Warm feet, warm heart

As previously mentioned I have struggled with the cold. Our lovely flat has a warm side and cold side. The front of the house gets a great amount of sunlight and is just generally warmer. The back side of the house…well, let’s just say it is a bit more on the Antarctic side.

The kitchen has three strikes against it--a wooden floor, no sunlight and no radiator. Cooking an evening meal is fine as the cooker is on to warm things up a bit, but just nipping in to make a bowl of cereal in the morning feels like walking on an iceberg.

I needed warmer slippers. I had some from last winter (jokingly called my heat-be-gone booties after an episode of that hilarious British comedy Black Books) but they were worn out and every time I walked anywhere the padding would come out of the hole in the sole.

It was time for new ones. Bit also, critically, ones with a rubber sole. (Not a Rubber Soul!)

 

I found just what I was looking for in B&M Bargains. For £4.99 I could have warm, cheerful and festive feet. When we got to the till they rang up as £2.99 so it was an even sweeter deal.

I put them on the moment we got home and they are soooooo comfy and warm that I refuse to take them off. Even for the photo for the blog.

They also have these decorative but slightly impractical  testicles on the back.

 Edited to add: last night one of my decorative testicles fell off so like Hitler it only has one ball!

 

 

But they are super warm and comfy. Right now they have quite a lot of bounce in them--it is a bit like walking on a bouncy castle. 

I also like that they are covered in Christmas puddings! I have never actually eaten one (they are a steamed pudding made from fruits soaked in booze and stuck together with suet, treacle and eggs)  but they are a staple of the Victorian era and was lovingly describes by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol.

"Mrs Cratchit left the room alone -- too nervous to bear witnesses -- to take the pudding up and bring it in... Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper which smells like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered -- flushed, but smiling proudly -- with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top."

 To paraphrase the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us(with warm feet), everyone.”

Two (pots) for tea and tea (pots) for two

The British are a nation of tea drinkers. FACT. I have never seen so many cups of tea drunk in my life. Everywhere you go, anyone you meet is an excuse for a cuppa. After every social event I have ever attended in the last eleven years of living in the UK, people spill out of the event looking like some shipwrecked sailor who has drunk nothing but seawater and his own urine for the past six weeks. They are parched. They are gasping for a cup of tea.

 

It’s not like they didn’t just have one an hour ago.

They need one NOW.

 

I have never been a tea drinker. Not even growing up in the American South where ice-tea was practically a religion. Remember sun tea? My Mum used to make a gallon of that at a time.

Seriously.

 I have never understood the appeal as tea always taste like drinking grass. Like the sort of mud pie, twigs and leaves in a cup of water from the garden hose crap you made as a child. Undrinkable.

But fruit tea turned me around. I discovered I loved fruit tea. Now I could have a drink with others and be sociable. But mostly I preferred my fruit tea cold. I would brew up a big ole pot and let it cool over night, sweeten with stevia and squeeze in some lemon and it was wonderfully refreshing.

 

But moving to Wales has changed my perspective.

 

Wales is cold and wet.

Our flat is rather cold.

I am freezing.

 

The cold tea drink just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. It was too cold. It made me too cold. I was feeling dehydrated because drinking a cold drink made my teeth chatter. I needed a hotter drink.

 

Spiderman has been a devotee of hot tea for years. He likes mint tea and black tea with roses as well as regular tea. In the evenings he will often drink a whole pot of tea. He never complains of being cold.

 

I see a connection here.

 

Last week when he was not home I used his teapot to make a pot of fruit tea.

 

It was warm.

It was wet.

I was warm.

I was dry.

 

I could not believe how much warmer internally 3 cups of hot tea had made me. I was able shed two of my many layers. It was great!

 

The problem being we each drink separate tea. Spiderman can’t have fruit tea as it has hibiscus in it which causes him to break out in a rash. I don’t like other kinds of tea.

 

Solution:

 Buy me my own teapot.

 

I wanted something inexpensive (preferably second hand) and with character. What did I mean by “with character”? I dunno. Not white. Not plain. Interesting looking.

 

I would know it when I found it.

 

Oh and definitely *not* made with bone china. Bone china is made with actual ground up animal bones. Blech. 

 

I cruised around the many charity shops in Carmarthen early in the week, but with no luck. Yesterday Spiderman and I popped into a few again on our way home from running errands and there it was.

I saw it and immediately said, “Is there a children’s story with a spotted elephant?”

“Are you thinking of Elmer?” Spiderman replied.

No. I was not thinking of Elmer. Duh!!!  Those aren't spots!

 

I could picture a spotty elephant with just this colouring…but from where?

 

And then it hit us! The spotty elephant from the wonderful Rankin/Bass stop motion animation Christmas film. The one with The Island of Misfit Toys.

 That was it. I had to have it. It was £3.99 and that was good enough for me.

 

So now we each have our own pot for tea. Spiderman’s pot is one I painted in a paint-your-own-pottery sort of place and it has a pink crab spider on it (also known as a Heather Spider as it sits on heather flowers and waits in camouflaged ambush). Here it is alongside the spotty elephant teapot.

 

Now we are both warm at night.

 

The only problem is three cups in, three cups out. Know what I mean? I had to get up in the night to wee, but that is a small price to pay for not being cold.

 

Fancy a cuppa, anyone?   

Box of Delights

Imagine my surprise when I tried to open our front door yesterday and there was something blocking it. When the door opens slowly due to weight on the other side my heart does a little pitty-pat flip because I know it means we have a parcel!

I could not imagine who would be sending us stuff, but I quickly ran up stairs and laid it on the table. Searching for the return address, my heart did a little happy dance.

 

It was from my friend and former student Lena and her lovely husband Max and adorable children Fyodor and Pavel. We had a lovely ritual every year of exchanging gifts and making Christmas crackers with the children. Last year my Mum was visiting and Lena, who is so generous and kind, invited my mum and had a little pressie for her as well. It was a lovely family and friends get together that always ended with a warm cup of tea  and some scrumptious Turkish Delight.

You mean to say you have never eaten Turkish Delight? Poor you. I had always wanted to try it ever since Edmond was persuaded to betray his family and friends by the White Witch after she offers him Turkish Delight in CS Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Since my first bite it has become a firm favourite and a decadent treat. For those of you who don’t know, it is cube shaped rose and lemon flavoured sweets dusted in copious amounts of icing sugar.   Despite having a jell quality which normally is made by the use of the definitely non-vegan ingredient gelatine (made from boiling the bones and hoofs of animals to get the marrow. Yuck. That’s what you are eating my American peeps when you eat JELL-O) they are completely vegan the gel is made with cornflour (cornstarch). 

 

Anyway, I had been feeling a bit sad about missing our annual get together and cracker making session. I sent them 2 pages of cracker jokes if they wanted to make without me, but I was really missing their company. Then this box appeared! I opened it and inside was a box of delights.

 

Look at that! A box of Turkish Delight! Some matching  posh fairtrade tea (green tea with jasmine and roses!) and some festive, warm socks!!!!! All of which I could really use as our flat is really cold and I have begun to follow Spiderman’s habit of drinking a whole pot of tea to stay warm.

 

I was so excited I didn’t know what to do. There was a temptation to scoff the entire box of Turkish Delight before Spiderman got home from work but then he would have found me lying on the floor in a diabetic coma covered in icing sugar which would have been a bit of a giveaway.

We decided to divide it into 2 containers so we would each get our equal share. This was his idea as he knows I could easily eat them all. He  also knows I would be like Edmond and heartlessly betray my loved ones for a taste of that rose flavoured goodness. Sorry, loved ones. Them's the breaks.

 

What a lovely treat. A real box of delights. I miss you guys. Thank you friends for making my Christmas a little warmer and lot sweeter.

Pen-blwydd Hapus

Pen-blwydd hapus i ti

Pen-blwydd hapus i ti

Pen-blwydd hapus i Spidergrrl

Pen-blwydd hapus i ti

Any idea what those words might mean? Hmmm? Using your newly formed Welsh detective skills can you work out what the song is? Wrth gwrs (of course) you can!

It’s Happy Birthday or rather Birthday Happy as those crazy Welsh like to put their adjectives after the noun. They are not alone in that--I know French does it as well.

It was a wonderful birthday because I have been alive for 45 years and 25 of those have been in the company of Spiderman. As we always put up our Christmas tree on my birthday I get to reminisce about all the good times we have had. We have an ornament for every year we have been married and so each one as it is unwrapped and placed on the tree tells a story. Our  story. This year we chose a goofy looking Welsh dragon with a jingle bell for an arse holding a sign which reads Nadolig Llawen (Merry Christmas).

As I am still unemployed money is in short supply so I wasn’t expecting much but Spiderman came through with a little something to make me smile. He made me a card with Cyw on it. Never heard of Cyw? Clearly you are not a Welsh preschooler. Cyw the chicken is the mascot for a preschool programme on SC4 where they sing lots of jolly songs in Welsh to teach little people (and some big people!) the alphabet and other concepts.

Most of the videos feature this cartoon chicken driving a vehicle and waving in a strange rhythmically way like a metronome with feathers out the window without watching the road. She can drive a safari car and a bus! Is there anything this little chicken can’t do?

Does anyone else find the concept of chicken cooking eggs a bit weird?

We love Cyw and practice waving in profile while singing in Welsh every chance we get.

 He came home from  the extensive and endlessly varied DVD library at the university with a copy of Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights which I hadn't seen for years. Larry (as Olivier was known to his friends)  was just as handsome, brooding and charismatic as I remembered but the film really takes liberties with the book (I just read it last year for book club) and only covers about half the plot. Plus it gave it a happy ending! But that's 1939 for you.

He also surprised me with an autographed copy of actor Cary Elwes’ book As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride.

Bendigedig! (brilliant!)

But the main thing the day made me realise is how happy I am. Sure, I will be happier when I find meaningful employment, but when I look at my life--it is pretty amazing. I genuinely have everything I could desire. I am loved by so many people and we have made friends--really good friends--since we arrived. We have a big, supportive vegan community and are able to do more outreach as well as socialisation. One of our new vegan friends owns a shop and commissioned me to make thirty badges to sell that contain positive messages such as LOVE, PEACE and FAITH.

Her generosity meant we had some pocket money for Christmas and I had a chance to be creative again. We have a roof over our heads and a flat which is big and spacious. Yes, it may be cold but that’s why God invented thermals which thanks to my Mum I now have three pairs of thermal leggings which keep me toasty warm. Thanks Mum! We have delicious, nutritious food on our table which is cooked with love and does not cause or contain suffering. We may be eating on a budget, but we have never gone hungry. Lastly, I have the privilege to be married to the most thoughtful man in the world. A man who knows me and loves me so deeply, despite my many enormous flaws, who knows that despite our limited circumstances that I need a treat every now and then and picks just the right one. 

Diolch yn fawr, Cariad.

Dw i’n dy garu di.

(Thank you very much, my love. I love you.)