"BUY ME LADY" SAID THE FROCK..

"And I will make you into a beautiful and whole and complete human being". "Do not be silly" said the man, "for a frock alone cannot do that". "True" said the lady. "I will have the shoes and the bag as well".

Oh, how this makes her laugh and remember an extremely funny - both funny haha and funny peculiar - shopping expedition in January 1973.

She was going to Chicago to start a working road trip with two friends and Bill had asked her to fly to Washington DC to spend a week with him before going up to Chicago.

'How lovely' she thought to herself and off she flew with a medium sized suitcase.

Bill meet her flight and drove to his home in Georgetown. He showed her a closet for her clothes and sat on the bed whilst she unpacked.

"But where are your evening clothes darling?" he asked her when her last item of clothing had been hung up. 

"Evening clothes, I'm not going to anything fancy Bill, this is a working trip I'm on" she responded.

"But didn't you get that message I left you about a week ago, that you had to bring at least three long evening and a couple of short cocktail dresses and that you could leave them with me when you went to Chicago".

"Nope, I didn't get that message but why would I need all of those clothes, what's happening, where are we going?"

He was an extremely patient man, he'd have to be!

But his eyes rolled and said "it's President Nixon re-election weekend.. we'll be going to lots of parties and balls all over town at different embassies and you can't not be dressed properly darling. We'll have to go shopping tomorrow, I'll call my sister to ask her where she goes for her more formal clothes, now let's go and eat something, you must be hungry, I know you never eat on planes".

And out they went.

When they got back, he called his sister and she, bless her heart, came to the rescue with chapter and verse of where he was to take her for pretty but formal clothes.

The next day was Saturday and after breakfast, out they went. Luckily her undies were pretty! For a lot of dressing and undressing went on, in three shops, in front of the lovely assistants who were incredibly helpful.

And it was at the last shop where the sales assistant who had found some wonderful things for her, said "what about shoes and bags, my advice would be to go to so&so on such-n-such a street, they have lovely shoes and a huge range".

And off they went to so&so on such-n-such a street where, sure enough, they found several pairs of beautiful shoes with matching bags that could have been made to go with all her pretty dresses.

WHAT a time they had! 

Now zoom yourselves fast forward about twenty years.. she was in New York on work and Bill flew up to join her for a few days in the city.

She had a hair appointment and they arranged to meet at her club, the ESU.. aka the English Speaking Union, on East 39th Street.

She called the club before she went off to the hairdressers and asked them to put Mr. Bill somewhere cosy until she'd come and claim him.

When she got to the club, she found that they had indeed let him in and taken care of him, in fact, he was chatting to friends who were members and whom he had joined. She asked for a cup of tea and was introduced.

Bill looked at her and grinned.. a silly sort of grin, she looked at him with an eyebrow raised and he mouthed "later".. 

\His friends said "we're off, it's a long drive, we hope to see you both again" and off they went.

"Very pretty hair, I like it very much" said Bill.

"Nah, don't think you can wiggle out of telling me what you've been up to, you have a very naughty look on your face, fess up" she said.

He reached down to a bag that was beside his chair and passed it to her.. it had something hard in it.. and he said "this made me laugh so much, you had to have it".

And she unwrapped a china mug.. on the mug is a cartoon with a dress, a pair of shoes and a handbag and written on the mug is..

Go back to the begging of the post and read it again.. he'd seen the mug, who knows where.. and remembered the crazy shopping and knew she had to have it.

She's still got the mug and she's still got those bags and all the wonderful memories of that most extraordinary time nearly forty five years ago in Washington DC.

Geegee Parrot.
November 30th, 2017.

WORKING A CHAINSAW..

'Just get on with it girl, you cannot be sentimental about a dead tree' she said to herself. She nodded at Dean, who was standing holding onto the first branch, and switched on the chainsaw.

It didn't take very long as the sharp blade ripped through the dry wood, she cut each of the branches down in two pieces, then it was the time to cut through the trunk. She took it down in three pieces and levelled the base as flat as she could.

The pieces were taken out to the car together with unwanted bricks and other unwanted materials. And off they went with Dean to the council dump.

She swept up the sawdust, straightened the garden furniture back into place and sighed.. poorpoor tree.

What a stupid man, fancy planting those dreadful ivy, then training them up a Japanese flowering cherry tree.

Ah well.. it's gone now but let this be a warning to you all, don't let ivy anywhere near any of your trees or garden and house walls.

These evil plants suck moisture out of trees and the cement between bricks and you don't want that.

She's a bit stiff but it's nothing that a hot bath with a couple of handfuls of magnesium sulphate can't cure.. ah, you may know it by a different name.. Epsom Salts. PipPip.. we're off to splosh.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 28th, 2017.

OUT OF BED, WASHED, BREAKFAST COOKED & EATEN, DOWN ONTO THE TUBE, INTO AUDIOLOGY.. TO FIND THERE'S NO CLINIC ON A MONDAY.. GRRR.

Poor mum, she didn't know that the hearing aid clinic at Charing Cross Hospital wasn't open on Mondays. How boring.. for it was cold and wet and she thought of how she needn't have woken up so early, nor hurried our breakfast.. sigh.

The receptionist, whom she has known for several years, gave her a pack of batteries and told her to come back on Wednesday as Tuesdays are always busy.

She thanked her and went down to catch a bus to Clapham Junction which would take her to Battersea Flower Station in search of a big pot of Christmas Roses for a gift and a couple of Christmas Cacti for us.

She loves these cacti, the way that they grow quietly all year then, just before the begging of December, put out the prettiest of blossoms.

Now are you wondering how we're getting on our new laptop? Well, she's pleased at the way her fingers remember how to touch type, for it is well over seven years since she's used a keyboard and she's finding the big screen wonderful!

There's no trouble with making the letters bigger 
and what bliss it is to be able to read something on line without the websites continously crashing, I fear poor old iPad is dying, she must get her photos off it before it does. 

Tomorrow she is cutting down a tree.. a glorious 45 year old Kanzan flowering cherry, poor tree. It was killed by a tenant who rented a friends' house. 

The friend asked her to do it whilst he is away, I am not surprised, I wouldn't want to see it cut down either if it was mine, she'll meet Dean there at 10.am, cut it down and take it to the council dump.

It will be an early night for us, she has a book by Monty Don to read, it is called 'A French Garden Journey', published in 2013, she remembers him when he had a pretty little shop in Walton Street.

We'll be back soon.. don't go too far away!

GeeGee Parrot.

November 27th, 2017.

IT WAS A VERY CHILLY BUT CLEAR DAY SO SHE WENT GARDENING.. AS YOU DO WHEN YOU'RE AS DAFT AS A BRUSH!

FREEZING! Brass monkey weather! Frosty tigers! Veryvery chilly indeed! Do you get my drift?  What my drift means.. it was a day that sensible folk, if they didn't have to go out, would have gone for a short walk or stayed home and read the papers or watched television.

But stuff that had to be done, so having dressed herself in multiple layers of thermal clothes, and her old pigskin trousers, off she trotted to the allotments and smiled as she walked down the steps on the plots, for the sun was shining, those daft wild parrots were zooming about and.. it was warm. But no one else was there.

There was no need to open shack up for she had only gone to check the state of her sheds for sadly there have been reports of break-ins, to pick herbs and vegetable leaves and to gather the rest of the beans that had been left to dry on their plants.

The father of Tereza, our upstairs neighbour, gave us a bag of these beans which germinated so quickly she calls them 'Speedy Beans'. She planted eight rows of these beans which are what we call 'Runner Beans', stopped picking them in late August and had left them to grow and dry on the plants.

Lots of them were dry by early October and they're already podded in a huge glass jar. Yesterday, she stripped the rest of the plants and brought the dried pods home. Yum, beans for hearty Winter fare.

She collected a big bag of endive, chard, Japanese spicy mustard and spinach for her friend who told her about the computer deals at Peter Jones and picked a small handful of white carnations for his sister, you may call them Pinks. They smelt glorious, as if the frost had deepened their perfume, perhaps it had and then she heard her name being called.

Joska had arrived, he is a charming friend of hers who has gardened his plots for almost as long as she has. He was there to do serious pruning to his apple tree, they chatted and then she left, bearing with her a huge bag of perpetual cabbage leaves which he had picked and given to her.

That's why she loves this place, apart from the land and what she has done and grown, it is the people who work these plots. Her Master Baking chum Corinne was not in sight but there were signs that Stuart, who shares the plots with her, had done lots of hard work digging two more huge beds.

HOHO.. time to go! The sky was darkening and she was glad that she had taken a high visibility jacket with her, for she has to cross the A316 and wearing dark clothing, she would be invisible to cars.. not clever if you want to cross a very busy road and make it safely to the other side! The bus came along, she hopped and was grateful to be out of the sharp blustery wind and the temperature had certainly dropped!

She dropped the leaves and the carnations in to her friends', then jiggedy-jig, home she came. She had bought two chickens from our butcher yesterday, so supper was going to be delicious, she heated the oven, put the birds into an oven-proof dish with home grown garlic, herbs, carrots, two shallots and a carrot and set the timer for two hours.

Ooh, such a good smell came sneaking out underneath YumYum HQ's door! She changed into pj's and got a tray ready, with a big plate for her and a small bowl for me. Huh.. as if she thought that would stop me raiding her plate!

How great, hot yumyum is on a winters' evening. She flashed boiled the cabbage leaves, then tossed them in a little olive oil with freshly ground salt and pepper. Pudding was a persimmon and several easy peel satsumas and we drank Lapysang.. it was all delicious and then we settled down to watch Blue Planet 2 on BBC1 and watched in absolute amazement as an octopus, who had been grabbed by a shark, stuck one of his tentacles in to the sharks' gill, thereby cutting off its' air supply and it was able to escape! The whole programme was wonderful so we are grateful to BUB who told us that it was on.

"Thanks BUB". To those of you who are new Dear Readers.. BUB is her cousin but I call him Big Uncle Bruce.. hence BUB.

Her escapades of this morning will be in my next post.. meanwhile, it is wet underfoot with a dreary sky, we need hot drinks and something to eat.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 27th, 2017.
PostScript. The engagement of HRH Prince Harry of Wales and Miss Meghan Markle has been announced. And the reason they didn't announce it earlier was, of course, so it wouldn't take any shine away from the 70th wedding anniversary of his Grandparents.. aka HM The Queen & HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.

PETER JONES REALLY DO HAVE GREAT DEALS!

Frosty Tigers! They said that it was 10 degrees C. Well, here in deepest Knightsbridge at the ungodly hour that we awoke yesterday morning, it wasn't.

But things had to be obtained so she washed, dressed, pulled out a long shearling coat, grabbed a woolen hat and left the house. I was pretty glad that we had had a hot breakfast and that I could perch up somewhere and cogitate my bald navel whilst she had to battle with the outside elements.

She was heading for PC World, the crew at her eye hospital, Moorfields, and her optician are not happy with her just using the iPad and a mobile and told her that the strain of looking at print on such a small screen is causing huge problems with people's eyesight, including hers.

Upon arriving at the branch on Wandsworth Bridge Road, she perused the laptops and wasn't very impressed with their so-called Black Friday deals.

Everything she wanted, 15.6" screen, Intel 5 or 7, dvd, and a 3 year guarantee was way over 500 pounds.. gulp.  


Then she remembered her Lebanese friend told her that he had found his laptop at the winter sales in January at Peter Jones.

She caught a bus back up the Kings' Road and went into the store and up to the 4th floor. Where a helpful man asked her what she was looking for and he asked her to wait until an assistant was free to help her.

She said to the assistant "I know nothing about the technical side of these things but this is what I want it for and I have to have the minimum of a 15" screen and a dvd'".


He showed her several models but they were much too expensive and so she said "I'm retired and I cannot afford that sort of price", he looked at her, smiled and said "come with me" and he led her to the back of the computer and television section, where there was a laptop and several other items.

He said "I have just the thing for you, it has no box but it's an Lenovo, it has a 15.6" screen with a dvd and it comes with a 3 year guarantee, the price is 299 pounds, it was 429 pounds, would this be ok?"

She smiled at him and said "thank you, it is just what I wanted", he unbolted it from the display 
stand and off they went to the till.

Where she handed over a credit card and smiled to herself as she entered the pin.. her frugality over the past few months had certainly paid off!

He disappeared and came back with it and its' charger carefully wrapped up in bubble wrap.

She thanked him for his kindness and help and they parted, she went back to the desk and told the two men who were now standing there how helpful he had been and they smiled at her.

"Thank you madam, how kind of you to tell us, yes, he is good and on a day like today when we are really busy, it is nice to know that customers are happy with the level of service that they have received".

And off down the escalators she went.. to take it to show to her Lebanese friend and to thank him for suggesting that she look in Peter Jones's computer department for a reasonably priced laptop.

And what a joy it is to use! Except she cannot find the pound sign..

GeeGee Parrot.
November 26th, 2017.

NOT A CRUMB WAS LEFT.. AND IMAGINE BEING ABLE TO TRACE YOUR FAMILY TREE BACK, RIGHT BACK TO HAVING WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR AS YOUR ANCESTOR!

We went out to lunch yesterday and took a spiced orange cake with us. We ate potted shrimp, have you ever made them? They were brought by one of the other guests and were delicious. Next came roast pork, yes, there was crackling, with delicious vegetables, roast potatoes for the other guests and mashed sweet potatoes for us. Then our cake with Mackie's vanilla ice cream.

Two guests said "no, thank you" until our host said "Yes you can eat this, I asked her to make this especially because it's both dairy and gluten free", well, that was the end of that cake, it disappeared in a flash for everyone had a second slice! And two of the guests asked her for the recipe of the cake so she directed them to my blog as she said "you'll find it there".

It was a happy meal and not a strain on our host, have you ever thought of doing a lunch like this, it makes sense for the host to do the heavier or hot dish so it doesn't have to travel but actually, if it was a casserole done in a slow cooker for instance it could travel quite happily but it would be quite heavy.

The potted shrimps were scrummydumptious! Little brown shrimps, traditionally caught from the coast of Lancashire, they are also called Morecombe Bay Shrimp. There's a company called Baxters who have been potting them, in clarified butter, for a very long time and very good they are too! Ask your fishmonger if he can get you some as we will be posting the recipe, they're easy to make.

It was a bright sunny day but chilly. A clear sky meant no cloud cover and Jack Frost had visited in the early hours of the morning but after lunch, they went out into the garden to look at the camellias and a crazy, absolutely daft narcissi that has decided to bloom and then we walked home after staying for a cup of tea and wanted for nothing.

But our host had slipped a little surprise in to her basket, for when she went to put her cake box away, she found a package of roast pork together with a jam jar of his excellent home made apple sauce!

We watched television and had an early night.. and one the television programmes we watched 'Who do you think you are?' was extraordinary, the subject of the programme, Frank Gardiner, had always been told by his mother, whose side of the family tree he was tracing, that they had come over to England with William the Conqueror.

And through very exact records, he found that she was correct but it was a bit 'more' than that, for, yes, the ancestor had come over with the Norman invasion of 1066, because it was William himself who was his ancestor! What a turn-up for the research teams!

I don't know the names of my ancestors, it doesn't bother me in the slightest for I care about things of today, like a warm place to perch, a thermos of LapySang tea and her.. aka my mum. Chirp.. she plans to go the allotment today, I'm not going, we have already ascertained that it's veryvery cold out there.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 25th, 2017.

A DAIRY & GLUTEN FREE SPICED ORANGE & ALMOND CAKE!

Who likes Cakes? Who likes Almonds? Who likes Satsumas? Who likes Spices?

Well, Dear Readers, here's a truly delicious dairy and gluten free cake made with almonds, satsumas and spices! Get your pad and a pen and write this shopping list down, then grab your wallet and head off out to buy these ingredients, 'cos I'm telling you folks.. this is a mighty fine cake!

You'll need:

8 Easy Peel Satsumas.
5 Medium sized Eggs separated.
200g Caster Sugar.
250g ground Almonds.
2 Tbsp of either Honey or Maple syrup.
Mix together equal, small, amounts of these ground spices:
Cardamon, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Star Anise and Black Pepper.
A small amount of Icing Sugar.
Vegetable Oil.

Baking Parchment.
A 23cm springform cake tin.
To brush the base and sides of the tin with a little vegetable oil.
To line the base with baking parchment.
A food processor.
A hand whisk.
2 large mixing bowls.
A set of weighing scales.
A skewer.
A very sharp knife.

Preheat your oven to 180c / gas mark 4.

This is how you do it..

Put 4 of the satsumas into a saucepan filled with cold water.
Bring them slowly to the boil and simmer for 25 minutes.
Drain the pan and allow them to cool.
Then whizz them into a puree in a food processor.

In a large bowl whisk the egg yolks and half of the sugar until the mix is pale and fluffy.
In another bowl whisk the egg whites until they make stiff peaks, then whisk in the rest of the sugar.
Fold the pureed satsumas, ground almonds and spice mix into the egg yolk mixture.
Fold in a quarter of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture to loosen it.
Then, slowly & carefully, fold in the rest of the egg whites.
Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin.
Bake for 55 - 60 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave the cake to cool in the tin.

Peel the remaining satsumas and remove any pith.
Slice them using a very sharp knife.
Turn out the cake onto a pretty plate.
Arrange the slices on top of the cake, then drizzle the honey or syrup over the slices.
Dust the top of the cake lightly with icing sugar.

She's making this tomorrow morning and we'll take it with us for pudding when we go out to lunch. It makes a mighty fine pudding especially after a casserole or stew. Tasty yumyum.. slurp!

GeeGee Parrot.
November 23rd, 2017.

HEY FOLKS.. EASY PEELS ARE BACK!

What an amazingly beautiful sky! And, it was dry underfoot, so what wasn't there to love about a day like today? Even the thought of going to meet the new dentist didn't wipe the smile off her face as she left the house.

She came back with WW late this afternoon and WW's basket had several paper bags in it, now you couldn't see what swag she'd brought but you know me.. I can smell yumyum a mile away and the smells coming out of those bags were mighty good!

There were three packs of very slurpy Grecian dried figs, fresh walnuts, persimmons, you might know them as sharon fruits or kakis and then.. oh, ho ho.. true winter fruits.. CITRUS!

Indeed, there was a bag of my favourite citrus fruits.. sixteen easy peel Satumas. Oh, I love these little orange fruits, so does she and we have a veryvery special proceedure when eating these delicious things. She slips the skins off, separates the slices, bites each piece in half, pulls the membrane off and puts them on 'my' plate.

I eat mine veryvery slooowly, unlike her, who munches three times, then whoosh, they're down her throat! So my pile lasts a whole evening but she's fair and doesn't steal even one!

Now stick around folks.. 'cos my next post also involves citrus fruits made into a cake.. yes cake but it's a special cake 'cos it doesn't have any of that gruesome wheat in it, so she can, and does, eat it!

YubbaDubbaDoo.. we just love cake!

GeeGee Parrot.
November 23rd, 2017.

IT PAYS TO BE FRUGAL SOMETIMES..

Our upstairs neighbour has gone away and turned her heating off.. sigh. So I took my clothes off too soon. Yes, folks, I took all my beautiful top vest feathers off as I was too hot, I am rather regretting that I did this although mum has switched our heating on, it's only onto low and only for two very short periods in the day.

However, her frugality has paid off because when she telephoned a meter reading to the gas company, she was told that our bill, for the past three months, was only £49.40. That cheered her up no end! Because, whereas we haven't had the heating on, she has used the gas for lots of cooking and was wondering what the bill would amount to. But under £20.00 a month for the amount of cooking she did last month is certainly acceptable.

She called in to see some friends yesterday but couldn't stay for very long for their house was far too hot, they were wandering around in shirtsleves! How daft can you be? She felt like saying "Put some more clothes on, including socks and turn the heating down or off during the day!" She hates to think what their winter bills will be!

She's canny when she uses the oven, for instance, there will be two chickens roasting in it later today, we'll have one tonight for supper, the rest of which will be eaten cold or made into Chicken-Mess-Up amd the other one will be allowed to cool, stripped off its' carcass, separated and put into frosty larder. Aka freezer.

And, of course, the two carcasses will be put into a stock pot with vegetables to make stock or soup together with two big tubs of whey from the labneh she's just made. There'll be three huge sweet potatoes roasting as well, there's no point in cooking just one chicken when you're heating an oven for an hour and a half, is there?

Today there were library books that had to be changed and some stuff to do at midday, so her plan to go to the allotments was cancelled and oh boy, she was glad that it was. For, whilst she was out and about, the wind became stronger by the minute and rain was starting to fall at 3pm when she came home.

Yesterday was quite mild but she noticed the wind was much stronger when she walked home after having tea and it must have blown itself into a veryvery big blow in the night, for today leaves were thick upon the pavements and trees on our street suddenly are beginning to look bare, in fact, a lot now are, for yes, winter is almost here!

She's meeting a new dentist tomorrow, she isn't happy with the way the new team ay her dental surgery are operating, they're starting to do all manner of 'other' stuff and have spent a fortune 'tarting' up the surgery but the work hasn't been done very well.. so she's going to go to another surgery up the road who have done wonderful work on a friend's teeth.

And on Friday we are having a treat for we are going out to lunch, then hopefully the weekend will be dry, she expects it will be cold but when you're gardening it doesn't really matter for digging and raking leaves soon warms you up. You just have to have waterproof boots and gloves on and maybe a new smart beanie hat like Pat has just knitted for her, she looks like an elf in it!

All is well.. we hope it is in your life too? Yes, I know there's a lot of stuff happening in the world that is grim and unpleasant, but there's nothing I can do about that, my motto is keep your patch 'clean and tidy' and be kind to those you meet, whether they be family, friends or strangers.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 22nd, 2017.

OUR 13th ANNIVERSARY..

Thursday, 18th of November, 2004. She got into the car and headed for Shropshire. The traffic was light and they made good time travelling north. Arriving just after lunch time, she greeted Rebecca, my breeder, and chatted to the other people who worked there whilst my big cage and other supplies were loaded into the car.

She spoke to Sydney, a Hycacinth Macaw, who lives free range and only comes in at night to have a cuddle, his supper and watch television before going to sleep in the big Dutch barn. He is a character, to put it mildly!

"Oh dear, look at the weather!" And there, rolling across the paddocks towards the farmhouse, was dense fog and rain! Ugh, kisses were quickly kissed, I was told by Rebecca to be a good girl and my new mother.. aka mum.. and I slid into the back seat of the car and off we drove to London.

It took hours, the weather was appalling, it was so awful even huge lorries were driving slowly as the rain lashed down in torrents.

North London came into sight after many an anxious moment and eventually the car pulled up to a halt outside the house. They unpacked quickly, she said "Thank you so much" to the kind person who had driven her and carried the last bit of my luggage inside.

She gave me a dish of YumYum and water on her bed and erected my big cage. Then transferred the two dishes into the cage, made herself a cup of tea and came back into the bedroom. It was like I had always been here.. this might sound a bit weird but from the moment I first saw her, when she came up to Shropshire to meet Rebecca and to find a baby African Grey, I knew we would be together and had surprised Rebecca and her greatly by flying on to her shoulder.

So there you are folks.. and as today is the 18th of November, 2017.. it's our 13th anniversary.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 18th, 2017.

WHO REMEMBERS THE PESETA & THE '70's?

Well, she's so old that she remembers them both very well! "Why?" I can hear you all ask.

Well, tonight she was tidying up a little cupboard which is in the sitting room and came across a box tucked away at the bottom. It contained a slightly weird collection of bottles of alcohol.

A litre bottle of Canadian Club was the first one she pulled out. The other were: Bushmills Single Malt Irish Whiskey 10 years old, Creme de Menthe, Creme de Cacoa, Kummel, Cointreau, Peach Schnapps, Ricard and lastly, a bottle of Courvoisier.

She sat down, slightly flummoxed and thought 'Where did they come from?' She looked at the Canadian Club for there was a little label on the neck of the bottle.

And there.. was the answer! It came back to her and she remembered where they had come from, she'd bought them at Malaga Airport, January 1974. 

She was en route back to London having been staying with her parents. In those days, you could literally take as much as you could carry onto the plane and she had scooped as much as she could fit into her lovely basket from duty-free prior to boarding Iberia 825.

Upon arrival at Heathrow, she went straight into the Something to Declare channel and said "I've gots lots to declare!" 

A customs official roared with laughter and said "Ok, show me", he looked at the bottles, sucked his teeth and said "well miss, seeing as how you've  been so honest, I am going to ask you for £10.00 and you can go off and have a happy time with all of this!"

They both laughed, she handed him a £10.00, he 
gave her a form saying 'Duty Paid' and off she 
went with her swag.

She was living in a friend's flat dog sitting whilst the owner was away working in America and she lived there for just over a year before moving in March 1975 into the flat where we live.

Some of the bottles are still unopened, which is a miracle seeing as how, in those days, people used to drink all manner of 'exciting' drinks after dinner!


But, I'm sure you're wondering about the reference in the title to the old Spanish currency, well, you see the little label on the Canadian Club was the price label.. in Pesetas and how much was the price of this litre bottle?

Be prepared.. Pts 23.90. Ah, life in the 70's was 
'pretty good', for you see, Pts 1,000 was £5.00!

Ahh..

GeeGee Parrot.
November 16th, 2017.

FAKE NEWS IN FULHAM.. "BUT IT MUST BE TRUE, IT'S ON THE WEB!

Well.. Dear Readers.. there were a couple of very confused people on the North End Road yesterday. for they were searching for a shop which wasn't there. 

Mum was talking to Maggie, more on her later, when these two women approached them and said "We are looking for the Aldi store, do you know where it is?" 

Maggie and mum said in one breath "the nearest one is on Tooting High Street, you can either go to Clapham Junction on a 295 and catch a 319 or go by tube to Tooting Broadway".

"But there's one here on this street" said one of the women, who pulled out her mobile phone and fiddled with it. Maggie looked at mum and smiled, "there" said the woman and sure enough, on Google, there was an Aldi store listed as being at 375. North End Road, Fulham, London SW6.

"No, sorry love" said Maggie. "Number 375 used to be a shop called Shop & Save but it's now a Farrow & Ball Paint Shop".

And Maggie and Mum both said "Fake News in Fulham!" 

Poor women.. off they trundled with their fabric bags on wheels, goodness knows where they had come from but they weren't happy. 

Back to Maggie, she's been away for ten months in Australia but NOT on holiday. Her lovely son, who was living in Melbourne, was savagely attacked, beaten and left for dead by three young Somalians. 

Luckily and extraordinarily, the whole incident was captured on camera and the three men were found and are in custody. 

Initially, they thought that he might never recover from his injuries, that the damage to his brain was too severe and that he would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

But Maggie has now been able to bring him home, the hospital in Melbourne to where he was taken were absolutely brilliant. Their rehabilitation teams worked wonders, but he is left with damage to his frontal lobe.

Oi vey..

She's off to her Moorfields Glaucoma Clinic and I'm going to spend the day figuring out how to get this cupboard door open.. for the top shelf, where there are piles of bed linens, would be a mighty snug place to snuggle down and spend the day. 

PipPip.. 

GeeGee Parrot.
November 15, 2017.

HALF A BEEF BRISKET & TWO PIGS' TROTTERS.

Came home in WW with her yesterday afternoon, for the weather is now cold enough to justify her cooking a large piece of beef and to make a huge stock pot of pork soup. And in the winter, in our house, a large piece of beef will always be brisket!

This cut of beef is solid meat with its' wonderful fat which she cooks in a big casserole with browned onions, lots of minced garlic, seasoning, beef stock with smoked paprika and Worcestershire sauce.

She got it into the oven at 6pm, looked at it at 11pm and decided it needed longer, so it cooked for six and a half hours at gas mark 3. And on top of the stove was a huge stock pot full of pork bones and a pair of chopped up trotters, trotters being the correct name for pigs' feet. They give a pork based vegetable soup a wonderful amount of gelatine and are extremely tasty.

As neither of this items would have been ready for us to eat last night, she reached into the chilly white larder.. aka fridge.. and pulled out a package which Juliano had given her when she left on Saturday night. And, oh joy! LookieLookie, there were eight beautifully stuffed cabbage leaves!

She took four of the cabbage packages, put them into a small saucepan and with a ladle, reached into the stock pot and and took out a generous amount of pork stock, brought the stock up to the boil and simmered the stuffed cabbage leaves for several minutes.

Now many of you will, I am sure, know how to cook brisket but if you don't here's a simple but truly veryvery delicious recipe for you.

First go to your butcher! Do not go to a supermarket for brisket, they'll have trimmed off most of the fat and if you're slow cooking beef for several hours, you need all of that fat!

And there's absolutely no point in buying just a little bit of this glorious meat! Because it takes a long time to cook, you might as well cook a large amount and freeze a lot of it or share the meat with friends.

So off she and WW went down to the North End Road. Her butcher pulled out a whole brisket and asked her how much she wanted, she drew a line across it and said " I want this piece with the fat" and he smiled at her and said "how many hours and what with?". 

"Ah", she said " you know me, I do it the way Mary taught me and it's so good, why would I ever do it another way, she was a brilliant cook, wasn't she?" and they smiled at each other.

This is a dish which is much much better cooked a day or two ahead of when you want to eat it. Cook it one evening, let the casserole sit in the oven with the heat turned off for the night, in the morning take the fat off and let the dish sit in the coolest place possible.

So this is what you need and how you cook it..

You need a good amount of brisket from a proper butcher with the fat.
3 good sized onions.
We use almost a whole head of garlic.
2 Tbsp of Olive oil.
Freshly ground Pepper and salt.
1 Dessert spoonful of Smoked Paprika.
1Tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
2 cups of (preferably home made) beef stock.
3 large carrots sliced not too thinly.
2 skinny but not too big parsnips sliced not too thinly.

You will need:
A large frying pan.
A smaller frying pan.
A casserole large enough to take the brisket.

**The lid of the casserole has to be a good fit, if it isn't, when you're ready to cook, put a layer of tin foil over the top of the casserole, crunch it down around the sides and then place the lid on, you want all the moisture to remain inside the pot!

Preheat your oven to gas mark 3 or the equivalent in electric.

Take the brisket and rub it allover with a mix of crushed and chopped garlic (4 or 5 fat cloves), freshly ground salt and black pepper and smoked paprika. Let the meat sit for at least 30 minutes.

Gently fry the sliced onions and 3 crushed & chopped cloves of garlic in 2 tbs of olive oil until they are brown but not burnt.

In a big skillet / frying pan (WITHOUT any oil) which you've previously heated up, place the meat, then turn it and brown it on all sides.

Mix the stock & Worcestershire sauce together.

Put the meat FAT side up into your casserole. Pour in the beef stock mix, put the carrots and parsnips around the meat and then place the browned onions and garlic on top of meat.

**Please read this about keeping the moisture inside the casserole!

Set your timer for 5 hours.

The piece she cooked last night was very large, it cooked for six and a half hours. The casserole was much too large to go into the chilly white larder, so she just turned the heat off, left the oven door open and went to bed. This morning it looks like a dream! The fat has become solid, this afternoon, she'll skim it off, melt it down, pour it into an old glass jar to keep and use as dripping.

About half of the meat will be portioned up and frozen, the remaining half will be split into two, half for us and the remaining half we'll up the road to our Lebanese friends for a supper on Thursday and we'll eat it with a crisp salad of endive and radicchio served with a lemon dressing and it will be truly delicious.

Now, off you go to talk to your butcher..

GeeGee Parrot.
November 14th, 2017.

MY MIDDLE INITIAL IS S & OTHER PEOPLE'S CENTRAL HEATING.

Not many people know that I have a second name, in fact, I think it's probably only known by mum and myself. Luckily I'm called by it very seldom because it's quite shameful.. it's.. Sloth.

She gave it to me one day when I had started to 'grow up' and become a bit independent. I was slow, veryvery slow to come to her hand one night and when I did eventually step down on to it, she brought me up to her face and said "You know what your second name is? It's Sloth.

Moving swiftly along.. today was a pretty good day. First of all, it was very cold (read freezing) when we woke up, so we were both extremely glad to have our eggy yumyums and slurps of lapysang tea. It stayed cold too, so she dressed in cold weather gear, kissed Beaky and set off up Yeoman's Row to visit our Lebanese friends to collect stuff that she was giving to mum for charity.

It took WW and her four trips to collect all the stuff that she was donating. Books, three huge bags of linens, lace and crochet trimmings and some lovely silver which will be divided between the 'Crisis' Charity shop in Hackney, Crisis supports local homeless people and this shop is a near neighbour to her opticians in Mare Street and New Horizons in Cadogan Street.

She combed through the linens and the trimmings, separating them into two piles, the silver and the pile of linens will go to Crisis and the trimmings will go to New Horizons. There are people there who want lace and crochet trims but don't want linens, it made her work much easier!

She went up the road a fifth time and stayed for over an hour having a cup of tea and saying "Thank you for the donations" then came home.. to a cosy flat! She feblt the difference as soon as she came through the front door. It was toasty warm.. how strange because it wasn't warm outside, that was for sure!

She suddenly disappeared back out of the front door, then reappeared literally a minute later with a huge grin on her face, the upstairs neighbour has arrived. Her flat must have been chilly when she arrived from goodness knows where. (She has mulpile homes, as you do when you're a Venezuelan (by birth) lawyer now carrying a UK passport who specialises in 'taking' companies overseas and basing them in Panama).

In fact, her home must have been absolutely freezing when she arrived for we haven't been heating it with heat from our boiler, that's for sure! HeeHee, maybe we won't have to switch our boiler on in December after all. That's good news when you're saving up for something and being frugal, isn't it?

She had another piece of good news. The invoices have arrived for the allotments and due to the huge amount of rain that we have experienced this year, the water bill for each plot for the coming year is only £4.70!

Phew.. that's certainly worth a Yubba-Dubba-Doo, don't you agree? Now it's goodnight from us both.

GeeGee (Sloth) Parrot.
November 12th, 2017.

AND OUT WE WENT TO SUPPER..

Yubba dubba.. what a delicious supper we had last night with our new young friends. They are Romanians and we met them recently through an Armenian friend whom we met through our much beloved Lebanese friends, our circle of friends is truly cosmopolitan, is it not!

Getting there to their home could not be easier, for they live forty houses away from a C1 bus stop on a quiet street overlooking a beautifully maintained square. They're lucky, because not only do they over look this lovely space but they have a huge terrace as well!

He is the cook in the family and what a cook too! The smell, as we entered their flat, was scrumptious and so after she had shed her jacket and unpacked me from my tiny travelling cage, she went into their kitchen to greet Juliano and investigate the source of the smell!

To find.. ooh! One of our favourite winter dishes, three gammon hocks roasting in stock with beans and root vegetables. I love this and she thinks my eating the fat is responsible for the glossiness of my new feathers, which Dear Readers, I'm sure you will be pleased to know, are covering up most of my tumtum.

She had taken two hostess gifts, one was a huge pot of our home made labneh and the other a gift box of her, also home made, crystallised ginger. As we've said before.. a cold winter is a'coming and ginger warms your tumtum and helps keeps that naughty cold at bay!

What a funny time they had! She asked them how they met as they didn't meet in Romania, Andreea grew up Bucharest and Juliano grew up eight hours away from the city in the depths of countryside. The stories of how they both got here to London is a book in itself!

And they started taking about the Romanian 'beggars' who have come to 'work' in the UK and oh boy, did they have tales to tell! Andreea went to fetch her iPad and went onto a Romanian website on Romanian Gypsy architecture and interior design, there were hundreds of photographs of the most extraordinary houses with interiors the like of which you cannot, could not, would not believe to be true! They squealed with laughter at the look on her face.

These two, I hasten to add, are not Gypsies and are both carriers of legally obtained UK passports!

Then it was their turn to ask her.. when did you come to London, what did you do, how old were you and they were incredulous when she said "I came to London fifty years ago" and filled in the past fifty years!

Meanwhile, I was perambulating about the dining table as free as 'de bird', having a little snack here and a little snack there off everyone's plates.. sadly she told them that I wasn't allowed chocolate, so I didn't sample the delicious looking chocolate mousse that Andreea had made.. that was a great pity as it looked very tasty.

But time waits for no man and soon it was quite late and our sweet hostess said "It's cold, I'll run you home", so I clambered back into my cage, Juliano was kissed, down the stairs and out to the car we went and ten minutes later, we walked in through our own front door. What a pleasant evening..

And we have awoken to a sunny but damp day, she'll go to the library, take tea with our Lebanese friends, collect things that she is donating to charity and tomorrow, well tomorrow, as Scarlet so wisely said, is another day.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 12th, 2017.

COLD & WET UNDERFOOT.. 'RATHER HER THAN ME' I THOUGHT.

Brrrr.. Monday's lovely weather seems like a dream, for today it's chilly and wet outside. She's being extremely frugal and apparently the heating isn't going to be turned on until December. I had a sneaky thought that she might be subjecting us to this because she thinks it will make my feathers grow back faster, evil wench! And I do admit to wishing that I hadn't plucked them out.

She would like to pull up the 'drawbridge' as it were because outside doesn't look at all appetising but library books won't change themselves, she has to investigate something at PC World and then go to Lidl at Clapham Junction for lots of their dark chocolate and an assortment of nuts with which she'll make several chocolate salami.

Talking of nuts, fresh (wet) walnuts are in the markets! Oh, slurp-the-durp! She saw them on Liz's stall in the North End Road last Friday, £1.00 for a big bowl of them, they're so delicious, especially if you've got some very good cheese to eat them with.

And for a huge treat she's ordering a brisket from Dickinsons, our very lubbly-jubbly butchers also in the North End Road. Cooked slowly and for several hours, it is one of the most delicious (and cheap) cuts of beef.

She rubs hers with smoked paprika, crushed garlic and herbs, it is wonderful cooked with carrots and shallots, we can't eat ordinary potatoes in this house as being a member of the Nightshade family, along with tomatoes, aubergines and peppers, they cause her arthritis to flare dramatically and the knuckles on her left hand and both her knees to become extremely stiff and swollen. But mashed sweet potato goes with it just as well!

Other things make her arthritis flare.. Wheat and Corn are two other BIG triggers as is dairy.. but only sometimes! She can eat some cheese but not others. The harder the cheese is, the less pain she gets so very sadly she is having to say "Farewell" to her two favourite soft Goaty cheeses.

Well, this isn't getting those library books changed, is it? She's off out and about and so I'll flap my way to a comfy perch and cogitate my somewhat bare tumtum. Silly me. Let's hope my 'clothes' grow back quickly and that I resist the urge to pluck them out again.

GeeGeeParrot.
November 8th, 2017.

'PUNCHING' OUT THEIR PERFUME..

We slept well last night. She made a delicious supper of gammon, with mashed pumpkin over which she'd sweated chard, endive and spinach leaves and our pudding was a chunk of that most excellent Kirkhams' Lancashire cheese and one of our own Idared apples.

With full and happy tummies, a good book for her to read and a comfy warm head for me to doze upon, the evening was extremely pleasant and a much needed rest after the six and a half hours hard graft she had put in at the allotments.

Today it is dull and gloomy out there. A day to stay home and do laundry and housework, who says that laundry has to be done on a Monday? 

Not in this house it isn't! It's done on dull days when the weather is grim. 

I've been invited out to supper! She received a call this morning to ask her if she like to go and have supper on Saturday with Andreea and Juliano and Juliano said "and please bring GeeGee with you"! 

We met them quite recently and it was Andreea who was the first to coo and cluck over me and to 
let me meander all over her head. Juliano wasn't so brave but I charmed him and now, I have two new friends! 

How about that! She'll make a fat long chocolate salami to take with us as our 'thank you' gift.. it being wintertime, she'll fiddle with the recipe a little bit by adding crystallised ginger and a slurp of ginger syrup.

When she woke up this morning, she sniffed the air and thought 'that's curious, something smells different', then realised it was the carnations and the roses that are in an old jug beside her bed.

In gratitude from being 'rescued' from the cold allotments where Mr. Jack Frost has come to visit, they're filling the air with their divine perfumes.

Ain't nothing like the smell of your own flowers.

Time to go Dear Readers.. jump about a bit, stay warm, drink hot tea and eat ginger!

GeeGee Parrot.
November 7th, 2017.

BLUE TOPAZ, SCARLET ROYAL WILLIAM, PINK SAVOY HOTEL & WHITE PINKS.

The sky was the colour of a dark blue topaz, it was 3 degrees and the garden nutter, aka my mother, trotted out of our house at 08.30am.. I tell you, Dear Readers, there's no hope for her or me, for that matter for she is, afterall, my only parent.

We had woken up at the hideous hour of 06.45 and she bribed me to be 'a good girl' by giving me a soft boiled egg with a teaspoonful of labneh together with my own mug of warm, being careful that it wasn't too hot, lapysang tea.

Many layers of clothing were put on! Her, not me. Thick cotton tights, long sleeved thermal vest, cotton t.shirt, her much beloved Scottish winter sweater, corduroy trousers and boots, a scarf round her neck, woollen gloves and an old Barbour tweed jacket.

She filled Constance's thermos with lapysang, put some bags into a basket, kissed Beaky and left for the plots. And the connections all came along as soon as she appeared. The train pulled into the station as she got to the platform, the bus appeared when she got to the stop and she walked down the steps onto the allotments in less than forty minutes after leaving the house. That's a record!

AND.. OH BOY! Old Jack Frost had come in the night to the plots and had scattered his icy wares everywhere! She had two huge Hubbard squash, that on Sunday were alive and in great shape, but naughty old Jack had struck at them last night with his icy wand and now they were dead and her dark crimson dahlias in a huge terracotta pot on the terrace didn't look too happy either!

But now there wasn't a cloud in the sky, the sun was shining and raking leaves and digging gets you warm in no time!

Soon Corinne appeared and they imbibed fresh coffee and ate fresh homemade Madeleines! Then it was back to work, she pruned all the roses and two of the apples trees. She'll finish them and do the four pear trees on Wednesday.

Time to trundle again.. up and down the track she went fetching more manure to cover the vegetable bed. The frost had worked its' magic on the bed that she'd filled yesterday, the level had dropped dramatically and so another eight wheelbarrow loads were added, yes, that equals a lot of trundling up and down the track.

Wow.. four o'clock! How times flies when you're working hard at something you love. She packed her tools away, picked up a pair of garden scissors and went off to pick flowers. There was lovely things, several dark scarlet Royal William, pink Savoy Hotel roses and lots of delicious clove smelling white carnations.

Shack locked up, she poured herself a cup of tea and stood looking at her plots and thought of how grateful she is for the peace and pleasure that this small piece of land has given her for nearly seventeen years.

Winter is a'coming and last nights frost was a taste of what's to come, the bushes are all laden with berries, she thinks that this winter will be a bitter and very cold one and will be getting a big supply of fat and seed balls for her allotment birds and will make sure their water supply is kept full, she pours a little olive oil into it to help it stop freezing.

Water is vital for birds in wintertime, please make sure that your wild birds have a good, clean supply  but not at ground level so that they can perch and drink safely away from cats and dogs. Now.. where's my night-time mug of tea?

GeeGee Parrot.
November 6th, 2017.

NOVEMBER LEAVES, ROSES & RASPBERRIES!

Up and down the track she went eight times, trundling along with a wheelbarrow, up empty, down full of horse manure. She made a new raised bed last weekend with double board edges and being so high, it took a LOT of manure to fill it to the top of the  boards. 

After this, seemingly endless, trundling back and forth, it was light work to plant all the cloves from two huge garlic into beds that she made in September. 

Mr. and Mrs. Worm had pulled the manure that she had covered them in down into the soil and it's light and fluffy and, it was weed free!

It was a glorious day! Too chilly for me to go but she was wearing cold weather clothes and boots and had a woollen hat for when the sun went down. Short hair and chilly autumnal days equal cold ears! 

And.. She is.. OH.. SO happy! The tree surgeons have been and taken down all of the dreaded self-seeded sycamore trees which covered the plot to the east / south east of our plots numbers 39 and 41.

There were so many of them and they were so big we never got sunshine until after 1.30pm and now the difference in light on our plots is truly amazing!

At 4pm, with the sun and the temperature dropping fast, it was time to gather her tools together, lock up the Shack and catch the bus home but not before she had gathered a bag of winter leaves, sorrel, chard, cabbage, endive, which is going crimson as the temperature drops, spinach, mizuna and landcress.

There weren't enough to put in a box to bring home but certainly enough to pop into her mouth and savour.. ah, Autumn Raspberries but there were lots of glorious roses to pick. Pristine, Peace, Ellen, Compassion being some of them.

She's off there again tomorrow at some outrageous hour to meet Corinne, they're renting a van and collecting as many pallets as they can to repair their fences and will use the van to carry giant Hippo bags full of manure down to their plots.

Corinne will bring a home-made yumyum, she's a 'serious' baker and mum will produce proper coffee. The weather forecast is for a bright sunny day.. sounds good to me. 

I'll doze at home.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 5th, 2017.

WHY WASTE WHEY?

Whey is a by-product of cheese making and it's not to be thrown away unless you're a very silly-billy! She makes Labneh (aka Lebanese cheese) every week and as there are times when she hasn't got that fresh raw goaty milk, she uses a shop bought yoghurt called 'Lancashire Yoghurt - Greek style'.

This particular yoghurt is extremely good value for two tubs of 500g (1000g) makes about 980g of labneh and it's quicker to drain because the yoghurt is denser than the one in the paler blue pot, there's much less whey in Greek style yoghurt.

We have a secret passion.. roasted gammon hock! After eating the meat you have the skinny bones which she puts into one of her big stock pots (with other hock bones that she has kept in the freezer) with lots of root vegetables, onions, garlic and herbs and seasoning.

Hubble-Bubbled for several hours over a medium heat it produces a wonderful liquid, which you could use as stock but we prefer as a thick soup with the softened vegetables mashed up and just before she ladles it out, in goes the whey!

So if you make labneh.. keep your whey and use it for : making Bread, Soup and Stock.

Waste not.. Want not.

Rain is tipping down here in deepest Knightsbridge! We're at home, she food shopped on Thursday, so we want for nothing. There's a slice of Skirt aka Flank or Bavette steak sitting on the work surface with herbs rubbed on to it for an early supper, which we will eat with together pumpkin with garlic, ginger and nutmeg which she made yesterday, Beaky had many slurps of that last night. Yum! Delicious!

The weather forecast for tomorrow is for cloud with sunshine and a bright, clear and sunny day on Monday with rain due on Tuesday, that suits her well, as does this rain. For it will help rot down the copious amounts of horse manure she spread over the beds last weekend and Mr. & Mrs. Worm will be extremely happy to have such a snuggly bed for the winter!

Tomorrow and Monday she'll: finish loading manure onto the beds, plant copious amounts of garlic, complete the apple and pear tree pruning and plant lots of different varieties of tulips in the back bed, she's planning to have delphiniums and hollyhocks at the back of this bed which is the back border of the terrace.

Our Lebanese friend has called, she, too, is having an at home day, yes, it's really miserably cold and wet but they've made plans to meet on Friday. We're sorry for Corinne having to be out in the rain, she's on duty at her youngest son's rugby training, we're also sorry for her husband, whose new motor bike was stolen from outside Waitrose in Chiswick last night at 7pm! Sadly, he didn't have a tracking device on it. Corinne has immediately booked an appointment with her garage to have a tracker fitted to her scooter!

That's our news.. all is well and we hope that it us with you too.

GeeGee Parrot.
November 4th, 2017.
PostScript: We have just had a call from a happy Corinne, her husband told his Honda garage about his bike being stolen and they said "walk the streets to look for it, it's a very heavy bike to push, they will have broken the steering as it was locked and they'll have left it locally until they get a trailer for it.

So he got up reallyreally early this morning and well.. LookieLookie what he found! There was his
motor bike, tucked away down a quiet cul-de-sac and only five streets away from his home! Needless to say it's now at Honda being repaired and with a tracker being fitted. 

OLD AND DUSTY BUT OH.. SO TRUSTY!

Those of you Dear Readers who read this blog regularly will remember her rant about that excellent brand of thermos flasks, Stanley, that used to be made in America.

The company was sold and the items are all now manufactured in China.. sigh.. and now, well, they're no longer excellent at keeping anything hot or cold.

Last week she was rootling about in the bottom of a cupboard in the old boiler room looking for the anti-slip grips that she wears on the bottom of boots in extremely wet or icy weather and lookielookie, what did she find? 

Why, none other than Constance's old and much loved 'Thermos' thermos!

She dustied it off, gave it a good wash and filled it with boiling water, screwed on the top and turned it upside down. Ahha! Not a drop or dribble of water emerged. She screwed on the cup and left the thermos in YumYum HQ and went about her business.

A full eighteen hours later she opened it up and poured a cup of.. still very hot water! 

Yes, her basket is now heavier to carry but on cold days when she's busy digging making new vegetable beds or trundling back and forth up and down the track fetching barrow loads of horse manure, it is exceedlingly nice to be able to pour herself a mug of steaming hot LapySang tea.

Ahh yes.. hot tea. Coffee is delicious but it doesn't carry the same degree of warmth to one's body as tea does. Slurp.. I just lurve LapySang at anytime of the day or evening and luckily she does too

GeeGee Parrot.

November 3rd, 2017.