A Picnic on Ashdown Forest

Ok, so the photo is not of us eating a picnic, but I think its a great photo Dan took so I'm using this one :)

I gave myself an area on the list called "Romance". Some on this list are proving tricky to complete and will need more time. Why on earth I thought it was a good idea to romantically surprise Dan I don't know. I know what I'd like, but I'm finding it hard to get inside his head.

Anyway, I live quite close to a beautiful forest and hardly ever go there for a walk or picnic, so I chucked it on the list to make sure I made the effort at some point.

After a unseasonably sunny Easter, the weather round here deteriorated, so after a few weeks was rain when the sun came out we nipped out to the forest and braved the winds for a mini adventure.

Ashdown Forest is the location A A Milne used in her childrens books Winnie The Pooh. I read them growing up and I must admit, it still holds some kind of magic for me. We drove out and stopped at one of two car parks I know on the forest. We walked off to the quarry where we sat out the wind to have lunch and then climbed a tree I remembered as a kid to see if I could get higher now. I could, but find if I do this kind of thing in trainers I am very wary that I lack the grip of my climbing shoes and found it scarier than I should!

We took our stuff back to the car and then found in the car park a post with some leaflets describing walks. It was SUCH a good leaflet. From the car park there were two walks, we picked the longer and got given the description as we went. No tricky maps to follow, but directions using the locations that were in the stories. So we set off first to the Heffleump Trap. They helpfully pictured the first stop so you could identify when you arrived. Then we headed off back to the quarry we'd had lunch in, which was actually Roo's Sandy Pit via the A A Milne memorial which has fantastic views. Then the route took us to The North Pole and up the hill past Eeyores Gloomy Place.

Then I suggested a diversion. We were at the track to take us back to the car, but hadn't really been walking long, plus it was hot. And I was certain the second of the car parks I knew was straight ahead and always, ALWAYS has an ice cream van.

Dan being a trusting sort of boyfriend let me lead him off route into the forest and gently teased me as trudged further and further from the junction with no ice cream van in sight....

My hunch was correct, but on foot it took us longer to get there than expected. Luckily the ice cream van was there, but the exposed position and strong winds meant I was freezing within minutes so we headed off back to the car, returning the leaflet for others as suggested.

It was a perfect Saturday mini adventure. The discovery of these fab walks taking you past points mentioned in the books is genius, and I may have to go back and do some more!! I need to see Winnie The Pooh and Tiggers house I think :)

A week without TV or Internet

I'm blogging this several months after my week without tv or internet, which wasn't my intention (I'm lazy and forgetful - oops!) but at least will give a perspective on what happened next.

The week off was unbelievably hard. I felt like I was missing on facebook, that things might have happened and I wouldn't know I felt very out of the loop. I found myself reaching for my mobile to check for updates at any spare moment. I had NO attention span, and was unable to to "be". It was actually quite alarming.

I found I had to work more at work. Everytime a thought popped into my head about a film I wanted to watch, or what the opening hours for such and such was, I had to put it out my head and keep working. It made me feel quite ashamed to see how easily I will leap on the net for five minutes even though I'm in the middle of a task.

Almost straight away I realised I hadn't needed to give up TV at all. I didn't really miss it, there are very few regular shows I watch. Instead, I watch whole series when it suits me on my BT Vision. However, two or three evenings I was at home, eating dinner in silence in front of a blank TV thinking, why I am putting myself through this? Thirty minutes of television to me company while I eat is not a habit that needs breaking!

I found my flat was tidier. I didn't end up surfing for rubbish on the net, so I was bored enough to wander the flat, find things to do and go to bed at a reasonable time. I actually read my bible once or twice (see the task to read the Bible all the way through, I haven't got very far yet...).

Then there was an earthquake in Japan. I couldn't check the news. I couldn't see what people were saying facebook. I didn't know how many were hurt or what had happened apart from a discussion with work colleagues. I had my one sort of "cheat" where a work colleague had an article from the bbc website up and called me over so I could just "happen" to read over her shoulder for a second.

And then the week was over and I hit facebook with a vegence and decided to sign up to Twitter which was an odd response! But I have discovered Twitter is very different to facebook and I have been so inspired by some of the people I follow, I wish I'd done it earlier.

And now? The flat is a mess. I haven't read the bible for weeks. I still check facebook and twitter almost immediately on waking (mostly to stop myself from going to straight back to sleep). I am better at not spending whole evenings surfing for random rubbish, but this might be because I have not really had an evening in for weeks. So I just come home and go straight to bed!

Writing this has reminded me that I was a bit calmer and had a better attention span when I went cold turkey. So I think I may try to cut back a bit. It would be good to try and restrict my use to just lunch times at work, so my little flat gets the benefit of more free time at home!

I'm very glad I did it.

The Sound Of Music

The other film on the top 20 list I have seen before is The Sound Of Music. My mum loved the film, and I used to watch it with her when I was younger.

I can't say I was looking forward to re-watching it. I remember it as being a bit boring, with a few good songs. And BT Vision told me it was 3 hours long...

So while the UK is voting a referendum on whether to move from a First Past The Post system to Alternative Vote, I am watching The Sound Of Music.

From the opening credits, I loved the film again. I can identify so much with Maria. When she is running over the hills, singing because her heart is full with happiness. That is, EXACTLY, what how I feel in the alps. You look to those majestic mountains and feel like your heart might burst. I also appreciate her ditziness!

I love the first part of the film, where she teaches them to sing, and they rebel and climb trees and swim in lakes. As a child it was my favourite bit. I was then amused to find that as the film heads to more adult themes such as love, my interest wandered and I updated this blog a bit, and dated some photographs. It was my intention to sit and really absorb every film, but I have just watched this one too many times.

I know why its in the classic film list, it tells a timeless story. And now, the Captain is singing Eidelwiess to the Austrians before he does a runner, and I'm only understanding now just how poignant that is.

I'm not sure quite when I'll get the desire to watch this film again, but I'm sure I will. And I think I'd better pretend the tear in my eye is because this was one of mums favourite films, and is nothing to do with sad ending!

Alien...

On my list of top 20 films is Alien. The first, and original. Its one of the few films on the top 20 list I have seen before, but a long time ago and I was looking forward to re-watching it.

It was made in 1979, which seems hardly believable, the film has hardly aged at all. Its not the space scenes, the alien bursting from the mans chest or the set that dates it, its the fact they are all smoking on their spacecraft which is heading home! It seems very odd now that we can't smoke on planes, or indeed anywhere public.

It had been so long since I had watched it, I'd forgotten a lot of it. I won't spoil it by saying what I had forgotten! But it was like I was watching for the first time. You can see why its considered a classic, it paved the way for all horror and suspense films that followed.

I now want to watch the rest of the trilogy!!

Duck!

I haven't blogged about all 12 recipes, but April (month 10 of the year of new recipes) is quite an exciting one, and more importantly Dan was around to take photos :)

I love duck, but have never cooked it before. It turned out to be as tricky as I expected. We bought duck breasts (about twice as expensive as chicken for reference) and we started pan frying them, which made the skin lovely and cripsy, and then the recipe said to transfer them to a roasting dish in a pre heated oven. They then cooked much slower than the recipe stated, and I kept checking them. It was hard to know when they done, as you can eat duck a bit rare, but these stayed bloody for ages and then suddenly cooked in 3 minutes!

I have to say, that with the wild rice and a side of chutney they were absolutely lovely. A bit pricy to eat regularly, but good as a treat I think. I shall look out some more duck recipes I think...

Only two more months to on my year of recipes. I want to cook lamb and fish cakes. I can't wait!

5k in under 40 minutes

When I set this task, I didn't really give a lot of thought to the time I wanted to run 5k in. I've done the distance a few times, and struggled to run the whole lot. The last time I can remember, I did a race for life in about 50 minutes, and had to walk the last 0.5k which was irritating.

After a few weeks of runs in the evening, I dragged Dan along to Parkrun with me. Parkrun is an interesting event, held at parks round England at 9.00am every Saturday morning with volunteers manning the route and giving you a time.

We went to the one in Hull (the nearest to where I live is an hour drive away and I'm not that committed!). I was really nervous and didn't know the route. I'd done 5k the week before one evening after work, just to check I could. I'd done it is 32 minutes and felt great, and wondered if I should be aiming for under 30 minute time.

For whatever reason, Parkrun was hard. Sometimes I find a rhythm when I run, sometimes I don't. Sometimes, it feels like I am running through treacle, and sometimes I find a natural pace. This day I couldn't get my act together. I tried to set pace with some people at the back, but got a bit overconfident and tried to keep up with runners too speedy for me. So I had to slow to a walk, so then when I began running again, I would sprint off determined to get a good time after all the course was flat so I knew I should be able to do it! Then minutes later, I'd be panting and out of breath and needing a walk.

I finished the course in an uninspiring 34 and a half minutes. For the record, Dan didn't stop and did it in 27 minutes.

So I passed the task, but I feel like I don't deserve to. I felt like I was pushing myself all the way round, and in a way I was, as every step I ran was a ridiculous battle. But in a way I can't have been pushing to limit, as I recovered my breath very quickly once I came to a stop.

So to this end I have just signed myself to do race for life, on home turf, to see if I can get a better time, plus cancer is still not cured. Given my genes, my preference is that this happens sooner rather than later...

Heres a link, in case you fancy sponsoring:
http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/stephstevens0503

Its a stepping stone on the way to a 10k!

Exporting Presents

Item 76 is also a present related one.

Two good friends emigrated to USA in the autumn of 2010, and I wanted to make sure they both got birthday presents (Nov/Dec) and that Christmas presents arrived in time.

Again, and mostly thanks to the power of the internet, I did achieve this :)