Farewell Cornelian

I discovered this weekend just gone that the restaurant where The Boy and I got engaged has closed down. It’s the recession. This level of personal grief that makes you raise your shoulders, then let them down emphatically with a hnfnhhmm. How unfair for the owners. How unfair for those seeking top French cuisine in south Suffolk. How unfair for the artists who try and sell work there, and for the camp maitre d’ who was apparently married and we weren’t sure if he was real. It confirmed reluctant suspicions I’d had that a top London French chef could never take a business right through a recession in a one-street town in Suffolk. Crumbs, every other shop was a charity shop there in the nineties. And the quaint downstairs shop, which sold little chocolates and had tea in vast containers with funny names. I’ll miss it. You can’t buy quaint. It is wrong to pastiche, and no craftsman under a certain age can build the fine curved wood and glass windows on these narrow shops today in any case.

Well, technically we didn’t get engaged at the restaurant. We walked down to the beach at Felixstowe and The Boy went down on two knees and asked me, with a ring he had made out of silver foil. I still have the ring. I also still have good memories of saying Yes and of asking him to do it again on One Knee somewhere more public. He obviously loves me: he generously obliged and humoured me and as many passing tourists as we could find outside Christchurch Mansion later that week.

This all goes to prove that if something is worth something to you, you keep it. Memories. Little foil rings. Husbands.

Chocolate shops with French restaurants on top?

Apparently the business has been sold. Let’s just hope Felixstowe doesn’t gain another Cafe de Corporate Franchise Grande there, or a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vegetables clothing shop. None of these raise a smile on the faces of tourists. Or provide loose tea for little old ladies. Or the occasional free bonbon.

Breadmaking for Beginners

OK, this took me a while to cut to just under ten minutes for the benefit of Mr Youtube, but it tells a little story. Mostly you will find it unfunny and uninteresting. Unless you have a fascination for cooking with toddlers, or for my own little one Lily (20 months). I am not a skilled video editor (see my sister if that is what you are after), so apologies for the quality. And lack of music. You could always play your own.

If yuo cnat raed tihs yuo soulhd nto be dirivng

I was only thinking today how I had no intention of scouting out a GPS system for my car, as:

1) I normally know where I am going

2) When I don’t know where I am going I look it up on a map

3) If that fails I use my head

4) If that fails I use someone else’s

and I always get there…

And I just spotted this.

What I want to know is, what were they driving and does it swim?

Of course Kim Jong-il isn’t dead!

First – don’t muddle up Kim Jong-il (the one who controls the weather and who shot 11 holes-in-one in his first round of golf) with his father Kim Il-sung (Eternal Sun who created the world).

Secondly - please ignore rumours that there has been a body double parading as Kim Jong-il since 2003, who is 2.5 cm taller according to US satellites.

Third – photos don’t lie.

Ahem

Do forgive the hacking cough. According to a reliable source I qualify for Swine Flu and passed the test and need looking after and so would Lily if she were not under 5 and therefore ineligible. It is not as convincing as I was hoping, as I think I have another bug which is going around and involves having a summer cold that lasts a week. It has been preventing me concentrating for very long at a…

… so anyway. Where was I? Ahem-hem. I think the boy has it too.

And do you know what I’m worried about? Having too many vegetables in, which I don’t want to waste (but which will, by all reason, be healthier than take-aways). And whether it is nosey to go to an Open Afternoon three doors down on Saturday for a house that’s come up for sale I’ve liked since we moved here and has a bigger garden, but can’t imagine we would go to the effort of moving for. They have WISTERIA!

Do you know what I should be concerning myself with? I have a preaching gig on Sunday evening, and it is about the Suffering Church (i.e. places in the world where it is very dangerous to practice Christianity) and am telling a bit about North Korea. I haven’t been there. There are no songs about it. It is not in the Bible. And it is all Top Secret, but luckily there is a fair bit on the web. Excuse me while I try not to feel sorry for myself any longer and look up some more google images and Bible verses.

And pray for me – I could do with my energy back, or else I may be forced to enact a dramatic The Preacher has been Gagged and the Sermon will be Passed round Secretly Under the Chairs on Rice Paper kind of stunt, which is not really The Thing.  I don’t even have rice paper.

Grieg’s Piano Concerto by Grieg

My deep philosophical question of the day is:

What if life is just not necessarily in the right order?

Another Day

We are all hoping that the Rain, Rain will Go Away and maybe not come back this week at all. It is not up to me, but it has meant an early finish to the work in the garden today.

We deliberated and decided to take down the rest of the wall and rebuild it entirely. Having considered rendering the end of the neighbours’ house, we realised (thanks in part to dad) that a brick walled garden in a town house is the right thing and there isn’t a better time to do it for us. Because the builders have turned out to be particularly slippery we won’t be using them again after this, but the wall we have so far is good. It will be done by the end of the week, unless they feel like taking a month over it.

In a separate twist, the reclaim yard brick merchants who they use (the only one in the area for old bricks, and a company who ‘only take cash’) went into administration today. There were just enough of the bricks needed for our wall, which had thankfully been ordered in time and were collected today.

And by the way, who voted ‘Other’? Was it you dad? Or someone else? What do you suggest? Email me or leave a comment below.

A brick too far?

Now the builders want us to decide whether to remove the remaining bit of wall to the RHS so that the new wall all looks the same.

What would you do?

You need to come and see this

… which translated, means

Whatever quote we already gave you, think of a number and triple it

I am now at the start of another tradesman-intensive week of preparing oddly sugared caffeinated drinks, keeping Lily out of harm’s way and leaving many doors open.

Let me show you where we are up to. It might make more sense than I could at this point.

 

Actually, we were just having this middle section of wall rebuilt. Now the wall to the left (the Pisan architecture) also has to come down, and the neighbours at the back are away. Let’s hope they are as understanding as we think they are. As we are now a three-skip, five-day job the builders have kindly offered to rebuild the wall at the front for free – it doesn’t even belong to us. Hmm. And those neighbours are out. So maybe I will avoid making any more enemies and go and put the kettle on again.

Sitting on the Fence

I wanted to blog before, but haven’t been able to get to the computer much as our windows have been cleverly double glazed and refurbished this week. I have been looking forward to them being done and the result is good. Photos will follow.

The fixing of the fanlight, a final part of the job, revealed a great deal of rot, which is a shame as we now have to decide whether to do Something Drastic when our new front door arrives. And we are in a Conservation Area!

Now we are between tradesmen. Tomorrow the skip arrives and the bricks for the new old back wall in the garden. Owing to neighbours fixing the top of the wall without talking to us first and then admitting it probably is our wall, we are left with a gaping hole where a gaping hole does not belong. There was a buddleia somewhere along the line, but the story is too long to relate today.

All our decking and a small shed had to be removed to see the state of the wall. It is not good, and every time the brickies come to see it they pull a bit more off, to try and convince us. They also try to embarrass us by making me – a mere maths teacher – do the calculations in my head and on my mobile phone. This is Intimidating and Criminal and not the thing I like doing when Someone is crying. Anyway, the job is urgent and now we have to empty and move the large shed and also negotiate with the neighbours on another side about a small wall at the front. And they keep finding more things that need attention.

What with the new front door, paintwork and boiler, this is going to be an expensive summer.