(Alternate post title:  “How to make your 24-year-old daughter scream with delight”)

When my dear Mum came up to see me last weekend she gave me one of my birthday presents.  It may seem odd, giving me birthday presents so long after the event but in truth this wasn’t a late birthday present.  Oh no!  It was in fact an early one.  My birthday (officially on 4th Jan) was scrapped entirely because we had such a bad day.  No cakes were consumed (an M&S cake was bought but not really eaten properly on the day), no merriments were had, there were no wishes upon candles and there were no presents or festivities.  We took the “executive decision” to have it at a later date (as yet unspecified, though I’m thinking it might be late Feb early March) or rather a birthday “in lieu”.

However my Mum being the angel she is, could not keep this present from me.  She knew it’d make me a very happy person indeed.  She couldn’t have been more right.  On the day of my actual birthday Mum and I were looking around possible houses to rent.  We spent the day visiting many little towns, villages and hamlets in the chance that somwhere would eventually catch our eye (we failed*).

In one of the towns we visited there is a proper ironmongery shop.  The kind that every town used to have, which stocked everything conceivable, including Tala icing sets.  Seeing it there reminded me of a post on Jenny’s blog about Spritz biscuits.  It appears that it was a rather retro fashion in the 1950’s to make extruded biscuits, and seeing that icing set reminded me of those and we started talking about it.  Mum was aware that such things existed and she very cleverly and secretly bought me a Spritz biscuit maker!

I found a recipe on the ‘net and off I went, merrily making hundreds of these perfectly-shaped mini edibles.  It was so much fun!  Sandwich the round ones with jam and you have perfect jammie dodgers!  I made almond-flavoured biscuits, which just happen to be perfect with coffee.  Thanks Mum, you’re the best! :)

*We failed, but that could’ve been down to the freezing temperatures (it didn’t get over -2ºC all day), the stress, carsickness and Mum’s dog being attacked by a neighbour’s dog.  I’m hoping with time I’ll come to love our New Location.

I’ve had a really nice time this weekend.  This may seem like a fairly inane sentence to most, but of late my weekends haven’t been filled with much relaxation or pleasurable activities – this is the side-effect of me being up here and everyone else being “down there”.  Whilst we’re still waiting for people to come and see the house (apparently no one in Northumberland is viewing houses at the moment, though it is hoped that this will change with the better weather).

This weekend Mum came up and we had a very civilised and girly weekend.  We visited Durham, walked around the cathedral and had pizza from the little pizza shop in the covered market.  I queued for ages to get my favourite coffee ground at a little stall in the market before doing plenty of window shopping then coming home.  It was such a nice way to spend a weekend; in good company.  Mum and I have the habit of staying up really late and chatting away for hours.  It’s been nice to have someone other than the cats to talk to!

Today it’s icily cold and I am not feeling well so I took an executive decision to stay at home.  Whereas I would usually flog myself to the last and work even though I was feeling awful, as I know I will be leaving at some point in the future I have decided to be good to myself and not overdo it anymore.  I sent Mum on her way this morning and I have been feeling fairly ropey ever since, so have spent the morning in and out of bed.

I have something to look forward to though, in the form of Mr. VP coming up to visit me this weekend for a long weekend.  As I haven’t seen him since the beginning of January, I cannot wait!

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Now playing: Liam Finn – Gather To The Chapel

It has been a quiet few days.  It is less quiet now as I am back at work.  Today was one of those days when I woke up earlier than I needed to, and spent the whole morning wondering how I was going to manage to survive the day.  Thankfully survive it I did, with almost all of my sanity intact.

I have opted to take odd days off unpaid for the next few weeks, in the quiet time, giving me a little space to do the things I have found myself desperately wanting to do but not having the chance to do.  I have been playing again with my lino-cuts.  It’s been a long time.  I am finally putting pencil to paper and coming up with designs.  It feels good.

I find time to be a fairly scarce commodity at the moment – it seems to drag endlessly at work and disappear at home.  I got back from work just before 6pm this evening and between cooking food, washing up and chilling for about half an hour, time has disappeared.  It’s suddenly 9pm and I’m already looking longingly at my bed – albeit sans Mr. VP (this separation of 250 miles is proving to be annoying).

I baked this cake for my friend’s birthday.  I show I love people by baking them cakes.  I really do love people, my people, and I love baking them cakes.  This was for my dearest friend D.  The cake was a buttery Victoria sponge with Tiptree raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream filling.  Add sugar flowers and girly handwriting and it’s a birthday cake!

And despite the distance between Mr. VP and I, I’m not totally alone.  I still have the loving company of D and H, our lovely, wonderful, purring friends.

I have also enjoyed the sunlight immensely (when it’s around).  Even the cats who are usually totally unphotogenic and squirmy laid still enough for me to take photos.  The cats are usually forbidden from being on the bed, but I allowed them on just to get a nice photo of them.

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Now playing: Lucy Schwartz – Gone Away

I’m not sure when exactly it was that I ‘lost’ my passion to do things, but it’s been gone for a good long time now.  For instance, I have been cooking since I left my mother’s house to live in the big wide world, but I haven’t relished doing it for a long time.  It seems like only now am I starting to get the will to do things back again.  This is ironic, seeing as Mr. VP isn’t around to enjoy these culinary confections that I seem to be happily making, but on my days off all I seem to do is cook.

This may be a sign that I am indeed missing Mr. VP – in times of stress or too-many-thoughts I tend to bake.  Or perhaps it’s just that I’m managing to shrug off 2009 and start something new (not good that I eat all of my food…).

Today as it was my day off I didn’t go back to bed as I would usually have done.  Having risen to feed the cats I thought “to hell with it – I’ll stay up!” so I wandered into the kitchen and began making bread.  At 7:15 am.  Having made the dough I left it to rise and breakfasted in peace.  It was such a lovely way to start the morning, as it was still dark and fairly cosy in the house.

In our living room we have a beautiful old writing bureau, which is one of the few pieces of furniture I genuinely adore.  We bought it some years ago from a charity shop and I have loved it ever since.  I used to spend many happy hours, before I was working full-time, writing, crafting and lino-cutting on this.  It used to be up in the spare room, but I hated not seeing it, so we moved it downstairs and I’m so glad I did.

However as it’s now in the living room, there is no escaping it’s contents; lino cutting tools, pieces of paper that have been drawn upon, painted, loved.  There was a time when I spent hours every day engraving and  creating.  Then 2008 happened and so did the ever-busy 2009 and I didn’t ever sit down at that desk and do any lino-cutting.  My tools lay where I had left them, untouched and unused since then.  But they have been tirelessly calling to me from their little boxes and today for the first time since I believe late 2007 I heeded their calls.  I took out the bag with all of my lino-cuts, took a blank piece of lino and started drawing.  It all flooded back and with the light on, the iPod playing lovely music, I remembered why I had loved it as much as I had.  I regained all of my passion again.

I made prints out of some of my old cuts, and remembered that magic feeling watching the ink hit the paper and leave a perfect copy.  It was a good way to spend a day off.

Just before the light disappeared (it hadn’t really been there much all day) I went down to the beach for a short walk.  It was icy cold and I watched a seagull with a broken wing, wishing it would come to me so I could at least take it to a vets.  But it wouldn’t, and falling off the edge of a bank trying to catch it wasn’t going to happen.  The sea was dark grey and wild.

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Now playing: Meiko – Hawaii

[Yes, this is a 30cm/ 12inch ruler and in parts of our garden it has disappeared!]

I woke up this morning to yet more snow, however my first thought this morning was “what on *earth* is that noise?”, upon looking out of my window I saw a man on a small tractor with a snowplough attachment ploughing the road.  Doing so rather noisily but at least it was getting done!

[Most of the outside is about this deep - 16cm or 6.3inches]

The snow has been prodigious, and is due to come again to us on Monday.  For now I’m just glad I don’t have to drive anywhere and that I have yet to be nobbled by a falling icicle.  As beautiful as they are, I keep imagining my life being shortened by a rather large icicle falling from above.

Today I have staved-off the inevitable cabin fever mentioned by Katie by baking bread – my first bread for a very long time, and how much I loved doing it! – cleaning the house, ironing and then walking down to the post office to post a parcel.  I also did what my mother suggested and made a path to the front and back doors, just in case someone needs to visit.  What I hadn’t reckoned on was the inch of solid ice under the snow which has now made a nice tidy – but lethal – walkway to the house (I tried to get as much of it up as I could, but wrestling with ice isn’t easy!).  Eeep, sorry Mr. Postman.

With these few days of “me” time I have got back into cooking again.  I hadn’t realised how much of an impact my working had become on the will and time to cook.  I love to be in and out of a kitchen all day – but not once I’ve done a full day’s work.  Yes, I will have to try to win the lottery so I don’t have to work and can cook and potter all day long.

I now have photographic proof of the snow’s depth, too.  Just in case you didn’t believe me!

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Now playing: Liam Finn – Gather To The Chapel