Sunset from Hill House, Mount Helen. February 2024

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

We were so, so lucky with the weather

We hosted a 25th birthday bash for Freyja on Sunday afternoon.  We had about 20 people all told, including us. It would almost certainly have been possible to fit everyone into the house, but these sorts of events are so much nicer when held outside. Besides, people wanted to play with the chickens and admire my huge pumpkin and potter about.

The weather on Saturday had been a bit showery - mostly sunny but you couldn't have guaranteed no rain.  The weather yesterday was extremely showery during the afternoon. Not good weather for being outside at all.  The weather on Sunday was absolutely glorious.  Truly lovely.  Sunny, warm, slight breeze. Absolutely ideal for sitting out on the patio and drinking beer and eating lasagne and pizza, followed by plum crumble, apple and gooseberry crumble, and chocolate mousse and cookies (Freyja made the mousse and Taffa and Gaz the cookies).  There were old school friends of Freyja's and some of her new friends there.  Taffa, Gaz, Ginger Rich and Marryk came. It was a lovely afternoon.  The Builder and I had a lovely time - even if we had spent all of Saturday and all of Sunday morning cooking and peeling and washing and tidying and generally getting ready.

The creating of the lasagne on Saturday afternoon was enlivened by the resolute refusal of my pasta making machine to rotate its rollers. Nearly led to an unexpected divorce between The Builder and me (it is not a good idea, when I am clearly struggling to make something work that doesn't want to work, to tell me that the object in question isn't working.  I KNOW IT'S NOT BLUDDY WORKING!!!!!!!).  He took the machine apart.  No obvious reason why the rollers weren't rotating.  Put it back together again.  Nope.  Still not rotating.  Threw the pasta maker away.  I have to say that I don't really expect my hand operated machines to die on me :-(  Fortunately, my trusty wooden rolling pin rode in to the rescue - and made absolutely beautiful lasagne sheets (demonstrating, by the by, that the pasta making machine hadn't been working properly for a long time!!).  I have always understood that it is nigh on impossible to roll pasta sheets thinly enough with a rolling pin.  This is emphatically not true!!

In the meantime, The Builder took himself into Sheffield on a much more successful mission to help Gaz make their washing machine work.  Freyja's washing machine is not working - but her landlord can sort that out.

The little IT company that Freyja works for has hidden its offices in a quiet, little, out of the way corner of Woodseats.  It took The Builder and me a very long time indeed to find them on Friday afternoon.  (They obviously hadn't tried hard enough to hide away!!) Should have asked Jenny.  She'd have found it for us

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