A note to Mary Berry

Posted on January 6, 2017 by thepogblog

Mary Berry, I think I might love you.

Me, the Pog who mostly eats toast, actually cooked last night.  I mean, with all different ingredients that I had to buy separately and use more than one pot to combine.  I was given one of your cookbooks for Christmas (a subtle hint, perhaps) and I cooked your ‘Swiss Chicken, spinach and mushroom bake’ for me and Himself.  Thanks to the step by step ‘keys to perfection’, not only did it taste good but….we’re both still alive!

For that, I might love you.

We do need some words though, because although your book is clearly geared up for idiots, it’s not entirely Pog proof. These are some additional observations you might like to include in future editions:

  • Not everyone has a baking dish.  Baking dishes only come in ‘huge’ when your only option is Tesco at 8pm.
  • You cannot buy spinach in 750g packs or mini chicken fillets in 725g packs.  Realising partway through your Tesco shop that to resolve some of the issue you should halve the recipe as you probably don’t need enough for six people anyway would usually be fine, but when it is the first day back at the office and you have been up for 14.5 hours and aren’t good with numbers anyway, it makes life very, very complicated.
  • The first line in the recipe: ‘Pick over the spinach leaves and trim off any thick, coarse stalks’ is confusing for a novice at this cooking lark.  Compared with what?  And do you know how much picking over is required in 500g of spinach?  (See?  trying to halve numbers as mentioned above clearly didn’t work very well.)  I got in such a pickle I started discarding leaves and keeping the stalks.  Which I now suspect probably weren’t thick or coarse…
  • Not everyone has a lid to ‘cover the pan with its lid and cook the spinach’ (although God knows where it is)…  It turns out a frying pan is a good lid substitute here though.img_1883
  • Now, I realise that this one isn’t your fault, but I really thought I’d get to the ‘pop it in the oven’ stage before He required picking up from the station, thereby becoming some sort of cross between a domestic pogess and 1950’s housewife.  Unfortunately, even though I worked from home and should therefore have had quite a bit of spare time, work dragged on and I only got as far as ‘press and pound hard on the spinach using the edge of a wooden spoon spatula’ before I realised I should really be part way through Bumpkinsville in my car.  I admit, I had also tried to multitask somewhat and clean the bathroom at the same time as the spinaching, which could have impacted the timing a little.

But do you know Mary?  That was kind of as bad as it got.  I gave up on the domestic pogess / housewife though and roped Him in to help (he’s a better cook than me anyway) and we didn’t do too badly.

I’ll be having a look at what I can try next week.  Although maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here…. :o)

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Toad armour

Posted on January 3, 2017 by thepogblog

Wowee.  That was a long day.

If like me, it was your first day back at work after the Christmas break, well done – we made it!  I do admit though, it wasn’t quite lunch time before I was ‘just looking for a bit of holiday inspiration’ on line.  In my defence, this was partly to save my sanity and give myself a distraction from the eleventy billion emails that were jostling for space in my inbox, and partly because I was trying to wish myself warm.

Because, in anticipation of those eleventy billion emails, I worked from home (with no distractions I had a chance of getting through them in one day.  It also meant that I didn’t have to get up in what now feels like the middle of the night).  The downside of this is that I work from my conservatory when I work from home, partly because I love looking out the huge window, even if it is only onto my tiny garden:

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But mostly because its the only place I can’t hear my neighbours.  I did think about staying in the lounge this morning but there was an argument going on next door.  I was tempted to let them know if they left out all the variations of f*ck they seemed very partial to, the time spent shouting would be halved, but frankly, I don’t have the balls.  So instead, I turned on the heating out here for an hour before I sat at my desk by which time it had reached a grand 2.4 degrees (36 and a bit if you use old money):

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But this is ok, because I have Sisters and friends who know me and my toadness well and for Christmas bought me keeping warm things.  Under my tracksuit bottoms I am wearing furry lined leggings that Sister 1 gave me.  They are like large teddy bears hugging your legs.  On my feet I have socks so thick that I think they are about the same tog level as my duvet.  These were from the Lovely Nut.  I’ve had problems bending my elbows with a thermal vest, polo neck, hoody (hood up) and sweatshirt and typing was a little tricky with gloves, but combined with the final piece in my toad armour I have made it through the day without becoming an iced Pog.  That final piece? Sister 2 gave me this:

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(The long light brown thing demonstrating its size next to Norman).  It’s the worlds biggest hot water bottle and it has ties one end and a loop the other so you can tie it to yourself!  How genius is that?!

It’s a good job  – it’s still only 11.6 degrees in here, but the rest of the house feels pretty much tropical with all these clothes on.  Maybe I didn’t need to look up sunshine online…maybe I just needed to add a few more layers and stand in the kitchen to get that holiday feeling :o)

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Don’t mind the gaps

Posted on December 31, 2016 by thepogblog

This time last year I said I didn’t think there would be time for resolutions. It turns out leaving some gaps was a good plan.

I’ve done the usual pog things – crocheted, baked (mostly badly), yoga-ed, spent lots of time taking photos of Norman and a fair bit of time with my family and Little Pea. A few of the things I didn’t anticipate and I am rather glad I had gaps for included:

  1. Getting a new job which has meant I get to do interesting work with lovely people (some of them might drive me nuts, but they are still lovely)
  2. Starting a beginners running course, finishing a beginners running course, enjoying running and actually completing my first 10k (and only having a slightly crunchy knee to show for it)
  3. Selling Pog Towers
  4. Putting an offer in on three houses (And withdrawing offers on two of them, obviously)
  5. Unexpectedly acquiring a boyfriend. (No, I actually don’t write about everything here….) To catch you up, we’ve known each other a long time, but I still gave him a 28 day no quibble returns policy when we first got together so he had the chance to see sense.  Strangely, he didn’t take advantage of the offer and a few months later we’re still together.  We must be quite a good match: for Christmas we gave each other the same canvas print of a photo from one of our first dates.  This has all made me very, very smiley.

So this year I’m not making any resolutions again; I’m pretty sure Norman and I will have enough to keep us busy, one way or another and I like the fact that because I won’t be too focussed on achieving goals there will be time for unplanned things to sneak into life.

I hope you have enough gaps in 2017 to allow for some unexpected things too. Thank you for coming along on my rambley blog journey this year.  I hope I’ve given you as many smiles as your being here has given me.

As a weird and not very good thank you, Norman and I tried a selfie in the style of those family Christmas cards people do.  We failed, but my left eye should recover at some point next year…

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And slightly better, here are a few pictures from the last few days of my 2016 that make me smile:

Sunset at Brighton

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Dawn at the seafront

Dawn at the seafront

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Country walking

Country walking…

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…With carved beavers. Obviously

A different view, from the i360

A different view, from the i360

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Happy new 2017. I hope it brings you smiles and happiness. :o) x

Posted in cats, Dating, fitness, Pog Life, Pog Pictures, running, work | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Christmasness

Posted on December 24, 2016 by thepogblog

For about five years I have tried making Brie and cranberry canapés for Christmas. Every year they have been a complete disaster.  I think I might have finally cracked it though! (You just have to ignore the fact that they are closer to pie than canapé size as I didn’t have the right tins and apparently using silicone ice cube trays wouldn’t have been hugely successful):

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It must have been the preparation of a Christmas Eve run that helped :

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Where we think we might just have seen Rudolf having a bit of a relax before the excitement of this evening:

img_1522Or maybe it’s just because over the years I have tried every other way you cold possibly make them. Next year I might even attempt ‘bite sized’… :o)

And in other photos this week, we have the preparation in my fitball class for playing cards, while in plank, with our feet on a ball:

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And the face of pure excitement when Little Pea saw the start of the circus show:

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I also saw this a few days ago. I thought it was rather lovely:

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Have a lovely Christmas, whatever you are doing :o) x

Posted in Cooking, exercise, family, fitness, food, Good for you, Pog Life, running | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

My own little Christmas fairy

Posted on December 21, 2016 by thepogblog

I seem to be starting the Christmassy thing, Pog style.  Yesterday I channeled my inner Father Christmas when I got stuck in my loft hatch.  I was trying to get a set of drawers down and to the charity shop and it hadn’t occurred to me that the drawers and me wouldn’t both fit through the hole at the same time.  There were a few moments of panic, followed by relief and the consideration that Father Christmas must feel those things multiple times on Christmas Eve, what with all the chimneys….

Today I had a whole day free to really get in the Christmas spirit.  I planned films, wrapping, cracker making and many mince pies.  Somebody somewhere had other ideas. Last week a teeny tint leak had started coming from my hot water tank. Assured by three men that it was nothing to worry about, I wrapped a tea towel around the leaky part and uncharactertically stopped worrying. In fact, when one of the men -my fixer man- called this morning to say he had finished all his jobs and was going to pop in to tighten the leaky bit up on his way home I told him not to worry and to leave it until after Christmas.  Luckily the handyman doesn’t have great listening skills, ignored me entirely and turned up 10 minutes later.

I am not sure if I have a Christmas fairy looking after me or if he is my Christmas fairy, but after a quick look, he very rapidly switched all the sockets off and pulled fuses out the fuse boxes.  Apparently I had been very, very lucky things had not gone fizzy pop as the water I could see was only a very small part of the leak…the big part, which had been leaking a while by the looks of things when he took it apart, was leaking almost onto a live wire.  And further investigations showed that a part about to detach itself was the only thing between all the tank water and the floor of Pog Towers.

Water coming out of here (even though it usually has a cover on it so you can't see this) is not a good thing...

Water coming out of here (even though it usually has a cover on it so you can’t see this) is not a good thing…

If was only going to take 30 minutes to fix though. Hooray!

Around 4 hours, a lot of swearing mostly the fixer man) a small amount of panic (mostly me), a blow torch, a disconnected smoke alarm, removal of all flammables from the bathroom and a lot of fumes, it was fixed, but only because my fixer man is a brilliant combination of lovely and stubborn (and possibly part Christmas fairy). He also only charged me what he had quoted for a 30 minutes job – although I did make him cheese on toast for his lunch too :o)

So now, even though I wasn’t worrying, I can rest easy knowing that there will be hot water with no risk of power loss to the whole house and no chance of flooding. I can’t work out if this means I should go back to worrying or not. Either way, thank goodness for Christmas fairies :o)

All better....just with slight scaring as a result of the complex operation :o/

All better….just with slight scaring as a result of the complex operation :o/

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Pointless conversations

Posted on December 19, 2016 by thepogblog

I seem to be collecting pointless conversations at the moment. Here’s a couple, just so you can share in their pointlessness (well, it is the season of sharing):

The house selling saga continues (the buying part has taken on a life of its own and would take eleventh billion posts to update on, so we’ll leave that alone for a while) and today I was told I need to pay £60 in case there was an outstanding balance on a charge I pay every month for maintenance on the communal areas of the road. The exact charge wouldn’t be identified for another 18 months though, so it would need to be done through my legal people at a cost of an additional £150 so it could be ‘held’. I called up the people requesting this payment explaining that every other service I pay for would be paid in full before I left, so why couldn’t this one?

Them: because we won’t know how much it is until at least December 2017.

Me: This year it was £20. I am not paying £210 because you can’t get yourselves organised.

Them: You have to.

Me: ok. I will pay you £60 direct when I leave to cover it, if it is a legal requirement, but I’m not paying £150 do do it through a solicitor.

Them: We don’t have the ability to hold money.  Could you just hold on? I’m going to talk to my supervisor

< hold music>

Them: So it turns out, it’s not a legal requirement. You don’t have to pay it.

Me: At all?

Them: Well no.

Me: Right.

Them: we would like a forwarding address for you though, just in case there is an outstanding amount and we’ll contact you then…

So that saved me £210, which is good, but this is the second time since selling the house that I’ve been asked for additional payments that a few phone calls revealed were entirely unnecessary. (The other one, should you be in the same position, was a request for retrospective planning persimission – around £150 – on a conservatory that never needed planning permission in the first place!)

The other conversation was on finding a washer had fallen out of my loo seat into the back of the loo base, only to discover after further inspection that the washer was in fact a sleeping catterpillar.

Me: Norman! Why is there a catterpillar on the back of my loo seat?

Norman:

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I don’t think he was bothered. Neither was the catterpillar though – he’s now munching his way through the front garden :o)

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Discombobulation

Posted on December 14, 2016 by thepogblog

I’m feeling a bit discombobulated.  It doesn’t feel Christmassy right down to the weather (- I saw a butterfly and two primroses in the garden today) yet tomorrow is my last working day of the year.  I keep starting to tell people I am going commando, but I’ve been informed I actually mean that I’m ‘demob happy’.  I’m sticking to ‘discombobulated’ to save any confusion.

My brain has clearly decided it’s had enough now.  I’ve forgotten what all acronyms mean – which is a problem as where I work, every second word is an acronym, and I’ve got to the ‘that’ll have to wait until next year now’ stage.   I also just managed to misread an email from a missing animal organisation and spent quite sometime wondering 1) how anyone manages to lose a fish and 2) why they would call it Amanda.  (It turns out Amanda is actually a very pretty grey cat.  I’ve no idea why any part of my brain thought she was a fish).

Maybe once I shut down my laptop tomorrow everything will become sparkly and lovely and I’ll start humming carols.  And all my Christmas shopping which I’ve usually finished around July time will be delivered to me by elves who have had more inspiration than I seem to have managed this year.

I’ll leave you with my best smile of the week.  On Sunday I laughed loudly while standing next to Little Pea.  He looked at me reproachfully and said  ‘Auntie Pog, you scared my ears!’  That’s the most perfect description I’ve heard in a while :o)

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New desk, new colleagues, complete lack of patience

Posted on December 6, 2016 by thepogblog

Last week I moved desks at work.  Again.  This time it was only two floors, but it was the biggest sh*t show yet.  I’d packed a crate the previous week and been promised that my new desk may have no natural daylight, but it would be all set up and ready for me to start work on the Monday.   It wasn’t – nothing had been set up, so I did it all myself (no mean feat for an untechie like me).  It’s a long story, but it ended up being two hours and alot of humphing before I was able to work.

But then people got involved in the new desk equation:

Part way through the morning it turned out my desk is actually assigned to two other, different people in two different groups, who didn’t know about each other, or me.  Its like some weird desk triangle.  I offered to move.  Or just go home.  Much discussion took place.   Someone emailed a complaint to his manager on the other side of the office about the fact that the discussions were distracting him from work.  We knew this because the manager came over to ask us to keep it down as ‘Richard’ was having trouble concentrating.  ‘Richard’ looked sheepish as he was sitting in the desk almost behind me, not having had the b*lls to ask anyone to be quiet himself.

The man next to me was only interested in whether I had the ability to order him a name plate thingy like I have.  I told him I couldn’t as it was from the days when we spent money on that sort of thing, about 10 years ago.  He hasn’t spoken to me since.

The man behind me looks like he sleeps under Waterloo bridge.  I’m not sure his t-shirt / jumper, both from circa 1970 actually cover his tummy, but I can’t be sure as I’m too scared to look properly.  I can only assume he shaves in the dark and without a mirror.  He paces a lot and only talks to himself.

Another man, a fair distance away does a lot of teleconferences in a very loud voice.  He seems to have bypassed corporate bullsh*t and just moved to plain old bullsh*t.  My favourite phrases so far are ‘free hunting pass’ (you what?!) and we must ‘syndicate that approach’ (not got a scooby).

I think it might be getting to me.  Yesterday one of the men arrived and sniffed.  Loudly.  And roughly every 10 seconds.  For about an hour.  I went to the toilet, got a toilet roll and popped it on his desk in a pointy sort of way.  He thanked me (in a not very happy way) and said that he couldn’t blow his nose too much or he would get a nose bleed.  I figured that between me and the friend I sit next to (who had also had the joy of moving desks) who was as twitchy as I was over the sniffing –  he was likely to end up with a nose bleed if he didn’t start blowing his nose.  So I suggested, very gently, that if tissues were out of the question, he might like to invest in two small corks: one for each nostril.

He learned to blow his nose soon after :o)

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Randomness and getting a little bit Christmassy

Posted on December 4, 2016 by thepogblog

I’ve not quite go  into the Christmas spirit yet,  but Christmassy things are starting to happen around the edges.

Last  Sunday Grandad introduced Little Pea to 70’s children’s tv.   After a spot of Hector’s House, the Magic Roundabout and Rainbow, Little Pea needed to stay close to Sister 2: img_2850But even Nanny and Grandad were taken by Pingu:

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After this trauma /entertainment it was Little Pea’s turn:

And, even thought is was only the first day of December, I had my work Christmas party. I still didn’t feel hugely Christmassy, but I did discover silent discos (incase there are any other uninitiated people out there, everyone has a set of headphones which have the ability to change channels to listen to different types of music. Everyone listens to whatever they like and has no idea what the person next to them is bopping along to.) Its genius for people like me who get all self conscious about dancing. It’s not so genius when you discover a free flowing supply of champagne, lose all inhibitions, dance like and idiot and go into work the next day to discover some people videoed you…

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This was some rather cool wall paper in the room I stayed in after the party (those are the eyes of a slightly drunken Pog):

img_1420And here are a couple of random photos from this week that I rather liked:
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:o)

 

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A bit of wondering

Posted on November 29, 2016 by thepogblog

Sometimes you have to wonder about people.  Even the people who are close to you.  On Saturday, as I do most weekends at some point, I spoke to my friend The Lovely Nut on the phone.

As is often the case, even though I’d just spent 45 minutes talking to her, she called back a few minutes later with a thought she has just had.  This particular thought was:

‘Where is my driving license?’

For those of you that don’t know, The Lovely Nut is the almost 80 year old Mum of an ex boyfriend from many years ago.  We speak every week and I see her a couple of times a year.  I don’t actually know the exact layout of every item in her house.

Me: I don’t know.  When did you last have it?  (Irritating, I know, but with her there is a good chance that is all it takes).

Her: I don’t know that I ever had it.  What does it look like?

Me: It’ll either be a credit sized card with your photo, or you might still have a folded up piece of paper.

Her:  Ah!  I have a credit sized card – my AA membership card.  Is that it?

Me: No.  I imagine that is probably your AA membership card.

Her: Well, where would it be then?

I went through all the obvious places I could think of – purse, handbag, desk drawer – but apparently they weren’t helpful.

Me:  You do have a driving licence don’t you?

Her:  Of course I do.  I’ve just never seen it.

Hmmmm

Me: What do you need it for?

Her:  Oh, I don’t need it.  I just thought it might be useful to know where it is….

I think at that point I suggested if she’d never seen it and never needed it, it probably wasn’t worth tearing the house apart to find it right this second.  I finished the call and took a few deep breaths.  And wondered about people a little…  :o)

It was a frosty run this morning :o)

It was a frosty run this morning :o)

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