Estate Agents

I never quite understood the almost universal hatred of estate agents until today, never having really come into contact with them before. It's not the people as such, just the entire searching-for-suitable-property experience ("suitable" being the operative word here).

Brief backstory: we decided this week to move from our (hugely expensive, freezing inWinter, boiling in Summer plus sky-high bills and a temperamental boiler) rented house and find somewhere a bit nearer to Mathilda's nursery in Norden.

Being me, I felt obliged to scour Rightmove for anything that looked promising and put it on a spreadsheet, with details of the area, bedrooms, price and estate agent, with a contact number. I sent it to Gary, who sent me back the revised list, which I printed off and started to work through.

Problem #1: They have later and much-reduced opening hours on Saturdays. Normally I would be fine with that, but in a Liz Jones-kind of way, when I want something I expect everyone to be in and working and ready to help me, none of this pesky office-hours business.

Problem #2: Would it really be so difficult to include a little more information in the online property searches? Just basic stuff like "No smoking" or "No dogs" etc. I'm sure this kind of thing is already asked of prospective landlords in the long, tedious forms they are probably asked to fill in for the privilege of having an estate agency take a cut of their rent. But no. Instead, I have to ring around, asking about each individual property, only to be told "I'll have to find out and get back to you - probably on Monday."

Problem #3: We really liked a property in Bacup, so I phoned up and left a message, and then phoned back when they didn't return my call, had the whole conversation about pets and was (eventually) told that small children would be fine, but one very lazy cat would require an additional bond, as they had recently redecorated. Seriously?? Even if Fergus scratched the walls at full capacity (probably once a day on his scratching post, if he can be bothered!) there is no way he could even begin to wreak the havoc potentially caused by two inventive toddlers. But okay. Maybe this landlord has had a bad experience with a particularly destructive cat - who knows? But there is no way we are going to be paying "at least £1000 bond plus the first month's rent" just because we have a cat. Thanks but no thanks. Another two properties gave us a straight "no".

Problem #4: I went to view a 3-bed property in Norden today. I took Mathilda with me, just to ease her into the idea that moving house could be something new and fun. I really liked the house; there were a few minor issues, but overall it had lots of potential. However, two notes: one, the house was not "well presented" - the carpets were a bit tatty and the laminate flooring in the kitchen had gaps in it. Overall, if it hadn't been located where it was, I might have thought it had been empty for quite some time. That doesn't really bother me - we have small kids and to be honest it would be nice not to have heart failure every time one of them picks up a crayon. The big one was note two - if you can't fit a bed in it, it isn't a bedroom. If, by some miracle, you managed to squeeze a bed into "bedroom 3", you would not be able to put anything else in it. This is blatant mis-selling and it irritates the life out of me. Do people really think you won't notice that you can't stand in the room AND shut the door at the same time?

I am now waiting to hear back about another property in Norden. We did a brief drive-by and it's in a little cul-de-sac in a quiet area, close to the village and Mathilda's nursery. Apparently the current tenant has a cat but the landlord is anxious about it. The estate agent said he might consider a pet depending on the "calibre of the tenant", so I guess we are going to have to present ourselves well and hope for the best. I've only been looking for a couple of days and I'm already bored and disillusioned.

More on Japan

Tonight, we managed a rare uninterrupted viewing of the 6 o’clock news. Naturally, the headlines were all about the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, describing the towns left devastated and the number of bodies found. I suppose we have all been left somewhat desensitised by years of violence in the media (both fictional and non-fictional) because up until tonight, I watched the news with a feeling of detachment. Of course I felt sad that bad things happened, and sympathised with those affected by whatever tragedy was news that day, but it didn’t have any real impact on me. It wasn’t really something that applied to me or to my life.

Tonight, something different happened. For a second, I pictured the people in Japan, just getting on with their day, whatever that entailed. They didn’t know what was about to happen, and they wouldn’t have known what to do other than following the standard procedures I assume they had in place to deal with earthquakes, just as we have procedures for dealing with fires at work. You know it’s a possibility but you don’t expect that it’s really going to happen to you. I looked at my husband, my two little girls. What would we have done? Which child would we each have taken charge of? 

Sidenote: I enjoy action-adventure films for what I think is a fairly standard reason – that you are pulled along with the adventurers and you become part of that group. You become part of the gang, and as such you are capable of having adventures, taking risks, making discoveries fearlessly and successfully. However, in real life it’s a different story. I’m well aware that I would not be a survivor in any disaster movie, in fact I would probably be the idiot that perishes first. I’m unathletic on a good day, and physically uncoordinated the rest of the time. I have no useful practical skills which I could helpfully apply in an emergency. All of this makes me wonder whether I would have the sense (in an emergency situation) to hand over both daughters to my husband for safekeeping and resign myself to my fate!

I’m not sure of the purpose of all this pondering; it was just very strange to realise that the victims of this disaster were probably just like me. To quote Phoebe Buffay:

“Yeah, it's just so strange. I mean, she probably woke up today and thought, "Ok, I'll have some breakfast, and then I'll take a little walk, and then I'll have my massage." Little did she know God was thinking, "Ok, but that's it."

Most Awesome Chocolate Cake In The World!!1!!11!

No word of a lie.

My aunt and uncle are visiting from N. Ireland this weekend, and we're going over for Sunday lunch. I said I would bring pudding in one form or another, and as my mum's doing a full-on roast beef dinner, I thought cake would be a good option. Because cake is always a good option, let's face it.

So here is my recipe for the best chocolate cake everrrrrrrr, a bit annoying and faffy to make in places but always always light, fluffy and yummy. I thought I'd better write it down somewhere as I keep losing the bit of paper it's currently written on. Here we go:

Ingredients

75g cocoa
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 medium eggs
370g light muscovado sugar
180ml groundnut oil
200g sifted SR flour

Note: I don't get too stressed out about the ingredients and neither does the cake. For example, I only ever have large eggs in the house, so they go in. I usually use light soft brown sugar, or whatever I can find, I've even used caster sugar before. I never have groundnut oil in the house, so I use any other kind of vegetable or sunflower oil. Obviously if you have everything in, that's spot on. Also, if you use the best quality cocoa and chocolate you can find, the cake will taste great. If you use Extra Value chocolate flavoured cake topping, that's what it's going to taste like.

1. Whisk the cocoa into 200ml boiling water, then whisk in the bicarbonate of soda. Leave it to cool for about 20 minutes. 



Don't accidentally lick the fork - not nice!

2. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas 4. Butter or oil two 20cm loose-bottomed cake tins and line them with baking paper.*

3. Whisk together the eggs, sugar and oil in a bowl until smooth, then stir in the flour and then the cocoa solution. Divide the mixture between the two cake tins and give each tin a sharp tap on the work surface to bring up any air bubbles. 

4. Bake the cakes for 30-40 minutes, until they are well-risen and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave the cakes to cool.

5. When the cakes are cold, remove them from the tins and peel off the baking paper. If they have gone a bit dome-shaped, you might like to slice the top off one of them, and turn it over so it sits on the cut side. This minimises wobble. Of course, it's up to you what you do with the extra bit of cake...
6. If you like, you can stick some filling between the two cakes - suggestions are whipped cream, buttercream, black cherry jam, even warmed Nutella works quite well! Or any combination of the above. However, if you want to go for the full whammy, read on...

Chocolate truffle filling

Ingredients

125g milk chocolate, broken up into pieces.
20g butter
30g sifted cocoa powder
60ml milk
1 tbsp runny honey (or golden syrup/maple syrup/anything golden and sticky!)

1. Gently melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over a pan containing a little simmering water, stirring until smooth. If you're feeling brave, you can do it in the microwave on a very low heat, checking regularly. If it seizes up and goes greasy, you're going to have to start again.
2. At the same time, stir together the cocoa, milk and honey in a small saucepan and heat it up until it's almost boiling, stirring it well. Push it through a sieve into the bowl with the melted chocolate, and give it all a good stir until you get a thick, glossy icing. 
3. Using a serrated knife (the finer the better), slice both cakes in half across-wise, giving you four thin layers of cake.
   
   

   

   Nice messy working surface - oh well!

   
   I tend to sandwich the halves together with the chocolate icing, and then sandwich the two cakes together with whipped cream, because I find three lots of chocolate icing is a bit rich and sort of sticks to the roof of your mouth a bit. However, I think three smaller amounts of chocolate filling, topped with a thin layer of whipped cream on each might work well, or as above, buttercream/cherry jam/fruit/whatever. You can also double up on the icing and put some on the top of the cake too, but it tends to go a bit dribbly down the sides before it sets and I'm not really into that.



Chocolate filling on - just about to add whipped cream

This is going to make you a nice, tall cake, depending on how much filling you like between the cake layers. It looks quite impressive and is also delicious.

Ta-Daaaahh!

You're going to be consuming about a gazillion calories per slice, but hey, enjoy it while it lasts. You could get run over by a bus tomorrow. Liz Hurley once said "I'd rather have a small bottom than a piece of cake" and look what happened to her. Anyway, for me, a piece of cake is achievable, whereas a small bottom... never gonna happen.

Anyway - enjoy. Edited to add pictures.


* If you're going to bake regularly, it's worth investing in decent cake tins, and the loose-bottomed variety make it easier to get the cakes out. Also, I know lining the tins is a royal pain but it really does make all the difference, both for baking evenly and removing the cakes.

Japanese earthquake

BBC News

There isn't much I can say without sounding trite or stating the downright obvious. This is a disaster on an epic scale and I'm sure everyone's thoughts and prayers* are with the Japanese people, in particular those who have lost loved ones or their homes, and those who are still waiting for news.

* delete where applicable

Domestic Violence

Oh Chris Brown. Some people find you attractive but I am not one of those unfortunate few. You could have done much better after the whole beating-the-living-daylights-out-of-your-girlfriend-who-oops!-happened-to-be-Rihanna incident. Lay low. Maybe do some charity work or something. Anger management classes would be a good start. But no. Not only do you not go away, but you decide to open up to the media about how you're a victim in the whole thing. You know, the thing where Rihanna's face bruised your knuckles.

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/57016935.html?page=3

“People are always gonna talk," the Forever singer said. "But I’m in a positive place. I consider myself a grown-a ** man. And at the end of the day, if I walk around apologizing to everybody, I’m gonna look like a damn fool.”

In the wake of the February 2009 beating, Brown said only “a handful” of his show biz peers, such as Pitbull and Pharrell Williams, had his back.

“When [most] people see certain things happen to somebody, they usually turn away,” Brown said. “They don’t want to get involved with it, because they don’t want their name attached to anything negative -- unknowingly, they kind of show their true colors when they do that.

“But you can’t blame people for how they want to be portrayed or if they don’t want to be associated with somebody who had a particular mishap.”

So there you have it, boys. Beating the crap out of a woman you're supposed to care for and respect is simply a mishap, and shame on all those who don't stand by you in your hour of need.

The thing I feel really angry about is that people are still buying this idiot's records. Oh, and the fact that he is responsible for my grudging iota of respect for Chris Moyles, who has refused to play Chris Brown's music. I dislike Chris Moyles, but Chris Brown is just beneath contempt. I'm all for second chances but he shows no remorse or even understanding that what he did was absolutely wrong. It's just sad that as a society we are so in love with the idea of fame and riches that we would continue to admire and even idolise someone who shamelessly condones violence towards women.

Next up: Roman Polanski.

Things can only get better...!

It's been a tough couple of weeks. Some of this has been superficial nonsense and some of it has been difficult and emotionally draining. It all started when I went to get my hair trimmed. I said "pixie cut", she heard "convict". I went home, sniffled a bit on the hubby and knitted an emergency hat. "Oh well, " I said to the hubby, "I can't get any uglier." Then I got conjunctivitis (shared by the munchkins, naturally.) We went through a period of coughs, sore throats and general flu-like symptoms. Then Fergus got ill.

Not with weird alien eyes, but a rehash of his earlier cystitis - or so we thought!! A few visits to our vet and about a gazillion English pounds later and Fergus is relieved of "the cork-like blockage in his penis" (the vet's words!) I was distraught at the time just thinking about Fergus having to stay overnight at the vets, because he is my furbaby, but also because of Hugo.

Oh, Hugo.

Where do I start? He started with a few worrying symptoms last year - confusion, shaky legs, general weird behaviour. Eventually, by January, all signs pointed to a brain tumour and we knew we would have to make "the decision" at some point. That point arrived last week, when Hugo's legs became inflamed and he was struggling. We took him in on Monday and he fell asleep for the last time at 5.20 p.m. I can honestly say it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, but also one of the kindest. I read about this stuff all the time, I know a lot of pet-lovers online, but actually having to do it is a whole other story.

This week has been weird, and full of firsts. That first night was very quiet - no noisy slurping of water from the kitchen. Neither of us wanted to go downstairs that first morning, because we knew we wouldn't hear Hugo getting up and shaking his collar before coming to greet us at the bottom of the stairs. I think in a strange way (as neither of us are fantasists) we were both somehow hoping we'd made it all up and that he would still be here, and we knew that by going downstairs the spell would be broken. The first pet feeding, with only Fergus to sort out, and no list of pills to add to the food. The first grocery shop where I didn't need to put the bags out of reach, because there was no dog to poke his nose in, hopeful of a bit of available something-or-other.

All this sounds very odd to say about a dog, I know, but Hugo arrived in our lives before we really became a family, and I feel strongly that we were meant to have him. He brought us all together, and was there through both my pregnancies, protective and affectionate towards the girls as babies, and patient with them as toddlers! He was a constant in a period of great change in our lives, and it's going to take time to get used to life without him being here, missing the good points and feeling guilty for being impatient over the bad points.

Anyway, tomorrow I am taking Fergus in for yet another check-up and collecting Hugo's ashes. We are going to scatter them next weekend. I think that will be the final confirmation that he's gone, and we will be able to remember him with joy instead of mourning his absence.

Testing, testing

This is me and the girls:

Here is the cat Fergus, aka Chung:

Okay, so I can do pictures now! Hurrah!

Hello and welcome to my first blog!

This might take a really long time...

I like to make lists, so here's what I'm going to blog about:

• My family
• Baking and cooking
• My knitting projects
• Topical subjects

I don't really expect anyone to be reading this, so if you are, continue at your peril... I am unable to guarantee an interesting read at any given moment.