Gaining an hour, Raves and Foraging

So much for looking forward to an extra hour of sleep as the clocks went back bringing lighter mornings and earlier dusks.  A rave started yesterday evening and is still going strong now.  The music – I use the term loosely – seems to be mostly base belting out building shaking sound over and over and over and over.  Thank goodness I have a very good pair of earplugs so I did get some sleep.  It’s now I’m awake again that I am thoroughly fed up with the intrusion into my usually peaceful life here.   

Yesterday, across the lane, a holiday home was opened up for a four day visit by the owner and three friends expecting a quiet stay in our rural idyll.  Fat chance.  I feel like a grumpy old woman but the rave is almost certainly kilometres away from here and what it must be like for people living close to the action I can only pityingly imagine.

We are also battened down against the storm which is expected to arrive this evening from the Atlantic.  Meteorologists are comparing it to the 1987 storm which did so much damage to buildings and destroyed thousands and thousands of trees.  I have stacked the garden furniture as well as I can and am hoping that the weather forecasters are being overly pessimistic in their predictions so that they are not caught out as they were twenty-six years ago.   Brittany Ferries diverted from Roscoff to Brest on Saturday and have cancelled their boats between Roscoff and Plymouth for both today and tomorrow.  A friend travelled over on Tuesday night last in very stormy conditions and did not enjoy his trip at all.

I have been out foraging and have collected nearly two kilos of good-sized sweet chestnuts in my lane.  I love them roasted and/or boiled, but I especially love them with my fried streaky breakfast bacon. 

Yesterday I made nine bottles of tomato sauce with just some of the surfeit of tomatoes I have in my polytunnel. 

 

In fact I had a cookery filled day and handmade bread and rolls and used up very ripe bananas in a banana cake/loaf.  

My son, Oliver, had a work accident and had a displaced fracture of his little finger on his right hand. 

 

The hospital been put it back to the correct position and he has a sort of guard on it now to protect it while it heals.  It makes me feel funny inside to look at this photograph.

Mia has been with us for three months now, it hardly seems possible, time is going so fast.  Here is their little family together the week before and a new one of Mia herself.

Three things I like:

1.   The gorgeous smell of my lovely loaf, with a mixture of seeds - pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and linseed - baking in the oven.
2.   Having a very long lunch at the home of friends who are disappearing back to Cyprus for the winter.
3.   Coming home with a bottle of Bordeaux after my team won the pub quiz last Wednesday.