Cold cures and seasonal sniffles...

The week before Christmas saw Agnieszka take to her bed in what was an unprecedented bout of coughing, cold and fever. I have never seen her so ill and it's the first time she ever took sick days while here. I was lucky and have so far managed to avoid anything worse than a sniff and slightly clogged nose, which a hefty hot whiskey saw off.

I think one of the reasons I am staying healthy is the thought of having to take some of the myriad Polish 'cures' that are bandied about, usually from tesciowa. Below are two:

On the left, a chopped onion to which has been added sugar. Leave overnight, then drain off and drink the juice. I tried this one, more out of curiosity than anything and I can honestly say that sugary onion is not something I could get a taste for. The jar on the right contains the mother of all cures and has a potentcy far beyond it's ingredients. To make, crush ten cloves of garlic and put them in the jar with the juice of a lemon. Add cooled boiled water and leave for 24 hours to infuse. Drink a couple of teaspoonsful before bed. This one stinks, and so far I have resisted the urge to try it. Agnieszka has been taking it for the last few nights but it doesn't seem to be shifting the cough.

Here she is, all bundled up trying to keep warm in our draughty and damp house. No wonder we get ill.

Cold dough and a rainy night...

The last few days have been really chilly, but bright and crisp. In quiet corners, the frost glints off piles of litter in the weak autumnal sunshine. On the way to work the sun is reflected in the windows of the flatblocks by the park, a vivid orange glow cutting through the willowy trees like fire, so bright it hides the stark grey concrete of Salford's slums.

At home the annual problem of how to keep the house warm is upon us again. During the summer I sealed the gaps in the floorboards but that doesn't seem to have done much good. I'm thinking of bringing the hens in at night to keep the kitchen warm, but where would we put the penguins then?

This problem of a cold house plays havoc with some of the things we try to make. Trying to keep milk warm to help it curdle and make some cheese is almost impossible, I just can't seem to maintain a level temerature other than 'cold'. Recently, I made some bread and in order to get it to rise I had to be a little bit inventive. Necessity being its mother and all that. So I have started laying a blanket down in the spare room (the only warm and dry room in the house), on top of which I put a hot water bottle filled with, well, hot water. Around this goes the bread tins and tray with dough and the whole lot is covered with a clean dry tea towel. After twenty minutes, half an hour, I go up and move everything round so the warmth gets to all sides. It looks a bit odd but the bread rises ok, eventually, and it comes out of the oven looking like it should. Now all we need is a bigger kitchen, with enough space to knead the dough without having to move things out of the way before, during and after the pummelling process.

A bigger, warmer kitchen. How lovely. Dream on...

New Year breaks and hobby cows…

New Year saw us staying in Winton, near Kirkby Stephen, on a working dairy farm. This suited me as I could ask questions about their cows, although I had forgotten about the taciturn nature of Lakeland / Yorkshire farmers. I did get one chance to chat and found out what type of cows they had, a breed I didn’t know and whose name I promptly forgot. I asked about Dexter cows, these being the preferred choice of the smallholder, and he harrumphed, saying there weren’t many about. Mainly, he added, because they were ‘nobbut a hobby cow’. This made me laugh to myself, the idea that keeping a single cow is, to a dairy farmer with a full herd, something that only part-timers do.
That aside, we had the most wonderful break. We spent New Year’s Eve in a small and almost empty pub, sat by a log fire, playing dominoes and drinking real ale, while the hippy-rasta barman crocheted to pass the time and where, at midnight, six small rockets were set off. Once they’d exploded, the silence descended again, to bring in the new year as it has done for centuries.

New Year’s Day took us to Borrowdale valley and a walk up Castle Crag. The fog of the previous night had gone, leaving hoar frost on plants and trees and a white cover over everything. At 11.30, when we got to the car park, it was already full and I only got the last space by asking someone to move their car a little.
On the Friday we woke to find a dusting of snow and drove the short distance to Ravenstonedale and followed a walk from the local paper, cut out by the landlady of the B&B. Although a gentle walk, it was made more difficult by the 44 gated stiles that we had to get through. Designed for people with very long legs and no bum or belly, they involved plenty of both stretching and breathing in. As we reached the halfway mark, we noticed a cloud bringing snow heading our way and I kept an eye on it nervously until I realised it wouldn’t overtake us and envelope us in a blizzard. Finally, on Saturday we headed home via Glenridding and a hike up towards Helvellyn. Bitterly cold in the wind, over paths covered in sheet ice, but terrific views. Slight nervousness when Agnieszka’s knee went, giving her another bruise to match the one she got from a tumble on a slippy path, but it seemed to be ok and we got back to the car park without further mishap.
Over Kirkstone Pass and through Windermere took us back to the motorway and it was dark before we reached the M6. A clear run and we were home in an hour and a half. As we approached the Manchester area, the light pollution was really obvious, especially after three nights of almost total darkness. The following day in Farnworth, the notion we were back in a city was reinforced by the piles of crap littering the streets, the graffiti and the track-suited inhabitants of our adopted town. Welcome home, to 2009.

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As a small aside, to see out 2008 it was decided to add an extra second to the year to allow for the slower rotation of the world. This involved, in the case of Big Ben, adding / removing some of the piles of old pennies used to regulate the pendulum. Technical eh? Some radio air-time was given to discussion about how this time could be spent although, for me, it was easy: I used it to kiss my wife. What better use of an extra second could there be?

Winter drawers on...

It seems a long time since the last entry, even though it is only a month or so. I have sold a few jars of honey at work but due to the cold weather and dark nights, haven’t been down to see if the bees are ok for a couple of weeks. I’m sure they’re fine, they have plenty of stores and they’re in a sheltered spot. But I should still go, just to make sure.

Work at the allotment has pretty much come to an end. Poor organisation led to there being nothing to plant or, worse, harvest and the experiment of putting some salad and a few extra beans in the unheated greenhouse has come to nothing. In order to try and avoid this next year, I have been checking the catalogues and deciding, in discussion with Agnieszka, what we should try and grow next year. In addition, I have been steaming through a few books now that the nights are dark and there’s not much to do other than huddle round the computer.

From several days the weather has been dull, damp and foggy. Standard summer weather Agnieszka thinks. But yesterday it was bright and sunny, as well as extremely crisp and cold, so we went out for a walk. We ended up in Blackrod, on a walk we’d done before. Nothing too energetic, just a five-miler round the fields and along the canal. After the fog, there was plenty of hoar frost giving grass and trees an almost cartoon-like foliage, making rose hips look like candied peel.
Spiders’ webs were strings of ice crystals and along the road and through the wood there was the constant slithering sound of ice, melted by the watery winter sun, dropping off the branches onto the floor.
In the sun it was relatively warm, but once we’d got into the woods and down into the valley to cross the River Douglas, it got terribly cold. Emerging on to the canal bank later, a sheet of ice covered the water, broken with a sound like an Arctic ice-breaker by a passing narrow boat. The crew, two men and a woman, were bundled up in coats, hats, gloves and scarves but, despite the cold, looked like they were enjoying themselves as they chugged sedately on down the canal in the direction of Liverpool.
For once the walk wasn’t a mud-fest and we managed to get round without getting too spattered. The ground was fairly solid and the paths firm. A robin sang at us as we crossed a bridge and we could hear the wheezing of some geese in flight. Two hours was enough though, and it was back to the warmth of the house and a cup of healing barszcz – surely the best soup ever invented.