Mad Hair Day

I’ll spare you the tales of sloth, gluttony, exorbitant consumerism and out-of-control, sugar-fuelled toddler behaviour. Likewise the Chardonnay-driven adults. Christmas is over for another year and now that we have finished shovelling up the shredded paper and mince pie crumbs and generally sleeping it off, our thoughts turn to self improvement - mostly because my mother keeps phoning to ask what my New Year’s Resolutions are going to be. She does this every year, she calls us all and makes notes of our good intentions. She says it is to help us acheive our goals by timely encouragements and occasional reminders. We have another word for it.

I’ll point out, in case you think that I am ranting (or that she has finally driven me over the edge) that I adore my mother. She is a strong, intelligent, charming woman. She comes from a long line of battleaxes and we are very proud of our matriachal ancestry. That said, it would be fair to point out that I am also a budding battleaxe, I have a Masters degree, three children and my own business and, therefore, it would be reasonable to believe that I am capable of crossing the road without my mother gripping my arm with her fingers of steel. This is because she thinks that I am still 12 and can’t handle the pedestrian crossing. Without fail, she grabs my elbow and says, “Wait for the little green man.”

This year we shared the Christmas Dinner cooking - I made unfeasibly large numbers of mince pies (homemade mincemeat, homemade shortcrust pastry - no cutting corners here!) and trays of hors d’oeuvres. I also made stuffed chicken breasts (none of us are particularly fond of turkey) full of sausage stuffing and wrapped in bacon (thus removing the angst-ridden roasting and carving of huge dry birds that require multiple amputations to fit in the oven if they are big enough to serve all twenty of  us). Despite earning several professional culinary qualifications including Health and Hygiene Certification I was asked NO LESS THAN FIVE TIMES if I had defrosted the chicken properly! This was followed up with a further FOUR queries into the pinkness/ rawness/ poisonousness of the meat!

I finally lost my remaining shred of patience and shouted, “Dear God, Mother! I’m thirty eight! I’ve been doing this for twenty years! I can cook a bloody chicken!”

“Yes dear,” she answered, “Bloody chicken. That’s what I’m worried about.”

AARRGGHH!

I’ve been hiding from my blog. I’ve also been hiding from my ironing pile and my mother. And the common factor here is that they all make me feel guilty. At least, they did until I knocked back half a bottle of Cab Sav and got a grip. This is, after all, MY blog. If I choose to spend my weeks earning enough money to feed the staff then so be it. If I spend my spare time lying face down on the carpet/ duvet/ sandy beach then that too is my choice! The fact that my ironing pile threatens to topple and swallow small children in its avalanche is beside the point. My mother’s plaintive messages on the answerphone (all about Christmas arrangements, another reason for hair-rending guilt) are but distant whispers thanks to our friends at Jacob’s Creek. And my blog? I’ve been so utterly hormonal and humourless lately that my dull damn-slow socks are doing you a favour by not making an appearance.

I’ve been knitting the feet toe-up in stocking stitch with every intention of doing something more interesting on the leg. And it is going pretty well so far. It just rather (okay, very) boring. And while my fingers do the knitknitknitknit thing in endless rounds, my brain is ticking over on my sanity-saving project (it’s what I think about when work starts to drive me crazy) which has progressed from the nonsensical daydream stage to the actually-drawing-it-on-paper bit.

In the meantime, it is finally summer here. And, in New Zealand, this means scorching hot days punctuated by torrential downpours at a second’s notice. There is a reason this country is so green, you know. In the last week I’ve planted 12 trees, been to two business meetings, attended a regional lunch for business women- lively company, lovely food and after the speeches we all strolled onto the beach and paddled in the shallows, a tidemark of high-heeled sandals and handbags abandoned along the sand.

I also went to the local spinning, knitting and weaving group’s Christmas lunch which was held at the most beautiful spot I’ve ever seen. A house on a clifftop, overlooking two hidden coves with turquoise waters and golden sands, rockpools and seaweed, blooming pohutakawas clinging to the rocky slopes. Forgive the purple prose, the place really was this beautiful.

Another sign of summer is the frantic preserving that takes place as the local produce turns up at every layby and farm gate in the area. The local farmers sell their ripe crops with honesty boxes by the roadside and there are strawberries everywhere. I’ve been boiling and stirring all day. And in the best Mad Hair Day tradition, I’ve managed to cock things up entirely. In my usual quest to do seven things at once (you might wonder “why?” - I have no idea, I think it’s a habit) I was making apricot jam in one pan and tomato chutney in another while talking on the phone (to my insane mother) and with a daughter clinging to each leg and Him Indoors stealing the ingredients straight from the pan. I made a teensy mistake. I threw the brown sugar and spices for the chutney into the jam. Luckily, I’d only measured out the ginger and cinnamon, but still, EEK! The apricot jam is usually the easy one and it always comes out such a glorious orange colour. The soft brown sugar began to melt almost immediately and the luminous apricot colour turned to muddy brown. So, shrieking “Sod it, sod it!” I ladled out as much as I could and, for want a of better place to put it, threw it into the chutney. This meant that the chutney had more fruit than the proportions of the recipe called for so I had to find more vinegar, sugar and spices to balance it out, which is when I realized that I’d pretty much run out of all of those and it was helpfully pointed out that my habit of putting empty jars and boxes back into the larder was perhaps less than sensible. Pointed out by my mother, who was still on the phone generously offering a running commentary on my language. “Really dear, I don’t know where you learnt words like that. We sent you to such a Nice School.” (This from the woman who taught my babies to say ‘bugger’.)

Still, the results seem to be edible, having been duly tested and approved by my children, the ever-willing lab-rats of my culinary experiments. The stuff is bottled, labelled and cooling on the window sill even as I type. Four big jars of Secret Recipe Strawberry Jam, 8 jars of Whatever’s Left In The Larder Chutney and 5 jars of Sod It Jam.

I often daydream about nice it would be if everyone knitted. Just think; there would be as many yarn shops as there are coffee shops. Nobody would ask silly questions like “is that crochet?” or “why don’t you just buy some for $3.99?” and it wouldn’t be rude to knit through the dull bits in a wedding service (currently we must amuse ourselves by laughing at other people’s hats).

As part of my plan for Total World Domination I am slowly but insidiously submerging the unsuspecting in a fibrecentric atmosphere.

(A little background: I work in a small company, there are three of us in the office - me and two technicians. They don’t knit, they can’t tell cashmere from carpet fluff, they wouldn’t know a dpn if it came up and poked them in the eye. They showed a brief interest in my spinning wheel but only as long as it took them to offer (and be rejected) to rig it up to a two stroke engine and make the whole thing more ‘powerful’)

Well, this week we did a little desk moving. Our company is growing and we are constantly trying to find ways to fit a quart into a pint pot. During the organization we addressed our Cabling Situation (worthly of the capital letters, believe me) when we pulled out the workbench. This is what we saw:

“Blimey,” said Technician Number One (or something like that) “look at those loose ends.”

Technician Number Two nods, “Don’t you just hate intarsia.”

Proof Positive: That Men (and Techie Men in particular) DO listen - even if it is just for ammunition for teasing!!!

But guess who they made weave in all those ends.