Oooh oooh oooh – this week, we have had our new hob delivered. It’s not fitted yet as it’s one of those clever thingies what involves electricky malarkies, but it’s going to be an utter delight to one who loves cooking – it has touch controls and no knobs, which, as you can imagine, = easy cleaning and thus a world very far removed from our current Baby Belling bliss. This weekend, we have made good progress on the extension work, too – Quercus has finished fitting the reclaimed door, complete with new double-glazed panel where previously there was wood, and I have grouted half the known universe, which is to say approximately a third of the tiny, teensy tiles in our bathroom (they are travertine; they look lovely, but man alive, they take some grouting).

We are now getting about two to three eggs a day from the hens, who started laying again about a week ago, and we’ve had five blue eggs so far from the new arrivals. We have also discovered that not having made any wine in 2008, or indeed for most of 2007, hasn’t made a jot of difference; I wasn’t drinking for most of that year, what with being pregnant and having just had a baby, and now that I’m having the occasional drop-ette, we find we still have vast quantities of alcoholic beverages just waiting to be tried. Tonight, a particularly fine demijohn of sloe wine has made the light of day; Quercus, motivated by some divine genius, remembered to bring it in on one of his many door-fitting-related trips to our sheds (ye gods – the extension drawing to a conclusion must surely mean that The Day When We Must Sort Out The Sheds is moving ever closer; the mere thought of that is utterly terrifying – I mean, there are things in there that we haven’t even seen for three years! Three years!), and lordy me, it is a very fine drop indeed, made by my own fair hand in, I think, 2006, and now clear, bright and sparkling, as well as being super-sloe in flavour. If you’ve ever had sloe gin and found, as many have before you, that it is the thing which your life has lacked up to that point, then really, try making sloe wine – it is all sorts of fantastic, and cheaper per slug than the gin version as, er, you don’t have to put gin in. This year, hopefully, having a larger kitchen (and no building work, pregnancy, or PhD research) should mean more wine, less chaos, and easier storage (the attic space above the bathroom might even mean one could simply keep the demijohns up there, and insert a straw at an opportune moment, leaving gravity to do the rest while one lay on the floor below… Ahem – did I type that out loud?); I have missed making wine as the year ticked past, though even I can see that acquiring more than our current twenty-five demijohns might be taking things a bit far, so somewhere along the line, consuming some of our produce is a bloody good idea, methinks.

I’m feeling more sorted about the nursery situation now, too. Quercus and I have basically decided that unless we can find somewhere we are 100% happy with, we will both go part-time work-wise, and juggle looking after the witchling between us. We are a bit twitchy about committing to this with no end in sight, but the six months or so which, thus far, I think it would take for us to get a place at somewhere we both like (that’s six months past the time I go back to work; the wait appears to be about a year or so), we could manage fine, provided we’re careful. So, a solution, of sorts, albeit slightly unconventional.

On which note, time to go and trough my way through Quercus’s chili offering while finishing a half-glass of said sloe wine.