d already been married (a short-lived thing in my teens).  My poor parents paid an extortionate amount of money for my first wedding, a fairytale church affair - we’re talking Laura Ashley wedding and bridesmaid dresses (well, it was the 80s - we had white stilettos too har de har!), a fantastic reception, the whole works - only to see it crash and burn in an embarrassingly short amount of time.  With this fact still very much in mind, and being a teensy bit aware of the fact that I was already pregnant with #1, Hubby and I decided to just sneak off quietly to the registry office and do the deed.  No parents, no friends, no beautiful wedding dress, no cake, no reception, and, frankly, no money.  I had a ring, but it cost us £40 and was so thin it wore down to evil sharpness over the years and I’d stopped wearing it.

Over the years we’ve talked about it and really can’t work out why we didn’t at least have a party, and have often thought that we might like to do it all over again, but properly this time.  Imagine my surprise, then, when after I’d handed over the obligatory bottle of aftershave, Hubby produced a teeny (the best kind), gold-wrapped box and I unwapped it to discover a brand new, beautifully chunky wedding ring.  The conversation goes a little like this (tissues out, people):

Me: Wow!  A new wedding ring.  Thanks, I love it!

Hubby then takes my hand and grows suspiciously serious.  #2, who is STILL not back at school, is suddenly very interested in the conversation:

Me: What?

Hubby: Would you marry me again properly? 

Me: Heh.

Hubby: Well?  Is that yes or no?

Me: Oh sorry I thought you were joking.

Hubby: Well, no actually.  Let’s get married.  This time next year, on our fifteenth anniversary.  Properly.  A blessing, a reception, a party… the works.

Me: Yay!  Partay!  Oops, I mean, yes of course

[Insert big hug here]

So there you have it.  Blimey, we’re getting married.

So I’ve had ups and downs with my first year of vegetable patch ownership.  For example, the sweet peas went completely mental but didn’t give me a single bloody flower, the pumpkins, coriander and basil all died (too cold? we didn’t really have any sunshine) and the cucumber covered the whole plot in huge leaves and spidery tentrils, but no cucumbers (well how was I to know it was a climber).  On the upside, there are two or three courgettes ready to go, the dwarf french beans have given us a sizeable crop; the fennel, parsley, mint and thyme are all huge and the carrots are surviving .  In the greenhouse, the tomatoes have been fruiting like wild things, but all the fruit is green and the weather is definitely on the turn here (our morning walk was both rainy AND cold - Bert was not impressed).  The aubergine has a tiny fruit but again it might all be too late.

The rhubarb absolutely excelled itself, growing to triffid-like proportions while I scoured local garden centres for one of those terracotta things to ‘force it’.  My kitchen gardening guru, Mr Titchmarsh, says that by the end of summer, the rhubarb will be too tough to eat, but ours has been amazing.  Sunday, then, saw us tucking into the biggest, juiciest steaks ever, complete with home grown french beans, garlic-roasted butternut squash and some very pleasant home made potato wedges  (four or five medium sized potatoes, cut in half, then into four wedges lengthways, blanched in boiling salted water for ten minutes, then tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and baked in a 200 degree oven until golden brown and crispy), followed by a huge rhubarb crumble with cream.

For the crumble, then:

Four or five big fat stems of rhubarb

Big splosh of apple juice or water (say 100ml?)

Sugar for sprinkling

6 oz plain flour

Generous teaspoon ground ginger

4 oz butter

4 oz sugar

1 oz porridge oats

Handful of sliced almonds

So preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  I’ve been poaching my rhubarb first as I’ve been freezing some of it, so weigh out your ingredients, then, and wash the rhubarb, chopping into inch-long chunks.  Pop them in a saucepan with your splosh of apple juice and a generous amount of sugar (to taste, but remember it’s sour!).  Let the rhubarb poach gently with a lid on until it’s just tender but not mushy.  Mine took about ten minutes. 

Meanwhile, rub your butter and flour together (not too fine - a lumpy texture is better), then stir in your ginger, sugar and porridge oats.  Spoon the rhubarb into an oven-proof dish, cover it with the crumble mixture and finally, sprinkle over the sliced almonds.  All you’re doing is cooking the top so it should only take about 15 minutes to come out all golden and bubbling. 

There you have it, then: good, fresh food, quickly prepared and happily scoffed.  I had the leftovers with yoghurt for breakfast then next day too.  Mr Atkins wouldn’t like it but hey, them’s the breaks.

So it’s all change here at English Towers, then.  September brings that most alien of sounds… the bloody alarm clock, startling me out of bed at 7am whilst simultaneously alerting Bert to the possibility that breakfast-providing people might be conscious.  This starts the pacing, the head-butting of our bedroom door and the pathetic whining - more efficient than any alarm clock to stop you returning to your pit.  Yes, I know, back to the real world and all that, but when you’ve had nearly three months off it’s a shock, I can tell you.  Anyhoo, #1’s new school (the one containing all the bigger boys) is a whopping 27 miles away, and he and his mate, J, (you know, his Dad C’s got the boat upon which we had such a lovely day) need to get down to The Cross (that’s the Dublin Road crossroads to you English people) to catch the Bus Eireann at 8.06am precisely.  I know it’s 8.06am as yesterday I got there at 8.05am just as it pulled up: 

‘But wait!‘,  I cried, ‘C isn’t here with J yet - can  you wait two seconds?’  ‘Nope‘, came the self-important reply, even as he was pushing the button to shut the door in my face, ‘my official time is 8.06am and I must depart’.

Oh, I thought, that’s a pisser, especially as the clock in my car only just clicked to 8.06am as I got back in, but then I headed C off at The Cross and he went hurtling after the bus like a Galway version of Jensen Button and managed to catch the bus up and deposit his child.  This morning, then, we were all huddled at the bus stop bright and early at 8.00am.  No way we were going to let the same thing happen again.  at 8.10am we were a bit worried that we might actually have missed him after all, at 8.20am, we were anxiously craning our necks towards Dublin, and at 8.30am, C decided to put the kids in the car and drive them to school himself, lest they didn’t make the journey by 9am.

A bit put out, especially after Mr Jobsworth wouldn’t even wait half a second yesterday, I decided to call the bus station.  Now I don’t know if Bus Eireann’s interview questions include: ‘ do you faithfully promise to not give a shit about our customers’, ‘can you answer the phone in a caveman-type manner that sounds a bit like ‘ugh’ and ‘can you do your best to sound half-arsed and completely ignorant’, but if so, this one passed with flying colours:

Bus Eireann Genius: ‘Ugh’

Me: ‘Er, hello?  Is that the bus station?’

Genius: ‘Ugh’

Me: ‘I’m calling about the Dublin Bus.  It didn’t seem to turn up this morning’

Genius: ‘Hmph traffic… meh nothin’ we can do… ugh out of my hands mumble’

Me: ‘So is this a regular occurrence?  In future is there any way we can find out if he left early or is delayed?  A phone number maybe?’

Genius: ‘Ugh… sniff… traffic… no guarantee… harumph’

Me: ‘Oh, okay then, thanks so much for your time and for making your position so clear’

Genius: ‘Meh’.

So okay, at least I know where I stand: Bus Eireann don’t give a sod if my child gets to school on time, there appears to be no way to judge whether the driver has arrived half a millisecond early and rocketed off to the next stop before we’ve arrived, or whether he’s been caught in traffic and yet to turn up.  Well you know me, I’ve rifled off a strongly worded email, which will no doubt make absolutely no difference and whether my child makes it to school or not will continue to be a total lottery.  Ah, rural life eh?  And you thought it was all sheep and green pastures…

Righto, then.  Our book for September: the most votes went to Rebecca’s Tale by Sally Beauman.  Available from Play.com used from £2.49/€4.48 with free delivery, on Amazon.co.uk for £5.99 and Amazon.com for $7.99.  Easons (reputable Irish bookshop) are stocking it at €11.10.  There’s also tons on Ebay if you fancy trying your hand at bidding.  Amazon describes it as an ‘ambitious sequel to Daphne du Maurier’s much-loved ‘Rebecca’ with reviews ranging from ‘gripping’ to ‘arrogant’.  The original was one of my favourite books, so let’s hope Beauman can do it justice.

As usual, new members are very welcome.  We’ll regroup at the end of September to chew the cud, touch base, think outside the box, and other such meaningless statements.  Off you trot, then.

So Hubby and D-next-door play 6-a-side soccer on a Thursday (well, sometimes it’s 5-a-side, or 7, depending on who can be arsed).  They come home absolutely shattered, pouring with sweat, have a quick shower and bugger off to the pub where they consume large amounts of beer.  I can’t help myself; I have to question how healthy this pastime actually is.  I, on the other hand, don’t bother with the exercise or the working up of a sweat - I just go straight into the vino.  We have a chat and decide that we’re probably not the healthiest of families.

The thing is, though, dear reader, I generally don’t think we do too badly.  We have good, freshly prepared food, eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, we exercise…  Well, I walk the dog every day and Hubby has a gym in the garage (I don’t go in since my run-in (hah) with the evil running machine that glares at me when I go to put stuff in the tumble dryer.  It made me dry-heave after ten minutes then spat me onto the floor).  But yes, I do have a serious baking addiction and a fondness for a glass of wine or seven.  Where do you draw the line?  I think I’m quite healthy - I’m a size 12, which is probably about right for my 5′7″ frame.  I have been this size for my whole adult life.  Yes, I have ‘tits and ass’ (sorry mother), but I like them, I’m fond of them and I don’t want them to disappear. 

But (or should that be butt), equally, I’ve noticed the curve of my tummy being rather more pronounced recently, and as much as I love curves, I wouldn’t want them to be lost under rolls of flab either.  I want to continue to be healthy, but to curb some of my more extreme habits (the baking of 6 ginger cakes in one day because I couldn’t quite get it sticky enough being one of them).  

I absolutely and utterly will not do diets.  I won’t have the D word even mentioned in my house.  I think denial equals disaster.  Healthy eating is one thing, but denying yourself fruit on the Atkins diet because it contains hidden sugar is just plain mental and unhealthy and I won’t countenance it.  We have a long chat, and decide on the following rules for English Towers:

• We will try to have a healthy breakfast (damn, there goes the enormous slice of leftover ginger cake and the big fat hot chocolate, then)
• We will cut down on the amount of refined food and junk that we eat.  Damn you, Ronald McDonald.
• We will try to avoid eating big stodgy meals after 6pm (scientific studies - not that pillock Atkins - have proven that you don’t need huge amounts of carbs at night when you’re going to just sit around and not burn them off).
• We will (double gulp) cut down on our alcohol intake.  Initially we’ll try to just drink alcohol at weekends.
• We will do all this without making a big fuss and involving our children in ‘ooh, I can’t possibly eat that’ type conversations.

There.  I’ve said it.  And now I’ve told you all it will have to become law or I’ll look really stupid.  And I’ve just bought 24 bottles of Jacob’s Creek up at Tesco’s in Enniskillen too.  Damn.

So this is weird, then.  I can’t comment on my own blog.  I’ve tried everything - logging out, using a different email address, even pretending to be someone else, but no, the result’s the same.  It starts grinding, then it hangs, then it says ‘internet explorer cannot display this web-page’.  And what’s worse, my hairy web-guru, Grandad, has gone on his holliers and won’t be back for ages.  So you’ll just have to do without my sparkling repartee until this glitch is fixed.  Sorry and all that.

In other news, #1 has started at his new school.  We found ourselves sitting in the car, ten minutes early yesterday.  He had his enormous blazer on (black, two sizes too big - well, you’ve got to get a bit of wear out of it when they’re 100 quid a pop), new black school shoes, white shirt, grey jumper (with crest - bought from school supplier at an extortionate price) and his new tie.  The tie caused a few problems, actually.  Wanting to be ready and prepared on his first day, #1 had set his alarm for about 3am and when I finally dragged myself out of my pit at 7, he was washed, scrubbed, armpit-sprayed, hair-flattened, and very, very cross.  It’s the tie, you see?  He’s never had one before and had managed to get it into a rare ol’ knot around his neck.  ‘Give it here’, says I, ‘I wore a tie for years’ before making an even bigger mess of it (I think they make ties differently these days).  Eventually, not wanting him to start on his first day with something akin to a large, stripey pussy-bow tied around his neck, we had to brace ourselves and awake the monster in order for him to show his offspring how to tie a decent knot, before skulking off back to his bed muttering about being woken so early.

So there we were, tie in position, lunch in schoolbag (pasta salad with tomato, mozzarella and ham, banana, frozen yoghurt and a cake, if you must know), waiting outside the school.  #1 was a bit nervous and making small involuntary squeaky noises.  A car pulled up next to us and a child the size of a small building got out.  As the man-mountain unfolded himself from the car, we both craned our necks to check him out - yup, he had school uniform on - and I swear there was a hint of stubble there too.  The squeaking got worse.  ’Uh oh’, said #1, ‘bigger boys’.  Poor chap, when you’ve had a whole year being the oldest, suddenly mixing with 18/19 year olds in the same school is going to come as a bit of a shock.

Still, we met the headmaster, #1 got a check on the squeaking, and I watched him walk away down a corridor for his first foray into secondary education.  I got to the front door at the same time as the headmaster’s wife: ‘don’t worry’, she said confidently as I wiped away a stray tear, ‘it’s always worse for the parents’.

Yes laydees and gennelmen, once again it’s time for the smalls to have new toothbrushes.  This is obviously a bonus as far as Bert’s concerned as he gets to eat the old ones.  What?  They taste lubly.