Hobbies

In these strange days when you're more or less confined to home it really helps to have something interesting, creative, to pass the time.  I thought I would be able to read more books, watch more TV programmes of my choice but it rarely turns out that way.  I have a hundred things to do everyday and there still isn't enough time to to do it all.  I still have to cook and clear the ashes and get rid of a few cobwebs.  Clothes still have to be washed, but not necessarily ironed, beds changed and carpets vaccumed.

However, that's morning stuff.  Afternoons, after the essential siesta, there is more time for me.  Thanks to my daughters I have begun a regular walking programme.  The festive season was too much fun and food and I seem to now carry a few extra kilos.  Those have got to go and I need to get fit.  My summer exercise is swimming but I twisted my ankle and sank down into that couch and rarely rose from its depths even when the ankle was healed.

  We have a treadmill which has the evil eye.  The xmas tree was set up on top of it this year through lack of space.  We took it down on New Years eve. Before twelfth night.  It seems that is unlucky.  Ye, right.  But when we turned the treadmill on it came to a grinding halt.  So I have been pushed outside to get exercise.  Dragged and pushed, not quite screaming.  What better place to walk.  We live in the wop-wops.  Fresh air and no-one else to encroach on our space.  The thing about walking is that when you've walked half an hour or so then you have to turn round and walk back again the way you came.  Boring.  Which is why I liked the treadmill.  But with encouragement I am overcoming that.  So many ways to go, so many different turns to make.  I'm getting to enjoy it.  Or I will.

 One of my many hobbies is crochet.  And knitting.  But crochet is faster and all you need is a hook, a bit of yarn and imagination.  If you make a mistake it is so easy to pull it out and continue on.  Unlike knitting

I'm making peggy squares, also known as granny squares.  I'm using whatever yarn leftovers I have on hand.  Sewing in all those ends is a bit of a bugger and you need a few hundred squares to make a decent size throw or blanket but the project can take years.  Who cares.  It's calming and satisfying to see the squares mount up.  If I had enough yarn in just one or two colours I could even make a vest or a jersey, may even do so.

One xmas I knitted dozems of these stockings to hang on everyone's christmas tree.  

Meanwhile the male half of our duo is fixing appliances of every sort for friends and family.  How often does a kettle, iron, vaccum cleaner, bedside light give up the ghost.  If you don't have a handy man then you chuck it and buy another.  Not us.

When it's freezing he brings his repairs inside to the living room.  That's ok.  If he's happy then so am I

Baking takes up time.  Sourdough bread or quick bread when its cold and wet and we don't want to get into the car and take a trip down the mountain.  I'm trying not to bake cakes and biscuits.  Easter isn't that far away and we will once again have a house full of easter baking, cookies and sweet bread.  

I'm making a cookbook of all the New Zealand, English and Gre-nglish recipes we make at Christmas.  I think our house hold should celebrate a Greek easter and an English Christmas.  Traditional people do not agree and we always have some fatty pork at Christmas too, like it or not.

But brussel sprouts, yorkshire puddings, stuffing, roast vege, real gravy,  pate, xmas cake and lots of chilled sauv blanc are essential for me to feel that xmas spirit. It's all being recorded for posterity. 

And now my cousin C in NZ has given me another project.  She wrote and published a book on her extra-ordinary life, her idyllic upbringing in NZ in the '50s and 27 years in Lesotho.  She has asked us all to write 3 pages on our own lives and she will publish a second book.  It's a marvellous idea.  Where to begin, where to end.