We're just about getting on top of the cleaning

A month ago builders came to smash down a stone wall outside our back door, as there was nobody inside the house they didn't think there was any need to shut the back door while they were working, so when I arrived home two weeks ago our home had been turned into the Sahara with drifts of sand reaching up to the top of the house.

Last week The Man arrived from Mongolia with bags of torn trousers and many types of thermal underwear, including woolly longpants  so heavy that I can't lift them on my own. These articles have been in a production line of washing and draping to dry then sorting into drawers or piles for mending.

I might have already mentioned that I am very keen on mending. I have a Massive Fan Girl crush on Celia Pym who currently has work in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Celia is a textile artist who specialises in visible mending, she also trained as a nurse, inviting hospital staff to bring loved but worn or broken items to the anatomy department, she mended them and this became an exhibition.

Visible mending shows the patterns of wear, the way that our clothes work with our bodies, how these and our bags, shoes or clothes become extensions of us - if these things are good at keeping us warm/dry/comfortable/happy then, like a beloved body part, they should be maintained for as long as possible.

It's going to hit minus twenty five degrees in Ulaanbaatar

Mongolia. The Man has travelled one thousand and a bit miles beyond Ulaanbaatar which I guess means one thousand and a bit miles even colder. He has been looking for snow leopards and for the last two months he has remained unshowered, unshaven and layered like a Baklava in silk thermals and camel thermals and woolies and fur-lined boots all topped with a long Mongolian Man's Coat with a special-sash-that-you-have-to-wear-with-these-coats-or-it's-Bad-Luck.


Once a week there was an underwater satellite call during which I could just about grasp that he's walking really far and up lots of hills carrying really heavy things and he tells me facts like every Mongolian he has spoken to has admitted to inadvertently licking a metal thing in this fierce cold and needing help to get separated, also Goat Fat Stew is delicious and alcohol made with fermented mare's milk is 'quite nice but tastes like goat'.

The Man reckons that the walking and the weight of the kit and the weight of the clothes combined are reducing his body weight but he can't tell because in all these weeks he has never unwrapped those layers. That's two months without a shower - and I get to welcome the smelly hairy marvel home tomorrow night.

In other news
a film about ants and Sir David Attenborough will air on the BBC on 8th December Xmas -ish - look out for it if you can, I shall probably mention this again. 

It has been a very sad week

on Monday we held the funeral for the wife of our friend who died earlier this year. This woman was my neighbour and a very kind friend, she looked exactly like a Modigliani painting come to life. We used to take tea in her elegant yellow lounge and she would invite me to join them for delicious family suppers and we used to go together to look at art and other lovely things.

I have an arthritic thumb joint

I've heard that turmeric can alleviate the inflammation. I wasn't sure how to make it a regular part of my diet until my recent stay in Stoke Newington - a neighbourhood with a lot of cosmopolitan green grocers. A couple of weeks ago among the cascades of plantains, yellow dates, and dozens of UVIs* I spotted some nice-looking fresh turmeric, I bought a few knobs and took them back to experiment. Hand-grated turmeric is not kind to the mouth.

Luckily Stoke Newington is also the sort of neighbourhood where people like trends, the juice trend is over and these monster machines are being thrown to make way for 'Nutrient Extractors'.  Walking around the neighbourhood looking at my bright yellow hands I thought - I need a juicer - and like magic there was one on the wall. 

This beast has changed my life,  turmeric juice can be added with beneficial effect to EVERYTHING (I make a batch and freeze in ice cube trays) - the mashed turmeric fibres in the outbox are good in flapjacks.



*Unidentified Vegetable Objects