Tag Archives: 100 Days Project Scotland

Secret recipes and a not so secret recipe

19 Sep

On 20 September 2021 I also posted:

My wee plant has grown strawberries! How cute is that?

Also, after work today I cut out fabric for a top using the rotary cutter on a cutting mat. MisoCat supervised of course. But hey, why have I always used pins and scissors instead of stones and a rotorblade? I feel like I have discovered the secret recipe for Irn Bru. Yes, it’s that exciting!

Talking of secret recipes, would you like my most favourite secret recipe?

It’s not really a secret at all, but it makes the most amazingly tasty jars of goodness, which you can then barter for other things. Or just enjoy for yourself. So I feel like sharing again.

Anyway, it’s my Cinnamon Apple Jelly and when I first started making it I adhered to Thane Prince’s instructions and quantities, because although I might like to think that I rebel, really I conform and if someone gives me instructions I am likely to follow them pretty closely, or at least until I know where best to veer off successfully.

When I first started making this jelly, I didn’t have a whole lot of jam-making experience to draw on so wasn’t wildly confident about where I could tweak.

However, things have moved on, I have been making huge quantities of this every Autumn now for years. Mum gave us two apple trees which we planted in the garden – they are prolific and produce the perfect apples for making jars of Cinnamon Apple Jelly.

I first wrote down my version of the recipe here in 2013.

I seem overly prescriptive about how you go about it, so below is an update, with fewer instructions but more blether.

That Cinnamon Apple Jelly

  • Fire up your slow cooker
  • Throw some cinnamon sticks in its base, and then add some water, just an inch or so just now.
  • Now chop up some apples (give them a wipe first if they are fallen ones, you don’t want bits of actual dirt going in to the pot). No need to peel or core, just chuck the whole lot in. If you have other fruit, like brambles, feel free to throw them in too. Though I’m not sure I would combine brambles and lots of cinnamon.
  • Add some more water, you want the apples to be sort of floating, but not swimming if that makes sense? Honestly, it won’t really matter, but if you add too much water at this stage you’ll have a bit less flavour I guess.
  • Add other flavours if you want, but I generally don’t bother any more. Fresh ginger, lemon peel, juniper, cloves all work. Cardamom might be interesting, even a peppercorn or two. Don’t go too wild – part of the joy of this for me is that it tastes purely of apples and cinnamon.
  • Leave to cook in the slow cooker till it’s all a bit mooshy. Probably 5-6 hours, depending on your cooker and the apples. Mash them with a potato masher after an hour or so, just to help the apples all break down so they release their flavour into the liquid.
  • Now set up a jeely bag over a large bowl. Ladle the apple mixture into the bag and let it drip overnight.
  • Throw away the solid apple mix left in the bag (I tried to persuade my hens to eat it, but they have never been keen unless I cook it into porridge for them. And I have my limits, and it appears that this year that was it)
  • Keep the juice. You can freeze it at this stage if life is getting in the way. Or keep it in the fridge for a few days.
  • When you are ready for the final bit… measure out your juice into a large pan. A cauldron will be good if you have one, or a preserving pan, or a very large saucepan. Or not such a large one, depending how much juice you have made.
  • For every pint of juice you pour into the pan, add 1lb of sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar. Feel free to convert these measurements to metric for yourself if you need to. I prefer to remember ‘a pound for every pint’.
  • Now, this is the important bit. Do NOT stress if you are not very accurate with your measurements. It will all come right.
  • Bring the sugary appley juice up to the boil. If you have a jam thermometer, now is the time to use it. Pop it in the pan, in a way that it won’t fall in.
  • Pop a small plate into the freezer or fridge
  • Watch your pan of sweet appley juice – there is a thin line between happily boiling vigorously and boiling over and onto your hob and making a hideous mess. You want the former.
  • Your jelly will be set when it reaches 105C on the thermometer. Or use the wrinkle test with your cold plate – spoon a wee bit of the liquid on to the plate, wait 30 seconds and then push your finger through it. If you see wrinkles, it is ready. If it all just runs back to fill the gap you made, then it needs to boil a bit longer
  • Once it’s ready, use a ladle to spoon it into clean sterilised jars.

Delicious on hot buttered toast. Also known as Loïs On Toast.

I’m going to see Mum this weekend. She sleeps most of the time these days, but I might take a small jar of this jelly and a teaspoon and see if she enjoys the cinnamon-y apple-y taste. Eating delicious things was one of Mum’s last real pleasures. And seeing her family.

***

Thank you for reading this.

If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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It’s cold out there

15 Sep

On 20 September 2021 I posted:

Sunday evenings are infinitely improved with a bit of stabbing. I nearly made a couple of strawberries while Suranne Jones was getting into ever deeper water on board Vigil on BBC1.

And today my embroidery threads organiser box arrived so I’ve started sorting it out whilst in meetings, under MisoCat’s supervision, obviously.

When I spoke to Mum yesterday evening she knew that she’d been out and about with my brother, but mostly what she remembered is that it’s cold out there. So I’ve promised to take more warmer clothes to her at the weekend… which means more sewing WolffeLabels on to things.

It’s interesting how we label things isn’t it? Including ourselves.

For many years. although I loved my name and the history it brought with it, I resisted being the sister, the daughter, another Wolffe. I suppose that was less about the actual label and more about the context, and HATING being compared to others. To this day I feel uncomfortable with comparisons, I don’t have favourites and I don’t think I am competitive – in fact I resist competing, but perhaps that is also because I hate not winning. We’re complex creatures aren’t we?

Mum had us three children one after another. She always claimed that there was no point getting used to a good night’s sleep and then a few years later start all over again, with nappies and night feeds and all that jazz. So, she had Three Under Three. And I am that third one, after which she decided, ENOUGH.

One of the consequences of being so close in age is that at school, your teachers are all too aware of your two elder brothers and their achievements; and you will know that you are always being compared to them. And if they excel in what they do – both very different, one academic, the other sport, music and art – then you might find yourself striving to do something different to avoid those comparisons. I was clever enough, rubbish at most sports though I tried and I liked joining in. I enjoyed art, but wasn’t especially talented.

But in all these areas I never excelled in the way my brothers had.

Teachers back in the day would tell me this. And my response was to withdraw from trying… I knew that of course I was not as good as them, but with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if perhaps a 13 year old Loïs was generally being judged against a 14 year old Andrew or a 15 year old James?

Anyway, I did science and maths, because neither of my brothers had, so I could plough my own furrow as they say. And I was good at it. My brain likes all that order, understands the art of mathematical equations. And someone had left an endowment for maths prizes at school, so I always got a bigger pile of books as prizes than either of my brothers. (Perhaps I am competitive after all).

In all of this, Mum had absolute clarity that we should not be compared to one another. And to this day we delight in her edict, “It’s not a competition” which can be used to great effect in a surprising number of circumstances!

I seem to have veered off my topic of ‘labels’. And also of the working title of this post ‘It’s cold out there’.

But I think I’ll stick with it. It is colder out there again now, after a mini heatwave. And somehow, my life seems temporarily colder… there are lots of decisions to be made, of practical activities to knuckle down and complete. And the longest lists you can imagine. I do love a list though, so that’s something.

***

Thank you for reading this.

If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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Stories as treasure

8 Sep

On 18 September 2021 I posted:

Well this is beginning to resemble a wild strawberry plant, which is handy because that is what it is! It was designed by my nephew MaxTheHuman, making this a properly transgenerational project, inspired and dedicated to my Mum.

I’ve been thinking of memory a lot as I’ve been stabbing, as you might expect, given Mum has Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia. Actually I’ve been thinking about how we value memories. I’ve always loved stories of my parents’ pasts, their remembered histories. Dad, who was born in Berlin in 1920 never really spoke much of his until he was in his 90s. But what a life!

But Mum. I feel like Mum’s stories, her life, runs through me like it’s my own lifeblood. I’ve known some of her stories as long as I’ve known my own.

And the stories, the memories, have felt like treasure, like my own super power too.

Recently I found a journal that Gran wrote over a 6 week journey from Sandefjord to Cape Town in a whaling ship in 1954. It’s fascinating. And I treasure it. It fits alongside Mum’s stories, but isn’t the actual memories. Mum’s sister Astri was on the same journey and will have different memories of it. I treasure the story, but have no memory of it, of course.

Now, as time passes, it has felt like Mum is diminishing, not just physically, but as she loses her memories and memory she loses something of herself.

And I wondered about this. Why do I consider her less than she was? She still had the same life, still enjoyed the same experiences. It’s only because I value MEMORY so much that I have been seeing Mum as being less of herself. I need to value the experience and the person who had it more than the memory.

Mum is still remarkable. She is living with dementia and I am grieving for the relationship we had, but I embrace our new relationship. It’s not easy, but it is what it is.

Oh, and your bonus today is cheese and onion cornmeal muffins, just out of the oven.

Two years have passed since I wrote the above. And I’ve done a whole lot more thinking about memory and what we value. But that can wait for another day.

This weekend I was reminded that memory is not always straightforward.

The other day I was sitting here at my laptop when I heard The Captain come in from the garden with something of a commotion and a lot of swear words. I went through to the kitchen to discover he’d upset a wasps’ nest and had been stung… several wasps, of course, had followed him into the house. Pandemonium ensued.

After a while things when things calmed down, I felt a tickle on my upper lip and swished it away with the back of my hand, only to experience the searing pain of a wasp sting. Somehow I had inadvertently managed to separate the wasp from its sting, so all that venom pumped into my upper lip, giving the impression I’d spent a LOT on some lip plumping procedure. The pain was excruciating.

The first memory which this prompted was when I was a child and we were foraging in the woods. I was at the back of the Wolffe Pack, with Dad ambling along just ahead of me…. and he must have knocked a wasps’ nest. For they all rose up and stung ME as the nearest human! I screamed as we all ran back to the car; the car seemed to fill with wasps and I screamed some more. So of course I ended up with a wasp sting in my mouth (to add to others on my hands and the worst one, on my eyelid). This incident was forever after referred to as ‘that time Loïs had hysterics‘. I always added, ‘because I was being STUNG BY WASPS’.

That story has never left me, and is part of our family lore.

But another story came to mind, dragged from an older memory. Of a small child in the garden, being stung by a bee on her nose, before she was going to a party that afternoon. And, to reduce the pain, some blue ink was applied to the sting, so the small girl went to the party with a large, throbbing blue nose.

I have a feeling the small girl was Gran, and that it was Miss Wright, her governess, who applied the ink. But perhaps the small girl was Mum? It’s a story I remember being told when I was a child, perhaps to tell me how lucky I was that blue ink was not being applied to my stings? But now I have no idea who that child was. Somehow, I have such a vivid image of her in my mind, of a wicker chair in a sunny garden, and of roses in the flower bed.

I will never know now who she was, but I’m grateful for her… and for the story of that moment in her life that has lived on.

***

If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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The social veneer

5 Sep

On 15 September 2021 I wrote:

And we almost have a leaf! I’m enjoying this wild strawberry more than I expected, possibly because I have learnt that the key to satin-like satin stitch is THREE strands of embroidery thread. I suspect I knew this aged 12, but am pleased to have learned it again.

I called Mum again this evening. When the carer gave her the phone and told her it was her daughter, Mum asked which daughter.

I am her only daughter.

She seemed pleased enough that it was me though and remembered that I’d gone swimming at the weekend, so assumed that was what I was going to do when I got off the phone.

She talks more freely about her confusion these days, though yesterday she assured me she isn’t very confused, not yet anyway.

The day after she moved into the home she said to my brother, “It’s good we don’t have to pretend any more”. Although it was never entirely clear what she meant by this, we took it to mean that she felt she could drop the social veneer now, and allow herself to relax and just live with her dementia. Certainly she seemed somehow more liberated at saying whatever was on her mind. And it certainly seemed a confusing place.

She seems quite settled now, and institutionalised, which is not surprising as she lives in an institution. She is treated with care, and knows she is loved. She even laughs when I tell her she is my favourite Mum. Well she is. And evidently I am her favourite daughter.

When I wrote this nearly two years ago, Mum had been living in the care home for just two months. It’s over two years now. Looking back I find it hard to recall exactly what she was like, what I was like… what life was like then.

Mum’s broken wrist was recovering… she hadn’t been able to move about while it was still mending, as she relied on being able to support herself with a wheeled walking frame, which she called her dancing partner. So her first few weeks in the home were spent sitting in her room, mostly entirely alone. And we were still in the grip of the second year of Covid restrictions, so our worlds were still pretty isolated. I say ‘our’ deliberately. The Captain and I live a couple of miles from the nearest village, surrounded by fields and woodland and could go for weeks on end during those Covid months without seeing another soul. It felt blissful if I’m honest. I, who had lived in London for half of my life, who loved being with old friends and making new ones, fully embraced this opportunity to be solo. And Mum? I never knew how the home operated before Covid so have no comparison, but I have a sense that her life was pretty solo too. And that her jumbling brain was finding it increasingly difficult after periods of isolation to remember how to make conversation again. it wasn’t just that she lost words, she seemed to lose the ability to connect sentences, or to respond to something someone else had said.

None of this mattered.

She might not have been able to excel in ‘our’ world any more, but we could usually slip into hers with her. So that is what we did… taking her as she was each time we spoke to her. There were good days and bad days, and there continue to be.

But the constant throughout these last years has been her ability to keep up that social veneer… she had wee phrases she would fall back on, that no doubt had seen her through her life, and had been said so often that the muscle memory brought them out despite the jumble in her brain.

“How lovely to see you”

“Thank you for coming”

“Thank you for calling”

“Oooh, your hands are so cold”

And then, more often, we were greeted with, “How did you get in?”

And quite recently, when Mum was becoming almost non-verbal, she told one of the carers that they looked tired. The carer told me this with tears welling up in her eyes, it meant so much to her to have been noticed by one of her charges.

Yes, despite her ailing health and her failing brain, Mum has remained her charming self.

***

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches.

If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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My fifteen minutes

24 Aug

Embroidering Mum’s fisherman’s smock all started as an act of self care. And now it’s up for an award!

Cutting to the chase, I have a small favour to ask. Please click here and VOTE FOR ME. Or read the rest of this piece and then vote!

At the beginning of 2021 we had just come through the first 9 months of Covid, with strict lockdowns and social isolation. We were heading for another lockdown and I was heading to live in Galloway, 100 miles from home, for several weeks or months (who knew at the outset? Our ability to plan things in any meaningful way was one of the casualties of Covid.. )

I had read research that proved that people who regularly indulged in some crafting activity, something creative, were less likely to break.. and so I joined a global online ‘project’ called #MakeDontBreak. Daily prompts, and sharing on social media helped create a community, and convinced me that a daily habit of stitching or sewing, of making or creating would be key to my wellbeing during this period of isolation.

Of course I hadn’t, at the outset, factored in that within days I would notice that Mum’s behaviour was slightly out of kilter, and that she had the early stages of dementia.

Or that she would gift me her old fisherman’s smock that was her ‘uniform’ for years when she used to work with clay every day, making ceramic models and selling them to people who wanted three dimensional portraits of their animals.

That fisherman’s smock seems to have taken on a life of its own. I have slowly, so slowly, embroidered designs on to the canvas, and with each stitch there is love, but also there are stories. Somehow, the gentle act of stitching has helped me to cope with the world around me, as it changed so dramatically.

I never anticipated that this act of self care, would lead to this blog, and now has been shortlisted as one of three finalists in the JustGiving Creative Fundraiser of the Year Award.

I should have told you sooner, but things have been a bit much this last month or so, more of which another time.

Anyway – the smock popped up in media stories all over the country, like THIS.

I’ve messed this up, but if you read this and have time before 12 noon (Edinburgh time) on Friday 25 August please please click through here and VOTE FOR ME. The winner is decided on a public vote, to be announced at the end of September.

If you have already voted, a thousand million thank yous, you are all such stars.

***

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me as I let everything go to concentrate on those tiny stitches. If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation.

Finally, if this has moved you, I would really appreciate it if you made a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, forever thank you.

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Time for a wild strawberry

13 Jul

On 14 September 2021 I wrote:

We’re back!

I started the next design today. It’s not the one I’d been planning, but sometimes you just have to go with what feels right at the time. And it’s time for a wild strawberry.

It’s not really… we picked the last of them a few weeks ago. This is the season for brambles. And joy of joys, for Victoria plums. The edges of our garden are wilder and more unkempt than ever this year, and I’ve harvested more than 3lbs of brambles from our wild edges and hedges. Five years ago mum gave us a plum tree. We’ve only ever had 2 plums from it before. We’ve harvested 26lbs so far this year! That makes a lot of crumble!

Anyway… most people have completed their 100 days for 2021. I’ve loved seeing so much creativity, and such a supportive community. And I’m more than happy to be continuing mine at my own pace.

Wild Scottish Strawberries are the most lovely treat for a small child. There is something about their teeny tininess that makes them perfect for small hands. I remember picking them as a child, probably eating more than were put in the bowl, but that is part of the point isn’t it?

This design was created by my nephew Max, who is now a grown up, but as a child he also loved to pick those wild strawberries. When you first start picking wild strawberries you think there aren’t going to be many at all, certainly not enough to make A Thing. And then slowly as you wander around the edges of the garden, lifting up the big green leaves to find more teeny bright red fruit, you realise that if you hadn’t eaten so many at the start, there would be plenty to macerate with a wee bit of vanilla sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar, to then add to a bowl of lush Greek yoghurt or spoon over vanilla ice cream.

Anyway, you are in for a treat with this embroidery design, it is one of my favourites.

It’s odd writing this blog post nearly two years on from when I wrote that first opener, about the wild strawberry design.

I see that back then I had just had a lovely visit with Mum – I reported that she was in good fettle, which is good enough for me.

But more than that, I had told her that she was my favourite Mum (perhaps for the first time?). She looked at me, paused, and then said ‘I am your only Mum’.

I told her that there were lots of other Mums in the word, and I was so happy and lucky that she is mine. She liked this. I then told her about my friend, J, who did not have a good relationship with her Mum. Mum looked puzzled at this, looked down at my hand and stroked it with hers. It was such a beautifully tender moment.

Mum no longer always had the words to express herself, but she could let me know that she cared, that she loved me. And that was enough. It’s still enough.

***

Can I ask you a small favour? Could you please click here and vote for me, Lois Wolffe. The Smock has been shortlisted for an Award and it would mean the world to me if you voted for it.

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me as I let everything go to concentrate on those tiny stitches. If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation.

Finally, if this has moved you, I would really appreciate it if you made a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

***

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Not boycotting

10 Jul

On 6 September 2021 I wrote

Cape logo. To celebrate Mum’s life in South Africa.

When I was young, South Africa still had apartheid. Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned. Steve Biko died from injuries sustained while in police custody. South African goods were boycotted by many in this country. But Mum always looked out for the Cape logo, and we had apples from the Cape in our fruit bowl. At Christmas a whole wooden crate of South African peaches would arrive by freight from Gran and Grandpa in South Africa. Mum’s childhood was on a South African fruit farm, and she wanted to continue to support those farms. I remember a sense of unease, but ate those delicious apples and peaches.

Bonus pictures today are of Mum in the 1950s at her flat in London, on South Kinnerton Street. She lived there when she worked for Aquascutum, working up the designs for their chief designer. One day she was invited out to lunch (at Claridge’s I think) by an elderly distant cousin. Mum wore a gorgeous tweed coat. But the cousin insisted that one does not wear tweed for lunch in London and made Mum change into a tatty old black coat. Different times, eh?

The other annual gift we used to receive each year, just before Christmas I think, was a bunch of flowers. As I think about it now, it seems such a miracle – this long cardboard box would arrive, just the perfect length to be used as a box for storing knitting needles once it was emptied of the contents.

And the contents were stems of something that resembled long asparagus. Mum would carefully remove each stem from the box, check it over, cut off the bottom half inch and then pop it into a big crystal glass vase. A couple of days later the asparagus had transformed into creamy white blossoms of chincherinchees, which we always pronounced chinkericheese. Back in the early 70s they were such an exotic to have in the house, especially around Christmas, when mostly all you could get was a poinsettia in a pot and some sprigs of holly.

I’ve started moving some stuff to Mum’s house, in anticipation of us moving there later this year … I thought I had been clever and had only moved things I wouldn’t need in the meantime – but now that I want to take a picture of the old chincerinchees box still full of knitting needles, I realise it’s 100 miles away so you’ll have to wait for that picture. I have already regretted taking the jeely pan down there, and also the crate of Jamieson’s Spindrift Shetland wool, which is just the perfect thing for knitting colourwork, and is essential in my 100 Days Project for 2023.

My idea for this year’s 100 Days Project was to play with colour in knitting, to get more confident in choosing my own colours and making designs. The first third of the 100 days has involved making a cowl out of what I call Carrick Shore Colours – though once I got half way around I realised that I was about to run out of the paler toned background colours (Dewdrop and Granite, if you’re interested) so the second half uses the darker tones of Blue Lovat and Wren for the background shades – this turns out to be a happy solution to running out of the pale colours – it gave me the opportunity to play with different colourways, and also the cowl now has a light and a dark half, which might work sartorially?

I am on the last day of that first cowl, and realise I need to quickly decide if I am going to make another cowl, or Other Things. I have a feeling it might be Other Things. We’ll see. After all, it can be Other Things for a while and then another cowl for the final month or so.

***

Can I ask you a small favour? Could you please click here and vote for me, Lois Wolffe. The Smock has been shortlisted for an Award and it would mean the world to me if you voted for it.

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me as I let everything go to concentrate on those tiny stitches. If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation.

Finally, if this has moved you, I would really appreciate it if you made a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

***

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Spitting plum stones

6 Jul

On 4 September 2021 I wrote

Today I discover that being precise and neat is harder than it looks. So this will forever be an impression of the CAPE logo.

In other fruit news, the Victoria Plum tree which mum gave us 5 years ago has this year decided to bear fruit. And oh so much fruit. I picked 1lbs a couple of days ago and 5lbs today but the tree doesn’t look like I’ve picked anything at all.

On the phone I reminded mum when she and her big sister Jen were children they rode the wee ponies through their orchard and would put their hands up and just pick the plums off the trees. And then they would see how far they could spit the stones. Mum liked to think of me now spitting plum stones.

Earlier this year when we had decided that we would put the house on the market and move to Galloway, I had sort of assumed that we would have moved or be in the process of moving over the summer, and certainly gone by the time any fruit are ready to harvest. In my head I had written off a 2023 fruit harvest.

Things don’t always go to plan do they? For reasons various it looks like we may still be here in the early Autumn when the fruit is ripe – we’ll certainly harvest blackcurrants again this year, and the red and white currants that made such teeny tiny quantities of jelly last year (and stupidly I haven’t opened those jars yet, believing them to be so rare and precious that they should be kept for another day).

The apple trees have hardly any fruit this year, which isn’t surprising after two heavily laden years (also they really need pruning). Those trees were gifted to us from Mum, soon after I moved in here – they are a Cambusnethan pippin and a Galloway Pippin, and they produce good, slightly tart apples which work as eaters or cookers. The Victoria plum similarly is taking a year off this year – I wonder if there was something about the time they blossomed this year? There wasn’t a frost to kill off the fruit, but perhaps the pollinators weren’t about?

In amongst this barren orchard are the two pear trees, which haven’t produced much fruit in recent years… but this year, oh my! So many pears! I have a lovely recipe for Spiced Pears, which involves slow cooking some pears in a mixture of sugar and spices and vinegar and wine (if I remember correctly) until the fruit is entirely infused with the flavours and the liquid has boiled down to a syrup – they are equally good served with cold meat, or drizzled on top of the best vanilla ice cream. I still have the remnants of a jar made several years ago (possibly pre pandemic) and honestly, those goo-ey soft fruit are ambrosial nectar.

Mum slept through my whole visit the other day, for a couple of hours, until the very end when she opened her eyes and smiled her big gappy smile at me. But her eyes twinkled and she knew it was me, her favourite daughter. Her eyes used to be green as gooseberries (according to her Aunt Janey). Now, they are slightly rheumy, and the green has faded to a soft grey-ish green – a bit like gooseberries do if you overcook them.

***

Can I ask you a small favour? Could you please click here and vote for me, Lois Wolffe. The Smock has been shortlisted for an Award and it would mean the world to me if you voted for it.

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me as I let everything go to concentrate on those tiny stitches. If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation.

Finally, if this has moved you, I would really appreciate it if you made a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

***

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Under The Stairs

1 Jul

On 1 September 2021 I also wrote

This is meant to be a quick wee emblem.. but I’m beginning to think it might take a while.

Mum has saved stickers from fresh fruit over the years, and stuck them to the back of the door under the stairs. There are actually no stairs in Mum’s house, but the larder was under the stairs in my childhood home, so the larder is still called UnderThe Stairs.

Under The Stairs in our childhood home was a magical place for me.

There was a rough stone floor, and thick shelves, which in memory were made of stone, but perhaps they were concrete blocks? I’ll never know. And everything under there was cool to the touch.

When I call it Under The Stairs you might be imagining a small space with a low ceiling. While one part of this space was just like that, most of it was a fairly a long thin room with long deep shelves on either side, leading to a tiny wee window at the far end. That window was covered in mesh, allowing a free flow of air into the space.

For some reason this was where we were going to go if we got the three minute warning of a nuclear bomb… I’m not now convinced it would have protected us from any fallout, with that old mesh over the window. How odd to think that one of the things I was definitely aware of as a child was where we would hide if there was an imminent nuclear bomb; and even odder that I don’t recall there being any anxiety about this knowledge (or the fact that our safe place clearly wasn’t that safe).

Anyway, what things were kept in there?

It was effectively an overflow fridge, though never quite as cold as the fridge. We didn’t keep the actual Must Be Kept Cold things in there (so no cartons of milk, or butter and generally no fresh meat or fish). But always, always leftovers, dishes of tasty leftovers, ready to be re-purposed into some other meal. Mince made into cottage pie, vegetables added to a soup, roast lamb diced up and mixed with gravy and some curry powder to make ‘curry’. The 70s were another galaxy weren’t they?

Tins had their own shelf. There was a rack of vegetables just by the door as you went in, and frequently there would be a brace of pheasants hanging, by their necks from a hook just to the right as you went in, with a newspaper on the floor underneath to catch any drips of blood. There was a pile of tupperware-esque containers and their not-quite-fitting lids; there was the huge jeely pan, brought out once or twice a year to make marmalade and then again before Hogmanay to make the most enormous vat of Pea Soup from split peas, to feed the revellers at some unholy hour of the morning when it became clear that no-one was leaving any time soon, but we all needed something else to keep us going through till breakfast time. There was the fish kettle, brought out only once or twice in my memory to poach a whole salmon; candles, torches, a tilly lamp and an old railway signal lamp in case of black outs, which were a regular feature of my early childhood (Mum, of course, made what must have been a nuisance and a frustration to her, into a fun game for us kids). There were cans and cans of dog and cat food, each one more stinky than the other. And there were spaces for us to hide in if we were playing hide and seek.

No wonder I wasn’t afraid of a nuclear bomb – hiding in here for a while was just fine.

I was living in London when Mum and Dad moved house and I didn’t visit them till some weeks after they had moved. But from the first moment I stepped into Mum’s kitchen in that unfamiliar house and opened the door to Under The Stairs, I knew EXACTLY where everything lived. The trays would be stacked beside that chair next to the fridge, the jars of jams and chutneys on the shelf to the left Under the Stairs, and the candles up on that shelf on the right. Bottles of wine would probably be on the rack on the floor on the right, with the old square tin full of shoe cleaning stuff sitting on top of it. Everything had its place, and when Mum became increasingly blind, and then unable to remember where things were, somehow her muscle memory compensated and helped her to put her hand on just what she was looking for, keeping her independent for far longer than perhaps was wise.

***

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches. The Smock Project is up for an Award, and it would make my heart sing if you took a moment to click through here to vote for it. It will take you but seconds to do it.

If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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Some lovely news!

29 Jun

I have some fun news to share with you all! (followed by a small favour to ask!)

Taking Smock of the Situation, my project to embroider and embellish Mum’s old fisherman’s smock has been shortlisted into the final three for the Creative Fundraiser of the Year Award!

It now goes out to a public vote, and I would be forever grateful if you could take a moment and click through and vote for The Smock (well, for me, Loïs Wolffe).

This all started as a bit of a whim, as something to focus my mind while it was trying to hold on to my stuff, as well as Mum Stuff, when her mind was getting increasingly confused with dementia. It was never really intended as a fundraiser, but it felt like the right thing to do, to try to help Alzheimer Scotland make sure no-one has to live with dementia alone. So, it feels like I am an absolute winner already just being shortlisted as a Creative Fundraiser of the Year.

So please, could you click here and vote for me? If you have a spare few pennies this month, I would be forever grateful if you could also make a small donation. Also, next time you see someone struggling in a shop, a café, or on the bus, wherever… think dementia, think they might not always have been like this, and with a bit of time and reassurance, maybe a gentle word from you, they might get through the day more easily.

Thank you, forever thank you.

***

Mostly on this blog I write about trying to care for Mum as she developed dementia, which nearly broke me on a number of occasions. Gentle meditative stitching her old Fisherman’s Smock probably saved me, giving me a focus and forcing me to carve out time when I could let everything go and just concentrate on those tiny stitches.

If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.

I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.

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