Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole has died and the tributes are pouring in. For a man who has so many amazing performances to choose from, both on-stage and on-screen it feels somehow silly to admit that just about my first memory of him and one of my favourite films is the wonderfully farcical "High Spirits". But there you have it. Haven't watched it for years but it was a firm favourite when I was a kid, I may need to find a copy to watch again soon.

The Table of Doom is dead...

...long live the, er, drawers of doom?

But before all that...I had a phone call on Thursday night from an old friend. One of those people you hear from a couple of times a year and it's just easier to chat and/or put them up for a night than try and convince them you're not really interested in keeping in touch. When I first moved here he would love coming to Dusseldorf to visit and maybe go and visit his mum in Holland for a day or so while he was here. I've managed to get things to the stage where he goes to visit his mum and at some stage rings me to tell me he's on the way back home and was thinking of stopping off to see me on the way. So he told me he'd be heading back on Saturday, I told him I would be at a concert for about an hour at six o'clock so he either had to come before that or after half-seven or so. He phoned on Friday to confirm that he'd be here (with brother in tow) at eight o'clock on Saturday evening. It's now after eleven and no sign of them. Yep, these are the type of friends you can really do without.

At any rate, knowing that something like that was a possibility I did struggle with myself a bit but I still decided to try and stay positive and use the threat of people coming to stay to tidy up a bit. Something I have been spectacularly failing at recently. So after being up early for therapy, having a quick wander around the christmas market (really quick because I thought they opened at 10 but they didn't actually open until 11 and so there were only two stalls to look at) and then a stop off to buy bread, I got home, put the mincemeat that I mixed up yesterday into the oven to cook (trying out Delia Smith's recipe), put a CD of christmas songs on and got stuck in. It might have taken me four hours, but I made good progress.

Some of it was just moving stuff around, to be perfectly honest, but I had to start somewhere and at least now I have cleared a decent space, which makes tackling the rest seem just that little bit easier. Here's a photo I took last week - still want to put up a proper before of the sitting room and bedroom but for now, here's some of the worst of the sitting room. And, drum roll please, I fully cleared off the Table of Doom.

Which is to say that I cleared off and tidied away all the big stuff and after moving things around a bit used the top of a chest of drawers to stack the last of the papers that need to be sorted. It's a very doable looking pile though (at the right-hand side of this photo) and I'm going to try the whole five-a-day procedure again to get it cleared as quickly as possible. The important thing now is to not add to it. And that the table is fully clear of stuff at least once a day.




So, with a much tidier (although still a long way to go to normal) sitting room, about two tonnes less dust in the place and clean sheets on the bed, I think it's just about time for me to call it a good day and head to bed. Tomorrow I'm singing with my choir in our advent concert and given that I might end up being woken in the middle of the night, depending on whether my "guests" actually do turn up or not, I'll need my sleep.

Christmas jumpers

When I was in Dublin one thing I noticed was the prevalence of christmas jumpers. I do love silly, colourful things but I'm not entirely sure if I like this latest fashion or not. Although I'm really not sure if I feel that way because the cheaper versions don't come in sizes big enough for me to be able to get one - so could just be sour grapes on my part. Haha.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what might happen if I were to walk down the street with Jingle my Bells emblazoned across my chest!

The other festive item of clothing that's popular is the onesie. I definitely don't get these!

Christmas cake

It took me a while to get to it but I did finally manage to bake a christmas cake. It started with making sure I had everything I needed and buying what wasn't on hand (slivered almonds, eggs and butter). And then I left the fruit to steep in brandy.

For a couple of weeks, as just when I had worked myself up to actually doing it and spent a fiddly half an hour or so lining the tin and wrapping a double layer of banking parchment around the outside of the tine, I realised that I had no lemons after all and so no lemon peel (I usually have some dried on hand just in case but even that was all gone). So after my first 'attempt', a week later I finally got too it. I had a hard time believing that the huge amount of stuff I had would all squish together into my 20cm cake tin but it actually did. To save me the hassle next year (assuming it actually tastes good, which I won't know until the friend who's getting it as a present has tried some) I'm going to make a note here that even though I use the big 7.5l Tupperware mixing bowl for steeping the fruit (it has a lid and therefore no need to use clingfilm) I should tip the fruit out into a different bowl as the fruit needs to be folded into the batter, not the other way round and by the time I was finished, that big mixing bowl was the only one big enough to hold the whole lot. I ended up folding a bit more than half the fruit into the batter in one of my 5l red mixing bowls before tipping everything from that into the Tupperware bowl for a final mix. I did make an effort to fold rather than my usual stirring at least.

And, as warned by my sister and the notes in the Good Housekeeping book, I make an indentation in the centre of the cake mix in order to have as flat a top as possible - it doesn't rise very much but does rise slightly in the centre. You can really see it that well in the photo but I promise, the dip is there.

I baked it as specified for 4 hours, checked it 15 minutes before the end and it wasn't done so left it in for, in the end, about 4 hours and 15 minutes. I had somehow missed the length of the baking time when I read the recipe so I was glad I had actually gotten it in to the oven shortly after seven!




And here it is in all it's glory. Well, maybe not quite glorious but at least it looks like a christmas cake, albeit a slightly dark on top one.

I gave it its first 'feed' of brandy the following day when it had finally cooled down and I'll feed it a second time this evening. It will get a feed of a couple of spoonfuls of brandy every week until New Year's. I'm going to take it to Frankfurt with me and marzipan and ice it while I'm there so that I can leave it out for my friend to find when she gets back from Ireland. Really hope it tastes nice.

National Design and Craft Fair

Just a few photos from a very exhausting but very enjoyable day wandering around the stands of some extremely talented people and trying to find a 'use' for my Sealed Pot Savings. I forgot at the beginning that I even had my camera with me, to be honest I was just too taken up with looking!

This was just one of three halls - 2 x crafts, 1 x food

I loved these photos by Enda Cavanagh - at around 400 for the larger ones (if memory serves correctly) they were a bit outside my budget though. The small ones were 'only' 105 euro and there was one I did really like but I felt like the small ones would work better as a set of three or four. So I settled for buying the gorgeous book he had.

Rebeka Kahn stand - this is one I spent a lot of time looking at and very nearly bought something at. Unfortunately at 350 euro or so, the large pieces were out of my budget. At 125 euro, I could have bought a small one but it really was the large one that had caught my eye and in the end I decided that buying a smaller one that wasn't quite what I wanted, just for the sake of it, probably wasn't really a good idea. 

A closer shot of these gorgeous pieces by Rebeka Kahn

And yet another shot from a different angle. The one I wanted was another of the large red poppy pictures that you can see on the top right here. 

There was another stand I very nearly bought a painting from. It was a gorgeous brightly coloured silk and collage framed piece by Patricia Murphy (who I also had a lovely chat with) and while at 150 it was outside my budget, I had nearly convinced myself that I could at the 15 euro without too much difficulty. In the end, however, there had just been too many lovely smaller things I had seen and I decided to buy a few different things - in particular a ceramic oil lamp which was one of the first things that caught my eye. Actually, the one which caught my eye was already gone by the time I got back to the stand but I got a very similar one. Will take photos of my purchases and post soon.

Plan a nice birthday and then nature takes over

I have a couple of days off work and am heading to Dublin for my long-planned long weekend birthday treat. I started my birthday off in style by going out for drinks after choir yesterday evening. Okay, there's actually nothing too unusual about going out for drinks after choir but I had warned people in advance so there were a few prepared to stick around until midnight to "feier in den Geburtstag ein" (celebrate into the birthday - it's extremely bad luck in Germany to wish someone happy birthday before the day but not all that unusual to stay up until midnight to wish someone happy birthday as soon as your birthday arrives). It was a lovely evening, very quiet but full of laughter and good chat. And at midnight, the waitress turned off the background music and blasted a CD of "happy birthday to you", which was kind of amusing. We've only been there a couple of times before but it seems to be the kind of place that adopts you quickly.

Got home just after one and spent 45 minutes or so packing and tidying up a bit (despite plans to have it all done on Tuesday evening!). Slept really well and had only minimal problems getting up at seven o'clock. Funny how it's so much easier to get up for holidays than for work! Did the washing up, brought the rubbish and recycling down and gave the floor in the kitchen a quick clean and still had time to have a shower, get dressed and head for the bus to get to the airport - yes, the bus. None of my usual running out the door and hopping into a taxi because I'm late.

I have a full program of fun and lovely things planned for today. Have tickets for a lunchtime concert in the National Concert Hall at one o'clock, floating booked for four and a hairdresser appointment at six, followed by meeting my brother for dinner. And then sleeping in a really comfy bed before getting up to head to the Craft Fair tomorrow (which I just got a free ticket for, woohoo!).

I had checked in online yesterday so just had to drop my bag off, there was no queue and I only had two people ahead of me going through security and no-one at all ahead of me at passport control. It's ages since everything just ran so smoothly for me when travelling. And then I got to the gate and while reading through some happy birthday texts they announced that our flight is delayed by about 70 minutes. There's a superstorm on the way - actually, it's five small storms one directly after the other and the first arrived last night. It's mild here but apparently very windy in Dublin so the plane was delayed from there. It has just landed here though so hopefully we will get out of here before the weather gets bad. I don't think I'll make it to the concert as I'll only be arriving in Dublin at around 12.30, I think but we'll see how it goes. And hey, for whatever reason, emirates' wifi is free at the moment so things aren't all bad!

Sealed pot opening 2013 and challenge aims for 2014

So, the Sealed Pot Challenge has come to an end. I actually only found this challenge and the wonderful SFT's blog at the start of February (thanks to coming across Sue's blog at Our New Life in the Country and what an exciting year it was to come across that blog, too, what with house-hunting and all). 

My original aim was to save the change from my purse at the end of every month and to also try the 52-week challenge by adding the same number of euro as the week it was (1 euro for 1st week of the year, 2 for 2nd and so on) from my housekeeping money. Yeah, that didn't really work out as planned. I did do it for a few weeks though, so there were a few notes in my pot. Although you can't really see them here. It was nearly half-full when I opened it, which I was quite surprised at.

Still, even if it has been mostly just the spare change from my purse and even if I have sometimes regretted putting that change into the pot when I realised I actually did need it for something, not to mention even though I did on occasion leave the pot sitting for weeks and weeks without any attention, I'm pretty pleased that I have stuck to this challenge and at least not opened it during the year. Look at that pile of money!

And here it is, all neatly counted out. Brought back memories of working in the souvenir shop on Mummelsee, when we had to count the takings in our tills at the end of the day and list exactly what was in there. So I did that, too.

		No. of coins/notes	Total
€10.00	x	2	€20.00
€5.00	x	4	€20.00
€2.00	x	16	€32.00
€1.00	x	27	€27.00
€0.50	x	23	€11.50
€0.20	x	34	€6.80
€0.10	x	47	€4.70
€0.05	x	134	€6.70
€0.02	x	180	€3.60
€0.01	x	199	€1.99

Giving me a grand total of

 €134.29

How cool is that! You might not be able to tell, but I literally squee'd with excitement (I'm not sure that's actually a word but it should be!). I'll be off to the bank later to feed it into the machine that will add it to my bank account so it should be available to withdraw by Wednesday. I'm off to Dublin on Thursday and on Friday will be heading to the National Crafts and Design Fair in the RDS to see if I can find myself something gorgeous. I am otherwise broke but I am sticking to my plan of using this money for that purpose. If nothing else, it'll be good for my mental health (no, not saying shopping is the solution to problems, just that I badly need a treat and I'm the only one who's going to do that for me).

So, the pot is dead. But long live the pot. Or, in my case, the pots. Here they are, all ready and waiting to be sealed up. Well, two of them will be sealed anyway. 

Pots and aims for the Sealed Pot Challenge 2014

My flowery pot will again be used for spare change throughout the year - and again, I will be using the contents to buy myself a nice birthday present next December

My London phonebox tin will be used to collect all 50c pieces that I receive during the year - this will be the start of a moving fund as I want to be making definite plans to move to the south of the country by this time next year and even having ten euro already put aside will be a big psychological boost, I think

And finally, the silver cylindrical pot will be used to not only store five euro notes (the first 200 euro worth of fives I get this coming year) but also to impart to those notes a lovely hint of the rooiboos tea that used to be in it LOL (that's the pot I won't be sealing actually, as it's too small to allow for a hole to be added.

And now I'm going to spend an hour or so checking out how other participants of the Sealed Pot Challenge got on. And it's December, too, so the christmas CDs can come out now!