A foraging we will go...better yet, get someone else to do it!

As many of you will know, Ms Monkey is an avid forager! Come late summer I can normally be found, fighting the brambles and up to my arse in spiky foliage, on the quest for various berries to make ingenious, normally alcoholic, concoctions. But at this time of the year there is little greenery about to be of interest, however, now is a fabulous time for shellfish! I will eat any kind of sea creature and the best kind are those you have foraged yourself! Nothing beats taking a stove on to the beach and rustling up a few 'moules mariniere' fresh from the ocean. The sweetness of these wee morsels cannot be over emphasised and I have a few choice spots where I can forage mussels, oysters, shrimps, whelks and winkles, but one little beastie has always evaded me. The Razor Clam (Ennis sp. and Solen marginatus). Now this little blighter lives under the sand, well under the sand...

Now, our local beach provides plenty of shells, ergo, the clams must be there somewhere. However, the mouth of Hayle Estuary is not a good place for food foraging, the intense industrial activity in the estuary during the Nineteenth Century has left heavy metal deposits amongst the sands (although I've yet to find patchouli smelling, greebos hiding out within the dunes!). I have to say, that shell fish, generally, are often found to be containing heavy metals. Providing one isn't about to embark on a shellfish only diet, then one should be fine. Still, I plan on staying away from the mouth of the estuary. Fishermen take lobsters and crab from elsewhere in the bay, so I am assuming that it's perfectly safe. If I start mutating, I will let you know!

Anyway, back to the plot... Now Razor Clams have a tell tale, keyhole shaped siphon hole. But I have never seen any!! Now, I suspect that there may be some dwelling over in Mounts Bay, but the problem is that I never seem to be over that way on a spring tide, or if I am I do not have a pot of salt with me. Salt, I hear you ask? Yes indeedy, the trick is to pour salt into the siphon hole, this will make the Razor Clam 'pop' to the surface to spit the salt out. Gripping the shell by the the edges, you can, slowly, but firmly, pull the clam to the surface. The rules for commercial landing state a minimum of 10cm, so best to let anything smaller go. All parts of the clam are edible, except for the grey stomach. The tastiest part (apparently), is the foot, which when cooked, looks a little like a flaccid....ahem...gentlemans' part! These little devils can be cooked in a variety of ways; barbecued, grilled, boiled etc. They are ready as soon as they cease to be translucent.

Well, I had still to taste these elusive bivalves, so you can imagine my excitement when I received a text from Mrs McGregor saying "At 5pm I shall be sauteing Razor Clams with garlic and shallots, how much do you love me?" Well my answer, as I'm sure you can imagine, was effusive! One of Mrs McGregor's friends had retrieved these whilst diving (the cheater!). At 4.45, Dude and I shot from the house, breaking all sorts of speed laws and possibly one or two laws of physics as well. Well, we arrived just in time for the feast to begin and I can assure you, we licked the plates clean. I would describe the flavour as rich and meaty, whilst also sweet. Only Dude was brave enough to eat the foot...although, as I have previously mentioned, it is, supposedly, the most tasty bit. Next time I will have more courage...

Of course, there has been another bonus from our marine plunder...dozens of razor shells, for converting into mobiles and wind chimes....and the cats got the scraps, well Tyson did anyway...nothing went to waste!!

I can feel a project coming on...

From the mouths of babes...

At the request of my dear friend Lorna, (you didn't ask for a pseudonym, so you didn't get one!), I am dedicating a little section of this blog to some of the things that my son, Dude, comes out with, that either make me want to laugh till I cry or just leave me standing there with my mouth hanging open like a gob smacked goldfish.

As I have already explained, Dude has a condition related to Autistic Spectrum Disorder and this means that he sees the world in a much more literal way to everybody else. He doesn't always understand the social rules that govern the rest of us and tends to blurt out whatever is in his mind at the time: "Isn't it great the hamster's dead? Now we can get another cat." (at the hamster's funeral). Combine this with his above average vocabulary and the results can often be somewhat humorous, at others disastrous. However, this section is not about those social clangers that can leave one squirming, but those blunt, one liners that tickle one's funny bone.

The latest classics follow:

Whilst stood surveying tumultuous rain at the back door, Dude meanders past with a sandwich; "Goodness! It's really chucking it down. I'm guessing the Tories are responsible?"

Whilst I'm playing a Lord of the Rings type video game on the PlayStation, "Honestly Mother! Skyrim is not about exploring random caves, it's about killing dragons and shopping!"

Heave Ho me Hearties!

Well, that time of the year has come around again, when my beloved Pearl needs to get her MOT. I see blank faces.....My beloved car is called The Black Pearl. Yes, it was shamefully ripped off a certain piratical film, but it all fits. She's a big girl and she is black and a bit pearly in colour, rust not withstanding! Plus, we live in Cornwall; the home to British pirates...we hold the world record for the number of pirates in a single gathering:

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Pirates-Penzance-smash-Guinness-World-Record/story-13920244-detail/story.html

The Argentinians may have had second thoughts about the Falklands after seeing this lot!

Then, of course, there are the Pirates of Penzance (Gilbert & Sullivan opera), The Cornish Pirates (rugby team) and of course our wonderful history of smuggling and wrecking....not to mention our absolute desire to fleece every tourist, out of every last penny they own! How much for a cream tea? Extra cream....that will be extra. £17 for some bit of tack with some shells glued on...a bargain, at twice the price!

One thing I have learned about living down here, is that for six weeks of the year, you stay at home! You try to avoid shopping, turning right across a main road and buying petrol from a main road garage. If you do go out, you can't park anywhere and you can guarantee that you will be stuck in a jam at least once....normally because of some old boy on a tractor....and no, he won't pull over at that convenient layby and let you pass...suck it up...it's tourist season!

Now, I have no objection to tourists....they bring money to what is the second poorest area in the UK. Most people I know down here have jobs because of tourism, either directly or indirectly. OK, most of them are gardeners....but if it wasn't for all of our gorgeous tourist centred gardens, there would be no jobs. And most of the second home owners employ gardeners and cleaners... but wages are low, jobs tend to be seasonal and winter can be a bit bleak. But, we have the beaches to ourselves and we can take the dogs on them.

Now this is the point where I hear all those people who want to cut the benefits saying, why should you have a car if you are on benefits? Well, let's break it down...my nearest shop is over a mile away. I can barely walk 50 yds, certainly not without a stop. My nearest bus stop is over 500yds away, down a steep flight of steps and over rough waste ground...I can't get to it. So I would have to get a taxi, to the bus stop. It gets worse. My nearest Job Centre is in Penzance, 15 miles away. To get there, without a car, I would have to get a taxi to the bus stop or train station, catch said bus or train to Penzance and then I would still be over a mile away from the Job Centre. It's up hill all the way to the Job Centre and there are no buses, I would therefore, have to take another taxi. And yet there is a car park right next door. You can see why I need my car. This is before I can even think of food shopping....

Now I don't qualify for the mobility element of Disability Living Allowance (apparently having proof of my disability from six agencies isn't sufficient), so I have to use my other benefits to pay for it and yet it is regarded as a luxury item by politicians, based in a city that has excellent public transport in the form of trains, buses and tubes. I couldn't even get a bus to the supermarket from my house! And so every year I am left worrying about how I can afford to get my car through another MOT and what is going to happen when I can't. As it is, if I didn't have a credit card I would be stuffed. But what happens when I can't pay that any more?

We even include the car in family photo's!
(2010, we're still waiting for snow this year!)

Luckily this year, it was just the exhaust and a bit of tweaking on the hand brake. The bill will still come to around £400, then there will be the tax in May, that will be another £200+. By then I will have lost out by freezes in tax credits and child benefit, which will soon be followed by the removal of the little DLA I get now, under the new welfare changes. I'm just wondering when the government will be reintroducing work houses and cholera. Put me down for diphtheria, oh....have I been immunised? Damn, how about a bit of rickets or scurvy? I suppose I ought to stick with the goth image and waste away from consumption.... Now wouldn't that be a weight off David Cameron's mind!

Queen of Hearts....

And so it's February the fourteenth...isn't time passing quickly these days?

No, I did not get any Valentine's cards. I wasn't expecting any, so had no sense of disappointment when I opened a bill from the Student Loan Company. Annoyance that, yet again, I have forgotten to send back my deferral form, but no expectation of hearts and flowers. I am content, for the moment, with my single life.

So, what are the advantages of the single life then Ms Monkey, I hear you ask? Well, I can have as many cats as I want, for a start! It also means that nobody but myself and the Government can have claim to the contents of my bank account (and of course the mortgage company, credit cards, utilities, insurance companies etc).....(and when I say bank account I mean extensive overdraft, of course).

It means that I can spend my winters with furry legs and not give a damn...and summers as well if I feel so inclined! I can wear saggy pyjamas and furry slippers. I can wear my hair short and dye it sky-blue-pink....or black! I can bring dead birds back from the beach without anybody thinking I'm slightly deranged. OK, that one is a bit of a grey area, as my children have made several comments on the strangeness of my behaviour and Dude, who had to travel in the car with the corpses (which were a little ripe), made several allusions to the state of my mental health....the dog thought it was awesome, however!

Do I miss anything about being single? Well, there are those moments when it would be nice to share a feeling or an emotion...but those are fleeting moments. And the intimacy? The 'rumpy-pumpy', I hear you ask? What's wrong with a cup of tea I say? It lasts longer and doesn't make you sleep in the soggy patch! (OK, I do miss that a bit....)

But, I am now so set in my ways it will take a very special Mr Right to win his way into my heart....he will also have to be solvent (and a dab hand at DIY)! As Mr Depp and Mr Vanian are taken (although I hear rumours regarding Mr Depp....) I will happily settle for the companionship of my darling children, my smelly mutt and my feline friends....at least for now!

So, to those couples among you....Happy Valentines Day! To those singletons, Happy Tuesday...I love you all!!







Tummy troubles and ASD...

I just thought I would post an interesting article I found about a bit of research concerning gastrointestinal problems and their link to ASD.

http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2012/02/06/tummy-troubles-studying-the-relationship-between-autism-and-gastrointestinal-disorders/

Dude has long suffered discomfort and constipation and I had no idea that the conditions were related. Luckily we have a very empathic GP, who, whenever I take Dude in, will patiently listen to his descriptions of the problem and use pictures and websites to help Dude get his problems accross....as opposed to ignoring him and asking me! In these times of pressure on the NHS it's wonderful to be able to highlight good practice and I cannot complement my GP enough for his people skills. I don't mind that I often have to wait half an hour to see him because I know that he will take as much time as is needed to get to the root of a problem, rather than only allowing you the ten minutes alloted! Sadly my GP is only available two days a week, which just goes to show the time pressures that GP's already have to deal with. The current plans to shoulder GP's with more responsibility for management of the NHS will surely put more pressure on them to spend time away from their patients....I'm not convinced that this is in any way a positive step!

When Hell freezes over....

I am in need of a large medicinal brandy! I have just returned from a child's birthday party....I have survived, with all limbs currently intact...although I may loose a few toes to frostbite at some future point!

These days, birthday parties are somewhat different affairs to the parties of my youth. Then, we would all gather at some friends house, in party dresses and the boys would have shirts and trousers. We would eat jelly and ice-cream, sausages on sticks and devour silver foil hedgehogs full of pineapple and cheese. We would play pass the parcel, hide and seek, pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs. And come home clutching a sliver of birthday cake, wrapped in a napkin.

But things have changed....Nowadays, a party at some tourist attraction or fast food restaurant is expected. There are, needless to say, a plethora of indoor 'soft play' attractions down here in tourist central, all of whom are more than happy to liberate locals of their cash in the name of child entertainment. And the worst of these....is Hell Zone! (Names have been changed, so that I may bitch to my hearts content)

Now, I should point out before, they sue me, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Hell Zone, from a child's perspective, or even some parents; it has a fully licensed bar, for instance. It is a vast, warehouse of a building, that would put most aircraft hangers to shame, and stuffed full with all manner of slides, ball pools, climbing frames and soft squishy things in hideously bright colours, that children seem to love.....and I hate every last inch of it!

Dude, on the other hand, loves it and so does young Master H McGregor and it was his birthday! Now we had been planning on a trip to Launceston, to a similar establishment that also includes a cuddle farm. Mrs McGregor and I had cunning plans of abandoning the boys in the soft play area, whilst we snuck off to ooh/aah over lambs and bunnies (not very goth I know, but there might have been a black lamb or bunny. Goths have fluffy moments too you know!). However, the demise of Mrs McGregor's car earlier this week and the uncertain health of mine led to a rethink.....young Master H chose Hell Zone and our fates were sealed.

Survival kit: Paper, Nicotene, Caffine, Ear Plugs & Twitter

The thought of abandoning my child with Mrs McGregor and doing a runner did cross my mind, but that would have been cruel and unusual punishment for a Lady who goes out of her way to help me. And so I resigned myself to a couple of hours of torment. I thought that I had my survival kit all worked out.....I was wrong!

The first problem with Hell Zone is the noise. Anybody who talks about the delightful sound of children playing, is a certifiable lunatic in my humble opinion. The battle cries of the young offspring of our species sound like the cries of deranged, feral banshees. In the vast, cavernous reaches of Hell Zone, these cries are magnified to something approaching the take off noise of a commercial airliner. And the noise is constant....it is all very well to be surrounded by a few noisy children, but when you find yourself surrounded by thousands....hundreds....OK, dozens of the little blighters, all bellowing for each others attention; you slowly begin to lose the will to live. Compound this with piped music from the 'popular' genre and you find yourself unable to concentrate on the written word and have to shout to make yourself heard to the person sitting next to you. To add to that misery today, somebodies 'little darling' set the fire alarms off and 45 minutes of various discordant 'whoo whoos' and bells resulted. To compensate for this noise, the staff turned up the music...while all of us helplessly tried to remember the little British Sign Language that we knew (turns out that was somewhere between very little and bugger all!)

Another small problem with Hell Zone is ambient temperature. I should have suspected something when I saw Mr McGregor senior arriving with his electric scooter, snuggled under a mountain of blankets. Apparently 'sub-arctic' was the level that the heating had been set at, the play area itself had been set to 'frigid', but I didn't dare enter that section of the building....that's where the wild things live! Of course, the best kind of seating for an indoor refrigerator is metal....do not lick under any circumstances!! And within fifteen minutes I found myself unable to feel any of my extremities. Thankfully, Mr McGregor senior, who is aware of my physical problems, had brought a few extra heating methods to spare. Without the toastie foot warmers, I feel I would have lost a few toes...I stupidly declined the spare hot water bottle and blanket...vanity bites back again!!

Mrs McGregor poses so I can take
 surreptitious photo of woman on Kindle

My final problem with Hell Zone is with relativity....today I lost 3 hours of my life that I will never get back again, But I actually felt as if I spent six months doing hard time in a Siberian gulag (providing that hard time consisted of chatting about how everybody else in the place was on a laptop, Kindle or I Pad, the difficulty of finding clothes for tall people, how can you make cheesy chips taste like chips with no cheese, aren't these alarms annoying and trying to explain Twitter without saying 'just because'). How many times I looked at my watch and thought 'it must be broken', I have no idea....

There was, however, an interesting high point... Number 2 son, who did not accompany us, but rather stayed at home to watch DVDs with his girlfriend. Foolishly put on Facebook that his girlfriend's mother would be at Hell Zone at the same time as myself....then young Master Gee gave her a description of me...Well sorry son, we met and we talked...about you (all nice things though....I did start to wonder if she was talking about the right boy?????)

And so, I am snugly back at home. I have survived my morning and afternoon at Hell Zone and I now just have to hope that Dude never gets invited to another party there ever again.....some hope!

The delights of housework.....?

This week I rediscovered the delights of ironing....there aren't any! Ironing I hear you say? When have you ever ironed anything Ms Monkey? The answer is I haven't, well not for years anyway! I haven't been anywhere that has required crisp seams or the application of starch since.....Hang on I'm thinking about it...I don't know, last century any old how! So, let me tell you a story, gather round. Are we sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

My mother was very much a product of a war time upbringing and I remember vividly washday as a child in the seventies. Washday was always a Monday, come rain or shine. We used to do the washing in a wonderful old twin-tub that had took up the space of a small Sherman tank. It would be dragged out and placed in front of the sink and a variety of tubes would be attached to the taps or draped towards the plug hole. Whilst the first load washed, the hand-washing would be done in the sink and a big galvanised cauldron would simmer away on the gas stove to boil wash the handkerchiefs and my father's smalls (not at the same time I hasten to add!). After the hand washing had been done and the scalding cauldron emptied and it's contents rinsed, all would be hung on the rotary drier just outside the backdoor. Then the first load would be transferred across to the spinner and rinsed within an inch of it's life. All of these loads would be processed and hung on the line before lunch whilst Women's Hour, Listen with Mother and the Archers provided accompaniment. I used to love wash days as a child, I loved to help and found the steamy kitchen, with its hot soapy smell a wonderful place to be. I particularly loved playing with the large wooden tongs and passing my mother the clean washing to hang up.

In the event of rain, all of the washing would be stored around the house to dry. The dripping hand washing and boiled smalls went on the clothes horse over the bath, the sheets and towels on the radiators and the clothes, on a further clothes horse, in the spare room, whilst my mother cursed the heavens. She never shared my love of washday, a feeling that I have some sympathy with now, even though I never have a set day for washing. My friends' parents had automatic washing machines and tumble dryers but when questioned as to why she would not change to the newer, labour saving equipment she would chide that "they just didn't clean clothes that well" and that tumble dryers were far too expensive to run. It was not until the late eighties that she eventually switched to a washer drier. She still complained that they were "not up to much" in the cleaning department, but reluctantly agreed that she did not miss washday!

The 'happy' housewife of yore

If my mother hated washing day, then she despised ironing day! Tuesday was dreaded day and the mountain of fresh clothes and linens would be piled upon the kitchen table. The ironing board would be dragged from its cupboard, kicking and screaming, along with the green and black iron; with its fuzzy black cord. I have fond memories of that iron; although as soon as she got the chance, my mother plumped for a steam jobbie, that made her life, she said, slightly less tedious. There were a variety of reasons that my mother hated ironing with such a passion, not least of which was her height. At six foot four, she towered over the ironing board, designed for one size, fits all, nineteen fifties women; who, it would appear, were all under five foot four! Bent over double, it was with gritted teeth that she attacked the sheets; with all the speed of a rat up an aqueduct (how fast a rat moves up an aqueduct is a matter for conjecture, I have better things to do with my time than sit around, up to my armpits in canal water, with a stop watch, timing rodents in a series of controlled experiments, possible involving me going "Boo!" a lot). Occasionally, I would be allowed 'a go' at the ironing, usually involving a tea towel or handkerchief. I would stand on the step-ladder, dreamily, but also somewhat anally, ironing perfect creases so that all of my hems lined up. This would drive my mother to distraction and, after about fifteen minutes, she would say "well I must get on now!" and I would be banished from the room and it's wonderful smell of hot, clean cotton. My mother didn't bother with perfectly aligned hems or or plumb line creases (except in jeans.....that one took a lot of working on!). If it was flat and looked marginally better than it had when it was off the line then it was done. And if it was something you wore under something else (vests, knickers, pants etc) then forget it. It still took her all day and there were only three of us!

A womans work and all that...

I never really understood her dislike of ironing.....until I found myself married and working part-time. My, then, husband, had a job in a music shop and required crisp, ironed shirts, with pinpoint creases and starched collars and cuffs. I threw myself into the ironing with abandon. A short lived joy, as my husband was more anal than me! After three weeks of him 're-ironing' all of his shirts, I threw in the towel and volunteered for alternative duties. My mother had been right! Soul destroying was a fairly accurate description of how tedious the ironing for just two people turned out to be. I could not work out how to put creases where they were supposed to be and ended up with all sorts of stop-starts and creases that veered off at peculiar angles. I discovered that I was more than satisfied with hanging things up after a good shake and nobody can really see peg marks on Tshirts...can they? What really put the nail in the coffin of ironing was my first purchase of a tumble dryer, when Gee came along. And when he started school, short sleeved shirts; no crease necessary!

So why are you ironing now, I hear you cry? The tumble dryer, my faithful, crease removing friend has died. A moments silence....that'll do, it's only a piece of electrical equipment after all! And so I am back to working out where to put creases and lining up hems. I am better at it than I was, but it takes me twice as long as I can't stand up for that long to do it. It is also eating into 'my' time. That hour and a half I normally spend watching a bad film in the afternoon while I make things or sew things or knit things. I do, however, like hearing compliments from Gee as to how nice his shirts are looking. He'd better not get used to it though....My good friend McMarkie is donating his to me...If he can get it down here from Bristol. And then, the ironing board can go back into its dark corner and gather dust until the next electrical crisis!