And lashings of Ginger Beer!

I don’t know if you remember this, but I do. As a child and a younger person, I have memories of a time when Boots the Chemist had a whole section dedicated to the art of Home Brewing. In fact, my parents went through a phase, in those far-off days when wine was hardly ever consumed at home, of making stuff from kits. I was too young to sample the results, but I have a feeling they may have been a bit nasty. Mind you, in those days few knew the difference. After all, the height of sophistication to wash down your prawn cocktail or black forest gâteau was a bottle of Black Tower or Mateus Rosé.

Apart from the wines, there was, in Boots, a whole raft of equipment and ingredients for brewing your own beer.  Hydrometers, hops, yeast and big plastic buckets took up whole shelves…

I’ll get to the point. TH and sons #1 and #2 have started to teeter on the brink of becoming beer bores. TH does enjoy a glass of wine each evening. I don’t. In life’s lottery, I have been dealt a losing hand. I CAN drink wine, but not only do I derive no real pleasure from it, any more than a glass tends to make me ill. I am what I can only describe as a “lightweight” when it comes to imbibing alcohol. Or, as some prefer to describe me, a “designated driver”.

Over the past few years, manly conversations in the N-o-T household have frequently turned to new beers, micro-breweries, beer festivals, tasting sessions and, more recently, home brewing. So far, it’s been mostly just talk, but last year son#1 and a friend brewed some beer from scratch, and in order to do so they borrowed all TH’s beer-making equipment, which hadn’t seen the light of day since before son#1 was born. And so, when  TH suddenly announced that he had an urge to make some alcoholic ginger beer, there was a problem. The equipment was missing.

Once upon a time, this problem could have been remedied by way of a quick trip to Boots. Alas, Boots has long ago withdrawn from the home brewing market, and alternative suppliers are a bit thin on the ground. But TH was determined. 

Thus it was that yesterday we set out on a journey to that well known centre of home brewing: Aldershot.  Now I don’t know much about Aldershot, but I do know that it’s not exactly On The Doorstep. In fact, it’s far enough away that we had to break out the Satnav.  As it was a sunny day -almost a forgotten phenomenon here – there was a lot of traffic, but the nice satnav lady got us there, and we found what appears to be the only purveyor of home brewing essentials in the South East. TH purchased all the bits he needed for a mere £45 (I hope you can tell I’m being sarcastic) and we drove it all home, where TH set to work in a “just add water” sort of way. He then wrapped the large bucket in a specially-purchased bargain-price electric blanket (Tesco, £9) and parked it in the dining room, where I am led to believe it will be staying for at least a couple of weeks.

Some time in the distant future, therefore, we should be the proud owners of 25 litres of Nowhere-on-Thames’s finest alcoholic Ginger Beer.

On the journey back from deepest Aldershot, TH informed me that he had been motivated to make his home-brew by the fact that Crabbie’s alcoholic Ginger Beer ( the commercially-available equivalent) is currently on sale in the supermarkets at around £4.50 a litre.

Now, let me see…

Trip to Aldershot… a 50-mile round trip costing approximately £12 in fuel

Materials….£45

Electric Blanket…£9

Total outlay: £66

PLUS the cost of having an electric blanket running for two whole weeks

PLUS  bottles (we haven’t yet got any bottles)

Yielding 25 litres..

I conservatively estimate that the whole process may just, if he’s lucky, have saved TH about £12. If he’s lucky.  As for what the resulting brew will taste like……I just hope it comes closer to the commercial version than a Boots wine kit ever got to wine!

Spring and sewing

Spring has sprung!

Well, it probably hasn’t, actually, although the daffodils are all ready to pop at any minute in Nowhere-on-Thames, and TH suddenly felt the urge to plant some tomato seeds today. Well, when I say “plant” I mean he’s filled the seed trays with compost and told me where to find them. He is to gardening what Henry VIII was to marriage guidance.

Anyway, the sun was out, the sky was blue, and I was suddenly all energetic and keen to get on with…something.  In the end,  I got on with doing a bit of sewing. I’d brought some bits of fabric back from Nowhere-in-France, planning to make a doorstop. The shops are full of them recently, and we actually needed one for one of the bedroom doors, so in the spirit of “HOW MUCH????? For THAT??? You’re having a laugh!” I decided to have a crack at making one. And, though I say so myself, it’s come out rather well.

Whilst I was in full “Blue Peter” mode, there has been an old sweater kicking around the house for some weeks, which I had thought of giving to the charity shop until I discovered that a moth, or possibly several moths, had eaten quite a bit of it. So I thought I’d have a go at making it into a cushion cover. Now, I can make cushion covers. I have many years of experience, owing to the fact that we had a care-in-the-community rescue Labrador for a long time, and whilst he was a gentle and loving soul, he never managed to overcome a need to eat cushion covers.  Making cushion covers out of old sweaters, however, is a new one on me, and meant that I got to try out a hitherto-unused stitch on my sewing machine. I was quite surprised at how well it worked.

I'm wondering what to make next, and TH is looking slightly perturbed. Clearly wondering whether his knitwear is safe....

Pottering about, or about pottering

As mentioned in my profile, I have a very short attention span when it comes to hobbies.  As a consequence, I get through hobbies like some people get through underwear. I change them often.  Then again, there are things I do that other people seem to classify as hobbies, but to me they’re part of life.  Reading, for example.  To me, that’s not a hobby. In fact, if you’re going to classify reading as a hobby, then I might as well list breathing as one of mine. And when does cooking become a hobby? And, if cooking, why not ironing?

Anyway, I digress.  I like hobbies where you can make stuff.  However, I guess I’m blessed with a gift that means I can make most things quite easily, so as a consequence I make stuff I don’t really need or have a use for, and then wonder why I did it. Our house is adorned with bits of useless papercraft which, whilst they look very decorative, ONLY look very decorative. They have no real purpose other than decoration, and there’s only so much useless tat you can display without making your house look as though you’ve turned it into a primary school art display.

 About three years ago, however, I met my nemesis. I signed up for Adult Education classes in Ceramics. I was going to make pots! My expectations were initially low, and I managed not to meet them with amazing success. OK, I didn’t make any of those wonky ashtrays that schoolchildren always seemed to bring home when given the opportunity to be creative with clay, but my first efforts were only a little better. And, for a long time, “ a little better” was about as good as it got.  Being honest, I haven’t ever really grown out of the belief that if I turn my hand to something, I will produce professional quality things within seconds, and now I’m twentyteen I should really know better, but my inability to produce my first masterpiece after half a term was a disappointment. Nevertheless, I stuck with it. I began with a lot of hand-built pots, which looked…well, they looked hand built. In fact, most of them looked as though they had been hand built by someone with impaired vision and one hand tied behind their back. So then, after a year of hand-building, I thought I’d try throwing.

 

You may be familiar with the film “Ghost”. I’m not, especially, but I’ve still seen the bit where  Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze make a phallic symbol out of clay on a pottery wheel whilst  listening to “Unchained Melody”. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Not so much for the slightly risqué imagery, more so that you can marvel in wonder that, apart from getting their hands covered in clay, they stay relatively clean. This, in spite of the fact that Mr Swayze has had the foresight to remove his shirt.  Now if I were remaking this scene, I would have them both dressed in wellies, a pac-a-mac and sou’wester, and have all the scenery draped in plastic sheeting.  I came back from most of my throwing experiences covered in clay up to my armpits. My trousers (in spite of the judicious use of an apron and an old towel) generally ended up so covered in clay that, had it set before I got home, I would have looked like I was half-woman, half-statue. Blowing my nose, even several days after a class, I could find that one or both of my nostrils contained enough clay to make a small dish.

Somehow, I’ve not only continued with this hobby, but (after abandoning the wheel for the rather cleaner and more controllable hand building) I’ve finally begun to make some half-decent pots.The main problem I’m starting to have is what to do with them. I have classmates who occasionally join in with local craft sales and manage to sell some of their work, but I’m still a long way off being confident enough in the quality of my output to risk it. I’ve shipped a fair quantity over to our second home in France, in the spirit of “out of sight, out of mind”, but I’m now wondering if we’ll ever have enough guests, either here in N-o-T, or in France, for me to call my increasing number of serving dishes and bowls  into service. I can’t see it myself. 

I leave you with a little example of my vast body of work…