The House Husband

Today saw the beginning of the first test cricket match since Lockdown. It began in Southampton. It’s between England and the West Indies. Except, things didn’t go exactly to plan. In one of those typical twists of fate, rain delayed the start of play.

This is made all the more ironic by the fact that we have had perfect cricket weather since Lockdown stopped any cricket from being played.

And I can vouch for the weather. It was very gloomy and wet. Not torrentially wet, just that constant English drizzle which Julius Caesar had such a problem with. Which only goes to show that good old JC was clearly a test cricket fan.

In the meanwhilst, at our house, we were gearing up for a special night. A night where we would travel all the way to Alresford. A night where we would have tapas at Pulpo Negro.

But, before heading down south, there was an important task I had to perform.

Normally I dye my hair the day before getting it cut but, given the absence of hairdressers for the past three months, I haven’t bothered. Underneath the coloured ends, my hair has become increasingly silver. I think I skipped the grey bit.

I was starting to like it and Mirinda even made happy sounds upon inspection. But, on deeper reflection, she decided I should dye it. And so that’s what I did this afternoon.

I should mention that I bought the dye ages ago in preparation. I couldn’t get my normal brand so opted for something new. Of course this meant guessing what the colour would be. While it is in amazing contrast to my beard (and eyebrows) I rather like the colour.

The new dye was rather odd as it turns a liquid into a foam without any shaking. Very odd but highly effective. Mind you, I still prefer the one with the comb attachment.

Eventually, we said goodbye to the girls and headed out for dinner.

We’ve been to Pulpo Negro before and absolutely fell in love with it. The food is exceptional, the staff lovely and the restaurant itself, an ambient delight. In fact, it made me feel like I was back in Spain. Until I looked out the window. So I stopped looking out the window.

We had lots of little plates of deliciousness, including ham croquettes, salted cod, giant olives and an amazing salad of Isle of Wight tomatoes.

But the piece de resistance had to be the pork belly ‘tacos’ and langoustine escabeche. Two little servings of magic for the tongue. Just before we left, the waiter told us that they were going to change the menu more often because of reduced clientele due to Covid restrictions. I almost begged him to keep the pork belly tacos.

Mind you, my favourite dish was dessert. The emerald green pistachio and olive oil cake was exquisite. It went perfectly with the chilled sweet sherry recommended by the waitress.

To say we thoroughly enjoyed it would be an understatement. We even enjoyed the drive, the longest we’ve made for ages. In fact, Mirinda believed they’d moved the town further away it took us so long.

For anyone close by to Alresford, the restaurant is highly recommended. Their website is here: https://pulponegro.co.uk/. You won’t regret it.

But, returning to the cricket, the first day of the test resulted in only 17.4 overs being played during which England managed to lose one wicket (without score) and only 35 runs. There were no spectators. There may have been a few seagulls on the hand sanitiser dispensers on the boundary.

Prick of the week

I haven’t had call for one of these since Lockdown started, mainly because there’s been a reduction in cars on the road. However, today, for most of the day, this van was parked a bit across our drive and, for reasons known only to the driver, on the nature strip.

Now, I know the nature strip actually belongs to the council and I really shouldn’t care but, honestly, why can’t people learn to drive and park properly?

It belonged to a couple of tradesmen who were doing some work either next door or next door to next door. I should add that next door to next door is the arsehole who thinks it’s okay to trim his hedge at 9pm on a Saturday using his very noisy electric hedge trimmer. For this unreasonable reason, I’m blaming him.

Today I spent some time in the garden, a rare thing for me. I started ejecting an unwanted guest from the raised bed then just decided to continue with some weeding in the Garden of One Thousand Yaps. It meant a pleasant couple of hours in the not so hot sun.

The unwanted guest was a rather massive plant we hadn’t put into the raised bed. While the raised bed borders the Wildflower Patch, we’ve never seen it there so imagine it’s a Butt Seed weed.

It’s a very pretty plant, resembling a daisy more than anything. The leaves, however, resemble fennel, which I thought it was before the flowers appeared. The problem with it is the size.

The raised bed was basically in order to grow a line of lavender in well drained soil. Mirinda added some hornimums and, of course, the California poppies in order to temporarily fill the gaps. She was happy for the new plant to remain until it decided it wanted more than its fair share of the bed.

Mirinda had me PlantSnap it to determine what it was. Turns out it’s a Tripleurospermum inodorum, more commonly called False Mayweed. And while it’s very pretty it is somewhat dominant. It had to go.

I set myself up and set to work.

Removal required a careful cutting away of the long stems, avoiding the other plants crowded beneath it. It was painstaking and laborious work, made pleasant by listening to The Curious cases of Rutherford and Fry while I worked away.

Soon a very different bed emerged. One devoid of False Mayflower and inhabited by the intended flora instead.

The poor lavender was looking a bit ragged and the hornimums were a bit floppy but these things will resolve themselves in time. Mirinda was well pleased, and that’s all that matters.

Something else that makes me very happy are fuchsias. Mirinda has planted quite a few over the years because, she says, I love them. A few weeks ago I featured a photo of one called Shadowdancer.

Here’s another one – I don’t know what it called but it sure is more welcome than a False Mayweed.

When we first moved into our present house, a neighbour, Sally, introduced herself. She told us her name, how she had an Australian soon-to-be son-in-law and how she thought of us as the fresh air freaks. This was due to our habit of always having our windows open.

And she was correct to a certain extent. I don’t like windows being closed. I prefer a cold to a stuffy room. A cold ROOM I mean, not a medical cold.

The thing is, with this window open habit, our house tends to get a bit breezy at times with the almost constant fresh air flow. This wind flow shuts the doors upstairs rather forcefully. In order to stop this happening, we have a series of door stops, one for each upstairs room, and they keep the doors open and the air flowing freely.

The door stop for the Old Rose Room is in the shape of a hedgehog.

Well, half a hedgehog really, with one side flat, the side that goes against the door. Because of the shape, when it’s not doing its job, it can fall over. Which it did today.

I was upstairs, unpacking some clothes I’d bought online and the big, grey outer bag was sitting in the doorway. I stood up to retrieve it but, saw something more interesting and grabbed that. This action, for some reason, informed my brain that it should direct my foot to kick the big, grey outer bag through the doorway, thus clearing my way. My foot, obviously, carried out the order.

What neither my foot nor my brain realised was that the iron hedgehog was sitting underneath it. Needless to say, I wasn’t wearing any shoes.

It hurt.

I can only blame myself, after all, this is what happens when you think without thinking.

This followed a lovely morning walk into Farnham to shop and chat with people at random.

Which preceded my attempt at making Romanian preserved white cabbage in brine. When Mirinda saw it ‘resting’ on the kitchen counter she wondered whether I’d started making my own botanical gin. Sadly, I had to disappoint her.

On Friday I bought Mirinda a bunch of flowers. This is not pathetic virtue signalling: I often buy her flowers because she likes them and they brighten up the house. The problem though was we’d run out of vases.

The sudden lack of vases was due to the lost ring incident last week when a whole bunch of flowers had to be cut back in order for me to find the ring. This gave us a whole lot of stems to put in water. So we were cleaned out of vases.

One would expect flowers to gradually die off but the ones I’d removed from the garden appear to be in some sort of sci-fi stasis as if they’re waiting to arrive at Alpha Centauri in the long distant future.

Not realising the lack of death in the household flower stakes, I bought yet more. Thus the reason why there were no vases for them.

Rather than depress, the lack of vases fired Mirinda into action. It made the ideal excuse to go to the Laura Ashley closing down sale. It would also mark a bit of Covid milestone for her.

Unlike me, Mirinda hasn’t really had a lot of real life social interaction since Lockdown started. Last night at the Holly Bush was wonderful but she had to take the big step which she did today.

She went to Laura Ashley and bought as much stuff as she could carry, chatting amicably with the sales staff commiserating with them over their cardboard virus shield and agreeing about masks. There was also a visit to Colours for incense and she wound up sitting outside Coffee Diem having an Americano and a piece of walnut cake.

Eventually, She came home looking happy and refreshed. I think her little adventure did her the world of good.

As for me, I had an incredibly lazy day which even included a granny nap in the late afternoon/early evening. This dip into the older age group may have been inspired by listening to The Conversation this morning.

Kim Chakanetsa spoke to two women in their late 70’s regarding what they thought about their age. One was Chilean author, Isabel Allende, the other Australian professor and feminist, Lynne Segal.

The conversation between the three women was wonderful and I actually listened rather than drift off like I normally do on a Sunday morning. They finished by suggesting that what old age should bring is Wisdom and Tolerance. I agree. It SHOULD. It’s a pity it doesn’t always work out that way.

The only other thing I did today was discover that I could make a cartoon Gaz on my phone. Here I am:

I’m not sure if this constitutes increased wisdom or tolerance but it sure beats growing up.

By the way, Mirinda also bought a puffin pen holder, something I was unaware we needed. Apparently, I was wrong.

The last time we ate out was not, as I keep insisting, L’alivi in the Marais back on February 24. It wasn’t two days later when I had lunch with Dawn at The Lost Boys. No, the last time we ate out was on March 18 when we decided to have lunch at the Holly Bush, thinking it could be a long time before it happened again. I remember saying to the owner that we’d be back as soon as they re-opened.

It has been a long time.

The government announced a while back that July 4 would be the date when pubs and restaurants could reopen, if they want, with social distancing restrictions and various other public safety measures. Of course this meant that the awful Wetherspoons pubs were open from 6am but it also meant that decent pubs were also open.

One of those decent pubs was The Holly Bush.

And, true to our word, we booked in for dinner tonight.

The pub had put in lots of ‘rules’ regarding distancing and there were lots of pump action sterilizers dotted about. But, the overriding thing was how happy everyone was.

The Holly Bush is very much a village pub and I think most of the village was there. At any rate, every time someone left they went round to every other table to say goodbye.

The photo above was taken quite late. Prior to this the tables were full and the chatter was loud and cheerful. The pub wasn’t full of boozy idiots yelling and yahoo-ing about freedom and shit beer. It was exactly as you’d expect from a real pub.

And, of course, the food was excellent. We shared ham crocquets and salted squid for entrée then I had salmon fishcakes for main. Obviously this was a free for all carb day so I had ice cream for dessert. But, best of all, I didn’t have to wash up.

Apart from the expectation ahead of dinner out, the day involved a very funny Freya episode.

I was in my office and Freya was in the extension. Normally she just follows me out and jumps onto my chair and sits with me. Today, though, she started barking. In itself, this is quite odd.

I popped my head out of my office but couldn’t see her. I called but she just barked. I realised she was just inside the back doors.

Last week at the garden centre, Mirinda bought a pot with a face in it. Sort of like an Easter Island head. It has sat on the potting table all week but today she planted it up and put on the terrace.

This is what Freya was barking at. She realised it was a face and she was telling it to go away. She wouldn’t leave the house, instead was sitting barking in her freaked out way.

It was very funny and also indicative of how intelligent she is. Emma, on the other hand, couldn’t work out what the fuss was about. She sniffed the pot and just went about her business of finding small bits of wood for Mirinda to throw.

PS: I’ve decided to stop cataegorizing posts as Lockdown as I think it’s sort of stopped now.