Very belated roundup

I think I am affected by the low-level writer's block that seems to be affecting some other bloggers out there. Every time I sit down to write, I end up concluding that I have nothing interesting to say and playing Scrabble on Facebook instead. Which is fine, but not really a constructive way to spend the evening (especially when I am being roundly beaten by my mother. Again.) I started blogging partly as a way to record the mundane events of daily life for future reference because I thought it would be nice to be able to look back on a record of what we were doing, what the children were saying and what was going on in my head at any given time. Of course, the children are less cute than they once were - a sad by-product of the ageing process - but we still do stuff that is worth recording for me, even if it will bore the pants off anyone out there unwise enough to read it.

So, on that basis, I am going to go back to basics: record what Clan Loth has been up to and moan about stuff that bugs me. Sorry in advance.

First up: had to show you the mutant carrot we dug up at the weekend. Second Born has developed a deep fondness for scrubbing carrots (I am, needless to say, pleased about this) and demanded that I take a photo of this beauty for posterity. We actually had quite a lot of similar carrots-entwined-with-other-carrots. I put it down to the fact that my sister-in-law sneezed whenn planting the carrot seeds resulting in a rather denser planting pattern than we had planned. If they have insufficient room to spread, carrots will cuddle, it would appear.


We had a school friend of Husband's (I'll call him S) staying with us at the Corbies over the weekend, together with his Russian girlfriend. A great time was had by all. S is rather a good, if eclectic, cook and he recruited the boys as his sous-chefs on Sunday morning to produce a quite spectacular breakfast which included oatmeal puddings (heavenly!), haggis, Northumbrian sausages, french toast, courgettes, carrots, eggs and potato cakes made from leftover mash from the night before. We should have been embarassed to head out later to the local pub for Sunday lunch after that. But we weren't.

S had also spent part of Saturday making rowan jelly from rowan berries we found on our walk (to eat with our game pie for dinner) and elderberry cordial from elderberries he found at the bottom of our garden. The elderberry cordial was lovely. It was (a) drunk with lemonade by the boys, and (b) turned into a quite lethal cocktail along with some Pimms, coriander from the garden and a bottle of whisky and ginger liqueur we bought at a recent food fair. It sounds awful, it should have been revolting but it wasn't. Apart from having to sieve the bits of coriander leaf out with your teeth, it was lovely.

We had taken S and girlfriend down to the nearest village for some supplies, the nearest village being over the border in England. I have always found this sign on the outskirts of the village amusing. I love the fact that the whole country is signed, but below Ladykirk and Swinton (total combined populations of both places probably about 200)
We went for a walk up to the bridge over the Tweed which forms the border between Scotland and England and the boys amused themselves by jumping back and forward over the mid-line chanting "Tea! Irn-Bru! Tea! Irn-Bru".

We ended up having such a good time that we stayed at the Corbies on Sunday night as well. The boys had a school holiday on Monday anyway, Husband had taken the day off already and I .......played hookey. Or "dogged it" as we used to say at school. (Not that I ever playing truant at school of course. I was far too scared.) Thanks to "Work-Life Balance" (or flexi-time as it used to be known) I can get away with this by working longer hours Tuesday to Friday to make up. Which is not great fun when I have to be in the office for longer, but it was totally worth it. I'm just wondering how to break it to S that the boys would like to come and live with him, please.