In lots of ways, I want to get that last entry further down the page, metaphorically and literally.* This afternoon the small girl and I went to visit our remaining two hens, Nutmeg and Cobweb, who are currently on holiday with e. We had a very nice time, despite the origins of the reason for our visit, and the hens are clearly doing fine; Nutmeg is even laying still. Cobweb, of course, being an Araucana, is completely mad still, but then that’s nothing new. Anyway, the small girl enjoyed feeding them, and talking to them, and a resemblance to various of our other hens didn’t hurt, although we have explained to her that part of the reason for the chickens’ holiday is that we are worried that the fox might come back to visit, and that foxes and chickens can’t be friends. It’s been a tough week, and having the aged parent here didn’t really divert attention from it so much as highlighting another area of life which is far from satisfactory, to wit: the relationship between AP and small girl, or lack thereof. (That’s a whole nother post, but basically he doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of her, and she, as a result, is a little stand-offish, which creates a wholly inaccurate impression of who she is, normally, with people who really know her.)

Anyway, that is a rant for another day, and for now, I’m happy to see our hens still standing, and OK, and alive. Quercus and I are still miserable about what happened, and the garden is horribly quiet without the chooks about the place. We had had them for three years, and seeing the place without them is just wrong. I think we are tentatively agreed that we will have some more hens while we live here, though we have yet to work out which changes we’ll make to make the run more secure (and, of course, how we can make me less forgetful; I feel unspeakably guilty, predictably, and I think I will full-stop, to be honest, when I think about what happened). I think we’re both prepared to go quite some way to try to ensure that this doesn’t happen again, whether that means an automatic chicken gate (which sounds rather like a bizarre political scandal, doesn’t it?) and electric wiring, or just tonnes and tonnes of ordinary chicken wire, or a moat and guard dogs and machine guns on watch-towers or what. But I feel better in my head when I think that this is not the end of the line for us as hen people, so we’ll continue to work out the details while I try to sit on my hands and not push Quercus before he’s ready.

We’re also trying to use what happened with the hens as an incentive to sort out the garden. A few weeks back, we tidied intensively in one half of it, before rotovating and sewing a mixture of grass, clover and camomile; it’s getting quite green out there (though let us not speak of the insanely healthy-looking rhubarb which has survived this ordeal, having played dead for several months prior to our decision to just cut our losses with it…) and it’s made us appreciate how nice it would be to have outdoor space that didn’t involve old nails and rusty bits of ex-roof. A garden, one might call it; I hear these things are catching on these days. So, it looks like our plans are changing from focusing entirely on the inside of the house, to sorting out the rest of the exterior work and creating a garden, not least for the small girl to have somewhere nice this summer. Hopefully, part of this will be creating a secure space for some more hens. And then retrieving our two from e.

In other news, next weekend we are getting a dining table, bringing us dangerously close to civilisation! In the kitchen! There will be pictures! We are going to Quercus’s mother’s for this, and a weekend away seemed like a rather nice idea given that we’ve had a week of horribleness. So, Weald & Downland here we come.

* And thanks for the sympathy on my last post; I really appreciated it, and it did go some way to stopping me feeling a complete and utter arsehole.

This morning I came down to find that five of our seven hens had been attacked by a fox. Quercus had to kill our rooster, whose neck was clearly broken but who had lived anyway, and four of the hens were already dead. We have sent the remaining two to live with e, who has lots of hens and from whom two of ours originally came. I feel just horrible about the whole thing; there are feathers everywhere and I feel physically sick when I think about poor Pepper’s horrible fate. The worst of it is that I forgot to shut the henhouse up last night; I think they came out very early and that was when it happened. I know it’s dramatic-sounding, but I shall never forgive myself for it. And yes, I know it could have happened to either me or Quercus, but it happened to me, and I feel just awful. I don’t know if we’re going to get more hens, and, if we do, when we might do it, but for now, we’ve a lot of clearing up to do and a small girl to lie to.

An unexpected by-product of sorting out the caravan situation has been meeting its owner, who I’ll call J, because, er, that’s his initial. Yesterday J came down from somewhere deeply northern to get the caravan ready for transportation on Wednesday (short story: J has given up on David, who moved it here originally, and who was supposed to move it once more, and hired someone to do it instead), which involved persuading the rusted-on wheels to come off so that new tyres can be fitted, and a general check-over of the electrics to make sure no-one will catch fire when this courier hooks things up when he’s ready to move. (At least part of my brain is thinking of Wagon Train at this point, and the oft-repeated ‘Heeeeead ‘em up; moooooooooooove ‘em out!’ Is that so very wrong, I ask?) Anyway, while we were farting about sorting out wheels and using large persuaders of the hammer variety in order to achieve this, J and I talked about houses. Largely, we talked about the sorts of houses that constitute architectural porn for me: strawbale and other natural building types. J, it transpires, is doing a PhD which looks at various aspects of strawbale builds; I had no idea that he was interested in that sort of construction, as the only things we knew about him, really, before this, were that he knew David and that they both have engineering backgrounds. So, it was cool to find ourselves comparing reading lists on cob, and on strawbale, and talking about render guns while using the phrase ‘feebly hydraulic’ with straight faces and without having to explain what that means, an occurence which is not exactly regular, shall we say.

The best thing about the conversation was that it reminded me of how lucky we are to live in an earth house, and how unusual it is, and how the roof – it is made of straw! Straw! (Well, reeds, actually, but hey.) Seeing the house through someone else’s eyes can really help when things seem a bit daunting, as can remembering how far we’ve come in a relatively short time; it’s only been since the small girl has been with us that we’ve been doing the major work this house so badly needs, after all, so, in twenty-two months, we’ve rebuilt about a third of the house, refurbished all the original windows, re-rendered the whole of the outside, and limewashed it, together with the usual DIY stuff that that all warrants.

And one day, I hope we will do more of this, but without the tedious fixing-other-people’s-dubious-and-sometimes-openly-shit-decisions bit, which is to say that I’d like to build our own house. I tend to um and er between cob (which I know and love, but which takes a bloody age to do, in that you have to build up layers and wait for them to harden before you can go taller or your walls sort of flop outwards in a process known as ‘ooging’ [as an aside, isn't that just the best word you've heard all day?]) and strawbale, which I’ve seen (we helped render a strawbale barn in North Devon when we were learning about lime rendering) but not really worked with, but which seems attractively quick in construction terms, and which offers similarly organic curves and a reassuringly thick wall to boot, and which, when combined with a timber frame, seems to equal the reassuringly sturdy nature of cob. I mean, a quick Google shows some of the possibilities, and the pictures here are just a taster, really, of what you can do, and on a low budget too. This picture is a strawbale house, and there are all sorts of things about it which I love, not the least of which is the curved side and the alcove thing they’ve got going on. The idea of a house as an almost sculptural thing appeals to me on a similar level that pottery gets me – you mean I can make a house? Like, a pot, but much, much larger? Oh yes. Oh, so very yes.

Also, the strawbale/cob ideas give me hope that one day, we might live in a roundhouse. Or even something with a rounded section. See? I can be flexible. Indeed, something like any of these pictures would do nicely. I harbour dreams of acres of woodland, a small stream for Quercus’s hydro-electric tinkerings, and the predictable raised beds and polytunnel combination. I see chickens and goats, and probably more than one small girl, and space, and quiet, and ordered chaos, and a kiln, and a cob oven, and a wood-fired hot-tub. And sometimes, I can see it all so clearly that it’s easy to find what’s in front of me a rather watered-down replacement, with the work needed being endless. So thank you, J, for reminding me that the watered-down nature is just because this is part of the process, and in order to get to Place B, we need first to finish Place A, and to give ourselves time to recover from the finishing thereof, before we start on the next thing. And in the meantime, it’s OK to dream, right?

So, while I daydream, I present for your visual edification, some natural building delights.

OK, so this one might be a tad on the petite side, but there is something I have come to really love about living in a house which is the size you need, rather than the size you want, if you know what I mean. Our house has two bedrooms, and hopefully we’ll be here for a little while longer; the footprint of the original house is about eighteen by ten, I suppose, so it’s not exactly huge, but I quite like the idea of being hunkered down in a little house which, with a careful approach to storage, can just about contain the stuff of life but does so in an unusually space-sensitive manner.

There’s something about the wedges of wood used as shelves here that I really like, and again, there are alcoves galore – the nature of cob being such that, if you fancy a hole somewhere, you just dig the blighter out. Ahhhh. Versatility.

This one vaguely reminds me of a boot-shaped house in the manner of the old woman with all those childer kicking about the place; it definitely gets my mythical house vote (although for true mythical houseness, have a gander at Simon Dale’s gorgeous house of loveliness, over which I have surely slavered before).

In many ways, this house is the closest relation of our own; it’s cob, it’s in Devon, and it’s thatched. Yet it also seems a world away in that the main house has a sense of space and airiness which our own, with its low ceilings and small floorplan, hasn’t. It’s a modern take on an old style, I suppose, and I think it works pretty well (particularly as there is a solid cob spiral staircase in there).

And you? What makes the ideal house for you?

I’ve been meaning to post lots of exciting things about lots of fascinating subjects, but, er, well, I’m brain-dead due to lack of sleep and a particularly un-scintillating copy-editing job which finishes today, so all I can come up with is the very lovely loaf recipe which I tried out yesterday, in need of a little something to distract from the aforementioned copy horrors. It’s a Cranks recipe, and I can honestly say that, other than the peanut butter and apple soup (which was never really going to work, was it, and if I’d read it in any other book, I wouldn’t even have paused for thought before damning it as the very worst sort of heresy), they are all fillers and no killers (see what I did there?).

So, here goes.

Spiced banana and apple loaf
Ingredients
1 apple, cored, peeled and grated
2 small bananas, mashed
Zest of a large lemon
2 oz sultanas (mixed dried fruit would work well, too)
1 lb of strong (bread) flour (I used a wholemeal spelt I just happened to have kicking about)
2 oz dark brown sugar (I probably used four, if we’re honest, because my hand slipped when sticking it in the bowl)
1 t(b)sp of mixed spice, cinnamon, nutmeg etc.
1 tsp quick-acting yeast
¼ of a pint of warm water

Then…
Pop about 4 oz of the flour in a bowl with the water and the yeast, and stick it somewhere warm to get nice and frothy. While that’s doing its thing, mash the bananas in with the grated apple and the lemon and the sultanas. When you’ve achieved a suitably frothy yeasty concoction, sling that in with the fruit, and add the other ingredients to form a dough-like consistency. Knead it for a bit, until it’s nicely formed, and then into an oiled (or silicone) bread tin with it, and off to a nice warm place to rise for about an hour. (Because I was using antiquated yeast and bread flour damp enough to have lumps, mine didn’t rise masses, but hey – let’s not judge.) Stick the oven on to about 200°c, and bake the blighter for about thirty minutes. As with ordinary bread, it’s done when it’s brown on top and sounds hollow when tapped in a peremptory manner on the base.
V. nice with a spot of butter on it, and works extremely well as toast. The funny thing is that, unlike many other banana-featuring recipes of my ken, this one hides its banananess extraordinarily well – you wouldn’t know they’d even been near it, never mind having moved in, wholesale.

Coming in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future:

- fat bells (and more dready loveliness) – a more successful experience, so thanks to all who commented on our first attempt;

- another ginormous-needles-make-fast-work knitted cardigan for the small girl, just, predictably, as the weather gets warmer;

- ponderings on when to sit and think about things, and the advantages and disadvantages thereof, and when to just get the fuck on with something and hope for the best.

Thursday is one of sometimes two nights a week when I am an orchestra widow. Quercus has been playing a rather large brass instrument (the tuba, since you ask) since he was small enough that he could probably have fitted inside its bell, had he wished to, and I have always felt strongly that he must continue to do so despite the usual call of the wild, which is to say the outland we laughingly call the extension. (It’s not that wild these days, honestly, yet the habit persists in thinking terms – I still see the things that need doing as much as the things that are already done, apart from during those brief moments when I manage to recall quite how far we’ve come – from hardboard interior walls and perpetually running-wet walls complete with a plywood ceiling and single-skin brick external walls…!) So, tonight he has wended his merry way to a rehearsal, where he will no doubt be tackling all sorts of musical delights. Or at least counting for a very long time. Which is something brass players excel at. (That, and relying on their neighbours to remind them of their cues when they forget to count altogether and doze off instead.)

While he is out, I am reuniting with my sewing machine. It has been off for a service with someone his agent laughingly described as ‘a sewing machine geek’; just as well, given that a bit of internet stalking revealed that it is actually well over a hundred, and thus something of a dying breed. Hopefully, I will now find my way to The Zen Of Sewing, but frankly I’ll settle for not wanting to hurl its not inconsiderable bulk out of the nearest window. I have a bag which is nearly finished – it’s been waiting for the return of the beast for about three weeks – and wants only four straight seams. D’you think I’ll manage it without some form of homicide taking place?

I’ve been thinking of establishing myself a regular crafty slot, and now that I think about it, Thursday evenings seems like a good plan. I don’t get very much time in the house on my own, as it were (the small girl having gone to bed just before seven, as is her wont), and as afternoon snoozes seem to be a bit hit-and-miss these days, I think that evenings are probably a better option, not least as I quite like a bit of time on my own and am thus in a positive frame of mind at the very outset, which is in itself a useful thing when I find myself confronted by a) my own technical ineptitude, and b) that recurrent desire to hurl said machine forth. So, we shall see; now I’ve said the whole regular bit, doubtless Quercus will have a drought of rehearsal time, and I’ll forget all about it until the next time I’m feeling particularly batshit.

In other news, in a moment of spectacular magnanimity the uncharacteristic nature of which those who know me personally will attest in the strongest terms, I have given the caravan’s owner (let us call him Jules, for that is… his name) another week’s grace in the ongoing saga of its removal (or lack thereof) from our garden. His girlfriend, the not-very-lovely one from the phone conversation the other week, has just had their baby, and he was proposing to come here (a five-hour drive for him) in order to, well, generally prat about in an attempt to formulate Plan B for its removal. Plan B is needed because Plan A was to get David to move it, and, as regular readers will know, that doesn’t seem to be on the cards given that he doesn’t reply to our emails or phone calls these days, and seems to wish that a large rock would appear just for the very purpose of our crawling beneath it and remaining there for a goodly period of time. Sadly (for him), said rock is about as keen on making an appearance as he himself is, so we persist. Anyway, I don’t want to be the utter trout who insists that Jules leaves his new baby and his recently-given-birth partner to drive all the way over here and attempt to clear up this situation, so we’ve left it until next weekend, with the solemn vow that then, It Shall Be Moved.

My.

Right. Knitting calls, as does the sewing machine, and, to my shame, an online episode of something terrible. Oh, but just before I go, let me gloat about this year’s foray into seasonal crafty whatsits: coloured eggs. I’ve never done these before, but have often seen them on blogs and thought how lovely they looked, so this was the year. Ye gods, blowing eggs requires some determination. I think it’s the sort of thing I’ll do again, though, as I quite like the idea of building up a collection of eggs over the years. (Assuming they last that long!) Have you tried this, and if so, what did you use for colours? For us, it was leftover food colouring from making L-Q-S‘s pumpkin birthday cake, some white crayon and a rubber band, together with some water and some vinegar. We never managed to get the green colouring to come out green, though – it always ended up bright turquoise.

And how is the internets tonight?

Well, not really unspeakable, as I am about to speak it, metaphorically, er, speaking. But still. Woe. Yes. Woe, for I have spent two days with a not-very-well small girl for company. And lo! there was much lying on the sofa with a small wailing person on top of me, wanting to do nothing except feed and go to sleep. She is most pathetic, and I feel very sorry for her, and have pretty much no idea what’s wrong. She just seems to have picked something up, and is a bit on the warm side, is completely uninterested in eating or going out and doing things, and is rather lethargic. I am taking the drink-lots-of-fluid-and-thank-the-gods-for-continued-breastfeeding dance, while perfecting the skills of doing normal household stuff with a toddler in one hand. Quite different from the same dance conducted to the tune of tiny babe, I find, and rather more demanding on one’s wrists (to the extent that I appear to have acquired a repetitive strain injury in my left wrist, which is currently intimating that physiotherapy might be the only way to persuade it to cease and desist).

Also, it being that time of the month, I have the cramps from hell.

Now, this brings me to a tricky subject.

WHY DOES IT HAVE TO HURT?

No, seriously. WHY?

I mean, I am all in favour of the many and varied attempts that various female writers have made to reclaim the majesty of menstruation, and to work in into some sort of alternative feminine esotericism which rejoices in the power of birth and recreation of the divine spirit through birth and blood, milk and ecstasy and all that. Oh yes. And I read tons of very lentil-eating books about childbirth when I was pregnant, and yes, I ended up very much in favour of home-birth with as few interventions as possible. (And yes, I am off to knit my own placenta into a menstruation veil shortly.) (Kidding.) But the thing that really stops me short of buying into this logic is that every month, my period arrives, and I feel pretty shoddy for the first day or two, to the extent that, today, all I’ve wanted to do is crouch over a hot water bottle, while muttering darkly about hysterectomies.

Traitor to the cause, see. Next thing I’ll be seeking out the interventions of a white male GP with an Oxbridge degree who votes Conservative and lives within an hour of London, not to mention burning my sandals and eating a Big Mac.

I do want to find a way to perceive menstruation as something other than a royal pain in the arse, if you’ll forgive the literal nature of that phrasing, but it’s something with which I struggle. I mean, mentally, I find the idea of a cycle which is in time with the tides of the moon immensely appealing, and I love the idea of women being linked with lunar tides and whatnot. I am also not at all squeamish (I have been using a Mooncup for about five years, for example, and am not at all grossed-out by anything involving blood and guts), so it’s not that that’s the problem. I even like the novel idea of using menstrual blood in composting, for the iron contained therein, and, after a brief deliberation, this month I’ve switched to using washable pads, with which I am so far delighted. Also, given my witchcraft tendencies, I have used a variety of herbal approaches in the past, some of which I continue to use, more out of habit than any particularly overwhelming effect; raspberry leaf tea, scullcap tincture, cramp bark, camomile, valerian, peppermint and many others which I can’t remember have all joined me in the ouch-why-ouch monthly dance, yet none have really trounced the problem. (And that’s before we even start on The Teenage Years: Does Any GP Think That The Pill Doesn’t Cure All Problems, And If So, Give That Doc A Prize.)

So, the eco aspects of menstruation get my vote, as it were. And the whole you-can-make-people-if-you’re-female bit never fails to astonish me, as it did throughout conception, pregnancy and birth, and as I hope it will again, if we ever finish our sodding house (that, dear reader, is another post entirely). I can talk my way around all sorts of phrasing which plays up the importance of positive imagery about menstruation in terms of having daughters and giving them a good feeling about being female, and I have learned to stop thinking of menstruation as ‘the curse’, a phrase my mother used for years (and perhaps unsurprisingly, given that she had a hysterectomy at forty after years of endometriosis) because I don’t want to feel that something which is natural to the female body is in any way something inflicted upon it; no – I prefer to see it as a sign of the great things of which women are capable. But that’s exactly where I flounder: I do believe that it’s a sign of all the extraordinary things that we can handle, as women, yet at the same time, the pain really pisses me off. It’s not like I’m lying in my bed of pain for days at a time, trailing a wan (and suitably Victorian) hand over a lacy cotton nightgown, but it does take the edge off me, for want of a better phrase, for the first couple of days, and my skin is completely crap for a few days before that, just to remind me of the delights which lie before me.

So, in short, how to resolve this dichotomy between the mental resolution with which I can cheerfully face the monthly challenges of being female, and the physical wimp which appears as soon as the bleeding begins? It’s a question I haven’t yet answered, but I’d really like to get my hymn-sheets in order before I start explaining all this to a small girl, one day.