With all best wishes to all readers of goodrichard.com. I hope you have a fun-filled festive season and both a healthy and prosperous new year.
Archive for December, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 25th, 2009Almost there…
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009I didn’t think we’d ever get there. The main courses are cooked and in the freezer, the chickens have been cleaned, the cards have been hung up and the presents have (almost) all been wrapped. With tomorrow being Christmas Eve, we’ve not stopped since we finished work last Thursday night and have had barely a minute to ourselves (which I know is usual for this time of year, but this Christmas seems to have been extra busy).
I’ve found that frustrating and like the snow on the ground here in Essex, the Christmas preparations have seemingly gone on too long this year. It’ll be worth it in three days’ time, though, as we can spend more time with the family rather than in the kitchen, but it has meant that we’ve less time to catch up with end of year jobs and have some time to spend on our personal projects, but there’s always next week. Hopefully my prickly sore throat and tickly cough which appeared today will have gone by then.
If we didn’t have this week off work, I don’t know what we’d have done. It all seems to have started to slow down a bit today, though. After popping into town for a few more bits, hitting (a pleasantly quiet) ASDA for a handful of wrapping paper to finish Nik’s presents and collecting the car with its new MoT, the remaining list of jobs can be counted in one hand. Which of course means that tomorrow, we can have some fun ourselves before the proper, real (and welcome) chaotic family festive fun begins.
Christmas shopping at Bluewater
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
That’s not all we did at the weekend, but it took up almost half of it. Ean and Vikki came down for a day in London and a day in Kent’s, if not Europe’s largest undercover shopping paradise. Saturday was filled with jobs and more shopping for the festive season, while the evening was spent at Seabright’s Barn, literally a stone’s throw away from Andrew and Sheila’s, where we enjoyed traditional Christmas fayre and joviality in the company of my local Starfish Project speech therapy group.
While we were eating and drinking, Ean and Vikki explored the bright lights of the big city, and planned the day that lay ahead for them in Kent. I bet those lights weren’t as bright as the ones at Bluewater’s Winter Wonderland, though, with dodgems, a towering ferris wheel, other fairground rides and a glowing Christmas market in attendance. We’d booked ice skating, and although fun, the rink itself was a little crowded with, well, little ones, but we enjoyed ourselves all the same. (Vikki in a good sports tradition, retired early, though, due to boot fatigue and ill-fitment, a common problem using universal skates.)
With the final of X Factor providing Sunday night’s entertainment, a warm-ish chilli to banish the cold and gins and vodkas to lift the flagging and tired spirits, we were soon on the phones voting for local boy Olly Murs to be crowned 2009’s champion of ITV’s big talent show. It wasn’t to be, though, and while disappointment gave way to bewilderment, amusement was gained through the previous night’s finalist Stacey Solomon (above), with her endearingly comical demeanour and personality. And it’s the memories of amusement and laughs with our guests which sum the weekend up – we don’t see my brother and his girlfriend often enough, and we can’t wait to host them again.
Chicken spies
Friday, December 11th, 2009
One thing about spending the day at home is that we can keep an occasional eye on the chickens. Our flock of three can be a constant source of amusement, amazement and distraction. They’ve all been going through some changes over the last few months, too. The annual moult started in earnest at the tail-end of the summer and although all our laying ladies have been going through it to some degree, Barbara and Margot have definitely suffered the most.
Both of them have lost handfuls (or wingfuls) of feathers – at times it looked like there’d been a chicken feather pillow fight in the coop – but they both seem to be over the worst of it now. Which is just as well. With plummeting temperatures, now is not the time to go featherless and bald. They need to grow them back fast, and although their heads are at last recovering (and they don’t look like old grey-haired ladies any more due to the grey colour of the feather shafts), they still have a way to go until they’re back to the glossy birds we remember.
One thing the moulting does is to affect the egg laying. The tally has been dropping steadily since September and the onset of autumn, but November saw a record low, with just 37 eggs collected from the bottom of the garden (compared to 91 in August). That’s barely enough for us, let alone parents and neighbours who watch them while we’re away. Once the annual moult has finished, normal service should be resumed, though. At the moment Gerry (above) is the hardest worker of the threesome and while she’s lost a few of her ginger-flecked feathers, she seems to be oblivious to the fact that it’s happening.
Our plans for getting more birds has fallen by the wayside somewhat and with Christmas almost upon us, it may not happen in the next couple of weeks either. We’re probably going to focus our efforts on more hybrid hens as opposed to rehoming battery birds, but even if we got them now, there’d still be no more eggs; they don’t start laying until at least 24 weeks old, arriving with new owners seven weeks before that. And, with six birds in total, we could have a problem. We may need even more vegetable scraps, as our three love them so much. It might also be a little harder to keep any on them all…
PoloDriver tests the new Volkswagen Polo range
Monday, December 7th, 2009
The new Volkswagen Polo is now on sale in the UK and the rest of Europe, and with revised and updated economical and high-performance versions at opposite ends of the Polo spectrum coming in the next few months, as well as a launch in India and a new saloon variant, it’s going to be a busy 2010 for VW’s newest arrival.
With the Car of the Year 2010 victory ending 2009 on a high, read what impressed the European jury enough to hand the industry award to the Polo in a review of the new range. Driven back in September at the UK press launch, read the initial findings of the 1.2 59 and 69bhp SE, 1.4 84bhp SE, 1.2 59bhp Moda, 1.4 84bhp SEL and 1.6 74bhp TDI.
The mini-magazine can be found on PoloDriver’s Issuu virtual bookshelf here and is previewed below.