writerslife – Page 5 – A. L. Lester

it’s all quacking along

The big news at Lester Towers is that we have some new ducks!

We lost Mr Duck last weekend–he’d been ailing for a while–and Mrs Duck was distraught, calling and calling for him. So yesterday Mr AL went down the lane and did a socially distanced pick-up of a new pair, a lady and a gentleman. They are in house and Mrs Duck is here in the little pond having a nice swim, whilst they are in the house behind her. You can hear her chuntering on to herself if you turn up the volume.

Apart from that, this week has been hard. Talking Child is still having a conniption fit about home schooling. She is wandering round with a beanie pulled down so far over her eyes it’s touching her nose, grumbling that education is pointless as it’s just the government turning out good little citizens that won’t argue with it and anyway we’re all going to die of covid.

I am finding this quite wearing.

We have hopefully beaten her into shape today (not literally) and are all spending five hours a day sat around the dining table working together rather than retreating to our respective corners with headphones. As I type we are running over kinds of computer hardware.

I am stuttering along with the Chicken Story. It can’t quite decide whether it’s set at Valentine’s or Christmas, although it’s definitely winter. On a good day I usually write about twelve hundred words and I’m hoping to have it finished by the end of next week, depending on life chaos.

In the meantime I’m helping Mr AL with his marketing (you can buy his first-in-series, Dark, for 99c/KU: his tagline is basically it’s hobbits in space if that’s your kind of thing) and I’m just fiddling with the distribution of Inheritance of Shadows to try and make it easier for people to find on Amazon, and making some pretty pictures for social media.

We had a visit from the children’s hospice earlier this week to provide us with some respite, and Mr AL and I went for a walk by ourselves, the first time we’ve been out of the house together by ourselves for weeks. Littlest is still throwing things on the floor the moment you turn your back on her and it’s exhausting. This week our carer has been poorly so we haven’t had any respite at all apart from that. On the one hand it’s quite nice not having people coming into the house every day; but on the other, being ‘on duty’ 24/7 is utterly draining.

It’s sunny today and I’m looking forward to the weekend–apparently we are playing Carcassone and having pizza.

Personal post: it’s a lot, folks

I’m genuinely struggling to know what to post about this week. I’ve got all sorts of things going on–Littlest had another COVID scare in the week and had to go in to the Children’s Ward to be tested and my Mama had her radiotherapy orientation yesterday and has her fortnight’s treatments scheduled to start in a week’s time and both kids have needed bloods taken and we’ve all had flu-jabs.

open book on table — Photo by Polina Zimmerman on Pexels.com

Then…Morris got out whilst Mr AL was taking Littlest in to the ward on Wednesday and when I went to collect him up, he wouldn’t be collected (because badger setts are more interesting than people, doh) and I ended up having a mahoosive seizure in the middle of a ploughed field a quarter mile away from home, in the dark, in the rain. Without my locator-watch gadget, which meant that poor Talking Child, the passing Lovely Jogger, my sister and my friend–both of whom I managed to call in a garbled fashion before I went full-on kipper–spent quite a while searching for me. I’d just got out of the bath and was in my nightie and house-trousers and unsuitable shoes, and I’d semi-fallen in to the ditch whilst trying to jump from one field to another.

Morris Dachshund of Lester Towers, Badger-Hunter Extraordinaire. Butter wouldn’t melt, obvs.

I felt pretty grim on Thursday–I get a sort of hang-over after the siezures–and that was made even worse by feeling so useless with everything else that is going on. Mr AL will be driving my Mama the ninety minutes up and down to the hospital, with my sister. It’s more comfortable and less tiring for Ma to travel in her powered wheelchair in our vehicle rather than transfer in and out of my sister’s and take a folding chair. I can’t participate in any of that, because I can’t drive any longer and no-one wants me to ride along only to have a fit in the middle of Mama’s appointment.

In addition, it’s not really safe for Littlest and I to be on our own without supervision. She’s a choking risk and I’m a fitting risk and if those two things happen simultaneously, well, that’s not ideal for her. This has been the case for quite a while and we work round it, making sure we always have oversight.

But after Wednesday, my nearest and dearest are having a conniption fit about me being alone at all.

Littlest, when she was in hospital for something-or-other earlier in the year. Honestly, we lose track.

I’m really, really pissed off about it. I relish my time alone and need it to recharge. Being stuck with a carer in the house is horrible, however much I like them personally. It’s not that I want to hoover naked or turn cartwheels in my underwear; but that possibility doesn’t exist at all if you have someone else in the house. And if they are pottering around unloading the dishwasher and changing the beds…both of which I am massively grateful that they help with…I feel guilt-wracked sitting on the sofa watching them and not helping.

In addition to all that, we have lost our usual support from the Children’s Hospice. Because of bloody COVID, they have had to change the way they look after their families. Usually we all go for three or four nights every three or four months, Littlest gets twenty-four hour care and we get looked after too. There are people to talk to and discuss different care approaches, there are comfy sofas and a nice garden and lovely food and we have a real rest. Now though, they are only open for end of life care for children (both COVID and other ‘normal’ conditions) and emergency stays for children when families are on their knees. Littlest went in the summer when we were doing really badly and she didn’t enjoy it as much as she usually does–it was all a bit different, the main parts of the house were shut off, she couldn’t interact with everyone like she usually does and of course all the carers were in scary PPE. They have us on the emergency list again, but it’s not the regular respite that we have been relying on.

Plus I’m bricking it because although we’re in a relatively low-incidence area COVID-wise, it’s on the rise everywhere and if we get locked down again we will have to cut back on some of the carers we have coming in to the house, just to keep everyone safe. That will mean we get progressively more exhausted–Littlest needs help in the nights. And there’s the risk to Littlest on top of her general respiratory fragility. And the risk to my Mama, with the lung cancer.

My mental health is for shite, basically, and not really because I’m becoming extra-depressed, but because there’s so much going on.

I’m trying to crack on with the rewrite of The Hunted and the Hind, but I’ve stalled a bit. All I want is to be in an alternate fantasy world, to be honest. Somewhere I have control over, unlike here. But I’m not sure that makes for good writing.

That’s it. That’s the blog post. Tomorrow is another day, we’ll laugh about this later etc..

It’s just a bit tiring, is all.

let’s move to France!

A blatant plug for my friend Lorraine today – she is a smallholder from Cornwall who has retired* to France with her husband. She has a smallholding book that has lots of good advice teamed with fantastic pictures, but also a very recent release about moving to France. This seems like an ideal book to buy now to plan out either a real-life or fantasy move!

Fed up with the rat race? Dreaming of a simpler life? A better life? A GOOD LIFE?
Since the 1990’s hundreds of thousands of people left it all behind and moved to France.

Are you dreaming about moving to France to live a simpler, rural life; perhaps on a smallholding or simply in the countryside? Then THIS is the book for YOU.

This practical and up-to-date book will lead you through the many questions you may have including:

* How Brexit will affect you
* Owning animals or setting up a smallholding in France
* Finding & securing the right property
* Starting a rural business

Benefit from Lorraine Turnbull’s own experience and read the case studies from real people who have moved to live the Good Life in various areas of France. It’s a big step to a brave new world and this timely book aims to help you in your journey to your Good Life in France. Lorraine is an award-winning smallholder and former cider maker who relocated to rural France in 2017.

Buy the book here!

* I use the word advisedly

disambiguation: mince pies

Proper British Mince Pies ™

You need:

Mincemeat
Plain Flour
Butter
Lard or vegetable shortening
Water
Sugar
Wine
12 muffin muffin-tin

Step 1

Procure mincemeat. THIS DOES NOT HAVE ACTUAL MEAT IN IT.

It usually comes in jars and if you can’t find it locally, you can make your own. Mary Berry, who is a veritable saint among food creators, has a good recipe.

NOTE: In Ye Olden Tymes, mincemeat DID actually have meat in it. In Tudor England, this was often mutton or perhaps beef. There’s a traditional recipe from 1591 here.

Step 2

Make (or buy) pastry

You can use shortcrust or puff pastry. We use shortcrust because it’s easy to make, especially since I prefer things to be gluten-free:

8oz plain flour
2 oz butter
2 oz lard (or vegetable shortening)
pinch of salt
splash of cold water

Put the flour in to a bowl and chuck in the lard and butter, cut in to lumps. Take the knife and keep cutting the fat, so that it gets covered in the flour. Then rub it in gently with your fingertips, lifting it up out of the bowl and letting it fall back in, to get air in it. When you have a bowl full of crumbs, add a table spoon full of cold water and use the knife to mix again, to start it sticking together. Eventually, you’ll need to use your fingers again. Don’t make it too wet, but if you do, you can add a bit more flour.

Stick it in the fridge for half an hour and have a glass of wine whilst you grease the muffin tin and wait for the oven to heat up to 220c/gas mark 7.

Step 3

Compile your pies

Roll the pastry out on a floured surface. Use a pint glass to cut circles and put them in your muffin tin, pressing them down.
Put a tea-spoon or two of mincemeat in each of the 12 little pies.
Use a smaller glass to cut a smaller lid for your pies. Or a cookie-cutter in a star or similar. Or you can make lattice strips for the tops. Or stack a little a pile of almonds on the top of each one. Or a couple of slices of apple.
Arrange your lids on top of your mincemeat. Glaze with milk and sprinkle with sugar.
Cook for about 15/20 minutes.

DO NOT EAT IMMEDIATELY AS THE MINCEMEAT WILL BE THERMONUCLEAR IN TEMPERATURE AND BURN YOUR TONGUE.

We sometimes eat these with no topping, sometimes with cream and sometimes with custard. Custard is a whole different can of British Worms that I will address on another day.

Fashion Museum, Bath

Firstly apologies for the lateness of this post. However, I’ve been collecting blog material! We’ve been on holiday near Bath and we went to the Fashion Museum earlier in the week. I was primarily focused on looking at clothing from the 1770s and 1780s for Edie and for Jones.

The trouble with collections of historical clothing is that you only get the really expensive things or the things their owners didn’t like much that survive. And you don’t get a great deal of working people’s clothing, because they literally wore it until it had holes and then it got cut down and repurposed. Clothing was so much more expensive and energy-intensive than it is today. Everything was woven and sewn by hand.

These gowns and petticoats from the 1770s and 1780s are much more Edie’s sort of thing than Jones’, although I do imagine Jones stuffed in to the one with the blue quilted petticoats when she was visiting her aunt in England. And perhaps the one with the yellow gown and stomacher for more formal occasions. I can definitely see Edie in the pale pink effort with all the embroidery on the front when she first meets Jones at the ball. (High waists a la Jane Austen only came in around about 1794 as far as I can make out).

Once the pair of them are travelling, they revert to much simpler clothes. I imagine Jones wearing something like this… it’s based on a working man’s coat from about 1780, made of wool.

I am still in debate with myself over whether Jones would wear local clothing once she gets home to the mountains. I think she might need to stay in western garb because I am not confident enough to write about regional clothing without getting it wrong and that seems disrespectful.

Edie doesn’t feel right going for breeches, however comfortable they might be. So she compromises by wearing ‘stays’ or ‘bodies’ (which is what she calls them) that lower class women, who had no help getting dressed, wore. They lace up the front rather than the back, so you can do them yourself. This is really interesting little video of a working woman getting dressed.

The little things… how you deal with menstruation, what pins you use in your hair, how often you change your stockings… those are all things that tend not to get referenced in contemporary texts because it was all such normal stuff that you didn’t need to. Everyone knew about it. There’s a good blog post about Georgian personal hygiene by the Word Wenches and I think I may have mentioned Madame Isis’ blog before.

Next week I am back to regular scheduling and I am interviewing Naomi Aoki!

PS: As we came out of the museum and went to find the old fashioned sweetshop, we fell over a coach and four. Netflix are filming the Bridgerton series of books by Julia Quinn.