90th Birthday

Before I get to the nitty gritty of this week's post, I just want to address the photo. Sadly this isn't one of the year's where there's a poppy field locally. I've hunted high and low, but can't find one. There are, however a few poppies dotted around (not the same as loads of poppies together). What's strange this year is that suddenly as well as the red poppies, there are yellow poppies. Never seen them before. These were taken by a local tennis court. Not quite the same as a sweeping field, but look..... yellow!

I've just had the busiest week and weekend for ages. Most of the week was, obviously, work. However, firstly the garden had become completely overgrown. Sadly son can't do the garden this year as his itch has come back full force. This means that if I didn't do it, nobody would. I ignored it for a while, but that's self-defeating at this time of year because it rapidly gets worse and worse.

I quickly identified that there was no point leaving it to the weekend, because at the weekend I'd suddenly suffer from can't be arsed and procrastinating about the gardening actually meant that I ended up not doing anything. So I made a decision - I'd spend 30 minutes doing it over lunchtime in the week. I'm quite proud that I stuck with it. It was a total ball ache, but by Friday I'd made my way around the key bits of the garden. I feel that now it's in a position where I can maintain it reasonably quickly. Let's see if I manage to stick to that (even I don't believe I will).

It pretty much rained all week, which at least meant I didn't need to water the garden. I think the killer on maintenance will be when I start needing to water the garden too. I flipping hate gardening so it will mean I spend far too much of my life weeding and watering. I will try to stick to it though.

On my newly painted car I started to spot some cloudly patches. I did some online research and it indicated that I hadn't put on enough laquer. For the first time in a few weeks the weather forecast indicated that it would be sunny on Saturday but it would be windy - Sunday would be sunny with no wind - but I was busy Sunday - more later. I didn't want to put the activity to one side, because I don't know when the next sunny weekend will be and the last thing I want is to hit the winter and my car is peeling all over again.

I didn't want to head for Halfords to get the spray paint during the day on Saturday - you'll recall from a recent post the journey is hellish when the roads are busy. Also I had stack loads to do at the weekend already. Because it was Dad's 90th on Sunday and I was helping with the catering.

So on Saturday my alarm went off at 05:00, I got up, had coffee and took the dog for a walk. Getting home I got in my car and drove to Halfords to be waiting outside as the doors opened at 08:00. It was a wise decision, the roads were clear. With my new spraypaint and laquer I headed home.

The first thing I did was go into the kitchen and prepare a gammon to boil. Once that was set up and on the heat with a timer I headed back to the car. I decided I'd cover the lights and the widows, the furniture and the number plates with paper and masking tape. I'd do the whole thing and then I could spend my time between the car and kitchen. The taping up took way longer than I anticipated. Around 2.5 hours! As I taped I headed back to the kitchen to make sure the gammon was doing fine (don't panic, I didn't boil it for the full 2.5 hours).

Once the car was taped up I first focussed on the bonnet, this hadn't been done properly last time, it was the last thing I did and it wasn't a great job. Every time somebody passed in their car they stopped to see what I was doing and to give me advice - though obviously not one of them offered to help. I gritted my teeth and smiled politely. Once bonnet was sanded down I then resprayed the car. That done I headed back to the kitchen.

I had to leave the spray paint for 2 hours, this gave me time to start on the other things I was preparing for Dad's birthday party. My offering for the table for prep on Saturday was was 1 x gammon, 2 x filo asparagas and bacon flans, 1 x rasberry coulis, 1 x large lemon cheesecake. By the time the 2 hours were up for the paint to dry the kitchen was in chaos. Every one of those items was in the middle of preparation, but not one thing was complete. The bacon, onion and asparagus was cooling, the sauce for the flan was also cooling. The cheese cake base was ready and the rasberry coulis - well that was a nightmare. I literally couldn't get it through the sieve. In the end I filled a sieve hung it over a bowl and left it to drip through the sieve.

Once the paint was dry I headed outside and put the first layer of laquer on the car. Only problem was by now the wind had picked up. I had to get really close to the car for any of the laquer to land on it. First layer done I headed back to the kitchen to continue with the food preparation.

And this was how the afternoon went. By the end of the afternoon I was exhausted, but 3 layers of laquer had gone on the car, the food was ready..... except for the coulis. After about 5 hours there was still only about 1mm of juice. Son suggested that I did it in smaller batches. So I gave this a go whilst shoving it through the sieve with a spoon. Eventually I got it all through.

I went out to admire my car and noticed that on the bonnet there were some bubbles of laquer that looked really rubbish. I'll leave them but the next sunny weekend we have I'm going to have to sand the bubbles down and respray and re-laquer, but if I just keep it to the bad patches it's hopefully not too big a job.

Anyway that was Saturday, on Sunday my alarm went off at 05:00 again. I went into kitchen and made a huge pile of salsa, hummus (I am so bad at making hummus) and quacamole. Not sure what happened to the guacamole, I'm usually pretty good at that, but for some reason it went brown from the outset. Once that was all done I chopped up some pitta and wrapped it up. Then it was time to take dog for a walk. On my return I needed to work out how I was going to package up all the food to get it to my sister-in-law's. I knew if I piled everything on top of each other it would ruin everything and some of the stuff was difficult to move (why I agreed to do a fragile filo flan I'll never know).

I had the idea of chopping up some cardboard boxes to act as shelves to stop things getting squashed. Then with some huge Asda bags for life ready I started to wrap the food up. You'll recal that last week I whizzed out to buy some plastic plates and bowls that I wouldn't mind leaving at sister-in-law's house. Goodness knows what they were made of, but they are the only things known to humankind that food wrap doesn't stick to. As I don't like using food wrap anyway I ended up using about 3 rolls of tin foil to cover the food. Once everything was ready it was time to have a shower and get dressed, then fill the car with presents and food and head off.

I got to sister-in-laws without too much trouble and there were remarkably few traumas with the transit of the food, nothing worth mentioning here. Together we got the food on the table and then all the guests arrived. As well as immediate family (there are 9 of us) my aunt and uncle jonied along with my mother's best friend.

The weather was kind to us and we all sat at one long table. I have to say sister-in-law had done us proud. It was a really nice afternoon and I got on really well with my uncle (which doesn't always happen) it was also lovely to catch up with mum's best friend, who is doing fantastically for 91!

Those in their 80's and 90's discussed old friends, exclaiming with delight when they heard that this person or that person was still alive (must be so depressing to have those conversations). Then at the end of the meal we had cake and Dad opened his cards.

Then as soon as it started it was all over. I drove home and promptly had a snooze on the sofa!

What I haven't mentioned is that sister-in-law and brothers dog is very much on it's last legs. In order to host Dad's 90th sister-in-law had to take dog to a dog minder to look after. They knew that they'd have to rush to pick it up. I'm not sure if it made it through the night or not. I'm beyond full of admiration for sister-in-law who hadn't mentioned this to anybody but me and managed to make it through the day with no sign of the trauma she was having to deal with.

It's so horrible when a pet dies, everybody expects you to continue as if nothing is happening and yet you have lost something that is very much part of the family and who you have years and years of memories with.

So that's it, my very very busy weekend.