Beamish Reliability Run 2010

I completely forgot to post this! It was only when looking through the photos on my phone that I remembered.

Back in June Ivan and I went up north to visit his family and also to take part in the Beamish Reliability Run which is a vintage car rally. Now, Ivan’s parents happen to have a 1931(?) Rolls Royce which usually gets to go out for a tootle at family weddings. They even brought it all the way down to Cornwall for our wedding back in 2003 – about 500 miles, albeit it was on a trailer. It’s a very special car indeed and is absolutely THE way to travel!

The rally took us around the north east countryside over a distance of 150 miles or more and considering the age of the car, performed impeccably without a hitch. They obviously built cars without ‘built-in obsolescence’ and all the rest of it in those days but then it is a Rolls.

Ivan and his Dad with the Rolls at one of the stop off points. Don’t they look alike?!

Ivan’s Mum looking terribly glamorous and photogenic as always.

Me travelling in style in the back seat.

I should probably mention that we all decided to get into the spirit and, as you can see, dress for the era. We thought everyone would but it turned out that only two car loads of people actually did so we felt slightly overdressed at lunch! It worked out well though as Ivan and I won a prize for the best dressed couple!

I do have more pics of the fantastic scenery on the other camera so I may well do another post on that soon.

Parham House

Mum and I took a trip to see Parham House which is just outside Storrington in West Sussex. It’s only up the road from where I live so it’s very handy for a bit of pleasant escapism. Except that we got there quite late and by the time we had wandered round the garden and had platefuls of cake etc in the tearoom we didn’t have time to go round the actual house (which is amazing) – in fact they were just bolting the door as we walked up to it but never mind! We promptly fell about laughing in the courtyard.

 

Although it doesn’t look it, it was actually raining but well worth a wander.

The little house built into the brick wall is in fact a child-size Wendy house. It’s all scaled-down and when you go inside, the doors are tiny and the ceilings are really low and there was a little inglenook fireplace inside. It was lovely, it even had bedrooms upstairs but I got a bit stuck on the staircase as it was so narrow! It was all very Alice in Wonderland.

Adventures in bread-making

A few years ago I presented my parents with a bread maker, thinking this was the perfect gift as they always like fresh baked bread – who doesn’t!

To my surprise they didn’t take to it… so I took it back, back to my kitchen that is :)

Having recently reorganised everything in said kitchen I was able to make some space to set up the bread maker under the stairs where it wafts its smells up the stairs when it’s nearly done.

I’ve never had much success with it before now but I am now determined to get it right. So I wanted to chart my adventures here along the way. Here’s the recipe which seems to be the most successful:

225ml warm water

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp yeast

4 tbsp vegetable oil

400g wholemeal flour

1 tsp salt

Small handful each of seeds/chopped nuts

1. Add the water, sugar and yeast to the pan and allow to stand for 10 mins – it should bubble slightly.

2. Add the oil, flour, salt and seeds (poppy seeds, whole sesame seeds, chopped hazelnuts)

3. Set the bread maker to the wholemeal brown loaf setting and in 4 hrs 15 this little loaf comes out:

It’s a pretty dense loaf, nothing like what you might buy in a supermarket (which I consider to be a good thing). It doesn’t rise massively so I’ve been adding a bit more yeast although this doesn’t seem to have much effect. It does have a nice crust which I’ve struggled to achieve before.

Has anyone tried using bread makers before? Got any tips?!!!

Jars

 

So pleased with the new shelves in our kitchen. We are a bit storage-challenged in our kitchen, by design rather oddly, and I really wanted somewhere stylish to store all the food that gets lost in packets at the bottom of the drawer and goes generally nasty and sticky and spills everywhere. And these jars came to the rescue! The shelves were a bargain from Ikea and I bought the jars on the internet – I actually ordered too many by mistake (I thought I was buying 3 individual jars of different sizes but 3 packs of 3 turned up!) but hey-ho, they mostly all got used.

Blue suede handbag

I am in love with my new blue suede handbag which my mum gave me for my birthday. Isn’t it pretty? It even has a pocket in contrasting brown suede. I think she probably bought it from OneForty in Cranleigh.

Computers

During the past week I’ve had real trouble with my laptop. It has managed to corrupt all sorts of Windows files and I now can’t use the computer except in safe mode which is a pain because the computer basically doesn’t do very much at all while in safe mode. There’s now nothing I can do except format the drive and reinstall Windows.

I, like many, rely on my computer for work – I work in software so it’s especially critical that I have a PC that works! Luckily in a moment of perhaps sixth sense I migrated to a new PC a few weeks ago so I’ve not lost anything but it has caused real frustration because the issue with the computer has basically got the better of me.

Anyway, my point is for anyone out there reading this, whatever you do, back up your data!

That’s all I have to say. Except that I might now go and open a window and expel the laptop out of it.

A lovely day…and it ain’t over yet!

Today is my birthday and I’m feeling very fortunate because lots of people have been wishing me happy birthday, even some of my customers in far flung places who I’ve never even met. I met my lovely friend Francesca for lunch and she gave me a bunch of whopper sunflowers and later I’m cooking dinner for my parents and Ivan.

In fact Ivan set the smoke alarm off this morning at 5.45am by lighting candles on a cake right underneath the smoke detector and when one goes off, the other two chirp in as well! Talk about a dawn chorus!