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Dark

May 18, 2017 northlondonhousewife

There’s a photo participation being organised by the Guardian newspaper on the subject “Dark” which led to e looking through the various albums.

There are the obvious pictures of sunsets, most obviously from Africa.

But also from Wales.

Turns out there’s not a bad sunset picture to be taken in a desert.

And there are the endless pictures through windows or window screens from the dark into the light.

There are the shots taken in dark places, usually more about the light than the dark surroundings.

Egyptian Show dancer

There are the pictures with dark subjects or topics, whether emotional (the cremations by the side of the Varanasi) physical (the gorging on a recently dead gazelle) or scary childhood toys.

And finally there are just pictures of dark coloured things, from tulips to a bit a black and white shade and shadow.

Turns out Spanish catholic churches can be especially morbid with their monuments.

head of John the Baptist, Seville Cathedral

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Retirement

May 17, 2017 northlondonhousewife

He says that at the end of the year when this contract comes to an end, he plans to retire. Hmm.

Economist James Banks of the University of Manchester says retirement can be good or bad for your health depending on what you have come from and what you are going to.

If you have had a highly paid, high-status job but little time or inclination to cultivate social activities or friends outside work, then retirement could be a negative step even if you have a huge pension pot. “You may walk all day and do sudokus all night once retired, but still miss the social and intellectual stimulation of the workplace,” he says. However, if you have given up a physically demanding and hazardous manual job, or one with little control and lots of stress, then retirement may be a positive step.

UK, European, US and international studies show a mixed picture; it depends on an individual’s change of status when they leave the workplace. And it is possible it may not even change your life much; if you can maintain your standard of living, interactions and sense of purpose, then retirement may not have an impact on your quality of life.

Academic Gill Mein, at St George’s, University of London, worked on the Whitehall II study, which looked at the social determinants of health among British civil servants. She has two tips for a “good retirement”. One is to develop a hobby or interest while still employed, which you can build on when you leave work. The other is to involve your partner/spouse in your change in role at home once you retire. “I met some couples where one person was used to being at home all alone day and found it difficult to adjust to both being at home and with each other 24/7.”

Professor Deborah Schofield, of the University of Sydney, says: “Moving into a planned retirement from choice is very different from having to leave because of illness. Control over your plans – such as paying off the mortgage, building up some savings and waiting for kids to leave home – are thrown into disarray, you may have less income and also fewer plans. You can find yourself at a loose end without companionship.”

There is a relationship between income and reported satisfaction with life; money may not make you happy, but it helps to be able to afford the necessities of life and a few luxuries. Schofield adds that divorce can hit women particularly hard as they often have lower savings than men. And the three main causes of early retirement because of ill health – pain, arthritis and mental illness – are poorly treated and resourced compared with other conditions such as cancer.

So since he has relatively good health, certainly none of the above issues, it bodes well. Since, between us, we have good pension provision and good levels of savings, plus the house bought and paid for, we should be well placed financially which always gives people choices.

There are said to be three stages to retirement: SAGA. AGA and GAGA that is, an adventurous start, a phase where home is best and a quieter life, followed by the decline into dementia and care homes. In my family experience, whatever age we live to, the last two years will be tough. The average life expectancy for my generation is around 80, but there are serious variations by geography, a fairly obvious proxy for wealth in the UK.

Geriatrician Dr Jeremy Jacobs, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says research into a cohort of Jerusalem residents has suggested old people who rate their health as being poor are more likely to be lonely, depressed, poor, obese or have back pain. “Loneliness is common, but it doesn’t kill you,” he says. Once you take financial security out of the equation, culture, country of origin and ethnicity seem to play a very minor role in how you age.

People over 90 stop reporting pain as a problem; no one knows exactly why.

To live longer and with good quality of life you need to sort out vision and hearing problems (cataract surgery and a hearing aid), take measures to prevent falls (nail down the carpet), avoid taking siestas, eat a decent amount and range of food (not vitamin supplements – they may increase mortality) and, above all, keep moving and stay engaged.

“Adverse life events don’t affect longevity, but if you sit at home all day doing nothing, you will deteriorate. You need to leave the house every day even if you’re in a wheelchair. And keep mentally, socially and physically active at whatever level you can manage. You don’t have to stay in paid work; volunteering is fine too,” says Jacobs.

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Grey

May 11, 2017 northlondonhousewife

It’s a grey day, which makes the weather forecast of warmth seem just a little unbelievable. It has been the driest Spring for decades and my driest of dry gardens is not enjoying life. The plants know that they’re not going to survive a hosepipe ban later in the year given that they’re already dependant on a weekly watering.

The hanging baskets which always suffer from my laziness when it comes to watering are already starting to look reproachful and they’ve only been out there a fortnight.

On the upside, the weather is great for tennis. Dry, with no wind to blow away the clouds means we had an entirely uninterrupted three hours thrashing on the tennis courts in our first match. And afterwards when the forensics begin, obviously the first comment is just “they were better than us” and the second is to question how many of their players “played down”.

In theory, people should play to their level in these little tournaments. Where a club gains a new player though, it might not be clear how good or otherwise they might be, so some wiggle room is left. A player can play at one level for two matches, to find their feet, before settling in that division. So where we play a bigger club with two or three teams across the various divisions, the early matches are always full of ringers from divisions much further up the tree.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that “Rose” turned out to be a regular playing in their first team last year, a team that plays two entire divisions higher than us. It’s a bit of a surprise that she was playing in pair 2 of 3, but, despite being against the spirit of the thing, it was certainly well within the legal rules.

Our next match is with a small club, like us able to pull together just a single team, so will probably play out a bit differently.

Obviously if you play a competitive game, you have to be prepared to lose with as much grace as you win.

Let’s hope we thrash them.

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Digging over Old Ground

May 10, 2017 northlondonhousewife

A friend is restructuring and replanting an entire garden in her new house. I am agitating to extending another flower bed. She is hating the whole process whilst I’m desperate to begin.

I love a good garden project.

Last year we extended the back bed and put in nine new David Austin roses. It was going to be a stretched eight, well they are reasonably expensive even bare root, but a spare arrived in the post so in it went. Sods law it turns out to be an entirely different variety but with a bit of luck…

They seem to be growing well and have coped with the narcissus and tulips for Spring. Hopefully the geranium (Roxanne Gewat) will look good underneath though I’ve also stuck in a few white gladioli and can’t quite remember where. This is why I’m a lousy gardener – too many plants and too bad a memory.

With the daffodils long gone and the tulips going over, it seems a good time to think about ordering for next year in that never-ending joy-fest of gardening with bulbs. They carry with them all of the promise of a beautiful Spring and the only downside is persuading the glum companion that an afternoon digging is worthwhile. He always loves the flowers, but not so much the dirt.

I’ve built up a wishlist on the website for PeterNijssen with as many of the ones from last year that I can remember. For under the hedge with the narcissus (a successful idea last year) I’m going to plant some tulip bakeri to follow on and hopefully cheer up the space.

And maybe if my potted up spares of the woodruff take, I’ll stick some of them down there too. The danger with the latter is that it spreads into the rest of the garden, like the thug it’s advertised as.

In the back border, along with the roses I’m going to add some black and whites so something like Queen of the Night and the white Purissima.

And I might add some under the wisteria where the tulips from last year have really brightened the place up.

In the front bed, I’m just going to abandon the colour scheme and add some scarlet tulips to the ones that already live there. I can’t get rid of them so may as well go with the flow.

In the front garden, I’m going to chuck in some soft pink tulips like an Angelique

Maybe some whites would do nicely as well but four types of tulip seems a sufficiency.

Depending on what happens to the fritillary bed (to widen or not to widen) I could add some mini-narcissus into the front, but the reality is that I have larger ambitions.

If we make the bed as big as I’d like, then I could fit some iris germanic (bearded) into the bed along with some long flowering favourites from the rest of the garden. What’s not to love about some space for yet more perennial wallflowers, some penstemons or a hardy geranium or half-hardy salvia or two?

It’s not sensible of course, I should really let one project settle, take stock and then start in on the next phase. I’m too greedy. This is why my garden will never be elegant. Fun, though!

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April Garden

May 3, 2017 northlondonhousewife

If March was all about the daffodils, then April is all about the tulips from the modest survivor saxatilis to some of the more showy ones planted just last October.

Even deep in the dark under the wisteria pergola, the tulip planted last Autumn have come through and are looking beautiful.

Up at the top they hide the daffodil leaves as they go over and fill a gap waiting for the roses to come into flower. Next year maybe I should add some “blacks” to the mix. Maybe not.

Unfortunately I can’t remember what varieties I bought and dug into the soil so will have to look them up on my account. Always assuming I can remember who I bought them with. One day I will organise my gardening, but probably not this year.

There’s always a few “Shirleys” in there and some “Queen of the Night” but thanks to the mildest of Winters, tulips bought to be staggered and arrive in sequence have all arrived together.

I seem to have bought some fancy shapes in as well, some lily tulips and doubles that look more like roses than anything else.

As for the yellow striped number, I’m pretty sure that’s courtesy of the squirrels digging and replanting. Would I have bought a striped tulip deliberately?

Yet again I prove a total inability to produce elegance and must settle for pretty – not a bad place to settle.

The perennial wallflower erysimum bowles, having flowered even through the Winter is now come into it’s own and is brightening up the borders.

The blossom on the pear has gone over but suddenly the red leaves of the maple open up. They will add colour all through the year to one final burst in Autumn. Sometimes it seems too easy to forget foliage as a useful colour to the garden.

In the shade at the back, the dry has been almost too much for some of the plants, The large ferns are at their most bedraggled and only the euphorbia is really happy.

Still the wild garlic is at least up and about and useful for recipes. I have no idea what a chimichurra is but I’m all for having a go.

In the forgotten bits, the campion and forget me nots are finally flowering away.

Up on the gravel roof, almost every day something new pops up it’s head. It’s shocking really how the combination of dry with sun is so very much easier to deal with than dry shade.

The phlox is in it’s element with flowers everywhere in a glorious mound of lilac

And with the occasional shower (though much fewer than a normal April) the auricula is out and flowering.

The dodecatheon have poked through though not in good numbers – too dry a Winter probably

And the rhodenthemum is bristling with daisy flowers

The alpine erysimum is in full flower too though it won’t last as long as the one below in the borders.

The sedum will grow forever though, turning redder than red in the Autumn along with the maple leaves.

Towards the end of the month, the bluebells (apparently inferior Spanish ones but beautiful nonetheless) have finally popped up their heads.

It means the slugs and snails cannot be far behind so the nemaslug has to go down even if a cold snap might make it pointless.

And although the blossom of my pear tree has gone over all too quickly, my neighbour’s decision to allow one trunk of the hawthorn hedge to grow into a tree is paying dividends.

There are small pleasures in all the corners of the April garden.

From the raindrops on alchemilla to the dancing blue bells.

And where there are surprising bare patches, it turns out less surprising when you find the favourite hideaways for the beasties of the household.

Down in the bed closest to the house, the solomon’s seal is sprouting up not yet eaten away by slugs nor grubs.

And at the midpoint of the garden, the wisteria is just about flowering after a very hard pruning at the end of last year.

A bit barer than usual but so incredibly beautiful it makes me happy.

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On Hold

April 27, 2017 northlondonhousewife

The weather has turned cold. It was inevitable as soon as ur plans had been set for a trip to buy bedding, just like the day of our first tennis match is always (and I mean always) rained off. So we headed off to buy begonias safe in the knowledge that once home they would need to be bundled up and stored for a week.

London rarely sees the snow but temperatures are definitely down to just above freezing for the night. There hasn’t been much frost but I suppose it’s still early days.

Perhaps more frustrating it’s also a problem for my garden’s latest biological weapon – nemaslug! It arrives in a packet (sealed) and you are asked to dissolve it into a 10l watering can and then further delete it 1l into 10l before watering it out onto your beds. The solution contains nematodes a parasitic worm that essentially eats young slugs alive. Gruesome but hopefully effective apart from the condition that the ground mustn’t get too cold ie. no frosts.

I’ve never used it before so won’t know whether it’s the temperature or my incompetent watering that’s to blame if it fails.

Mostly though the garden is looking good. I have that enthusiasm that aways arrives before making up the hanging baskets and gradually fizzles away as the reality of my incompetent watering schedule dawns, year after year.

As well as bedding I have some perennial geraniums to plant out underneath the new roses (blue Rozanne Gewat) and some verbena lollipop bonasiensis to top up the border on the gravel garden. I need to dig some of the many self-seeders out of the gravel path up to the gravel garden before they really dig deep. Plenty of primroses and maybe some violets could be moved along quite easily. I’m not so sure about the iris and fritelaria but they’d certainly be no worse off.

As always each success and failure in the garden brings a new item to the list for next year. The dwarf narcissus underneath the hedge worked well but now I’m left wondering what can be put around them to carry the season forward a little, maybe white mascara, or woodruff or possible some small tulips that naturalise.

As yet I’m undecided about the huge alliums in the fritelaria bed. They’ve obviously dried out at various stages so the leaves have become scorched but maybe their flowers are worth it. they’re about to open into (hopefully) huge white balls and I’m quite excited about what may happen.

But overall the bed seems meagre: just too thin. Like the bed at the back, it could be doubled in width and benefit. One side effect of this would be to make the carrying of the lawnmower all the way up to the back lawn even more difficult. The end of the bed is already being squashed and mangled as the machine is shimmied over the plants, something that I’m unhappy about but the answer has to be long term, probably sinking stepping stones down into the middle of the gravel.

Projects beget projects.

The tulips planted at the back are beautiful and have been a delight this year. Maybe next time I should top up with some of the white and darker bulbs but in the front, some shortish pink bulbs would look lovely. I’d like some more anemones at the front of the rose bed also.

Next time I’m offered some white forget-me-nots I need to accept and stick them in my pots for the early spring. And maybe I could plant up a few more snowdrops.

At the same time, I’m going to start pulling up and getting rid of the comfrey. It grows well in the dark shade but isn’t that pretty. I’m coming around to the bugold though.

And the other thing I need to work on, which might actually help with the hanging baskets is putting together a watering system using some small plastic bottles buried into the compost in pots, specific beds and baskets. I have a whole range of watering globes that basically work on the same system but if I could bury small 330ml bottles into the pots, surely i could achieve the same result by creating mini reservoirs?

And then wandering through the various on-line catalogues there are always new sweeties in the shop…

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All Paper Chat

April 26, 2017 northlondonhousewife

Supper tonight and I’ve decided to go with three salads and a “bread and butter” pudding made out of the left-over panettone like Easter cake. It might be described as a left-over meal but that sounds cruel.

Either way I’m now left with not quite enough time to do everything so am writing lists.

Roast carrot salad (and sod the heritage carrots)
Grilled asparagus salad
Spicy potato salad (otherwise known as aloo papri chaat or as spell check seems to insist: all paper chat)

Bread and butter pudding (possibly chocolate)

Mostly it’s a question of time in the oven or on the hob rather than effort.

Roast the carrots, assemble the dressing
Grill the asparagus, assemble dressing
New potatoes need to be boiled and various sauces assembled (tomato/tamarind and yoghurts sauce)
Slice the bread and make up the custard (with or without chocolate) and set to bake

Some fresh bread would probably be a good thing. Plus there’s a sad lack of alcohol in the house.

The kids will need some pasta and an early supper to free up the space for my mates.

I will need to stop myself over providing and just try to keep it simple. Raspberry muffins are calling me.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Healthy

April 11, 2017 northlondonhousewife

In our house we are counting down months towards retirement, which is both a positive expectation and a financial worry.

It isn’t about how long we expect to live for necessarily since the cost of living will change as our old age changes. The first ten years will be relatively expensive as we plan to travel and enjoy our lives. We’ll also probably end up spending some money helping to make our kids independent lives a little easier.

Then we’ll probably start to settle down and travel less extensively, live closer to home, more baby sitting and less rock climbing.

And finally we’ll settle into proper old age when our biggest weekly trip will be to the supermarket and relatives, maybe the bridge club once a week, with a (hopefully) brief last two years when physically it all goes “tits up”. The last seems to be true whenever you die, whether at 60 or 90: the last two years can be grim.

Life expectancy at age 65 for men in the UK reached 18.4 years in 2012–2014 and for women it reached 20.9 years. This means that a man aged 65 could expect to live to age 83 and a woman to nearly age 86.

In 2009-11, Disability-Free Life Expectancy (DFLE) for males at birth was 63.9 years, for females it was longer at 64.4 years. Despite having shorter DFLE, males expect to spend a greater proportion of their lives (81.0%) free from disability, compared to females (77.8%). basically women live longer but not in perfect health. Disability can hide a multitude of sins at this age, but given our socio-economic class the cards are stacked in our favour a little.

Before we all rush to book one-way tickets to Dignitas when we are 80, it is important to remember that many older people have no social care needs. If you ask people what they would do, knowing now what they do about old age, to prepare for it.

The advice went something like this: make a will, make a living will, put in place power of attorney, have a pension, avoid being overweight, don’t smoke, drink moderately, stay active, think about your needs in old age before you get there and, if necessary, downsize and move to somewhere more suitable, don’t stick your head in the sand about old age, have a social network, stay mentally active, keep out of hospital if you can (a geriatrician told me that 10 days in hospital is equivalent to 10 years of muscle wasting in elderly people), work for as long as you can, and find what you enjoy and do it.

That is as much as we have control over. Except, knowing all this, we may also want to start voting for a political party that invests in elder care. You know, just in case.

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Peru

March 31, 2017 northlondonhousewife

I’ve never travelled to South America, so given that Macchu Picchu has always been on my wishlist, and given the sad sad compromise that a trip to Andalusia turned out to be, it was a pretty obvious place to plan a 2017 trip especially since BA has now started up non-stop flights through to a number of S American capitals.

So we will fly from London Gatwick straight through to Lima in Peru for a brief overnight stay at the airport hotel before flying on to Cusco. A number of people suggested that given a choice, I should cut down on time in Lima in order to spend longer in Cusco which is supposed to be a beautiful place to hang out as well as the obvious stopover to acclimatise and see the sacred Valley of the Incas.

From there we travel on to Ollantaytambo where we catch the tourist train to Macchu Picchu, staying overnight at nearby Aguas Clients before travelling back to Cusco.

From there (and after a couple of days chilling out) we catch the tourist bus to Puno, the obvious place to stay over and visit lake Titicaca.

Rather than turn around and head home at this stage, or visit the Nazca Lines, we decided to head towards La Paz in Bolivia. I may or may not visit South America again, and if not, I wanted to have seen the salt pains at Uyuni. So from la Paz, we fly down to the salt flats and a stay in a salt hotel before flying back to La Paz, onto Lima and home.

And one of the reasons is that the eldest has decided she won’t be coming with us this year so we might as well go for the longest of long-haul flights since she truly hates flying (my fault!)

Next year, it’s going to be all four of us and Iceland is on the cards – not too far, not too similar.

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March Garden

March 31, 2017 northlondonhousewife

The crocus from the beginning of the month have disappeared and the magnolia and camellia are in full flight.

The Spring garden is a delight, a real delight. Even the hellebores are holding on to their flowers.

Some of the daffodils are still around, but most are on their way out, even the tiny narcissus which newly planted under the hedge have proved a really jolly delight.

Maybe next Autumn I’ll plant some white mascara to continue along the flowery border. White would probably strike out from the greenery rather than the established blue in the beds.

The miniature tulips are out in full, but the large ones are just beginning to show through.

And is this some convallaria or a huge late snowdrop that has suddenly appeared?

If the gaffs newly planted have been a great idea, planting giant alliums in the fritelaria bed has been less successful – they look like triffids.

It’s a shame because obviously the fritelarias themselves are so delicate and beautiful.

Primroses and primulas can be found scattered through the gravel garden and gravel path.

But they’re also popping up in the back, in the dry shade.

Mostly though it’s dry, dryer and driest of shade with the green of the euphorbia and white of comfrey not doing much to life the gloom.

New bird feeders make it a surprisingly entertaining place to sit, but a few more flowers would be nice.

Up on top of the roof the aubrietia has survived despite my decision to rip most of it out as a weed a month ago but the lithodora is pretty dull and disappearing. Even the blue chinodoxa disappears in the sunshine. Maybe blue flowers are just too dull for this time of year.

Many of the sedums are just beginning their grow back after the Winter.

The rhodanthemum doesn’t seem to ever stop flowering but is definitely moving into full out daisies and the erysimum is pushing out yellow flowers everywhere.

I am a bit confused by some bulbs that appear to have come up blind but have left them in just in case they turn out to be alliums.

Thankfully the new rose bed seems to have survived the Winter, though the gaffs planted with them are a bit mixed. What fool grows a flower too heavy to stand up?

Nothing significant has died, though I might well wish the gigantic alliums had proved less happy. As always the reddest of tulips are the hardest to get rid of and have popped up as vigorous as ever. Why did I plant them? Why?

The bedding has reappeared and the wallflowers continue relentlessly.

And then I look at the most lovely magnolia, a small but delicate little tree that will grow no higher.