Get a grip woman!

Suffolk_lass

We decided that all the lifting of a folding bike was not what we want as we get older. I am also working on DH to look at a step through (Dutch style). I think this will be a once purchase for us and as such, while he is fine with a diamond shaped frame with a cross-bar now, it might not be what he wants in ten years time.

Suffolk_lass

I need to make cake today. It will be courgette and lime, using some courgettes from the garden (courgettageddon here). It's for the lunch club tomorrow - first one back. Relatively small number signed up but that is good for the first one. The lady from the local authority is going to come and observe too so I will find out if our approach is deficient (that's good, I can address it then!). I feel quite excited about it all. It is certainly needed. Lots of people are missing company here and this is a way of addressing it. As a registered food business we should be able to continue, if people are happy to come.

Suffolk_lass

Lunch went well on Friday and the Food Safety lady from the local council came and observed. We have a five star rating now (which I would like to display) and she was highly complimentary about our covid measures. I had shared the risk assessments for the premises and our lunch "club" and I offered that she could share with others doing similar things if she thought it would be helpful, which she seemed happy about. It took ages to clear and clean up properly though. I will write a short lessons learned piece for the Hall committee and my fellow volunteers.

Friday evening we took a barrow load of wood and kindling over to the field and about 12 of us (ironically in two groups of 6!) enjoyed sitting and standing round the fire for a while, with a glass or two of our own wine. That might repeated, but we will be elsewhere as five of us are going camping next weekend!

In the meantime I am making crabapple jelly, chopping and freezing some butternut squash (they won't all fit in my larder!) and I hope to process some of my frozen tomatoes into passata while DH is off out with his bike club on quite a long ride-out for the day.

Suffolk_lass

Had my negative antibody test this week - so the nasty virus in January was either out of my system completely or not COVID.

The test was a random invitation from the Imperial College, DH&SC, NHS and Ipsos Mori study and just came in the post for me to do and upload results. The biggest nightmare was trying to get the little lance to work, then trying to upload the picture was impossible. The interface was awful and failed twice before I got to the end of the questionnaire. Not sure if the unresponsiveness is our rubbish internet (drops out intermittently, affecting many in the village) or a rubbish server capacity at their end (maybe the same as the testing interface...

I remember just how much effort my former employer's IT Department put into managing annual IT demand peaks but I am guessing this is all new for DH&SC IT. Most of the pressure they are used to experiencing is operational capacity in the NHS in winter. 

We are off away to sit in a field later today with DS cat sitting. Having made the bed up in his old room the cat is firmly entrenched there, rolling around on the bed when you go past and did not appear until 10pm for her 6pm tea! What a trollop!

Karmacat

I love a trollopy cat

Suffolk_lass

I have been quiet - just quite busy after our long weekend away. Everything out of the van while DH rust treats and repaints the deep metal larder drawer as it looked awful and I felt it was unhygienic, despite paper liners. Meanwhile lots of our stuff has been washed and dried.

The weather seems to have driven the forum into superdrive and it has taken me a week to catch up on my favourite diaries. MIA are two of my favourites  :'( for a month or more now. I felt I had to catch up on here before I could update my own.

I've also been processing stuff like tomatoes - loads still frozen but first lot of passata made. I haven't got a posh machine to remove skins and all the pips but a colander helped a lot and three large jars in my store-cupboard and I can make more when I get to the last one.

Lots of garden work to do, getting ready for winter too, so no excuse to sit fiddling with electronic gizmos when I should put my wellies and gloves on and get on with it!

Suffolk_lass

I spotted a few dead bees on the ground outside the hive last night, and then to my horror, I saw two wasps enter the hive. We are (probably too late) going to get some fizzy drink bottles and make some wasp traps to try and distract them. I almost wept

trix-a-belle

Oh no SL! fingers crossed you can get the sharp bummed objectionables out before too much damage is done. I've had great success with grenadine & an old bottle of cocktail sugar syrup in a wasp trap this summer including it tempting and despatching a hornet or larger objectionable

Karmacat

So sorry to hear this, SL I hope you've caught it at an  early stage

themadvix

Oh no, hope you manage to get rid of the wasps! 😔