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Calm seas after stormy weather






I’m starting today with two pictures for a change, because they sum up both the stormy weather we’ve had and the spirit of Old Poole, which is the bit around by the Harbour. The sailing boat looked beautiful where it was, but look at those rocks and think what would have happened to it if someone hadn’t seen that it had broken free of its moorings and been washed up and got a line on it So yes, it was beached, but it’s now been recovered, and the paintwork is the only casualty.


The rowing boat had almost sunk when the fishermen towed it up to the beach by the old swimming baths and emptied it out and pulled it safely up on the sand and again, they put a line on it to stop it being swept away.


And now the storms have passed, and the mornings when I took those pictures were beautiful. They were the sort of day when you need a coat over a sweatshirt but you don’t need to fasten it and when you can sit in the sun, maybe with a cup of coffee from the converted horse box you can see in the background to the picture of the rowing boat. It’s lovely to see how well they’re doing because they’re a young couple who’d make a very good hero and heroine. The heroine could meet one of the fishermen you can see leaning against the wall and… well, who knows how they reach the happy stage but we know they will, don’t we? I do believe that we can be happy if we go looking for it and define happiness in terms of small things rather than perfection.After all, getting perfection would mean that I’d have to be perfect too and think how stressful that’d be. While accepting we all mess up means that whenever the people I love mess up, I can happily bank it against the days when my brilliant ideas turn out to be not as brilliant as I was hoping that they’d be.


I’ve been out for a walk every day this week because next week’s weather, just for a change, is going to be wet. I’ve explored a new cake shop and tried a gorgeous salt caramel choux bun that was filled with chocolate hazelnut spread. My mostly adult daughter fell for a chocolate hazelnut filled, white iced doughnut that was advertised with the slogan ‘You dough nut scare me.’ We’ve decided that we’ll try their Halloween cakes to remind ourselves of the changing seasons because, joy of joys, the entire shop front is open to the street, so there’s enough ventilation for me to enjoy it safely. It’s a proper bakers shop with different sorts of breads, which has inspired me to explore some more options at home. Today’s bread (it’s Friday as I type this) is honey oatmeal with oat bran and oats and wholemeal flour. If it was any healthier it’d deserve a halo. It’s in the oven at the moment, in a silicone former and it seems to have risen rather well, probably because I’d been making the mince for lunch time in the slow cooker so there was some warmth beside it.


The mince uses some red wine that I was given years ago and am using for cooking because none of us drink wine. My husband likes the local beers and cider and I prefer fruit juice or a nice cup of tea or coffee. We’ll have it with jacket potatoes cooked in the air fryer when we get back after another long sunny walk and I shall think about the dramatic scene that’s coming up in the fourth Esther Graham book, which has finally got a title. It’s going to be called ‘A Darker Kind of War’ and all going well it’ll be out next summer. I’m about halfway through the first draft and getting happily distracted by the research that seems to have so many echoes with today.


Think of the fun I’ll have with that next week when I’m indoors more. I’ve got recipes I want to try and more sorting out I want to do, and I’ve finally got ahead of myself with the next batch of plastic boxes. This is for a little room that once held the children’s toys and will eventually be for my husband’s tools and his workbench because he and my son are both born tinkerers. Right now a lot of it is in the ‘this is ready to find a better home’ stage, but little by little it’s coming together, just as the scullery is beginning to change post flood. That’s almost there and I promise I’ll share pictures so you can see it before it finishes its evolution. There’ll be some new units, and some bricks removed to make it easier for me to use. For now, I’ve sorted almost everything out and got rid of the things that we do not need or use, and given the sink the clean of its life. I’m feeling very smug because the limescale is coming off so well that my 38 year old sink and taps will be fine for another twenty or thirty years. I like the cheerfulness of red and white and knowing exactly what I’ve got and that I will gradually use it up.


There’ll be other little things to enjoy, like reading Christmas cookbooks so I hope your days are as full of small pleasures till we meet again on Wednesday.

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