Window decorations

This is a window between where I work and the Norfolk Street Deli, which is where I go to get my sandwich at lunchtime.

How shall we make our house look attractive? I know...

In many ways I think it is admirable that the people who live in this house have made a little display for people to admire who walk past. In other ways I secretly feel that spider will escape its case (and escape the fact that it is dead), jump through the glass, and get me by the throat. I still walk past to get my falafel. But I will not pretend I am not secretly nervous...

Go me not buying wool!

Also, you remember in the last post I was not buying any more wool? Doing great there.

A story with a moral

I am failing at Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. I am sorry. However just popping up because today an event happened to me which can be made into a Story With A Moral which is worthy of Pinterest so I am sharing it.

I was walking home from work down the street near our house with a ridiculously large number of cats, the bad black cat, Siamese-But-Striped, the cat with the bushy tail who stares, other black cat, nervous tabby grey, lots of cats. (This is not about cats. I'm just remarking). Anyway because it was practically the first sunny day this year I was wearing something different. I was wearing my brown jacket (ebay), grey skirt (Secret Lentil), green cardigan (factory shop), Boden biker boots (ebay), and various printed Uniqlo items whereas previously I have been wearing my camel duffel, bright blue Ugg boots bought for me by mum, and with my Ipod in my ears, shivering and looking a bit miserable. I was walking along when a woman on a bike who I did not think I had seen before came round the corner towards me and I moved to the side. As she came up to me she beamed at me and said, 'but no bright blue boots today! And I love those boots! They are my favourites!' and then she beamed again. I smiled too and said thank you and we both went on our ways.

I do not need to spell out the moral of this but I will do anyway because I am pedantic and literal. I did not remember ever seeing that nice woman before and yet she had been watching me and admiring my boots! So the moral is, you do not know when you are brightening up someone's day. You just do not know. Even when you are wandering along looking like Paddington on Valium with Dolly Parton in your ears you may be cheering someone up. Is that a cheering thought? It is a cheering thought if it is a nice smiley woman on a bike. Not if it's a stalker.

One last pussy

Just indulge me. We're back to knitting soon (or, crochet! I crocheted something! Or, my thoughts on burlesque, fan dancing, or the Beauty Myth as it applies to yoga),

I stare moodily at the river

Whyohwhyohwhy don't I live on a cool boat with a big fat cat, being counter-cultural? It would be great. I would cook thrilling veggie meals on my little stove, and there would be homemade crochet throws on my bed and I would wear vintage and have a nose piercing.* I would drink red wine and lean back on my tie-dye cushions and I would talk to my cool friends about Important Things, perhaps strumming a few chords on my guitar, and I would not moan about not having a spare room and a kitchen diner at all ever.

It's all in the shading, you see. Somebody take me to the theatre

I just liked this poster. I should go back to drawing nudes, actually I could just follow Partner round with a pencil, especially when the weather is a bit warmer. That would be cheaper too.

The Foggy Knitter recommended an excellent blog - Streetmogs - for those of you who like to see these naughty creatures in the wild, so, this is one for you, Aunty Kath. When Partner has retired, he has occasionally stated his intention to exploit Cambridge's one enormous natural resource and run Pussy Safaris, where he will stride the backstreets of Cambridge with a flag and a posse of highly-paying tourists, shouting, 'Come on down here, if you're lucky you might see the great big hairy one who lives at number 52, and then we're off to the pub'. I am divided on whether this will be a healthy pursuit for Partner: however at least he will get some fresh air and exercise.

* I absolutely want a nose piercing. But allergies and reasons.

I had so much fun today. And I'm on fire

Just to show you some pictures.

Light on the water! We have had no light here since the middle of last September so you can understand why I was excited

It was like Spring here today so after my yoga class I walked the exciting way home over my Favourite Bridge. Partner thinks it is the height of tragedy to have a favourite bridge, but I am sure there are people in Paris who have strong feelings one way or another about the Pont Neuf so why I can't have a favourite bridge and a favourite walk I do not know.

I do not have a strong sense of direction but the way Cambridge seems to work is as follows: the centre and the posher side are on one side of the river, and obviously our house is on the other side. So that means I can walk home along the river, and choose which of a number of bridges I cross, and then cut across through various small terraced streets depending on things like, do I want to go to the Co-op, do I want to be waylaid by felines. I do not often go over my Favourite Bridge because it is a longer walk so, you know, it has the charm of novelty.

Our walk starts in the centre where someone was making the mistake of feeding the birds not knowing that the birds in Cambridge are as assertive as the cats and you do not mess.

Good luck getting out of this one, man with bag of bread

We move along a bit to where I came across some yarn bombing.

They come in the night and they make your lampposts woolly

Who is the mysterious Cambridge yarn bomber? It is not me because I can't knit quickly enough. (Oh, God. At work we were looking online at coffin prices for reasons which are just too bizarre, and did you know you can get a woolly coffin? But felted, not garter stitch. And also you can get one with a photograph of cherry blossoms on it, and matching pyjamas for the corpse).

Then I moved on to the other bit of the river and saw a dog out enjoying the spring air.

Can you spot the dog there?

I always want to live on a boat although then I think about chemical toilets and doubt myself. Anyway there were actually boats for sail for less equity than we have got in our house so I may yet throw in the rat race and go feeding people tea and oranges.

Then unfortunately it happened.

I don't know why they do this at you. We had rolling, then wandering up to be stroked, then rolling again and passersby probably wondering what I am doing

I never met so many of these creatures until Partner started pointing them out, but, what he did not tell me was that once I had the Power I could never be rid of it and would have to roam leafy suburbs like a kind of Tithonus, i.e. even the Gods can't take away their gifts and I am doomed to have cats throwing themselves at me forever.

Top bridge Evar. Pedestrians on the black, cyclists on the red, you can see it is working in practice

Here it is! My favourite bridge! I don't know why I don't find people standing and admiring it. It has a gap in the middle so the cyclists can separate from the walkers and it has a viewing platform too. I know someone who in her youth once came and bought a donkey from travellers in the meadow it overlooks, no-one has offered me a donkey yet but I would not have far to go to take it home.

Where a church hall notice board is, there must a zumba advert be

Notices on a church hall notice board. I always like to have a look because I am absolutely the type of person who goes off randomly attending the kinds of things they advertise, in fact, I shall be keeping an eye open for this food fair.

And a nice stained glass window from a pretty church I sometimes call in.

I suspect this depicts Jesus but who the others are I couldn't tell you

I have it on good authority from a Christian friend that even though I am a hedgewitch it is fine to go in churches and I will not be struck down like on the Omen. They are nice quiet places. I admire one of the altar cloths in this one but they did not have it on today so I took the window instead.

Spring! Thank goodness! At last! Hope it is nice weather where you all are x

Flag waving

I have found the most patriotic house in Cambridge. Unfortunately it was raining when I took this picture, as I can imagine this house looks even more impressive in bright sunshine. I felt there ought to have been a crowd of people outside, waving flags, drinking nice cups of tea, singing Jerusalem and being slightly sexually repressed.

Look closely at the corgi in the middle of the downstairs window. Is that literally the campest thing you have ever seen? I thought so

There were flags outside Al Amin too. (I say that as if you all know Al-Amin. Al-Amin is the nice shop on Mill Road where I buy my millet flour, of which exciting foodstuff more tomorrow, poppadums and harissa).

Yeah yeah, Al-Amin. Asian, Arabic, Persian and Afro Caribbean but not a single packet of berbere and I can't ask if they've got it because I don't know how to pronounce it. Burrburr? BearBear? Burrburr-eh? Chumley?

I am surprised actually at the dearth of flags and sports propaganda given that the Olympics are starting next week. I keep reading bits in the papers that say it’s because you are not allowed to use Olympic branding unless you are one of the official Olympic sponsors. Is that true? I found this in the Independent, which is obviously faintly worrying, as we have a little Olympic display in the window at work which consists of some wooden rings which we have painted carefully with acrylic paint and hung on transparent nylon thread. Now, though, I realise we have been cynically threatening the profits of Proctor and Gamble and BP, and indeed the ultimate viability of the Olympics itself! So, if you are sitting down next week, all ready with your Big Mac and Coke waiting for the synchronised swimming to start, and suddenly a message flashes up on the screen saying ‘there will be no synchronised swimming because a selfish shop in Cambridge impinged on our trademark and now we can't afford the nose clips’ then it will be my fault. I am just apologising in advance.

Objectively speaking, it would be a good idea for them to make an example of me because it is not like I am not used to lengthy pointless vindictive legal battles. I do hope I will still be able to watch the gymnastics, though, as I like them very much.

No rain next week. Its... summer!!!!. I think I perhaps ought to mow the lawn?

Beset. On the Solstice.

I don’t know if you think I make this up but I don’t.

Looking at you looking at me looking at you

Just after I had taken this photograph after going into town earlier (I do understand this is odd to start with, going round photographing cats), this cat bounded across, leapt onto the dusbins, miaaaaaowed me over, stood up, put its paws on my chest and licked my nose. And this after I had fended off a Hare Krishna nun with a gold nose, although not very successfully, as I now have a copy of the Hare Krishna Mantras and she has the last of my cash which I was wandering off with to buy lunch with from Greggs. It all worked out in the end actually, though, as the mantras are very interesting and I got a pastry from M&S while I was buying spaghetti sauce and put it on my card.

I must say though, I was a bit worried about that Hare Krishna nun. Looking at the expressions on the faces of the people doing their last minute Christmas shopping, I would say it was only a matter of time before someone said to her, Hare Krishna nun? That sounds a good idea. Let me get my handbag, and before she knew it she had not a donation but a grim-looking woman in Boden sitting at the communal table trying to get drunk on green tea, shouting, thank the Absolute I never have to look for another pair of socks for Uncle Jeffrey or cook that bloody turkey. I won’t take part in the chanting, thank you, but could someone nip out for a bottle of cava and show me where the TV room is so I can watch Eastenders.

Anyway. I wanted to say thank you very much to Julia and Omlair who have awarded me blog awards, thank you very much, ladies! (Aunty Kath tells me off via my mother if I say that, so can I assure you I mean it in a postmodern ironic but appreciative kind of way). And also to say that tonight is the Solstice, the shortest day, so we are sloughing off the old oh hooray, and welcoming in the new, which is why my thoughts are turning to Resolutions. As next year is 2012, I had a couple of ideas. Firstly, some people on Ravelry are knitting 12 things for themselves in 2012 (group here if you want to chat about this with people who do not photograph cats), and I thought that might be a fun thing to do although I would be splitting the 12 between knitting and sewing. And my other idea was that I would quite like to do ‘a brave or different thing every month’, possibly something involving leaving the house, gasp. So for January I thought I might do some mad kind of exercise class, for Feb I thought I might go to one of the millions of talks they have in Cambridge, Dan has promised to take me to a particular club night, I appreciate that none of these things sounds very wild initially but who knows, by October I may be bungeejumping. I’m afraid I have to do my anecdote here. My mother once resolved to do ’60 different things in a year’, and had a book in which she wrote them down. She checked her book after about 9 months and it contained the following entry:

1/ Tried a different kind of pants.

So I am worried this would be where I would end up. Anyway, we will see. Happy Solstice everyone, I wish you a merry sloughing of the old and seeding the new, and remember to be ware of cats as they seem to be particularly lively at the moment…

Cows

I don't know if this is bizarre or not, but, one of the ways in which Cambridge has not moved on at all since 1463 is that we have cows in the city centre. Lots of cows. Hanging out. Doing their bovine stuff.

We turn our bottoms towards women waving cameras. Vamoose

These cows are near one of the main roads into the centre. There are also cows in the colleges (this is bizarre, isn't it?) and also near the river which runs through the centre, on the fen. The cows on the fen stand on the bridges and face down tourists. They are cows without shame. When people have picnics in the summer, sometimes the cows sidle up and intimidate them and nibble their sandwiches.

I was buying some beef from the farmers' market once, and as I passed it to the woman who was running the stall to pay for it, she said, brightly, this beef comes from the Cambridge Cows! I winced because I do not really like to think where my meat comes from especially if it is a cow who might have faced me down on a bridge, and she looked at me firmly and said, now look. These cows have had a very lovely life.

This is the dilemma, isn't it? The more you don't know where your meat comes from the more likely it is to have come from somewhere absolutely appalling, but then it's difficult to eat a cow who you might have met out and about. I won't do my lecture on How Capitalism Separated Us From The Means Of Production And Destroyed Society (although, what a lecture that is!) but I think if I'm going to eat meat I should eat meat whose origin I know and trust, not pretend it started off in a neutral polythene tray and ignore how it was really produced (I know there's the option of not eating meat at all. Not at the moment. Perhaps later).

Antisocial behaviour

Cambridge can be quite a dangerous place to live. As I have documented earlier, there are the very bad cats who jump out at you from all directions and weave round your legs in a fashion contravening all health and safety directives. There are the tourists with enormous cameras who think it is an excellent idea to be walking along and then stop suddenly and crouch down so they can take photographs of something bizarre like a road junction, and that no-one will be inconvenienced or trip up over them. There is Partner, who is not friendly, and who I suspect sometimes says choice words to tourists who do this, especially when I am not there to supervise him, instead of just tutting in an annoyed manner like I do, which is the proper British way. And then there are the swans.

A swan pretending to be innocent. They aren't innocent

In Cambridge the river is quite a big presence and a lot of the time it is full of boats, often punts full of people thinking they are Sebastian Flyte (OK, I know that was Oxford). And that is lovely, especially if they want to take their enormous cameras with them and not photograph road junctions and trip me up. Or there are students rowing. There are also a lot of swans. The boats annoy the swans very much, because it is their river and the boats are interlopers and they are quite furious. However, in recent years a swan hero has emerged. I do not know if he was elected by some form of swan consensus or if he just rose to prominence because of natural swan superiority but, since 2009, Mr Asbo the Swan has been terrorising rowers and boats. It has obviously been a contentious issue because on the one hand there are the people who Mr Asbo has had a go at who are very frightened and want him relocated, and on the other there are people forming under a banner of Rights For Swans, Swans Were There First etc etc. It is like the Montagues and the Capulets or like Al-Amin and Sainsbury’s although I do think possibly Al-Amin’s case may have been boosted recently by a Cambridge woman finding glass in her Sainsbury’s Basic Sausage, but I digress. (Actually I will digress further and tell you that my mother once found glass in a Sarah Lee Gateau and ate it by mistake and bled. So I came home with the news that I had passed my driving test to find my mother hacking up blood in the sink, upstaging me as usual. She complained. We got vouchers. Here is a recipe for a nice easy non-Sarah Lee chocolate cake, you do not have to add glass unless you want to).

Anyway there is a sad postscript to Mr Asbo, which is, he has a bad toe and has had to be removed from the river, although he seems now to be recovering well. But, what new Animal Avenger will emerge in Cambridge? I will be keeping a close eye on the very bad cat down the road and also the collared dove, who now actually hovers over me when I am outside if I have not put his nuts out quickly enough. We are very close to nature here, which as you know is red in tooth and claw. Things can turn very quickly.

Get well soon, Mr Asbo!

Dear man who I met in the centre of Cambridge yesterday,

Cambridge is a tiny city with medieval streets. This means, when vans have to park to drop things off for shops, it causes problems, doesn’t it? That was why, seeing that a van was parked half way on the pavement, making it impossible for two people to pass, I stood in the road politely and waited for you to go past. I was the woman in the grey tshirt who you completely ignored and who stared at you furiously in a pointed fashion. I have not got to the point yet where I actually stop and tell people off in the street when they do this, so you are fortunate. I am saving this for when I am forty. I will enjoy it very much. I may print flyers.

I live in the part of Cambridge which makes people suck their teeth, man who had lots of expensive carrier bags, and when I go to pick up my paper from the shop in the estate I meet a lot of young men wearing hoodies, and sometimes walking pitbulls. I also meet a lot of people speeding along the pavement on their bikes, because part of the pavement turns into a cycle track (yes! This is inconvenient for all of us!). The young men wearing hoodies/ cyclists invariably stand aside to let me pass, and, when I do the same for them, chirrup ‘thank you!’ cheerfully. The pitbulls look cheerful too, but pitbulls always look as if they are smiling to me. I am sorry that you have not had their opportunities and good upbringings. This is very sad.

It is, however, possible you are just a little socially awkward and not a great big entitled git, and, in case that is so, I have prepared a little etiquette guide for you. This will make you more popular than the new clothes in your carrier bags will. If someone stands aside to let you pass, holds a door open for you, lets you go first on a bus etc etc, this is what you do. You make eye contact very briefly, you smile, and you say, ‘thank you’. Then you go on your way. This discharges your social duties. I do not need to be invited to dinner, to receive a written thank you card purchased from Primavera, or to be presented with your firstborn. It is a small thing, but one day I will turn into the She Hulk when this happens, rather than just writing passive aggressive letters on my blog. Do you want to be the recipient?

No. I thought not. So, you get off, and get practicing your thank yous.

Yours in joy and friendship,

Susie xoxo.

A nice new-to-me shop

We found (when I say found, I mean, it has obviously been there for years and years it’s just that I never went there before) a nice charity shop. With ALL THE THINGS. It was excellent. Partner’s eyes lit up and he bought books, because obviously we don’t have enough books and need to increase the amount as a top priority, before we sort out the garden or paint the bedroom or do anything like that.

The founder of Emmaus. ++ I am glad to see proper health and safety is being observed with that fire extinguisher

It is Emmaus, which is a community which supports people who have been homeless. We managed to miss the shop and walk round the bit where they put the furniture they are sorting for 20 minutes, until one of the companions took pity on me and directed me firmly into the correct bit. Once inside it was like an Aladdin’s cave.

Stuff. No need to go to Argos!

Partner was thrilled to see some nice sturdy bookcases which we might go back and have a look at. I believe we once had a bookcase with some space on it, briefly for a few days in 2003, since then we have been playing Bookcase Catch-Up, so how thrilling to have a new source. (OT. I don’t think people actually make bookcases that you are supposed to put books on. When you see bookcases in magazines they are shown with one book and a vase on them, this is because if you put anything substantial on them the shelves bend. It drives me mad. Who buys a bookcase to put a vase on? If anyone does please let me know and I will rent some of your shelf space for Partner, he will turn up at your door at dead of night inappropriately dressed and muttering, can you fetch Lucan, I want to check a reference. Quick!).

Want. Shall I go back? Stop me

I was this close to buying this tea set. This close. It is very lucky I have no cupboard space otherwise I would have a plethora of questionable seventies pottery.

I always think there are some nice places in Cambridge if you know where to look (i.e. not the centre of town on a Saturday in July. That is not a nice place. It is more of a mental endurance test and eventually a resident will crack and strangle one of the people who try to make you go on punts and then there will be a big fuss).

Urban scenes

Slightly blurry because the lights changed to green and people get narky if you hold them up without a proper reason. I think if someone's painted their garage door thematically it gives you faith in the quality of their chips

What kind of shop shall we have? I know, let's sell bikes. And we could cut keys as well, that would go together. And sharpen knives. Yeah. And let's have some LPs as well because we like them. And I don't see why we shouldn't fit in a tanning bed, do you? Excellent. Let's get started. I'll just nip out and get some nail polish as well, just in case

It pops up everywhere. I may invite them to perk up my pebbledash and scandalise Le Tout North Cambridge

In suburbia

One of the things I always think, is, whenever people tell you about where they live they always tell you the touristy things and no-one ever tells you about the really boring bits. Like, where people live, where they do their shopping and what kinds of flowers they have in their front gardens, etc. It made me think of this when I went to Edinburgh recently because all the houses were so different to our small stunted houses Down South. I am always interested in the really boring bits and for those of you who do not live in the UK this might have the charm of novelty. For the rest of you it probably will not and you are welcome to skip ;-).

Put that camera down and stroke my furry back

The first thing about Cambridge is, wherever you go and whatever you are doing, a cat will jump out at you and want you to stroke it. I think 80% of houses here must have a cat. One of the Great Cultural Differences between the US and the UK is, in the US they keep their cats indoors because, as I understand, if they go out they may be eaten by a ravening coyote and/ or a bear. In the UK 99% of our cats are free range and are at liberty to molest passers by. Indeed the other day I had to try to rescue an older lady near our house who was weighed down with shopping bags and had a very determined cat weaving around her feet. Alas! She had fish in one of the bags and thus I was powerless to dissuade the cat, and as I walked up the road I could hear her saying ‘Ooo! Stop it! Go on, you naughty thing!’ all the way.

I am estimating £800,000. Nice flowers though

The second thing about Cambridge is, house prices are just completely ridiculous. If you buy a house I think it is now almost impossible to get anything anywhere near the centre for less than a quarter of a million pounds, and if you rent, small houses/ flats cost about £800 - £1500 a month. This means if people have a house they hold on to it and no-one can ever leave anyone else because of their mortgages, unless they find a couple with a mortgage of a similar amount/ length of payment left and swap partners. Even when the housing market was at its worst, there were people in Cambridge gazumping other people with cash. It is all very depressing and sometimes I feel like knocking on people’s doors and saying, excuse me, do you mind telling me what you do and how much you earn, as I am curious.

Spot the bike. They're everywhere!

Everyone cycles everywhere in Cambridge, apart from me because I prefer walking and ambling about and stroking cats. So there are bikes everywhere you look and lots of second hand bike shops. Cycle theft is a major concern (yes! It is! Yes this is indeed a bit of a backwater!) and the only untethered bike in Cambridge which has never been stolen is the one in our back garden which I bought thinking I would be able to ride it. I could not, as I think it was actually a bike for a child, and it bruised my coccyx. I may put it in front of the house with a sign on it. ‘Someone take this away. PLEASE’.

See? Bikes again

Most houses in Cambridge are tiny terraces, often two up two downs where you go into the living room straight from the street, but there are some big ones like this. These are normally split into bedsits and/ or owned by the colleges. Often, university departments are in these big houses. When I was looking for a bedsit after I finished university, I went to see one in a house like this where it was just like Rising Damp. The lightswitches were hanging off the walls by their wires and there were 2 toilets for 15 rooms. We were dogsitting at the time and I used to go back from the horrors of bedsit-hunting and cry into the dog’s fur (she had dreadlocks), she used to sit patiently and then she and I used to pull ourselves together, drink coffee (me) and listen to loud music (both of us) while we waited to go to the pub.

I want to live in a boat with a solar power generator but not one of those chemical toilets

People live in house boats on the river. I always think this looks wonderful, but Partner says if he moved into a houseboat with all his books he would sink it. When I took this photo there was a boy sitting on one of the boats happily playing his guitar. It may not be so much fun in winter though. There is a big park next to this river, and actually there are loads of green open spaces in the centre, many of which have cows on in the summer. Sometimes the cows chase tourists, and when Stephen Hawking still used to get about in his wheelchair the cows who graze on the fen over the other side of the city used to chase him over the bridge while we watched from the pub.

No-one has ever stripped to their pants in this launderette. It is devoid of eroticism

All the centre of Cambridge is made up almost entirely of chain stores which is a bit boring, but as soon as you get out of the centre you find small slightly bizarre, 50s-looking shops like this. There is a shop round the corner from this where they have made their own sign, and, though I am supportive of the DIY ethos, well, you can really tell. I imagine the owner setting off up a ladder with paintbrush in hand, crying, pay a signwriter? I think not, and everyone else standing round raising their eyebrows despairingly at each other.

The scene of the Weaving Cat and Fish Bag incident. Leafy suburbs near my house

Plants in front gardens go in fashions. A while ago everyone had those giant spiky plants, at the moment we seem to be on things in pots, roses, or lavender. My street has a lot of petunias. There is a street near my house where someone has written all of Jerusalem on their front window and someone else has made some eyes and put them in the hedge. I don’t like to actually take direct photographs of people’s houses but I might see if I can do it discreetly to show you because, you know, eyes in a hedge O_O. Cambridge is very arty so often people have quite interesting displays in their windows, one house has a large hand sculpture, another has straw figures operating a wheelbarrow. A house not far from us has a big black cat ornament outside, often there is a real living black cat sitting next to it looking vaguely contemptuous. I assume it belongs to the house and has not just been attracted there by some kind of cosmic ordering vibe.

Have I bored you? What are the houses like where you live, and are the biggest threats to public safety free-range cats, horror at house prices and bike thieves? I am curious :-).

Shopping local and risking looking foolish with the fish man

Now. For those of you who have been with me since last year (and gosh, well done if you have), you may remember that the Truth was revealed to me in the middle of Sheringham, and I decided I was going to do more of my food shopping in small independent shops and less in supermarkets. Then I read Shopped and various other anti-supermarket books and bored all my loved ones with my discoveries, became righteously indignant about various encroachments Tesco was making into North Derbyshire, and rang the man from the Clay Cross planning department and alarmed him with my questions about how much of Clay Cross Tesco now owns (he wouldn’t tell me. He was very nice though, we had a long chat. I think he was worried I might be an incompetent Guardian reporter). So I like to update you periodically with how I am getting on with my efforts to bring down the supermarket monopoly single-handedly by buying my sausages from the butcher down the road and not from Waitrose.

I can call in for a sausage and then pop in to town via the river and it is much nicer than trailing round the artificially lit Mordor

Partner says I am just making my life more difficult and he thinks I have masochistic tendencies. He says instead of my various things I do i.e. knitting my own socks and similar, perhaps instead I could just hit my hand with a hammer as this would give me the same effect but with less trouble. As soon as he sees me heading off looking grimly determined with my Hemp Shopper, he mimes hitting his hand and says, ‘Ow! Ow!’ and then laughs. It has not yet palled for Partner. He also says my life is now like this Monty Python sketch of John Cleese in a cheese shop, I have to tell you that I do not find Monty Python funny. Not any of it. Not the dead parrot, nothing. I have watched this sketch all the way through to check there is nothing obscene before I link it, and my opinion of MP has not changed.

Anyway, it is all very exciting because I thought I would try shopping in independent shops for a week and then give up and go back to Tesco. However, I have not, I now shop in independent shops more than when I first started and was keen. I do still do a weekly shop at Tesco, but for fewer and fewer things (although I’ve found it hard to replace the supermarket for things like washing powder and toilet rolls. Ecover stuff is twice the price at the wholefood co-operative). I have found that I spend far less on food, and, actually, it is much cheaper to buy some things at small shops, like, free range eggs, vegetables, and meat (I never bought the really cheap meat, though). Instead of doing a weekly shop in just one place, I now go shopping about 4 times a week. I do the supermarket and the wholefood co-operative at the weekend, then I do a quick run to the butcher, the farm shop for fruit and veg, and the cheese shop on Monday morning, the veg box comes on Tuesday, then on Wednesday I go and get some fish from the fish van.

I actually go to a veg stall just out of shot on the right and the man says to me 'don't have the plums, they aren't sweet enough. Have this rhubarb!' and I am impressed by his honesty and product knowledge. It doesn't take much

Now, you are reading that and thinking, God that sounds a performance and she’d never manage to do that if she worked in an office. Well, readers, this is where I am going to surprise you, because actually it is easier than the once a week supermarket shop (honestly), and, if I went back to working behind a desk 12 hours a day fortified only by coffee and fury, then, knowing what I know now, I actually would do a version of it. For instance, it is no more trouble to get the bulk of our stuff from the wholefood co-operative and then get the rest from Tesco than it is to only go to Tesco: it’s actually easier, because going to the wholefood co-operative is on the way, and is much more pleasant, so I enjoy my shop there. And the veg box comes anyway, so whatever hours I was working it would be easier to have one delivered than go schlepping about dragging back potatoes. And I might be able to go to a butcher/ fishmonger near where I was working.

I never realised until I stopped doing about 50% of it quite how much I hated supermarket shopping. I really hated it! The fruit that you buy even though it won’t taste of anything, having to predict what you’ll want to eat all week when really you’ve got no clue, pushing your trolley round like a pratt thinking, God, where have they put the harissa. I felt like I never really wanted to eat what I ended up buying. Also the person at the till always tells me how fed up they are. One person gave me a long explanation about how Tesco always stiffed her on overtime and how she missed her old job, where she’d done something completely horrendous like work for a major pharmaceutical company poking guinea pigs with a bodkin, but at least everyone knew her name (I don’t go round asking people how Tesco is treating them, I want you to know, she did volunteer the information ;-) ). And a man once in Asda gave me a long explanation of how Asda was manipulating me as a customer. I mean, he was quite right, but the man in the fish van never tells me how I’m being cheated. He looks like he thinks I’m getting some rather fine fish. And I am!

One thing I have found with shopping in independent shops is that it was a bit of a learning curve. For instance, I have become very fond of a cheese called Cornish Yarg which I buy from the cheese shop and which is wrapped in nettles (cheese shop cheese is seriously an entirely other breed). When I last went in to buy my Cornish Yarg I had a sudden panic that I was pronouncing it wrong and that in fact it should be pronounced Yurglurglurgle or something ridiculous, like Belvoir is*. I have found in circumstances like this I have to be brave and ask. The thing with supermarkets is, you never risk looking daft as you never have to talk to anyone. You just pick up your item in a packet and then you go to the till and grunt. Whereas, in a small shop, you have to chat and say things like ‘how much braising steak is 500g’ or ‘what is your cheapest fish today’ or, ‘I would like just one very large potato please’. I always feel I will walk in and a spotlight will shine on me and a voice will say, this woman has no idea how many grams of Red Leicester is an appropriate amount for two adults for lunch for three days, because she is insufficiently middle class. I have decided this is my own insecurity and so now I just smile sweetly and ask my silly questions or gesture with my hands (‘this much!’) because the alternative is ending up with a small piece of fish which costs £7, as once happened to me. I decided that as a one-off I would look upon this as an Idiot Tax, but my budget does not allow for too many Idiot Taxes, so now I interact.

The cheese shop appears to do pork pies as well, be still my beating heart

Anyway, those are my Independent Shopping Adventures and I look forward to many more. It seriously is loads more fun, also it takes me wandering around the back streets of Cambridge and I have discovered that the area I live in is not as depressing as everyone tells me it is, it is actually quite nice. And I can stop and stroke unfamiliar pussycats, some of them are rather furrily striking (and terrifyingly trusting. Pussycats! Be cynical!). I accept I haven’t quite brought down Tesco yet, but on the plus side, we’ve had some really amazing cheese. Is there a better kind of activism than that?

* Beaver. I know you know but just in case you don't.

A celebration of nice weather. And another rhubarb recipe

We have had lovely, lovely weather this weekend. When it is warm in Cambridge everybody goes out and finds a patch of grass and then sits on it.

Divided but together, staring into the middle distance

I count myself exceptionally fortunate to have my own patch of grass i.e. the garden to sit on. It has been possibly my favourite week of the year in the garden: as I am not much of a gardener, I cannot say that our patch is a cornucopia of earthly delights with new and thrilling blooms every month of the year. No. We have a few ratty daffodils and that is about it. We do, however, at the very beginning of summer, have the cherry blossom tree, which has survived my lack of pruning, and an ivy which is trying to strangle it, and has done its magnificant cherry blossom thing again.

You see, if that was a quilt you'd think it was a bit garish

Partner has also been enjoying the garden.

Partner in shades and not properly attired. God knows what the neighbours think. They probably think, there goes the neighbourhood

The squirrel who comes and eats the nuts I put out for the birds is completely furious that Partner is encroaching on his turf. Completely furious. He cannot forgive. He sits on the fence and stares at him. I am hoping he does not move from passive aggression to active resistance, but Partner is very laissez-faire about wildlife (there was an incident recently involving a spider in the bathroom) so I am leaving him to fend for himself.

Mum and dad came to visit this weekend and brought me some rhubarb. We have been having lots of rhubarb since it came into season and I was happy to have it again as I am enjoying it this year. Mum said she was about to take a knife to her rhubarb patch when she was apprehended by Beryl, who is my mother’s next door neighbour, peering at her over the hedge. ‘Put that knife down!’ Beryl said. ‘I will give you some of my own rhubarb to take to Susie. Because my rhubarb is bigger’. So my mother feels her own rhubarb has been unforgiveably dissed, but we all enjoyed Beryl’s rhubarb and I have sent her some marmalade to say thank you. I feel I have essentially moved to a barter economy and perhaps I may end up like the man who started off with a paperclip and ended up owning something like prime real estate in Manhattan (or perhaps it was a slightly larger paperclip). Anyway, I shall share with you my rhubarb-using-up recipe. Because, it uses lots of rhubarb (and I am suspecting rhubarb oversupply might have become a bit critical in Chesterfield if people are fighting over who is giving theirs away) and is so easy you can cook it when your brain has gone awol, which mine has this week. I always think that would be a fine recipe book: Recipes You Can Cook Even When You Have PMT or Have Started on the Gin. I cooked it with a migraine! - For those of you who get them you will know the flashing lights do not help with difficult culinary manoeuvres.

Rhubarb Fool – serves 4 people (or thereabouts).

500g rhubarb
150g sugar
250ml double cream

Chop up the rhubarb into smallish pieces. Put it in an ovenproof dish with the sugar, give it a good stir round. Again, you can use any sugar you have got, I always go digging at the back of the cupboard where I seem to have an endless supply of muscovado sugar which I have not consciously bought for years, it is a mystery where it comes from. Cover the dish in foil and cook at about 190-200 degrees C for about 40 minutes, then take it out, poke it with a fork, and if it is soft then good, it is done, if not, leave for about another 15-20 mins. When it is done, sieve the juice into a separate jug and save it, then leave the rhubarb to cool. Then whip all the cream into soft peaks, squash up the rhubarb and fold it through, and fold through a splash of the juice. Then you can add the rest of the juice to taste when you have served up the fool.

Delicious. If I had had energy and no migraine I would have made some biscuits to go with it, shortbread would have gone really well. I have no photos sadly because we ate it really quickly, so, you might want to take the lack of photo as, counterintuitively, a really good sign. Happy rhubarbing.

Cambridge Creatures

I'm not entirely sure what it is but it has a mohican

Creature on the gate of St John’s College (I think it was St John's). Partner did his PhD there and they occasionally try to get him to go to High Table to which I say, go, go let someone else feed you, and bring home a doggy bag and then we can cut down on the food bill and I can buy a shed. But no, he prefers to sit at home complaining about having to watch My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

You'd be supercilious too if you had eyebrows like mine

Creature on the steps as I walked home through Portugal Place. This is Fat Grey Pussycat who has featured on my blog before but this time deigned to actually pose, albeit in a slightly contemptuous manner.

We are the village green preservation society

I was wandering into town earlier in the week and I happened upon a tree which seemed to have been singled out for special attention.

It may well be more attractive when it has its leaves on. Let us not judge

This is a tree in the middle of a common with many trees on it. I couldn’t quite understand what made this tree special, but it seemed a very popular one. Has it been targeted? Is the council after this particular scruffy-looking tree? I did google, but frankly I can't make head or tail of it.

Hugely controversial. Your guess is as good as mine. Go Valerie! Go Cressing Temple!

But then I thought more about Cambridge trees. And I’m feeling a bit smug now because we have, like, a million trees in our back garden. Well, not a million, more like, ooh, I don’t know, eight. Big ones. All this time I spend feeling bad about my trees, thinking, oh God I ought to get someone to go up a ladder and trim them a bit or whatever it is you do to trees, when all that time, I didn’t realise what I’d got.

Save all the trees! Look, there are some others in the background! Save them as well!

I've got a tree sanctuary! Yes! It’s just as morally impressive as having a donkey sanctuary, but a lot less trouble! And my trees give so much! I have a beautiful cherry tree that blooms in Spring, with great big pink flowers – a laburnum – a big apple tree – an elderflower bush – and big tall ones at the back that I don’t even know what they are. Every one of them more exciting and impressive than that scrotty old thing with the baubles on. And yet somebody (possibly a mad person, yes), loves that scrotty old thing enough to put baubles on it even though I wonder if just writing to the Cambridge Evening News in a non-mad fashion might be more effective. And I have never put a single bauble on any of the trees in my sanctuary! They must think I don’t care. So this is my pledge to my trees: you will always have a home with me, lads, (and lasses), and I will appreciate you more. I am not going climbing up you to put baubles anywhere because, you are pretty enough with your various blossomy events, but I will appreciate you silently.

You do need trimming, though. I wonder if I should get a quote, oh no :-(.

The kids are alright

I must be a bit dim, and I certainly ought to read some kind of idiot’s guide to Economics, but I absolutely fundamentally don’t understand how banks lending inappropriately and losing money means that we now have to cut basic services and benefits and ramp up tuition fees. I don’t. I’m not being coy or rhetorical or faux-naïve or anything. It seems to me like if you say you don’t believe in fairies a fairy dies, and everybody’s suddenly decided they don’t believe in the money markets at the same time. I was hoping never have to dig out the Dummy’s Guide To Why Capitalism Is Fundamentally Unsustainable but perhaps that day has come.

Down with this sort of thing!

Anyway, here are students protesting in Cambridge and having a sit-in at the central admin section, the Old Schools, in the Senior Combination Room, which is the Old Schools café (I use this term loosely). I imagine this has confused the Old Schools hugely because, on a point of etiquette which I can assure you would have been a bit much for Jane Austen, you are not actually allowed in the Senior Combination Room unless you are an Officer or have a Cambridge MA (or are invited and accompanied by one), and now they have got people who aren’t even technically BAs sitting about knitting and twittering. Someone in the Old Schools must be frantically writing a sub clause in the rule book somewhere (Paragraph 311 clause f: non-MAs may exceptionally be admitted into the Senior Combination Room in case of sit-in, revolution, plague, breakdown of society as we know it or the M&S café across the road having run out of millionaire’s shortbread). Go students!

Anyway, I do think everybody’s wasting their time getting riled up by poor old Nick Clegg when honestly he’s only doing what he has to do, and he’s actually set us all a really fine example. Indeed, those of us who sell things could make direct use of it to sell lots of stuff and try to prop up our economy. I myself feel quite inspired. So to recap, Nick Clegg was voted in on a pledge that the Lib Dems would oppose tuition fees, and now obviously he’s, like, in actual power, and he’s realised it’s not really that practical. Well, that’s fair enough, isn’t it? Anybody can rethink things and realise they wouldn’t really work. So I’ve been thinking about things myself, and I want you to know that if anybody buys anything from my etsy shop between now and Christmas I’ll send you a free bar of gold bullion and a Maine Coon kitten. Completely free. No, really, I will do. A great big shiny 24 carat bar! And I’ll make sure Fluffy’s all housetrained and brushed nicely and everything. And I’ll come round and hug you. Personally. Sorry? What’s that you say? You don’t believe I’ll actually do it? Look, just paypal me the money, OK? We’ll worry about the details later.

/ end sarcasm ;-). / end Lib Dems as well though, probably...

Silk Scarves

Well, it continues cold here, cold and bright. I swear I feel the cold more than other people. I’m not going to say ‘God I’m bloody cold’ in every blog entry between now and April but I’m afraid I’m going to be thinking it. I won’t say it though, I do accept that might be a bit boring. God, I’m cold! OK, it’s out of my system now.

It's like living in a picture postcard, and then I wander past in my Parka and spoil it

It’s been windy as well.

Conkers!

What do you want in circumstances like this? Brandy. No. What you want is a lovely scarf. So I have been making scarves from the tie silk, and I must say, I’m rather pleased with them.

Silk. Thick and lovely

What I couldn’t capture in the photo is quite how nice and thick the silk is. Because it’s so thick, the scarves hang really nicely. They’re Statement Scarves. They're the kind of scarves you imagine a louche aristocrat wearing to the opera or to oppress somebody, in fact if you have heard Edith Piaf's Milord (lyrics in French, the English version seems completely different, sorry) I think he is actually wearing one in that ('foulard de soie'). I’m really enjoying making them.

And again the standard disclaimer: Must Trim Threads

The only drawback (and this is a drawback for me, not for the scarves) is, the silk frays and leaves threads everywhere, so all our carpets are covered in threads and I have to keep hoovering it up. Partner in particular has become covered in threads. I’m not quite sure how, but he’s like a great big bit of Velcro and if he walks past a bit of silk it attaches itself to him. So I’m following him round subtly plucking bits of thread off his back, because if he catches me he goes off into a Thread Rant. (‘This entire house is covered in thread! Thread! All over this carpet! Thread! Everywhere!').

And now we've had the fire done I can take photos in front of it. That wasn't why I did it. It kind of was

But I don’t care, because I love this silk and I’m going to keep going with more scarves until I run out of big enough bits. Threads be damned! Ha.

Pictures: Textures in Cambridge

A wooden gate opposite the Old Schools, where youth, hope and principles are all devoured. There is a novel to be written about the Old Schools, but I do hope I don't have to write it. (I have thought of a plot since you ask, yes, thank you. I could not help it).


Cobbles on a street behind Clare College. Someone's carrier bag in the corner compromising my Art.

I think this was on Gonville & Caius. (You pronounce Caius 'Keys'. That's just to make you look daft if you don't know. I can't think of any other reason, although if anyone wants to tell me anything about Old French derivations or something I will try to be interested).