Twice in One Week!

I haven't been into London since early December when I travelled in for my belated Mother's Day treat at the Van Gogh Immersive Experience. I also hadn't seen L since our holiday to Jordan, so I was feeling the need.

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on whose point of view you're looking from), her washing machine broke down. I only discovered this when she phoned me from the local launderette for a chat. The symptoms sounded familiar. Years ago when R was going abroad for work on a regular basis, I noticed that, as soon as he left the country, our domestic appliances sensed his absence and took it in turns to play up.  On one occasion I recall the drive belt falling off our washing machine and R having to talk me through replacing it over the phone. The problem sounded very like L's, and, after R had a chat and confirmed the fact, she ordered a new drive belt. As J was away, we offered to go round the following weekend and help to fix it.

The job wasn't as simple as it should have been - in order to get the washer out, the cupboard under the sink had to be dismantled so the dishwasher plumbing could be removed, then the dishwasher could be brought forwards, thereby allowing the washing machine to be extracted. See, not so simple! Their kitchen isn't huge, so it was a bit like one of those puzzles where everything has to be moved in the right order.

To cut a long story short, R fixed the washer (and also their door where one of the hinges was a bit dodgy) and then we celebrated by popping to the Van Gogh Cafe for a vegan Sunday Roast.

The beetroot and cabbage were the best bits:

Rhubarb Creme Brulee.  It turns out that there is a reason that creme brulee contains egg! This was very runny but tasted nice anyway.

The following Thursday, I was supposed to be meeting my friend, S, either in Bristol or Bath. She has been having some problems with her eyes and, the day before our proposed trip, she had an appointment confirmed at Moorfield's Eye Hospital in London, so we changed plans and went there instead. As I said - twice in 1 week! This time, I went in on the train and we met in the cafe at the V and A. 

I had never noticed this sign before but there is indeed a lot of bomb damage to the building. Still, given the current news, and other areas of London at the time, it got off quite lightly:

The glorious cafe where I had the best caramel pumpkin cake and coffee. It was so nice that I had eaten it before remembering to take a photo!

After a short catch up chat, we set off for the hospital and just had time for a quick lunch at Wagamama's before her appointment time:

The appointment over, we wandered round looking for a cafe, that preferably wasn't part of a huge chain, for a coffee and to catch our breath before the journey home. We were astounded by the number of Prets in the area - at one point we thought we must be walking round in circles as there seemed to be one on every street corner. Really, a ridiculously large number. Eventually we found a little independent cafe and finished our chat. Then, we walked to St. Paul's underground station and split up to catch our respective trains. On the way home I received a text from S to say that she had made it onto the Exeter train and had bought a sandwich for the journey ........... from the Pret at Waterloo!

St Paul's at dusk:

Other happies this month:

Making a reproduction of the 'Goddess of Hayyan' plaque from the Temple of the Winged Lions in Jordan. L took a shine to the plaque on holiday, so I made her one as a joke present:

A trip to Arlington Arts to see the comedienne, Lucy Porter. To be honest it was a tad disappointing:

She did, however, give out badges, as adults (unlike Brownies) don't tend to get them anymore. There were badges for making dinner, putting the bins out, flossing your teeth and (the one that R chose for me) :

This isn't strictly accurate as, although I am a member of my local gym, I only go for the swimming and have never lifted a weight in my life. It currently lives on my fridge and I might donate it to L next time I see her as she has taken up weights.

The Peasemore and Leckhamstead walk:

My Camellia in flower:

Making chilli jam. It is really delicious, although it took me several attempts to get the consistency right. I kept having to get R to chisel it out of the jars when it had over-set, so that we could add more water. 3rd time's a charm!

A partridge in the garden at dusk. We don't usually see partridges, mainly pheasants. We did try pointing out the pear tree to it but it wasn't interested!

Finishing my Persephone Mitts. As you can see, I'm not one for matching up my yarn so they are quirkily different. :O)

Finally, a trip to the Corn Exchange to see 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide' by the Black-eyed Theatre company. There was a cast of 4 and they were brilliant. I would definitely recommend seeing it if it comes to your area:

The set - the photo is a bit dark but there was some beautiful furniture amongst that lot!

That's all for this month. I heard today that Nazanin Zaghari- Ratcliffe is finally on her way home to her husband and daughter. At last, some good news among all the current horror going on in the World.

Toodle pip for now. x

Battening Down the Hatches

According to the Met Office, the high winds that we are currently experiencing are due to Storm Dudley. Apart from rescuing the olive tree in a pot at the front of the house that had been blown over during the night (it's a heavy pot too!), I have to say that I'm quite enjoying it so far. I've got all my necessary jobs that involved going outside out of the way and I'm now snuggled up indoors, wearing 2 sweaters and enjoying a cup of tea. I'm lucky to have the last item as our kettle went phut yesterday and we resorted to boiling water in a pan until R managed to work out how to remove the tamper-proof screws in order to fix it. All is well now, for the time being anyway; he's handy like that. All in all, it's rather cosy.

Apparently, Storm Eunice is following hot on the heels of Dudley, so it looks like being an interesting few days. Luckily, we have no plans for the weekend, so we can stay at home and ride it out.

Last weekend got off to a rather eventful start. I was reading my book in bed whilst R was having a shower, when I gradually became aware of an unusual noise. It sounded like the wooden gate at the side of the house being rattled. Either it was a rather useless burglar or one of next door's cats that squeeze underneath it on one of their usual routes had got stuck. Ignoring the fact that I was still in my pyjamas, I ventured outside to investigate. Unusually, there were 2 deer in the garden; a male and a female. I say unusually because whilst we're used to them pottering about out there and they ignore us if they see us through the window, generally, as soon as we go into the garden they disappear. This pair were different - they stood a few feet away on the grass and the male started barking. It occurred to me that they might have a baby and I was worried that, inadvertently, I may have got between it and them. I could imagine the headlines: 'Woman in pyjamas, gored by muntjac!'. I looked around but couldn't see a fawn. Then I thought that it might have squeezed under the gate and the parents couldn't get to it. The neighbours would have thought that I was potty if they had seen me telling the deer to 'wait there while I go and have a look'! The front garden was fawn-free as well, so I decided to ignore it, merely telling R that the deer were behaving weirdly that morning.

I had my shower and breakfast, did a few chores and, as we were going out for the day, made a picnic and then sat down for a quick cup of tea before we set off. Then, I heard the noise again. This time, we spotted it - a fawn had got itself stuck behind the log store at the side of the house. We assume that it had squeezed into the gap and then, being unable to reverse, it somehow scrabbled up to standing and then toppled backwards getting firmly wedged. What we saw was its little head sticking out, partly concealed by the Camellia. It was on its back with its legs in the air ( I think the hooves scrabbling against the wood was the noise that I heard). Its eyes were shut and we initially thought it might be dead - it must have been 2 hours since I had first noticed the noise. We ran outside and, donning gardening gloves, R tried to pull it out. Well, I don't know if you have heard a muntjac cry out but it's a really piercing scream. R was worried that he was hurting it - I don't think he was, it was just terrified, poor thing - so we decided that the only thing to do was empty the log store. The cries had brought the parents running and they stood watching as we emptied out the logs and then pulled the store forwards. In seconds the fawn, closely followed by the adults, dashed up the garden. They live underneath an old conifer near the river and I think they went there to recover from the ordeal.

I still can't decide whether the father deer had been 'doing a Lassie' and trying to tell me earlier that the baby was stuck. Either that or he just wanted me to keep away. They seemed to know that we were trying to help and didn't interfere when we unloaded the wood, so maybe they understood. At least we now have the wood pile more in order, with the older wood on top, so they did us a favour really.

Other events this month include:

Doing the RSPB Garden Bird Watch:

As you can see by the above photo, I'm not very good at photography and failed to take any in-focus shots of birds on the feeders. I think I get too excited and my hand jerks when I push the button. I did manage to get a shot of a red kite on a tree though:

We had numerous great tits, blue tits and mallards, along with a couple of nuthatches and various little brown jobs. Needless to say, the goldcrests, heron, woodpeckers and pheasants waited until my hour was up before putting in an appearance.

Sorting out my seeds for the new season. I still need to buy some aubergine seeds and compost:

Buying some new boots to replace the ones that fell apart in Jordan. The old ones have been downgraded to being my pottery boots - I forgot about their lack of waterproofing until I walked through a puddle on my way to class on Tuesday and suffered a wet foot as a consequence. My new ones are, wait for it .... children's Docs in a size 3! I'm usually a size 4 and have 2 other types of Doc Marten's in a size 4 that fit perfectly. The adult boots though swamped me and I was planning to go down to a size 3 when I spotted these in the children's section. They were £80 cheaper and also have a zip on the side which makes getting them on and off much easier, so I'm not proud!

The Acer tree that R bought me for Valentine's Day. Now I just need to decide where to put it and get it planted:

A trip to Chichester, where we had a very cold picnic in the Cathedral grounds.:

There was a brilliant second hand bookshop and I treated myself to a copy of Daphne Du Maurier's short stories.

A trip to Unravel - the yarn show held at The Maltings in Farnham:

I may have made a few sneaky purchases:

I had a little wander around the town afterwards and found the best shop!:

A trip to Harcourt arboretum near Oxford. We had a lovely, if chilly, wander round the trees. It is much smaller than Westonbirt but closer to home:

They also had incredibly tame peacocks:

We called in at Abingdon on the way back and had a delicious lunch at a Thai restaurant and a potter round the charity shops.

A trip to the Watermill Theatre to see a play about Spike Milligan. It was very enjoyable:

A short walk to Coombe Gibbet:

The wall hanging that we bought on the way down from the Monastery at Petra. It still smells faintly of wood smoke and I hope that it doesn't lose the smell entirely:

Finishing my travel knitting. It's a 'sockhead cowl' in Hufflepuff colours and the garter stitch made for a lovely relaxing knit, even if it does look a bit waspy!

A trip to nearby Littlecote Roman Villa to see the Orpheus mosaic:

Littlecote House is now a Warner Hotel and we sat in the grounds to eat our picnic, expecting a gardener to come along at any moment and tell us to clear off. Luckily, they didn't. 

My first attempt at sauerkraut. I rather liked it (although, if I'm honest, I'm not entirely sure what it is supposed to taste like). R though pronounced it 'really rather nasty'! :O)

Lastly, I'm gradually working my way through P G Wodehouse's books this year. L's collection is still on one of the bookcases in her bedroom, so I'm borrowing those. I did, however, interrupt Jeeves and Wooster to read 'The Salt Path' and its sequel 'The Wild Silence', both of which I really enjoyed and would recommend:

Well, that's it for this month. I hope you stay safe and warm in the coming few days, whilst Dudley and Eunice blow themselves out. Anything exciting going on at your end?

Toodle pip for now. x

Jordan #2

Welcome back to part 2 of our holiday to Jordan. 

Christmas Eve found us at the Intercontinental Hotel in Aqaba on the Red Sea. We arrived in time for dinner, and although it seemed almost sacrilegious to opt for anything other than the delicious Jordanian food on offer, you can have too much of a good thing and L had found an excellent review of a Chinese restaurant nearby. The lure of tofu was too much and we hastily made our way towards 'Formosa'. It lived up to its reviews and lots of food and 2 pots of jasmine tea later, we were back in our room, settling down for the night.

Christmas Day was wonderful, if a little unconventional. After a breakfast of multiple 'immune boosting' glasses of fruit juice etc., we spent the rest of the day on sun loungers at the edge of the Red Sea. Mojitos and French fries on the beach were enjoyed by way of lunch! It was a lovely contrast to the preceding days of exploration and batteries were rapidly recharged. I had a little nap, collected some sea glass, read my book and did a bit of knitting before going for a swim and then hitting the jacuzzi. It was glorious.

The mojito with the kiwi fruit is apparently called a 'Royal mojito'.

We headed out for dinner to the local restaurant, 'Papaya'. The vegetable sambousek were delicious but, sadly, the rice dish tasted as if it was cooked in meat stock and we failed to finish it. In situations like that, we would normally give it a go rather than appearing rude, but it really did make us feel quite queasy.

We returned to the hotel for stollen (both L and I had smuggled one into our luggage thinking it would be a nice surprise!) and tea. Sadly, we couldn't find a channel broadcasting our customary evening viewing of the hajj rituals, so we plumped for what appeared to be an Arabic version of 'Pop Idol'!

The following day, suitable refreshed, we checked out of the hotel, breakfasted on falafel at 'Falafel  Bas W' (Excellent, since you ask!) and coffee/ hot chocolate from the V60 cafe, before heading for Wadi Rum; a protected desert wilderness not far from Aqaba.

Here, we planned to spend the day exploring before staying at the Hasan Zawaideh camp for the night:

There were 2 types of accommodation available: the tent type structures and a sort of martian bubble that looked a bit Eden Projecty. We had opted for the former.

Inside the tent - it was surprisingly cosy and I had the best night's sleep of the whole holiday.

We hired a jeep and driver and took a 3 hour jeep safari to explore the area:

We sat in the back and soon got used to the jolting around. The scenery was spectacular and, when we got out to climb the dunes, L was able to do a bit of sand-boarding. Her recent surfing course came in handy and she was surprisingly good.

The Mushroom Rock:

Little Bridge:

Um Fruth Rock Bridge. We scrambled to the top of this stone arch and took the obligatory Wadi Rum photo. It is quite wide at the top, so you do feel relatively safe but, even so, I was relieved to come down again!

Petroglyphs:

We stopped for tea in a Bedouin tent. Even though it was obviously a contrived visit (our guide lived in the same village as our host), it was still memorable. The open fire made our eyes water but the cinnamon, clove and sage tea was delicious. 

He also played a rebab and sang for us. We bought a couple of items from his stall (tea and olive oil soap) and made our farewells.

Finally, we parked at a viewing point and watched as the sun sank down over the desert. It was quite a moment.

Back at the camp we enjoyed a buffet supper and then showed our complete lack of style and rhythm by attempting to join in with the dancing. It wasn't a pretty sight but it was great fun! We had a last mint tea around the fire before bed.

The following morning, we said a reluctant goodbye to our camp and made for our final hotel on the Dead Sea, stopping off on the way for yet another mint tea and coffee in a sweet, little cafe.

I can't say that I was overly-impressed with The Holiday Inn. It was far too expensive and up itself; checking guests on the way in to ensure that no food or drink was brought in from outside and leaving threatening notes in the bathroom in case anyone should think of removing any articles. Give me a Bedouin tent any day. We made the mistake of ordering drinks by the pool and R was charged 8 JD for a small can of beer. He choked it down! The hotel's only advantage was that it had a private beach which was handy for the obligatory mud smearing and floating in the Dead Sea. Here I am practising my synchronised swimming! :O)

I'm slightly eczema prone and the combination of mud and hypersalinity did me no favours. It was great fun though! We stayed by the water to watch the sunset and then returned to our room for baths and to complete the passenger locator forms for our return journey. Dinner was a lovely falafel sandwich and mint tea (!) at a roadside cafe and then we smuggled bags of crisps under our coats and returned to the hotel - just because! :O) We completed our pre-flight lateral flow tests (thankfully, all negative) and then ate crisps and watched a programme about dinosaurs before heading for bed.

Our penultimate day was my birthday. I had said that the holiday was enough of a present, but a few extra treats had been smuggled in the luggage. The owl card made me laugh as R is a complete grammar freak!

My birthday was spent exploring Jerash. Nicknamed 'The Pompeii of Asia', it is one of the best preserved sites of Roman architecture outside of Italy.

Hadrian's Arch, the gateway to Jerash. Built to honour the visiting emperor.

The Hippodrome, an ancient sports field once surrounded by seating for 15,000 spectators. Recent excavations have unearthed stables and pottery workshops, plus indications that the site was used for polo.

The Temple of Zeus:

The magnificent Forum. This lies in the heart of the city linking the main thoroughfare (Cardo Maximus) with the Temple of Zeus. Surrounded by 56 unfluted, Ionic columns, with limestone slabs radiating from the centre, this unusually shaped oval plaza was breathtakingly beautiful.

The South theatre, where I had my most surreal experience in Jordan. We had climbed to the top to listen to the Jordanian Scottish Bagpipe Band (yes, you read that correctly!) who were demonstrating the acoustics. It had the same bouncing back effect as the amphitheatre in Amman. I was fine climbing up because I had the steps in front of me. Coming down though, I had to take it slowly, with R walking in front so that the only thing I could see was his back. On reaching the bottom, the main bagpiper called me over and they proceeded to play 'Happy Birthday' to me. L had skipped down first and requested it. Well, you've never lived until you have had Happy Birthday played to you by the Jordanian Scottish Bagpipe Band in a Roman amphitheatre. I feel I have peaked birthday-wise!

The Courtyard of the Fountain:

The staircase leading to the Cathedral:

The Nymphaeum - the main ornamental fountain of Jerash:

The Temple of Artemis:

The smaller North Theatre. Sadly, no bagpipes!

The Cardo Maximus - the main street which still bears the marks of chariot wheels on the original flagstones:

We bought a Jordanian coffee pot and a small camel mosaic from the stalls near the exit. Also a gift for our neighbours for house and bunny sitting in our absence. Jerash had been a perfect birthday treat. We added to the excitement when we had a close encounter with the border on the way back to the hotel. The phone tried to take us across a junction that the border guard clearly didn't want us to cross. We had to reverse and do a bit of extra navigating before we found a safe place we could turn.

Not wanting another falafel sandwich for our final night, we made the mistake of choosing a restaurant at a local shopping mall. 'Elite' provided us with a Mexican salad, a quinoa and pomegranate salad, baba ganoush and fattoush but it was all overly citrusy and a disappointing final meal. We should have stuck with the roadside falafel.

On our final morning, we drove Polly to the airport, stopping very briefly to admire the view from Mount Nebo where, according to the Bible, Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land.

Our flight home was uneventful, if a little bumpy, and owing to Bank Holidays and postal delays, we spent a week confined to the house awaiting our post-flight PCR results. 

Despite this and despite the weeks of stress and uncertainty beforehand, I am so glad that we got to see this beautiful country, full of some of the loveliest people you could ever wish to meet. It was an adventure and one for which, especially in these uncertain times, I am truly grateful.

Toodle pip for now. x