Festivities

This is where we spent Christmas, Mallory Court in Warwickshire. Dad, Jon and I arrived to afternoon tea on Christmas Eve and left the day after Boxing Day. On Christmas Eve we had a carol concert by the boys and men of St Mary's Collegiate Church in Warwick, which was lovely and included some interesting newer stuff alongside the traditional carols. We were looked after fantastically and loved it, especially the food. Given how much we over-research things, can you believe that we missed the fact that the restaurant was Michelin starred? We began to get an inkling at dinner on Chistmas Eve though! The food was wonderful, but so was the service, the hotel, everything really. I couldn't recommend it high enough - we even got a gift hamper when we arrived and a 'care pack' of water, nibbles, fruit, etc for the journey on leaving. More photos in the photo album on the right. Also managed to nip into Leamington Spa to have a quick look at the sales on Boxing Day!

We've had a nice peaceful uneventful week off work since then. I could really get used to not working for a living! The New Year began with soup making to use up a few things from the freezer and one or two things that were lurking ominously at the back of the 'fridge. I'm typing the recipe here 'cos it's actually an amalgam of several recipes and at least if it's here I'll know where to find it again!

Bacon and lentil Soup
Serves 12 (makes 6 pints) at 22p per 250ml serving (excluding the wine and parsley). Each portion is at least one of your '5 A Day'.

200g lentils (I prefer red, but you can use any)
200g bacon (I prefer to use smoked, but again...) finely chopped, with the fat cut off (leave it out of you just want a vegetarian soup)
2 carrots, peeled and chopped finely
2 medium onions, peeled and chopped finely
2 sticks celery, chopped finely
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
400g tin tomatoes, or 4-6 ripe fresh tomatoes (those at the back of the 'fridge that are about to turn to water...), chopped finely
1 glass red wine (optional)
1 tsp fennel seeds
Half tsp dried ground coriander
Ground black pepper (taste the soup before salting as the bacon and stock will probably make it salty enough)
Pinch Cayenne pepper
3 pints vegetable or chicken stock
2 tbs chopped parsley stirred in to serve (optional).

Put all the ingredients except the parsley in a large pan. Bring to the boil and then turn the heat down and simmer for an hour until the lentils are soft.

Allow it to cool a little and then, if you like a slightly lumpy consistency, liquidize half the soup and return it to the pan. If you like it smooth then liquidize it all. Add more stock or water if the soup is too thick. Reheat and then stir in the parsley just before serving. Can be frozen.

As it's New Year's Day I thought I'd review the goals I set this time last year http://lazyferret.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html

Goals for 2011:
1. Get more exercise
Nah, was never going to happen was it?
2. Do some track days/driving 'experiences' at local motor racing circuit
No, I must do this in 2012.
3. Cook a new recipe each month
Yes, I think I managed 12 new recipes and posted them throughout the year
4. Get a hair cut - sounds easy but I've always hated going to the hairdressers and the last time I went was Sept 2009!
Yes! And have been several times since. Shocked all my colleagues who hadn't known me with short stripey hair!
5. Worry less
Nah, was never going to happen was it?
6. Sort out a new boiler
Yes, and Michel is great and was blogged about.

I'm not sure I want to set any goals this year. We'll just see how it goes!

Happy 2012!

2010 Goals Update

I posted some goals in January, and I just thought I'd look at them again to see how I was doing.

They were:

1. re-mortgage in Feb when our 10 year fixed rate ends
2. over-pay mortgage to allow us to pay it off early
3. do at least one long motorbike holiday this year, even if it does rain all summer, again
4. get more exercise

So, 1 & 2 - we've re-mortgaged. The chat with the mortgage girlie was very positive, in that her figures matched the ones we'd worked out before-hand, so that was good.

3. Have booked a ferry and the first 2 nights' accommodation of a bike trip to Germany before the schools break up for the summer. So expect the nice weather to end soon and it start raining!

4. Have moved offices at work and it is slightly easier to walk up the stairs now! We have been trying to get out for a walk round Dyrham Park or to walk to Lacock on a weekend. Training walks with Claire as she prepared for her trek helped too. But could do better.

There's been some progress toward the goals I set myself for the next 10 years:

1. pay off mortgage in 2012 (13 years early) On track, but it'll be 2013 instead. We will have paid off the mortgage in 3.5 years - 12 years early and only 23 years after we took out the mortgage on our first house.
2. travel more – possibly by volunteering on archaeological/environmental projects
3. perhaps do more studying
4. work less I think this and no.s 2 and 3 will be more do-able once 1 is sorted.
5. enjoy life more
6. do more draft/scary things to prove I’m still alive
7. use the motorbikes more – preferably abroad, preferably Libya, Iceland and Morocco Trip to Germany planned. Although we've mostly enjoyed our trips abroad in the last couple of years, we've REALLY hated the flying - airports and airlines seem to do all they can to make travel as unpleasant as possible. So I think that our hols for the next few years will be on bikes and trains (hence the rail map of Europe I got for my birthday).

5 and 6 still need a lot more work!

New Decade, New Dreams

A forum I belong to started a thread recently on the start of the new decade and reflections on the past ten years. I'd forgotten that ten years ago we were all relieved to find that the Millennium Bug hadn't brought the world to an end. We all started posting on our past 10 years and hopes for the future; here's mine...

10 years ago we were just coming to the end of the house move from hell. We had a bet on with some friends, who were also having problems with the house they wanted to buy, as to who would move in first. We lost as it only took us 7 months to move, whilst it took them almost a year! The final straw for us was our buyer dropping out on the day of exchange just before Christmas ‘99, we looked around our house stacked with boxes ready to move and just couldn’t face staying there, so we went into Bath and spent the night at a hotel. That turned out to be a bit of a disaster too and when I was telling my counsellor the following week of all the awful things that had happened, he said, “Do you think you’re getting a bit paranoid?”. I think he was a bit taken aback when I shouted, “Paranoid? Paranoid? Of course I’m f****** paranoid! I’ve got every reason to be f******-well paranoid!”. I’m a firm believer in the old saying that, ‘just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’.

Anyway, luckily the vendors were buying a brand new Barratt home and Barratt bought our house to stop their sale falling through (for a tiny bit more than our buyer had offered, plus it was a private sale so no estate agent’s fees). We moved in Feb ’00 and we’re still in the house and have no intentions of moving (well, unless our numbers come up and the house of our dreams comes on the market at the same time).

Jon had just started a new job and was very happy. His old job had been a bit rough towards the end and also had him working late 2 nights a week and alternate Saturdays. The new job was 8.30 to 5 and no weekends, so a significant improvement, although a slight drop in salary. He’s still there, despite being out-sourced and the company changing hands several times.

I was less happy with my job. That’s probably an understatement. But I did manage to negotiate a couple of periods of going part-time, which probably helped me hang on to what little sanity I had left. One period was where I moved sideways into a project role for 18 months working 2.5 days a week – that was an eye-opener: people actually said, ‘Thank you’, ‘That was really good work’, ‘You’ve really helped us a great deal there’, etc – it’s amazing what a morale boost someone just saying ‘thank you’ is. It also made me realise that so much of my normal job entailed banging my head against a brick wall, it was nice to do a job and not have people putting barriers in your way. The other 2.5 days a week were spent teaching Adult Literacy, researching some local history for a small family company, yoga lessons, volunteering at my local museum and starting to do an A Level in Art History which finally led to me getting a First in an OU degree in Dec 2006.

When the project finished and I had to go back to my old full-time job I decided to swap jobs with a colleague on a different campus, in the hope that I would feel better. But the organisation made half of all the library staff redundant, so that made things worse rather than better! I managed to negotiate another period of ‘part-time’ work, where I took Mondays off in return for working an evening, short lunch breaks and getting a bit less pay. When this was coming to an end in Jan ’08 the organisation started another round of redundancies. I applied for redundancy and got it. Started a new job in July ‘08, outside my interests and skills, and am thoroughly enjoying it.

We did a charity motorbike ride in India in Oct ’06. This was my idea, decided on the basis that I spend the majority of my life frightened of, well, just life really, that I might as well do something genuinely scary now an again ‘cos it’s not going to make me feel any worse and, hopefully, the wonderful experiences I come back with should actually make me feel a lot better. We raised £2,000 and had a brilliant time. Unfortunately, it also cost us around £2k each to do it, so it did contribute towards my minor debt problem that finally got cleared in July ’08 (it was worth every penny). Oh and, on the subject of charity treks, have you sponsored my sister-in-law yet? Click on the Just Giving link on the right to read about her trek and donate to Diabetes UK.

Jon's brother got married to Helen (and provided us with a nice photo to go on the top of our blog!) and we got a gorgeous little nephew in Dec ’06.

After 19 years of road-testing, we got married in April 2007 on my 40th birthday. That was something the pair of us, let alone all our friends and relatives, never thought we’d see.

BUT we’ve seen colleagues and people we admired be struck down at such stupidly young ages with debilitating illnesses which have led, in some cases, to an early death and in others to permanent incapacity. Sadly we’ve also lost 3 grand-mothers in the last 12 months and the last remaining one isn’t too well either. So, I suppose that what we'd like to do in the future is to find a balance between working and enjoying ourselves (the latter does need work as, by nature, we’re both miserable gits!).

The decision not to over-extend ourselves when we bought our new house has proved very useful, as we are slowly being able to afford to do more enjoyable things that were previously out of reach. I hope that the emotional problems have settled down and that we can enjoy the next ten years, rather than just existing, as much of the previous 20 seem to have been.

So goals for the next 10 years:

1. pay off mortgage in 2012 (13 years early)
2. travel more – possibly by volunteering on archaeological/environmental projects
3. perhaps do more studying
4. work less
5. enjoy life more
6. do more draft/scary things to prove I’m still alive
7. use the motorbikes more – preferably abroad, preferably Libya, Iceland and Morocco

Goals for 2010:

1. re-mortgage in Feb when our 10 year fixed rate ends
2. over-pay mortgage to allow us to pay it off early
3. do at least one long motorbike holiday this year, even if it does rain all summer, again
4. get more exercise

Happy New Year!