Life moves fast in the country

29 July 2010

Just three days before I’d been walking through a field of barley wishing I had my camera with me, rather than just my phone. Returning with my Nikon camera on a walk just those few days later though, I found all the barley gone, with the last few bales being collected from the now bare field.

No Comments Posted in: photography, walks

CDWM: Lauren continues to feed us

28 July 2010

By now, we were full of crudités, soup, fish pie, cheesecake and sorbet. But there was more! Lauren brought out a plate of her trademark dark chocolate truffles to finish us off. As we enjoyed them the tealights along the centre of the table began to burn out one by one – Suzy hastily rearranging them if one dared to dwindle out of sequence.

Continuing the quiz theme that had sprung up after my CDWM evening, Lauren brought out a box of general knowledge trivia questions for us to take turns asking and answering. Trivia is much more my area – no useful information here, no siree – , but there was no score-keeping. So technically, I won.

Then our hostess revealed that there was one more treat for us and we were each presented with a cardboard box, with a personalised, hand-stamped gift tag. Inside … more food, but food to take home with us this time: a whoopie pie. I’d not heard of whoopie pies before, but very much enjoyed it a couple of days later with a cup of coffee. It’s two chocolate cakey-biscuity things sandwiched together with marshmallow goo in the centre and proved to be a very tasty memento of a great evening. And we got to keep the boxes. Seriously, stationery and food – Lauren has me sussed.

2 Comments Posted in: CDWM, food, friends, photography, video

At night

27 July 2010

A couple of nights ago I went out into the garden to photograph the moon. There was a lot of cloud around, so it would tantalisingly appear and disappear on me. I made a complete hash of putting the tripod up in the dark, but eventually got it about right and settled myself in a garden chair behind it. As the moon emerged from behind the cloud I snapped away, experimenting with settings to try and get what I could see with my own eyes.

I’d brought my mini Maglite out with me too. Though the display on the D80 lights up if you pull the on switch round beyond the on position, it still leaves the other buttons in the dark and without a torch you’re left fumbling about in the dark changing what you’ve just got perfectly set, instead of pressing the button you were actually aiming for.

I was quite content in the still darkness, watching the moon come and go and the stars start to appear in the summer night’s sky, when suddenly I heard a strange sneezy snuffle off to my right. I froze and stared wide-eyed ahead of me. Ok. I have a torch I can shine over in that direction, I thought, but I’m not sure I particularly want to, because, oh dear God, what if it’s a puma with a cold and it wants to eat me? After a little hesitation I pointed my torch in the direction of the sound and saw … a little hedgehog. Not a puma. He was making his way along the fence, noisily sniffing the ground and heading towards a puma another hedgehog in the corner of the garden.

I summoned Mum and Dad to see our nocturnal visitors and we watched them sniffing around in my dim torchlight. Not wanting to startle the creatures (the hedgehogs, not Mum and Dad) with my flash I settled for just a high ISO setting and torchlight. Sometimes you just have to enjoy something in the here and now and not worry about getting a perfect photographic record. After a while I ran back inside to grab my laptop to see if I could record their wonderfully loud snorting and snuffling. Unfortunately the laptop didn’t pick it up among all the general noise of the night, but I did get a couple of bits of video of them running about.

It occurs to me that I should have pointed them towards my vegetable patch, where I currently only have about 3 little weedy beetroot, slugs having methodically feasted on the leaves all along the row of beetroot I planted. I guess they’ll find their own way there soon enough.

No Comments Posted in: encounters, garden, photography, video

CDWM: Lauren’s dessert

24 July 2010

With the way I’ve loaded my recent photos to Flickr, you could be forgiven for thinking that Lauren had provided the The Red Arrows as mid-meal entertainment. She did not. But she did have a handy-dandy sofa in the kitchen onto which we could collapse between courses while she whipped up the next culinary delight. A tip for anyone doing a Come Dine With Me evening: provide comfy seating for your sated guests and they will mark you well. True, they may also fall asleep and whine about having to get up for the next course, but that’s the chance you take.

Lauren’s dessert was a New York baked cheesecake with a delightfully palette-cleansing raspberry sorbet. Mmm, raspberries. The story she told us of how carefully the cheesecake had to be treated – please to pull on your kid gloves and lay out a red carpet before it – put me off ever baking a cheesecake myself, but the result was great.

No Comments Posted in: CDWM, food, friends, photography, video

The Red Arrows come to town

22 July 2010

Every year the War & Peace Show takes place at the nearby Beltring Hop Farm. Military vehicle enthusiasts come from all the over the country to display their vehicles, attend exhibitions and see famous guests such as Dame Vera Lynn and former cast members from Dad’s Army. Even if you don’t visit the show (and of course, being local, I never have) you still get a taste of the military and wartime vehicles as suddenly all kinds of jeeps and trucks are mingled in among the ordinary traffic as they go from camp site to supermarket to stock up on food for the week.

This year the Red Arrows made their debut at the event and performed a full 20 minute display. We were able to watch them zooming around from our garden and then one aeroplane came right over our house at the end.

4 Comments Posted in: encounters, photography

CDWM: Lauren’s main course

21 July 2010

Does anyone spot the reason that Lauren was so good at matching flags to countries in the quiz at Helen’s Come Dine With Me? This world map hangs on the wall by her kitchen table and serves as a great talking point and impromptu “find X” on the map competition. It’s fun to see how far we’ve travelled over the years and to plan where we might go next.

Lauren’s main course was fish pie with spinach and carrots. Not just any old spinach and carrots though. The spinach was cooked with garlic and lemon and the carrots with orange zest and rosemary.

Our fish pies were not just in individual portions, they had been personalised to suit each person’s particular taste – for me there was less chili, because I’m a complete baby when it comes to levels of spiciness and for Helen, her fish pie was devoid of prawns, prawns just being too far along the weirdness scale of seafood for her liking.

Then having suffered so very much walking from the kitchen to Lauren’s room on the top floor to record the video about the starter we moved filming location and I carried the laptop outside. You may have noticed how our videos have developed over the course of this food venture. We started with very organised videos at first and always listed exactly what we’d had to eat. Now we don’t repeat ourselves as much in that regard and instead use the energy saved to heckle each other more.

No Comments Posted in: CDWM, food, friends, photography, video

Fields of gold

19 July 2010

I went for a walk yesterday, as part of an ongoing effort to clear my head and get my joints working. I’ve been out in the fields in recent days, among the seed heads of oil seed rape and horse beans, thin and fat, little red bugs and swarms of little flies that I then had to empty from my bra at the end of the day.

I went a different route yesterday though, heading south and then across the field towards the church. I couldn’t see over the hedgerow and hadn’t given any thought to which crop might have been planted there. I turned into the gate and – wow – it really was a field of gold. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and the field of barley was glowing before me. The footpath cuts all the way across the field and I wandered along it so slowly, enjoying the sun, the view of the oast houses and the Kent valley beyond and the feel of the one barley seed head I picked from its waving stalk. It really was beautiful.