Donna and Mags do afternoon tea #1

 Everybody needs a partner in crime, metaphorically speaking. I realise that I am very blessed to have many co-conspirators, and here is one the best! Donna and I met when our older boys were great friends at the start of primary school, and here we still are: deciding to work our way through 2020 with a tour of local afternoon teas. Sandra, I don't think we'll top your Titanic experience, but we'll have a good go!

On Saturday, we braved the elements and headed slightly north of our little suburb to Carrickfergus. The most important thing you can do in Carrickfergus is visit what is possibly the UK's finest example of a Norman Castle. Apparently the quirkiest thing to do in Carrickfergus is visit the old gas works museum, but I've not done that... yet. We, however, headed to the Loughshore Hotel which is a huge monstrosity of a place on the outskirts of the town, beside a much nicer little M&S food hall. We were hoping not to judge this book by ts cover.

The food was lovely. Tiny warm quiches that were delicious. Sandwiches with generous, if extremely plain fillings, and very small scones. My appreciation is in descending order.

The little scones were delicious, and there was certainly an enormous amount of cream available, but I think that they should have had full sized, adult scones, given that the sandwiches were just a tad uninspiring. What was great, however, was the amount of fresh strawberries.Overall the bottom layer of a savoury course was a bit too meagre for me. We booked for 2pm, and my morning bowl of porridge was well digested by then, so I would have liked a slightly more substantial "real" food offering before devouring the desserts!  

The toffee profiterole didn't last long enough to be photographed, but here are the other desserts. Possibly defrosted and therefore a bit too soft? Not the macarons though; they were wonderful, as macarons always are. Then there was a top layer of too many chocolates. Perhaps you feel that there can never be too many chocolates. It is a standing joke in this house (and my place of work) that I don't like chocolate. I don't, particularly. Certainly by the time we had eaten absolutely everything (including all the chocolates), I did feel that I had overdosed on sugar, but would still have been able to eat something tasty and filling and scone-like, with some of that left-over cream.

What put me off the most though, was indeed the setting. There is a very interesting frieze of Belfast in the entrance hall, but the tea itself was served in the main restaurant. This felt a bit odd, because lots of families were finishing their carvery lunches, and when they had all been and gone, we were left with the good folk clearing away counters and dishes. We did feel out of place. We moved out to the seating area at the front of the hotel with our tea and glasses of fizz, and there was much more of a relaxed atmosphere there. We could even watch a lovely wedding unfold!

Lessons learned:

Brush your hair before letting anyone take your picture.

£15 is very good value when it includes a glass of fizz, but you can't drink the fizz if you're driving so look for something that might cost the same, without the fizz, and give you more on the cake stand.

Look for somewhere that can let you sit in a nice, relaxed coffee area, or somewhere with a nice view from the window, or plants.

And finally, marks out of ten? Well, Donna would have gone to 6 but I think I might stop at 5. It was super fun being out with a good friend, with hours to sit and catch up, and the food was lovely. They did also very happily refill my pot of peppermint tea. I think however that the setting could have been made nicer, and I am looking forward to more interesting sandwiches and bigger scones next time. Donna, diaries out...

The silence of snow

 I am yearning, groaning, longing for the silence of snow! It's the end of our half-term break and I am, for the first time ever, relieved. We have had incessant storms all week, making the very idea of leaving the house abhorrent. Every day had been full of noisy, noisy weather: boom banging of the house all night long for days with Storms Ciara and Dennis, then lashings of torrents of rain on every window and roof tile. Hibernation continues here at the Meadowplace!

I think though that we have no chance of snow this year at all now. There has been sleet and hail, hard, hammering hail, but no gentle, enveloping, silent snow. I t would be lovely to have a blanket of white to make all things new, for a while! I was amazed to find snowdrops in the garden earlier in the week. It seemed inconceivable that anything would have survived the storms, but there they were. Brave and resilient despite being so small.

I've been thinking about Elijah on his runaway mountain. Hiding in his cave from all the pounding elements, and waiting for the still, small voice of God. It has been good today to read Ang's prayer response about Jesus stilling the storms; and to read of the importance and beauty of stormy days over at Gretchen Joanna's.

We'll just have to keep going with the brave and resilient for another while.

Reading=hibernation

It's definitely still Winter here in the Frozen North, though I am bizarrely insulated from the cold most days by this particular chapter of my life that seems to come with built in, if somewhat erratic, central heating. However, in the afternoon there is a glorious hour or so of full sunlight, with no shadow of dusk. So, with the resolutely cheerful flowers that someone gave me on Sunday and the first ever St Brigid's cross I've made myself, I look forward to Spring!

So far this year I've finished three books and started a fourth. I suppose that, having absolutely nothing else to share with Blogland, I could talk about that! Bedtime reading snuggled deep down under my quilt listening to stormy winds outside is as close to hibernation as I'll get just now!

 I am going to buy everyone on my list "Christmas Days" for Christmas next year. It's a beautiful collection: a story and a recipe with an anecdote for every one of the twelve days of Christmas. The perfect gift! The stories are appropriately spooky and explore Christmas from lots of quirky perspectives. Lots of twists and turns. Winterson is so warm and gentle and generous and honest throughout, especially about her life with her family, wife and friends.

 I didn't mean to spend January with short stories, but I'd bought Prince Charming Tom Hanks' collection for Christmas because I'd been wanting to read it for ages and filling PC's Christmas stocking seemed a good excuse at the time. Obviously PC saw through it not immediately but certainly as soon as I spent two weeks guffawing through it when he was trying to get to sleep. (Note to self: don't buy PC "Christmas Days".) This book is genius. There really is a typewriter in every story: it's like an erudite Where's Wally. The stories are brilliant, just brilliant. Mostly unconnected, but there is a group of four friends who do pop up throughout with another instalment of their misadventures. I might like the space one best, or the girl typing at the window...

Now, "Olive Kitteridge" is not, I think, a collection of short stories in the purest sense. It is the coherent story of one place, and though it took me a while to work out why she claims the book's title, it is the story of Olive Kitteridge. But Olive is a bit like the typewriters in Uncommon Type, isn't she? Sometimes the chapters are all hers, but mostly she appears in the background to a greater or lesser degree depending on how well the chapter's protagonist knew her. It's a very clever book. I loved her husband. I was terribly disturbed by her. She made me fear for my future relationship with my sons. She made me fear for me. This was a book that seemed to be gentle, but was in fact harrowing.

And just now I'm re-reading la Peste; what else could you read during this Coronavirus? Here is a book that seems to be harrowing, but is in fact gentle. That's why I love Camus. I love his love of life, his enjoyment of the simple things, his respect for people and his faith in them. My Masters dissertation was about "le Christ de Camus", because of his respect for faith and those who chose it. The most poignant thing, thus far, in la Peste is the sadness of separation for those whose loved ones are outside the quarantine. I was shocked that when I wrote about it nearly twenty years ago I didn't actually twig that the plague in the book symbolises Nazism and its taking of Paris, where Camus was stranded when France fell. Not that shocked actually; my preparation for that dissertation was nothing if not desultory!

 By the way, did you know that St Brigid is buried with Columcille and Patrick here on the hill beside the cathedral in Downpatrick? This is the big stone that marks their grave. It's a very lovely spot, looking out to the Mourne Mountains, with a bench just behind the camera where you can sit and think awhile. Brigid apparently wove her cross from reeds that she plucked as she sat telling a dying Irish chieftain about Jesus. He came to faith, and her cross is still made on 1st February all over Ireland as people look forward to Spring. Until then, I'll be hibernating and reading!

Celtic Advent (started two weekends ago!)



I travelled to Glasgow on the first night

Of Celtic Advent:

Forty days and forty nights like Lent.

A Lenten fast in winter.

I journeyed beside three sad men.

A nephew had died, and they were pilgrims

To pay tribute,

Laden with grief, bearing friendship.

I too journeyed with gifts,

But of wine, chocolate and curtains to be made.

There was indeed a star,

Shining warmly,

Over the table of hospitality

Where my journey ended.

And lo! Glad tidings

Of many things were shared.

And as the three sad men

Travelled home unseen next day,

I was pondering all these things

In my heart.

 

Not the darkest day

 

Last week many of my friends, Prince Charming, included, changed their facebook profile picture to black #darkest day. I didn't. Not because I disagreed with them: just the night before the boys and I had discussed the imminent new marriage and abortion Northern Ireland legislation and the impact it would have on our little society. Or perhaps on Christians in our little society. My perspective was that not often are you aware that the fabric of society is changing, but last Tuesday was a milestone.

The reason I didn't change my picture, and I did think about it, was because my reading the night before had been from Psalm 118:24, "This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it". I'm working through Warren Wiersbe's Prayer, Praise and Promises book, and this is what he writes, "The psalmist was going through battles and difficulties, yet he was able to say, 'If God put this day together, I'm going to rejoice...'" And so I felt that, like Corrie Ten Boom in her lice-infested bed, I should give thanks and strive after faith. I told the boys that in this new chapter my plan was to live a life of hospitality and sacrifice. I wasn't entirely sure what I meant myself! I wondered if the sacrifice would be putting aside what others thought of me in this brave new world.

It's finally half-term, and today I am slightly hysterical with joy! I have bronze toes and a new sofa in the sunny spot and plans plans plans to embrace all things orange and to breathe deep deep deep of this gorgeous season. The year is slowing down, and in the cosy darkening we can burrow slow down into what sustains us. Now and through the wintry times.

Hunkering down

 When the strawberries were littler, there were many movies we watched over and over again. They loved, much to my amazement and delight, the Kiera Knightly 'Pride and Prejudice'. They called it 'The Man and the Lady'. Baby Mattman lived for the scene in 'Prisoner of Azkaban' where Harry Potter flies off on the hippogriff. "Buckbeak", Mattman would demand quite quite clearly before he could say much else. Later on, we all became a bit obsessed with the terrifyingly exciting 'The Day After Tomorrow', and that's exactly what I said out loud when I read this article on-line just now! I know that we're all divided by the contentious subject of snow, but just look for little Ireland in the picture above.... She is completely covered with it!


I read Greta Thornberg's little book of speeches last week - 'No one is too small to make a difference'. This week I'm reading William Morris' 'Notes from Nowhere'. I think Greta would approve of Morris' Utopia, where people live and work and have their being productively, but in tune with Nature and each other.  I hope Morris would approve of our slowly returning respect for the way things were done not long before our age of plastic and consumption. Reading 'Notes from Nowhere' is uncanny actually given the environmental concerns of today.

 I was blaming MK wrongly this week for sending us Storm Lorenzo! She was obviously wholly innocent of all charges. We've been lashed by wind and rain, with no choice but to light the fire and crochet pumpkins. If a very cold winter is indeed about to roar up to the doorstep, I'll hope that we'll stay snug, rest up, and be very grateful for the blessings of a home and a hearth. Hunkering down and able to do so. Lots of tea, lots of books, lots of projects!


The importance of thanks-giving has been much in my heart over the last two months, having been in and out of hospital very briefly, grateful for results so clear that everyone was delighted, and having loved time at home as my body knit itself back together. So I'm very gradually putting out my pumpkins like Ebenezers: 1 Samuel 7, "Then Samuel took a stone... and named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the Lord helped us."

The Enormous Turnip (Pumpkin)

 Everything seems to come down to fairy tales at the minute here! This week I've been remembering one of my very favourite stories from when the strawberries were really very small indeed. We loved the repetition of the list and the final triumph and joy. Why I remembered this one this week was this:

I had promised myself that I would buy the very first pumpkin that I saw this year, not really expecting to find it on the 27th September! Usually they only appear in supermarkets here for Hallowe'en and you need to buy one before they all sell out. But they are never quite as beautiful, or as huge, as this sublime specimen! This is the most wonderful pumpkin I have ever had. It is hugely enormous, and just as perfect. It makes me ridiculously happy. And it was the smallest of the three sitting proudly outside the grocer's shop last Friday!

It has given us lots of pumpkin curry, lots of pumpkin soup and a tray of pumpkin seeds, which I burned. Oops. And you can see from the carving that in fact it could have yielded still more, had I not been worn out from scooping and watching the clock for last night's boy activity taxi run.



Raggedy Elf #2 was fifteen today. When I first started blogging he was pre-school and waddling out the front door of Strawberry Land in his father's too big shoes. I seem to have said, back then in 2009, that I caught a glimpse of what he would be. I think I'm still only cathing glimpses...

Happy Birthday, young man of mine. And happy October to us all. Autumn must surely be the season for which blogging was invented. And in the northern hemisphere, it's here!