Today I harvested my garlic. The whole veg patch slumped when the garlic was ready.

I have put it to dry in a strange wall thing that’s part of our house. The wall comes in useful come the garlic drying time (see pictures below). The garlic will stay there a couple of days (assuming no rain) before being brought inside to continue drying. Once dry it should last 6-8 months… well, I might eat it all before then!

I have put together a vlog (a video blog) about the experience. I will post it here when I’ve uploaded it.

It’s against most of my eco-friendly principles, but sometimes getting brand new toys is just too much fun to pass up.

Today I received my new Zoom H4. It’s personal digital recorder but designed for music and stuff. It’s basically a really posh dictaphone. It’s got a really nice set of microphones on the front which is what makes it so special, really.

I bought it because, when I go to sessions, it’s going to be useful to record people playing tunes I don’t know. The music (or ‘dots’ as we folkies call it!) don’t provide enough information on how it should be played. The only way to really know how it should be played it to listen to someone playing it. So, if I take my little device along to sessions and workshops, I can set it to record so that when I get back home I can learn to play tunes properly.

At least that’s my excuse for buying a nice little new toy

Once a week I have to come to work. My boss is quite happy about me telecommuting all the week, but sometimes it’s just necessary to have some face-to-face meetings, so I always try to arrange them on a Tuesday.

However, I don’t much like travelling to work and there are a number of reasons.

Firstly, the travelling itself. I used to love driving but these days everyone else on the road appears to drive like chimps on the dodgems. People seem to drive with their “Ryanair elbows” out, barging around like they own the place. Although I find the barging annoying, it’s the fact that I actually feel a little scared on the road these days that makes me want to be at home. I feel like I have no control of my destiny out there. One slip up by some sleepy commuter and I’m history along a bunch of other people. I sometimes look at the people going along in their cars and they look very very odd. They remind me of Independence Day when all the aliens were flying around in their ships. People are weird looking creatures and they look even stranger when staring out the front of a great big metal box flying along at 70mph.

Secondly, offices suck. At least, all the offices I’ve been in. The air is cold, but not fresh: on scorching summer days like today I always bring a jumper. Only once did I have a good desk. Right now I can’t see the beautiful sun outside. There’s a wall to my left, a cubicle partition in front and behind me there’s a window with the blind closed. Not my choice to close the blind, but that of my colleague’s. He sits right next to the full-height window, so I guess it’s his prerogative. I always open it if he’s not here. The other thing I dislike about offices is that they’re noisy, but at the same time really quiet. No one here talks much. I sometimes do comedy sneezes to see if people will take any notice…. nope. Despite the silence, the whir of computers, the clatter of computer keyboards, the hum of the air con, the flollop of passing students, the bang of closing doors, the whizz of laser printers… it all adds up to quite a cacophony.

Thirdly, there’s the time issue. It takes me an hour from door to door. That means that, on the days I come in, I spend 2 hours humming along the road trying not to die.

Fourth ought to be cost, I suppose. Cars cost huge amounts of money to run. Even at £80 for a year’s insurance and doing 50mpg, it still costs a nice wad of cash. That said, I personally think that petrol should be expensive. I won’t be joining Facebook groups or signing petitions that demand cheap petrol. Petrol’s a luxury but most people seem to think it’s a necessity now. It’s only a necessity for the upkeep of a luxurious lifestyle that us westerners lead. It’s about time someone stood up and pointed out that it’s not sustainable and we can’t continue to suck the planet dry and the only way to stand up and point that out is to not reduce (or increase) prices.

Anyway, I’m very lucky that 4 days a week I can work from home. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere. As a bit of a loner, I am happy working away on my own, even if sometimes motivation can wane a little.

I’m back on a diet It has been a while since I last dieted. We were dieting conscientiously up until Christmas and then it all went pear shaped. Since then we’ve been saying to each other “We really must get back on the diet”, as our tummies got larger and larger.

The main reason for dieting is that Daisy’s skeletal dysplasia causes her hips to hurt. The lighter she gets the better her hip is. The nice summer weather (and a major road bridge closing) has instigated us to go cycling again and that has brought on this push to go dieting again.

Tonight we had fish and chips. Not from the shop, although a couple of weeks ago that may have been what we would be having on a Monday night. Tonight we made our own.

We chopped 300g of potatoes each (very generous portions) into wedges and fluttered some barbeque spice over them. They then go to bake. Meanwhile we took some homemade bread and mashed it into breadcrumbs along with some chives, rosemary and thyme and some cayenne pepper and mild chilli powder spices. The lovely fish (low fat plaice) was dipped in some egg, then in the breadcrumbs and bunged in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

Some carrots and peas and the dish is complete. Yummy it is too. I wish I’d not been so hungry, then you might have had a photo of it

We’re following the Weightwatchers regime (the old one where you just count “Points”) and tonight’s dinner was 8.5 points. Daisy gets 20 points a day and I get 28, so you can see it leaves quite a large chunk for some other goodies. But to be honest, right now I’m quite full. Mind you, we have quite a few tins of custard….!

The longest day has just passed in a blur of rain and dark clouds, so winter’s on its way now.

It’s usual though with the lag of the seasons that the best weather is still yet to come. My veg are just starting to crop and things are looking sunnier today.

Since I started fiddling I have been rather anxious about going to folk music sessions or workshops. As a complete violin beginner, I know I play slightly out of tune and that my technique needs a lot to be desired, so forcing my playing upon others always fills me with dread.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my teacher, Matt, organised a session for all of his students. In fact, he’d already organised one a month before that but I couldn’t go.

One of Matt’s other students, Sheila, kindly offered to host the session and so I headed down to Portland Bill in Dorset for the session. Turns out it was great fun with good food! Even a beginner accordionist turned up, and Matt persuaded one of his pro guitarists to come along and strum to the screeching.

Last week I plucked up the courage to go to one of the fiddling workshops at the Wimborne Folk Festival. It was taught by Tom McConville, a fiddler from Northumberland. He was a great fiddler, but trying to teach 3 tunes to a bunch of mixed abilities in 1 hour was a bit too much. My head was spinning afterwards. Still, he gave out some copies of the music and I have managed to learn two of the tunes.

Last night I went to my second session. Again, it’s specifically for beginner-types so I didn’t feel too out of place. It is run in Sturminster Marshall once a month and the people that turned up were all very friendly. Again, it was great fun and I’m glad I made the effort to go. The session actually has its own website: http://www.oldschoolsession.org/.

I’m still plodding along with my fiddle. Last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to improve my posture and intonation. I’m still finding it really difficult to be consistent though.

I’ll do another video soon; I haven’t managed to keep up my promise to myself to do a video every 3 lessons. I’m up to 16 lessons.

It’s been a bad day today. I’m not superstitious but what’s happened today is almost enough to make one superstitious.

So, we decided, having felt the bottom of our chicken called Vicious, that we must take her to the vet again. Her tummy was very tight but seemingly no reason. She wasn’t in a lot of distress but was drinking huge amounts of water, as she had been for a long time. Strangely another of our chickens, Blondie, was also drinking lots of water and did appear to want to pass something more than she could.

So, we booked an appointment at a vet (a different vet to last time – one that we’d been told were nice and caring).

In the morning, Blondie didn’t come out of the house. She wasn’t right. Daisy saw her trying to pass an egg – she was egg bound again.

So, we started to get a box together ready to take them down the vet, but when we returned to the house, Blondie was dead. It’s likely she had a heart attack while trying to force out the egg. I quickly dug a hole and we paid our respects to her, before we rushed off to our appointment with Vicious.

The vet was, as we were told, very nice. She felt around and reckoned Vicious was egg bound. I had read (on T’internet) that egg bound chickens only last a couple of days (see Blondie as an example) so how Vicious had lasted for over a month is hard to say. The vet pulled out some really strange bits of egg from inside her, but couldn’t reach the other egg. She gave her some drugs to help move the egg along and then we waited for the drugs to take effect.

But there was no effect. Vicious just slept and began to look more ill. So, the vet tried again. By now Vicious was getting weak with the effort. She could barely stand up. So it was with a deep sorrow we decided it was best to have her put to sleep.

We brought her home in her box and buried her next to Blondie in the garden.

It’s so sad to see our first chickens pass on. Although it’s likely I couldn’t have done anything I still feel it’s somehow my bad husbandry. I’m sorry girls. RIP