Journal Entries
MVP's NaJoPoMo 25 November
Posted Nov 25, 2014
I've realised that I missed out X ! 
But it doesn't matter, because X is for Xmas and today is exactly a month before Christmas.
I haven't done much preparation for Christmas this year. In fact, I dislike modern Christmas, because it is the excuse for an excess of consumerism: people give presents nobody wants and buy decorations that go straight in the bin. People eat too much, drink too much 
and have rows with their families. Some even end up in police cells or the local hospital. Yet, if you live in the Northern hemisphere, you need some celebration at this, the darkest time of the year, to express the ancient hope that the sunlight will return.
I wondered what Christmases I remember, but find they tend to merge. For some years, we went to Yorkshire to stay with my husband's sister and their family. Everybody would get up late, have breakfast and assemble round the Chrismas tree, when the father of the family would don his 
hat and hand round presents. Then we would go for a walk on the moors, across landscapes that looked like a Christmas card. One Christmas, we walked round a local reservoir, past a waterfall that had frozen into a cascade of icicles. Christmas dinner would be eaten in the late afternoon and meander on into the evening, with fish and lots of vegetarian delicacies.
Nothing goes entirely to plan, of course. One year I made a 2 pound Christmas pudding, but boiled it dry, burning the pudding and ruining my pressure cooker. On other Christmases, the weather changed while we were there and we had difficult journeys back through ice and snow. As time passed, my sister-in-law's family grew, acquiring a grandchild and making Christmases which include everybody difficult. 
So there will probably be just the three of us this year.
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Latest reply: Nov 25, 2014
MVP's NaJoPoMo 24
Posted Nov 24, 2014
Today is Y for yachts.
This is misleading as we never had a yacht. What we had was a small sailing cruiser, which my father built out of wood, in the garage of our house in Rugby. When we moved to Chislehurst in South London, the boat sat on our drive, covered in grey plastic, earning the name of Hippo.
My father obtained a cheap mooring at Elmley in the Isle of Sheppey and we took Hippo there. It was a strange and mournful place: low grazing marshes, divided by little creeks and a few windblown trees. The clubhouse of the Yacht Club was in a second- war minesweeper, which wallowed in one of the creeks. Decrepit and black-painted, it looked like something out of David Copperfield.
Although my brothers joined Dad in sailing Hippo, my mother and I just went along for the ride. I was more interested in the wildlife: clouds of lapwings, occasional waders picking along the tide line and big birds of prey said to be marsh harriers. There were always problems with the tide. Our boat was moored some way from the landing stage and we used a dinghy to row across to the mooring, but at low tide the boat sat on the mud.
Once we went out sailing:Dad, my two brothers, my mother and I. By the time we returned to the mooring, the tide was ebbing fast. There was only room in the dinghy for two, so Dad and my elder brother took turns carrying Mum, my second brother and me to the landing stage. Dad and my elder brother were left in Hippo as an expanse of glistening mud opened up.
They rowed the dinghy to the edge of the mud but even this shallow boat stuck fast, with a few yards of mud between it and the landing stage. Dad, always an ingenious man, took the oars and laid them on the mud and crawled back along them. This left my brother. He cautiously laid a foot on the mud and sank in. He took another step, sank in to his thighs and waved his arms to keep his balance. As he pulled his foot free, covered in thick, black mud, my second brother and I watched, helpless from the landing stage. Eventually, he made it and we pulled him out.
At the time, I laughed to see my brother floundering but we heard from the owners of the sailing club that someone drowned trying to cross the mud.
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Latest reply: Nov 24, 2014
MVP's NaJoPoMo 23 November
Posted Nov 23, 2014
Today is W for walking.
I remember the first walking holiday I went on at the age of seventeen. It was run by the YHA and involved walking on the North York Moors. When the group assembled in the hostel, our leader told us there were three servicewomen joining us, and we were worried that they would be very tough. On the last day, we walked from Whitby to Scarborough, which I remember as a beautiful walk along the cliffs. However, it's a long way and our servicewomen, who'd joined the Army because they wanted to play in the band, lagged behind!
It was some years later that I went on a Ramblers Holiday in Majorca, where I found myself the youngest of the group. I remember the bus going down to the town of Soller, where we were staying, looping round hairpin after hairpin. At some, it had to stop and reverse a bit before it could get round the bend. Some of our walks followed a stream that cut through white rock, leaving blue pools, amongst yellow and orange spurge plants.
The next walking holiday was in the Cevennes in France. It was May but the weather was varied, and the leader of the group often put up his umbrella. I remember sitting on a stone bridge over a stream eating cherries. The event that stood out, however, was meeting a young man who knew about wild orchids and butterflies. I subsequently married him!
After that, we went on walking holidays together. The last one before our son was born was in Andorra. Here, we crossed snow fields and climbed to about 3,000 metres. The memory that lingers in my mind is of sitting, looking at a grand circle of dark rock walls around a blue tarn, while our local guide played on a kind of recorder. Unfortunately, several of our group had stomach upsets, which rather spoiled the holiday.
After that, our walking became tamer - mainly the South Downs, Ashdown Forest and the Surrey Hills. But I am quite proud that, this summer my husband and I(both in our sixties) and our son, climbed Ben Vorlich in the Scottish Highlands.
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Latest reply: Nov 23, 2014
MVP's NaJoPoMo 22nd
Posted Nov 22, 2014
Today is V for vegetarian cooking.
We abandoned meat bit by bit, after the Mad Cow Disease scandal. I refused to give up fish but, nevertheless, the majority of the meals in our house are vegetarian.
Some of our early dishes were based on Rose Elliot's 'The Bean Book' and, although I've changed these over time, I still do chickpea curries, lentil lasagne, spaghetti with lentils, and ratatouille with haricot beans. So the pulses have to be included in any vegetarian's list of useful ingredients. They can be difficult to digest and, if you use dried beans, most need to be soaked and cooked thoroughly.
When I taught my son a few recipes, he commented that all of them started with chopping and frying onion, crushing and adding garlic and then adding tomato. This does have a certain amount of truth to it! Although onion, garlic and tomato might come top of the list of useful ingredients, I would add aubergine, courgettes and mushrooms.
Many of my favourite dishes feature cheese, and I don't stick to vegetarian ones. Some of them are pies - like the cheese and spinach pie I know as spanakopita, and a goats'cheese and beetroot flan which comes from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. You can, of course, ring the changes: leek and mushroom, blue cheese and broccoli, asparagus and ricotta.
Many Italian recipes lend themselves to vegetarian versions - pasta, pizzas and risottos. But Indian cookery is another great source of vegetarian recipes. I do paneer saag (spinach with paneer cheese) vegetable biryani and a two potato vindaloo devised by Yotam Ottolenghi. My husband makes super samosas in filo pastry and a couple of starters from a book by the Prashad restaurant. The nicest is a pethi which consist of balls of spicy coconut filling coated in potato and fried
.
It's surprising what you can stuff. Aubergines, peppers, mushrooms and butternut squash are good. But you can also stuff cabbage leaves and vine leaves, as well as cannelloni and conchiglioni.
If all this makes me sound like a super cook, I don't think that's true. I must have made every mistake in the book - from lumping white sauces to burning beans. I suppose it's often just a question of trial and error.
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Latest reply: Nov 22, 2014
MVP's NaJoPoMo 21st
Posted Nov 21, 2014
Today is U for the United States of America.
My second brother left for America when he was twenty four. He'd got a PhD in biochemistry and a job with John Hopkins University (I think), so he settled in Maryland and has been there most of the rest of his life. Being interested in sailing he had a boat on the Chesapeake bay and now he has a farm.
He came over to Britain most years but, this October I went to see him. Our trip out didn't go to plan. Our plane was an hour and fourty minutes late and, as we then had to pick up the hire car and drive to his house, we arrived after midnight. 
The farm consists of a couple of paddocks, an area of woodland and wetland along by the river, which my brother is required to keep in a natural state, and a field with a few cows. There are horses in the paddock, some of which belong to my brother, and three dogs. One of the dogs is an affectionate golden retriever and the others are wolfhounds - an adult female and a puppy which was growing as we watched.
Being used to a country where most people have a small house or a flat in a town or city, rural Maryland seemed spacious. The farm is on a lane where every property sits in many acres of land. The houses have a distinctive style, many being clapperboard (though I suspect the boards are plastic these days.) The trees are bigger, the fall colours brighter. It was odd to see the local hunt ride through my brother's woodland, because that seemed such an old English activity.
On a grey day, we went to Washington and stood outside the Capitol building taking pictures but, when we tried to explore, we walked in the wrong direction. We fared better when we drove west through Virginia to a bed and breakfast in West Virginia and went walking in the Shenandoah National Park. The weather wasn't very good. The first time we went walking in the forest, we completed our walk and started to drive back, only to run into fog which reduced the visibility to a few yards.
One night and the next day there were four inches of rain. When we crossed the Shenandoah, it had been transformed from a shallow blue river to a brown torrent. We went to Luray Cavern, which was spectacular - caverns full of towering stalagmites, and delicate folded stalactites.
On the return from West Virginia, we stopped at Harpers Ferry. As we crossed the bridge over the Shenandoah, I could believe this place was strategic, perched at the confluence of two great rivers. We toured the old town, which has managed to keep its old buildings and some of the atmosphere of the time.
When we got back to Maryland my brother and sister-in-law took us to Gettysburg. I had been doubtful about the interest of a battlefield, but I was wrong. We drove round the site - a distance of about fifteen miles, and stopped and looked at monuments. I could see where the Confederate forces were based and imagine the charge to the rocky outcrop where the Federal army was lined up.
We also went to the Sea Life centre in Baltimore and saw the harbour. I got the impression of a sweep of calm, blue water, with a line of sleek launches, surrounded by buildings housing restaurants and shops, and the Sea Life Centre itself. As we drove out, though, the road soon passed into poor areas.
My brother and sister-in-law were great hosts and we had an interesting trip, but we only saw a corner of this great land. Perhaps we should return and include other places on our itinerary!
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Latest reply: Nov 21, 2014
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