Category: london

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Extreme heat

The rest of the country is living through a Met Office severe weather warning with temperatures hovering around 40C, but Skye today is a cool 22C with balmy sea breezes.

Blue skies and sea breezes

I don’t think that we would have survived that heat if we’d still been living in London.

The house we were renting there was badly insulated :- a town house with three floors, our bedroom being at the top of the house. There was no airflow or air conditioning, and the heat would rise to the top of the house and make sleep simply impossible.

Even with fans we found it too hot to do anything, and whole months could be lost to weariness and bad temper through lack of sleep. There was also a continual sense of grubby stickiness from the proximity of the crowds and the air pollution, which was palpable.

London does not do summer well, like most cities.

I know that people think it’s bizarre but we genuinely like the cooler temperatures up here. There’s nearly always a wind blowing, and it rarely exceeds the mid 20s. That’s comfortable, as far as I’m concerned!

We’re so glad that we got out. The air is clean and cool here, and we enjoy the wide open spaces of the croft. Today was a good washing day and husband hung sheets and a duvet cover out to line dry in the warm breeze.

Washing day

I’ll take the cooler temperatures and the rain over the pressure cooker of the city any day.

Feeling so lucky to be here.

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Work boots and packing boxes

We ran out of bread yesterday afternoon, so husband offered to pop into the local Tescos to pick some up.

The last thing I was expecting was for him to come back with a bargain pair of steel-toe capped work boots for me.

He returned and presented me with them with a flourish worthy of a man clutching a large bunch of red roses. Who says romance is dead!

I guess this means that I am going to have to pull my weight on the build, then… 🤔

I secretly love them. I may never take them off.

These have been added to the rapidly growing pile of knee pads, work trousers and power tools that are filling every free space in the house at the moment. This is the reality of a household getting ready to move in just a few weeks time.

Bertie, our ancient but lovely spaniel, has been reduced to sleeping in odd corners wedged between the boxes wherever he can.

I can see that he is perplexed by the erosion of his space, with boxes forming cardboard labyrinths around the house.

Poor dog. At his age he deserves peace and quiet, and a degree of constancy, and all we give him is change..

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Darkest before the Dawn

The saying goes that the darkness is deepest just before the dawn.

As I sit here in our bedroom in the half light of morning listening to the birds on the nearby lake beating their wings against the water and the sounds of London slowly waking up, I understand that feeling.

We have this amazing dream that after two years of nurture, focus and hard work is now within inches of becoming reality. We are within just a few weeks of packing up our old house, getting in the car and driving with the dog to our new life on the island.We are weighed down with lists and arrangements, with disposing of things, and with decisions.

Although I have now finished work, husband still has three weeks to go and so doesn’t have the luxury of daily headspace to process things. I’m limited by what I can do to help. It’s a huge weight.

Covid 19 is on the rise again with the prospect of further lockdowns and travel restrictions which is adding another spoonful of stress and uncertainty to an already pretty potent mix.

I know that this will pass. I know that everything will get done, and that if it doesn’t get done the world won’t stop turning.I know this. We both know this.

We will find the space to hang on to the excitement of these new beginnings. Even when these feelings of excitement are heavily entwined with the decoupling from our old lives and all that this entails. Even when sleep is dominated with dreams of all the things we haven’t yet done. Even when our bedtime reading is all plumbing manuals and spreadsheets.

It’s important not to allow the “to-do” list to consume every waking moment and to reconnect with feelings of joy at what we are about to do.

Because of course it will all be worth it.New beginnings, a new way of life.The dawn is lightening the sky already.

We will be ready.

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A sea of boxes

We are surrounded by a sea of boxes, bags, mattresses and guitars.

This weekend we’ve been moving the two boys into their flat in Manchester. They’ve been with us throughout lockdown, and although they’ve eaten us out of house and home, it’s been really good to have them with us.

The time has come for university to start again, jobs to be found and a new life to be started for them both. The London bolt-hole will be no more in a few months time, as we will have de-camped to the static on the Isle of Skye.

At the last minute the big van that husband had hired from Europcar got changed to a much smaller one because of a health and safety issue, and all the ranting in the world couldn’t change that as they had no alternative vans available.

This has meant TWO days of loading and trips from London to Manchester and back again. My poor husband. Most of this has fallen on his shoulders. All that lifting and driving 😢.

I’ve made up an emergency start box with some pantry basics, like teabags, sugar, pasta and tinned goods and we’ve managed to get rid of tables, bedside units, two beds, bookcases, bedding, lights, towels, and bedding to get them started.

It’s been a good start to our house clear-out in preparation for our move in October.

We may have been left with all their rubbish to dispose of, but we can see the floor again in their two rooms now! We can use that space to sort, pack and organise for our main move. And we have two van loads less of stuff than we had last week.

Small steps. But progress.

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The Quiche Chronicles

As summer moves on and the temperature in this warm and stuffy London house rises, we throw open all the windows each day to try and get some fresh air.

The traffic levels in this city sadly seem to have returned to normal, so it’s a moot point how “fresh” it actually is. At least it’s not long to go now until we have all the fresh air that we could possibly want on the breezy Isle of Skye..😊

At this time of year we also move on to lighter foods, and I’ve unexpectedly found something that all family members will eat without exception – quiche.

Every weekend for the last three weeks I’ve made one. They have to be vegetarian, but they’re all the better for that, to be honest. It keeps me creative!

We started with an asparagus quiche shown above, then moved on last week to a courgette, pea and fresh coriander one, and finally this week to sweet potato, spinach and pine nut. Except I forgot the pine nuts.

These have reminded me how, with a bit of time and effort we can make a meal from very little – a few eggs, herbs and a couple of vegetables. One day soon I hope that I’ll be making these with our own eggs and at least some of our own produce.

As the season moves on and the tomatoes start to ripen and actually taste of something, I’ll be slow roasting a tray of them next week to make a roasted tomato tart too.

On the croft front, we’ve sourced a static which will become our home for the next nine months and are making arrangements to have it moved and hooked up in September whilst the build slowly progresses.

It’s all started moving and is becoming very real now….

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The Seventh Week

We are about to enter our seventh week of lockdown.

I’m getting quite used to our new normality. Of course I miss restaurants, galleries and live music a little, but the truth is that we didn’t used to do these things that often.

I find myself baking and cooking much more than normal with four hungry adults in the house. We’re going to roll out of lockdown, I suspect, based on the trays of brownies, shortbreads and breads that we’ve been eating. Whether it’s comfort eating or what, we’re certainly eating a lot.

Where I’d normally do a supplementary shop each week to top up on bread and fresh vegetables, I can’t do that now, restricted to one delivery slot a week by the online supermarkets and not wanting to send anyone out on an inessential journey.

I have to plan ahead meticulously to ensure I don’t forget anything essential. It’s made me more careful and certainly more creative, substituting ingredients where I don’t have exactly what I need.

I made a malt loaf last week, my first ever, and couldn’t get black treacle for love nor money for some reason. Baking goods such as flour, yeast, eggs and sugar have all been really tough to get. So I substituted a few tablespoons of pomegranate molasses instead and it tasted delicious. The smugness at my own ingenuity was not pretty to see.

Bread baking skills have been essential, so I’ve been baking rolls, baguettes and loaves, finding some brilliant basic recipes. The offspring aren’t fans of sourdough so there’s been less of that.

In the first few weeks of lockdown I couldn’t get a supermarket shop at all, and resorted to midnight trawling of websites to see who would deliver what. As a consequence we’ve found the worlds best sausages from a farm shop in Lincolnshire (seriously good), and a South East London butcher whose beef is to die for. Small producers, both, with care for their animals at the heart of their production.

The experience has been so good that from now on that’s where my pork, beef and sausages will come from. I think that anything that we can do to help support small farms or producers at this time is a good thing. Once up in Skye we’ll source local equivalents and eat them less often to make it affordable.

It’s heartbreaking to think of how many small makers and companies will go to the wall in these tough times.

Stay safe, and I hope that you are all managing to survive this new reality, however temporary it may be.

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Easter bread and no eggs

The chocolate eggs I ordered two weeks ago for the family didn’t arrive in time for the Easter weekend. This feels like a bit of a first world problem, to be honest, so we’ve all agreed that we’ll enjoy them if and when they arrive later this week, and in the meantime to mark the day, I made Tsoureki.

Hugh remembers this from his days in Istanbul. I’d never tasted it before, but was up for a voyage of discovery, and bizarrely I had most of the ingredients needed in the cupboard.

This is a special Greek Easter bread sweetened with sugar, enriched with egg yolks and made fragrant with orange zest and mahlep, a curious spice made from cherry kernels. I had a packet of mahlep powder gifted from a visit from relatives a year ago and had never used it, not really understanding what it was or what it added.

The bread was soft and doughy, a cross between cake and bread in texture, and sweetly fragrant. We nibbled some as it came out of the oven yesterday, and will eat the rest with honey for breakfast with our coffee this morning.

Thinking about it, if the chocolate eggs had arrived in time I wouldn’t have searched for a celebratory alternative. A perfect example of creativity blossoming in adversity in our current captivity! And a delicious one that will form a part of our Easter celebrations from now onwards, I think.

New beginnings.

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Week four of lockdown

We are just going into week four of lockdown. We are all well, for which I remain eternally thankful.

Our small London townhouse houses us all plus Bertie the ancient spaniel, who seems perpetually confused by the presence of his tribe around him.

We are managing, despite the absence of outdoor space which is the biggest hardship. Evenings are Cards for Humanity games doing our absolute best to gross each other out. I bake bread when we run out. The kids are starting to go stir-crazy. There’s only so much Xbox a body can play.

Sleep patterns are totally screwed and new routines need to be forged before peace can return. All are trying their best, but grumpiness and flare-ups are happening, which is normal, I guess. The Easter eggs that I ordered didn’t make it in time.

I learned to make Waterford Blaa rolls, which seemed to go down well. I’ll be making another batch of these today as they’re relatively quick and easy to turn out.

The blossom is out. We have sunshine during our days and we are all well. In these times of extremity, there are a lot of people doing a lot worse. We have food. We have each other. I am grateful.

Once lockdown is over, our Skye life beckons, and seems tangibly close. Despite the news that no work could start and is delayed until people can move freely again, Francis emailed a photo of the house sign that he’s been able to carve whilst the island is in lockdown. It was a wonderful and unexpected boost to our spirits.

We will get through this.