A couple of weeks ago I spent a lovely afternoon with two under five’s, they were delightful and generous with their germs. I promptly caught a cold. I’ve had about three colds in the last five years which have lasted about a week, but this one is a doozy. I got through the first week and by the end of that, I had completely lost my voice, I was coughing in a different pitch. Last week, I admitted defeat and took some off sick. I came back to work today. I’m much better but still a bit snotty and going outside causes a coughing fit. I’m also extremely tired, which is great as I come up on a really busy time of year. As ever, my recommendations are night nurse, soothers, lemon and ginger shots, honey and lemon drinks and these Lemsip cold and flu tablets. If you get it, Godspeed…
The week before last, I went into the office from Mum’s house, while I don’t love leaving the house in the dark, the walk from the station to the office felt like a gift. London does that. That walk also takes me past the Salvation Army International Headquarters which has bible quotes on the building and I ran smack into this “everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness”. Which also felt like a gift. God does that too.
I have a new desk set up at mums which is making work easier (yes that is my morning vat of coffee!
I bought a Christmas tree over the weekend. Circumstances mean that I’ll be at Ma’s for Christmas, but I still want a tree, it’ll just go up earlier than usual. Parade Fruiterers sell them and I’ve picked and paid for one that they will deliver to me on 19 December, with my fruit and veg box. If you live locally, I can’t recommend Parade enough, they are great.
This is from last year!
Ma had a birthday last week, there was cake and fizz and family and the first batch of cheese stars, because tradition.
I had last Friday earmarked for allotment and it didn’t go well. The trains were balked, so it took me ages to get home, then I had a ton of stuff to sort, then I had to go to the Post Office and it was 3pm by the time I got to the plot.
The problem with November is that it gets dark at 4.30pm, so I had an hour and a half. I planted two new trees (cherry and apricot), for those keeping score that’s five cherry trees and three apricot trees in pots! I have a peach tree to pot up this weekend and then despite the buy one, get one free offer on cherry trees that I was sent this weekend, no more trees!
I wanted to cut back the raspberries and I did manage to do the back bed. I t started like this…
in pots and cleared a bed and did some weeding and that was it.
I cut them down, weeded and added wood chip to the bed and a little bit to the path.
By that point I was losing light, I had wanted to weed this section on path, but it was frozen solid and I couldn’t!
Instead, I cleared the nasturtiums that the frost had destroyed and got about a quarter of the path between the strawberries and the ex nasturtium bed, it was slow work!
That is all I managed! So the plan for this weekend, plant the peach tree, finish that weeding, to sort the blueberries and the gaps in between the pavers that the blueberries live on! I’d like to take the last table in and cut back the other bed of raspberries.
The unseasonably warm November weather ended last week and I woke up energised. I hate that it’s dark when I get up but I love those sunny, crisp days. We’re back to single figures again and until it started raining, I was feeling pretty great for November
I had a weekend of socialising, on Friday Kathy and Sue came over for Friday fizz and on Sunday, I spent a delightful afternoon with the Kenny-Kingham’s. It’s a life goal of mine to find something that excites me as much as the prospect of a babybel, excites the youngest!
I had my first day without back pain last week. Progress, I promptly destroyed with a couple of hours at the plot and scrubbing Ma’s floors at the weekend, but it’s reinforced the need to do the exercises (that I’m not keen on and can’t do properly yet) because they are working and I need to stick at them.
I have realised this weekend that it’s December and Mum’s birthday next week, then I need to start organising for Christmas!
After an unintentional week off, I was back for some gentle allotmenting. My back is still not fabulous and it’s really hard to work out what to do to help it (I can’t stop carrying wheelchairs downstairs or sleeping on the floor three nights of the week – although Ma has offered that I can sleep with her!)
I really need to weed the paths at the front again..
If heavy duty weeding was out, I had some ranunculus corms to plant, I wanted to clear the tomato beds and put the dahlias to bed for the winter. I’m happy to report that I did manage that before it got dark!
So first the poor dying tomatoes, time to cut them down and weed the beds, which I did and I was really surprised by how good the soil was looking after some rain, over the summer it felt like all the soil was turning into desert, I also had a little weed of the paths and planting outside those beds, and considered what I was going to do with them over winter.
Have I mentioned that I’m on a mission to make the plot more manageable with my new responsibilities? Yes, I know I have and I’m probably not going to stop banging on about it either! To that end I’ve put more perennials in and have planned more flowers because they don’t need as much work in either growing or harvesting. I’ve got some tulips that need a home and I had about 100 giant ranunculus asiaticus corms to plant. My initial plan was to plant them in the empty bed next to the strawberries, the one I weeded the cinque foil out of the last time I was at the plot. You may remember that way back in spring, I’d planted some perennial leeks in that bed and they had promptly died in the summer.
My plan was to plant the rannuculus there. However, the leeks that I thought were dead, weren’t and have started to come up again. So I’m sticking with the leek plan and planting some more in that bed. And also it seemed mean to pull up all the nasturtiums that are trying to take over that bed. So the perennial leek seeds I have will go in there next week and we’ll see if they survive!
So I needed a new plan, but first dahlias…
The last dahlia of 2025!
I’ve loved having the dahlias this year, I bought them on a whim with no idea what I was doing and it’s a miracle that they flowered at all. I bought some smaller plants which have been overshadowed somewhat by the larger Cafe au Lait Dahlias, next autumn I’ll probably take the smaller ones out and put them elsewhere so they have some room. While part of me wants to buy all the dahlias now, I need to practice restraint, and the only other ones on the list for next spring are some Wine Eyed Jill tubers, which I did have in 2023 but they didn’t survive. I cut down the plants, added a bag of compost to the bed and then a layer of strulch which I watered to lock. Fingers crossed they will survive the winter.
Then the rannuculus, I decided to plant up one of the old tomato beds and did so as it got a lot darker, I had a fair few left over which I think I’ll plant in pots. The bed got the same compost and strulch treatment as the dahlias!
That was it, it was nearly 5pm and fully dark. I’m busy next Sunday so I have this Friday off for a plot day. The four main things I want to do are:
Sort out the blueberries, weed them, top up with fresh compost and strulch
Weed the gaps between the patio slabs on the fruit cage.
Cut back the raspberries
Plant the onion and shallot sets and the garlic
Plant out the rest of the brassicas
There is also the outside possibility that I’ll have some more trees to settle in and there is always weeding to do!
One of the reasons that looking after Mum has been so easy is that she is not a hoarder, she doesn’t collect random stuff and she it ruthless about throwing things away. My Grandad was the same and when he died, it made clearing his flat easy in a difficult time.
Overall the Hull’s are not into clutter, my Dad’s flat in contrast was a disaster. I went into it the day after they found his body and it was a nightmare. I couldn’t go back, that was the flat I grew up in and it was traumatising, I regret not being able to do it now but it was probably for the best. Mum and Ben, with help from Dad’s siblings did it, and they took a bunch of stuff and so much stuff was taken to the tip that we had to pay an excess rubbish fee.
I am a bit more hoardery than Mum, nowhere near as bad as Dad but looking after Mum has made me think a bit more about my space. A big part is, that right now I’m only here for four nights. I come home on Friday but I spent Saturday daytime at Mum’s. I need the flat to function and to be a restful place for me. I heard clutter described as ‘noise’ the other day and that’s what it is to me. If the flat is messy and/or cluttered it’s noisy to me and that doesn’t help my mental health.
I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s a lot tidier!
I’m in a season where I don’t operate at my best because everything is hard and depressing – thank you SAD, and in a season of life that is just busy and stressful (work, menopause, caring for Mum). Recently, I’ve been so aware that I’m not doing this with the grace that I’d like to have and I’m an ‘action changes attitude’ person. So while therapy (and prayer) are helping a lot, I will feel calmer when I have a calmer space.
That’s reason enough think about my living space but I also am aware that as a childless, single person clearing my house is probably going to be done by my nephews or if it’s really bad by people they’ve paid. I don’t want to leave a mess and I’m working on it.
Four piles into one and I’ll work on getting this one gone too!
First there was housework to do, it’s ironic that while I do all of Mum’s housework (laundry, ironing, hoovering, mopping, and washing up), mine has been neglected. I caught up with all of it and that helped massively because then I just started putting things away.
I don’t have time to do a massive declutter of the flat but I have spent some time this week sorting the spots that have been really stressing me out. The clutter around the kitchen table is mostly allotment things, so I’ve rationalised all the piles into one pile not in the kitchen.
It’s not that there’s no stuff but there are many less jars!
I put all the random jars that I swear had been growing on the unit in the kitchen away in the cupboard of doom and a tiny sort out of some of the things in the cupboard of doom. There was a pile of magazines on the sofa in the front room, so I sorted all of the magazines and threw a bunch away, which led to a tidy of the top of the cupboard in my bedroom. It’s all about putting things away and being more ruthless about whether I actually need them.
It’s wasn’t a massive clear up it took about two and a half hours of Sunday morning but it was to extra bin bags of rubbish and a massive amount of recycling. There is more to do, and I think that this is the way to handle it, keep on top of the regular housework, don’t bring g anything in until something has gone out and spend no more than three hours on it in one week.
What’s super weird but absolutely shouldn’t be is how much lighter I feel and how much easier it is to work and do just about anything I the flat. I don’t feel weighed down by the weight of the tasks I haven’t tackled and I’m energised by the idea of the next task to get done. I talk a lot about life being a series of lessons I have to constantly learn, forget and re-learn and remembering that my resilience in stressful times is directly linked to being in control of a clear space!
My next big jobs are going to be cleaning the oven, sorting out the seeds and having a clear out of the white cupboard in the living room.
I was completely missing in action from the blog last week because I was busy. I had a migraine on Sunday and that is when I do the bulk of these posts, and I just didn’t catch change up. Hey, life gets in the way but have another picture of the Eiffel Tower!
I finally had a conversation with the GP and got back on HRT. It’s been really frustrating and but very soon, I should be back to normal minus the hot flushes..
Work has gone from busy to ‘oh my god there are only six weeks left in the year before people start going on leave for Christmas’ and therefore it’s bonkers, diaries are chaos and I am just about clinging onto sanity. I’m not sure why but whenever I say I’m going to focus on one thing and please don’t disturb me unless you’re on fire, everyone and their dog starts asking for stuff! It’s probably an other reason for my higher blood pressure..
Mum’s wheelchair arrived! We’ve been out quite a bit and while Mum feels quite vulnerable in it (I think she can feel every bump in the road and having to put herself in my hands for ‘driving’). It has opened up what she and I can do! It gives me a walk and gets her a bit more engaged with the world. However, I put the picture below on social media and have been fielding questions about mum, PSP and whether they can come to visit. I’m not gatekeeping, I’m leaving it to mum and she is being extremely antisocial!
I had a delightful chat with a lady on the bus on Friday morning. It just reminded me that joy comes from unexpected places
I hope in this hellscape of a month that everyone is having the best time available to them…
The truth about impartiality at the BBC. This is about how I feel about the issues the BBC are having this week. Except to say that I would absolutely support my licence fee going to defend the BBC in court against Trump because he can just fuck off into the sea with this nonsense…
Last weekend, I banjaxed my back. This weekend, I was determined not to hurt myself anymore. But I wanted to be consistent and I needed to pick up the weed bin, so off to the plot I went.
First, I watered the poly.
Then I collected beans, chard, herbs and dahlias.
I weeded a bed to rid it of cinque foil. At that point my back did hurt and I went home.
Nic Dempsey 