Tots and tottering

 Completely unintentionally, I'm becoming fond of the tortoises.  I read, the other day, that they can eat lilac - by good fortune, the lilac was just coming into flower at the time.  They like scents and flowers - I've got some lovely, scented roses and occasionally pick a handful of petals that are just about to drop, to scatter in their run.  I was going to cut a few pieces of lilac for the house, so took off a couple of sprigs and took to the Tots.  Fyodor was just munching on a globe artichoke leaf,  Of course, he has to chop through it at the bottom, beaver-style, so the whole leaf is destroyed, but I can't begrudge it.  So he was not especially impressed by the lilac.  His smaller brother was thrilled, though and I took a little video of him chomping happily.  Today, I picked them sensible greens - deadnettle mostly - and left it for them and later went to find dandelions.  Tortoises love dandelions.  I also picked some plantain, lilac and ground elder, plus a few leaves of sedum and houseleek.  Leo was just inside the door of the run, so I went to him first.  He's not very bold and drew his head in with a hiss each time I put food in front of him, though he immediately poked it in again.  They don't actually hiss, it's the sound of air being squeezed, rather like a foot-fart (I trust everyone knows the expression?).  I looked round.  Fyodor was positively scampering towards me, eyes fixed on the dandelions.  He covered a couple of metres in seconds.  Such an expression of bliss as he tucked in.

I have no wish to become emotionally attached to tortoises.  But at least they're likely to outlive me, which my other pets may well not.  I mean, they won't unless I die in the relatively near future.  Do I feel lucky, punk?  I don't even know what that means, in this context.  

In a moment of good cheer, a couple of months ago, I bought a small lemon tree - actually, a bush - in a pot.  It was covered in flowers and I love the scent of lemon flowers.  Apparently, it's self-pollinating.  I kept in on the kitchen windowsill to start with and then moved it to the study window.  To my surprise, quite a number of lemons have set and are now about half an inch long (I mix imperial and metric measures and hardly notice doing so).  It seems I need to look up how to care for them.  It's now reached the stage where I'll feel mean if they shrivel and drop off.  I don't like to think of myself as sentimental about a lemon plant.  I have a cactus that the Sage rescued from a house which his firm had for sale, some 60 years ago and he gave it to his (probably dismayed) mother.  She dutifully kept it and I inherited it.  I've done my best to kill the wretched thing.  I left it outdoors all last winter.  It seems to be fine.  I have to respect it.  I did repot it last year, because its pot had been broken for the last decade or two - I'd avoided doing so because its spines are vicious and barbed.  But finally, armed with thick towels and leather gloves, I did the deed and, unfortunately, it seems to have a new lease of life.  I'm not even going to consider any kind of a metaphor.

Z rambles and posts this two days late

 I didn't use an alarm clock for some years, unless I needed to.  With a depressingly irregular sleep pattern, I thought it was better to sleep as much as I could, as I was often awake for several hours in the night and then nodded off just as it wasn't too early to get up.  Eventually, it occurred to me that it was better to train myself by getting up at the same time and I've had my phone alarm for 7.15am ever since.  I don't leap straight out of bed as it whacks my blood pressure right down and I am liable to faint, so I check the news, do puzzles and so on for a while before getting up.  

This morning, after switching off the alarm, I dozed for a few minutes more.  Checked the time - 7.30.  That was fine.  As long as I was downstairs, dressed, by 8, I could spend the morning doing a job I'd planned.  Ten minutes later, I looked again - 8.43.  What?  Obviously, I'd dozed for more than a few minutes, but I thought I'd looked on the digital display of my phone, not the clock face of my watch.  It occurs to me that I dreamt I was checking the time.  Oh well.  There's always tomorrow.

Wink and I are going out to lunch.  I'm not sure how I've been drawn into this, though I'm sure it'll be pleasant.  While I was away last year, she re-engaged with someone we were at school with, though in age she's between us and neither of us really knew her.  There's a group of them who meet for lunch about once a month, but no one is the same age as either of us, so the people they talk about are little more than names to us.  Neither do we have particularly enthusiastic memories of school. Wink was not very happy there and, though I wasn't unhappy, I wasn't sorry to leave.  The teaching wasn't a very high standard overall and we were bright, we should have been stretched more.

I have no idea why we were not sent to a better school. I asked my mother and she was defensive.  She said I should have told her it wasn't good.  I asked how I was supposed to know, since it was the only school I'd been to?  She had no answer.  She did know and so did my father.  I said, not unkindly - though I see that it probably sounded unkind - that we'd have gone to a good school if we were boys, ours mattered less.  She was furious and denied it, but it was true.  The odd thing was, there was an excellent girls' school, less than half an hour away and it took nearly that to get through the traffic to ours.  We could have gone as day girls, weekly boarders or full boarders.  My parents could well have afforded it, but they just didn't bother.  Such a pity.  

The local grammar school was also superb, but it would have been very odd for us to go to a state school.  It is impossible for people who do not have an understanding for and acceptance of social history.  It's too easy to judge the past, especially the relatively recent past, by present rules.  If you go back far enough, it becomes somewhat easier.  Simply, if you could afford to pay, it was tacky to take it for free.  Likewise, private medicine.  In those days, it made little difference in time, but you didn't bother NHS funds if you could afford to pay - it did mean a private room,  but everything else was the same.  This is simply an explanation, not a justification or a claim that things shouldn't have changed.  Different times.  

Anyway, I had a really poor education and I wish I hadn't.  

Blog Party 2026, 20th June

 The only date in June that works out for everyone who's replied is the 20th, so that's what I'm going with.  As ever, you are very welcome to stay overnight - or more than one night if you want to make a nice break in Norfolk.  Absolutely open house.

Blue Witch asked if the kitchen ever did get finished.  Yes, it did.  I probably won't bother to put up photos.  The whole ordeal has crushed me.  But, if it had not been for the awful process, I'd be pleased with it.  Never again - and if I were in the situation that I needed a new kitchen, never that branch of that company - nor the company, though that may not be entirely fair.

Anyway, things are okay at the Zedery.  The tortoises are cheerful, Wince put up an extension to the chicken run, because there are so many foxes about in the daytime that I can't let the bantams out, but they have fresh grass to peck, the outdoor cats are thriving and, of course, Eloise cat is too.  Wink has just had another birthday and is looking cheerful about it.  I unexpectedly lost a pound in weight and am eating cheese and biscuits to celebrate.  I won't weigh myself tomorrow...

But, back to the blog party.  Looking forward to seeing friends.  Love from Zxx.

Z is in disgrace and takes it quite well

 I was firm about the 'no' and my friend was not pleased.  She's told everyone I won't help her at all, which is not the case.  I simply baulked at taking full responsibility, I'd do the work but a solicitor would have to submit the forms.   I've explained that more than once.  I wasn't well enough to take her to the dentist - apart from anything else, I didn't want to pass on my very nasty cold - but she had decided to cancel the appointment anyway.  So I haven't seen her for several weeks, phoned a week ago to offer to see her last Friday and got the brush off.  I suspect she thinks she's punishing me.  Bless her heart (yes, that's sarcasm) I really have been very busy all this week and couldn't have gone over anyway, not that I'd said that, but said I'd come whenever she wanted.  She hasn't phoned.  

Honestly, I don't mind what I do and I don't begrudge any time spent with her, but some weeks it's taken up 4 half days, so several completely free weeks (even though I spent a good deal of two of them in bed) have made life easier.  I'm not easy to fall out with, on the whole but, once I do finally stand firm, I don't give in.  

Anyway, since last writing here, I've been quite unwell and still have a cough, have been to London twice and have had all the family over to lunch again, but not all at the same time.  Young Gus had a tooth out last week, in preparation for having braces fitted so, at his mother's suggestion, I made a cheese soufflé for lunch on Saturday.  He and his sister (she was at her Saturday job) are both inordinately fond of my cheese soufflé.  Few people make them because chefs give the impression that they're difficult.  They are actually very easy, but not all that suitable for a restaurant as the diners have to wait for the soufflé, not the other way round.  The pre-cooked and reheated ones (which can be very good, but I've never made one myself) are far better for a professional kitchen.  After that, I made Eton Mess, which Gus has adored since babyhood.  There was some left over, which I sent home with them and Zerlina sent me an appreciative message later, since she had been given it in compensation for missing the soufflé.  I tried, by the way, to write the final word of the last sentence without stopping to put in the accent, hoping for an autocorrect.  It offered me shuffle.

It's only 9pm but I'm very tempted to retreat upstairs with a book.  I didn't get much sleep last night.  I'd just nodded off when I was woken by a crash from downstairs.  The cat had demanded my sister come and let her out of the front door and, in the dark, Wink knocked something over.  Of course, then I couldn't sleep again for several hours.  I spoil that cat, but Wink spoils her rather more.  I've suggested that, another time, she just pick her up and put her outside - she has a cat flap and would not be shut out.  She does it because she gets away with it - it's adorable on both sides, but not when I have a wakeful night.

Blog party will be the 3rd Saturday in June.  That will merit a post to itself, hopefully tomorrow, if I get around to it after a morning out, lunch in Norwich and then a visit to the hygienist.  I used to take all this on the chin, now it tires me out!  Old age has struck at the Zedery, darlings.

Z says no

 Sunday was lovely, the children all had fun together and all the adults get on very well.  Hadrian's older brother and sister are away at university and so he and Ro's two played together much more than usual.  Al is brilliant with small children and he and Perdita coloured in together and made a game of that too.  Al always was great with children, even when he was a child himself.  He was 8 when his brother was born and they were inseparable for years.  I always knew both he and Ro would be good parents.  

It was Squiffany's 21st birthday on Friday.  Unbelievable, of course it is.  She passed her driving test two days before that, so much celebrating.  I hope I'll see her during the Easter break.  

I'm gradually doing a little admin, having taken the first few rungs of one financial ladder this morning.  I have no excuse not to write a follow-up email now, which is the reason I'm blogging instead.  Is it less reprehensible if I admit it?  Probably not.  I will do it today, though.  It'll only take ten minutes and my excuse is that I've developed a sore throat and a cough overnight.  No idea where that came from, I rarely catch anything and I haven't knowingly been with anyone with a cold.  I hope I'll be over it by Thursday, as that's when I'm taking my friend to the dentist and I don't want to have to tell her to find someone else.  She will make a big thing of it.  She's being hard work at the minute and, though I sympathise with her, there's a limit to how much I can cope with and I had to draw a line the other day.  It's a fairly complicated situation regarding property abroad and I'm not willing to do all the paperwork.  I said, if it were my affairs, I'd give it to the solicitor to do and, failing her willingness to do that, I think her daughter should.  It's not necessarily that I can't, but that I don't need more stress.  She's pretty cross with me, but I'm not budging on this one.  

PS - I have written the email.  And sent it.

Food, Zedulous food

 More food.  Some of the family will come for lunch tomorrow.  I don't often buy meat, though I eat it, but I've decided to cook the first Sunday roast of the year - pork in this instance, followed by Queen of Puddings, which is Dilly's favourite and has the advantage of using up a glut of eggs, plus a rhubarb crumble with home-grown rhubarb.  

Walking to the butcher's, I passed the fishmonger and we smiled at each other, so then I wanted fish, of course.  I called in on my way back and decided on some Cornish squid.  Then I noticed the dish of seaweed, three different sorts.  I've never cooked with seaweed, I said, so it's about time I did.  No idea what to do with it yet, but I'll find out.  

Then to the greengrocer and I saw the asparagus.  I can hardly believe that there is English asparagus in the third week in March.  It didn't have a price on it.  If I'd asked, I'd probably have been too alarmed to buy it, so I didn't ask.  Comparing notes with Wink afterwards, she made the same decision.  Then I spotted the lion's mane mushroom.  The thing is, when an independent greengrocer decides to buy in something expensive, he has to sell most of it to break even.  It's not on sale or return and it's very perishable.  So I bought some of that too, along with the veggies for tomorrow.  

The bantams have been laying very well recently, but they're going broody, so it'll all pause while they ponder their maternal instincts.  I really must do something about finding a nice cockerel, so that I can let them rear some chicks.

I put the tortoises in their outdoor run on Thursday.  It's chilly overnight, but they've got a choice of two shelters (and they each have opted for a different one).  They're out and about all day and much happier than in their comfortable, spacious indoor run.  Wild animals in captivity deserve the most natural conditions possible.  I feel guilty about having them at all, but I'm stuck with them, so do my best.  

When the going gets tough, Z cooks. And eats. And drinks.

 One used to say, it'll all be the same in a hundred years.  I don't think we have that sort of certainty any more.  I'm concerned for my grandchildren, of course, but there's nothing I can do about it.  The cousin of a friend (no one I know personally) went out to the Middle East  for the birth of her grandchild, a few weeks ago and now she and her family are stuck there.  The daughter of another friend, along with her own two daughters, lives there and she's stuck too.  We think we have a sort of control over our lives until something happens to prove that there's nothing, we may be helpless.

I'm so relieved that my propane tank was filled in February.  It cost over £2,700 but it would be double that now.  No idea what it might cost next time, but that's a long time away.

I have things to do today, but I cooked instead.  I still need to do the admin, but I pretended that cookery mattered more.  And at least it was practical.  I made leek, celery and a little potato soup, tomato and onion (with spices) curry sauce - it's a fabulous Madhur Jaffrey recipe that is supposed to go with hardboiled eggs, but actually goes with many other things - and spicy masala potatoes, from a newspaper recipe that I cut out 20 years or so ago.  I had eggs to use up and a bunch of coriander leaves, the rest was all basic stuff that I have all the time.  I'll freeze a lot and still use some of it every day next week.

Then I had cheese, lovely local cheese with homemade bread, for lunch and some wine.  Cheap, the wine, but palatable.  I should get on with the paperwork and housework.  I'll do some of it, anyway.