Saturday night @theoldmortuary.
A curious mix of old and new. We finally managed to get our hands on some Cherry Liqueur and were able to make a derivative of the ‘Hix Fix’ cocktail, a reward for diligent moss raking in the garden and exterior painting of the actual old mortuary.
I’m not sure where Cherry Liqueur fits into ‘ essential’ shopping but it was bought at the same time as an adequate but not extravagant quantity of toilet roll. In the interests of total honesty it was also bought alongside a bottle of Cinzano Bianco for cooking purposes.
The ‘ old’ of our Saturday night was watching Brassed Off. A British film set in Yorkshire at the time of the closure of Coal Mines by the Conservative Government during the time of Margaret Thatcher.
©Amazon
Cocktails and a comedy/drama. Exploring the harm caused to a community by the loss of jobs and the accompanying damage to a way of life; driven by a government devoid of compassion, whilst drinking cocktails, would have felt a shocking pairing in 1996 when the film was made. The film is ‘grand’, as they would say in Yorkshire
The passing of time has made the drinking of cocktails more acceptable and less elitist than they were in 1996. Elitist governments that lack intelligent compassion have not become any more acceptable.
Let’s return to the Cocktail , a thing of simple beauty.
Invented by Mark Hix and first exposed to me by a fabulous work colleague, Nic Delahunty in Pandemic Pondering#25 .
http://www.countrycalling.co.uk/item/cocktail-of-the-month-hix-fix
We had to slightly change the recipe because of Pandemic restrictions.
We used in each glass.
Two Morrello cherries.
Two teaspoons of Cherry Brandy, we could have used Kirsch perhaps.
Top up the glass , you can see the style we used, with Prosseco, any sparkling wine will do.
©Google
I’m really not sure how I’ve missed the word . I love a personality test and the NHS where I worked for years was an early adopter of Psychometric Testing . To be honest I’m still not sure that Psychometric testing really helps to make the best decisions if you follow it slavishly, without using instinct, yes I do know about unconscious and indeed conscious bias. This is not the point of this blog. Personality tests, for me, have always been a bit of fun.Personality tests have certainly pointed me the way of being an ambivert but have used way more words and explanations than the simple explanation at the top of this blog. A week or so after learning the word I’m luxuriating in and snuggling right into it. It feels like the warmest cuddly jumper and just like a cosy jumper I can pop my extravert head out anytime I need to, to leave my introvert self. Perfection.
We planted a mix of Oriental Poppies and Field Poppies on the rough ground to mark 100 years since the end of WW1. The land is opposite the village War Memorial.The rough ground is not officially ours but it is the entrance to our back garden. For many years it was the responsibility of the local council to look after it. It is a sad little triangle of land planted with actual road signs. It also bears the posts of old Street furniture and the droppings and scrapings of many years of road surfacing contractors left over cement and tarmac. With Austerity the council has abandoned it. As a growing space it has a mixed aptitude, in the spring it does beautifully with miniature daffodils . In summer weeds do particularly well but so do the poppies. At a high point, it slopes quite steeply up a hill, we have created a little garden between abandoned curb stones and an old but hugely fecund ash tree. The garden like the rest of the triangle is somewhat picky on what it will grow. Currently it supports a very old climbing rose from Hannah’s parents garden. A Christmas tree from a broken home who needed somewhere to rest his roots, some vivid geraniums, a glorious helibore and a few bright Heucheras.Attempts at introducing other things have failed , not exactly expensively, but disapointingly.This week’s Lockdown outdoor project is our annual chore of taming the wild space for the summer. We’ve not quite finished but it was a great reward to have this beautiful poppy this morning.And then there were two.
and then the job was done.
Gardening has become a routine but we are fast running out of places to store lawn cuttings, bush trimmings and weeds. It is weather related rather than supply and demand which governs shopping. Storage of garden waste is soon going to be the factor that controls us. The weather flip opposite of the gardening routine is interior DIY. It’s amazing how much we can achieve just by using stuff we already have in our shed.Curiously Mondays have become our laundry and house cleaning day. This is exactly the routine my grandparents had and it’s one that has crept up on us. In non pandemic times we washed whenever there was a load but with no life beyond home we are producing less washing. House cleaning is not so bad when you are not exhausted from working elsewhere, I can only think of two pre-pandemic routines that we’ve not modified. One is the bedtime walk for the dogs, we never meet anyone even in normal times and that’s not changed, people don’t whizz past us in their cars anymore . No cars means no pollution and what is noticibly more lovely about our evening walks, this spring, is the intensity of fragrance from people’s gardens and the hedgerows.The other unchanged routine is having flowers in the house. The weeks of daffodils have passed and currently we have tulips.
One slightly odd juxtaposition is our fireplace. An interiors psychologist suggested keeping Christmas lights up until Spring as it helps to make darker evenings less dire. Weve stuck with that because a Pamdemic needs light shining on it. Fear not, that is not a Trumpian solution , we just love a bit of twinkle, any excuse. Now we have tulips and Christmas lights,if this goes on it could be sunflowers. In this shot the pandemic gets a mention too. It does not improve with twinkle.
Not to be outdone the garden has some new solar lights to brighten up the evening of whoever walks past the house. Something we do at Christmas time but it seems important to do it now too.
Lola reminds me that there is one other routine that must be adhered to, dog hugs. This is the face of someone who wants me to stop pondering.
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