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Because I never seem to post these days, I'm just going to blather about something, regardless of whether or not I have anything to post about. It's rained fairly heavily for most of the last week. Friday was glorious though. My mother, having discovered a bottle of gin in the cupboard that nobody can identify (we assume it's a relic of my grandfather's day), has decided that she wants to make some sloe gin. So on Friday I set off in search of sloes. For those of you who grew up in towns/aren't fruity at all in nature, sloes look a bit like giant blueberries, but are in actual fact evil disguised as fruit. That shouldn't be a surprise, since they grow on blackthorns, which are themselves pure evil. People don't so much want sloes, as are forced to use them because they live in the middle ages, and there's little alternative. So when an (otherwise apparently) perfectly reasonable human being decides that they want to make sloe gin, it's best to smile gently and accommodate them. Then back away slowly.
So anyway, I spent four hours on Friday climbing hills and crawling through thorn bushes, on a hunt for sloes. Everything was early this year (the blackberries and elderberries have already all gone), so it wasn't easy, but my mother now has a copious supply of sloes, and some gin (or probably gin), and goodness only knows what will happen next. She told me that she wanted "about a pound" of sloes. I asked how much that was, since I had no intention of going equipped with a set of scales. She very helpfully suggested that it was about half a kilogram. Yes, thanks for that, Mother. For the record, in case you should ever need to know, "about a pound of sloes" is roughly equal to "rather less than I picked". So she's going to make even more sloe gin than intended, despite a: not knowing how to make it, or b: whether or not anybody is going to be fool enough to drink it.
Elsewhere, I have now finished watching The Rockford Files - or season one of it, anyway, which is all that I have. I heartily recommend it, if you're in the mood for seventies detective shows. Rockford is a terrific character, ageing, beginning to slow down a little, finding fisticuffs both harder to partake in, and harder to recover from, and increasingly suffering from a life with a very irregular income, and an increasingly dodgy future. If that sounds grim, then it's not really. It's often very funny. James Garner is a terrific lead, in the quite brave position of a heartthrob who is showing that he is no longer in his prime. But blimey, the décor. I shared a picture a few weeks ago of a brown, stripy apartment:
The show also appears to have a real fondness for appalling yellow floral wallpaper. In one episode there's this:
Which comes with matching curtains, as you can probably see by the wiggles off to one side. Who the hell looks at a pattern like that, and even finds it good for a wall, let alone for matching curtains?! Oh 1970s. What were you smoking? And then in another episode there's this:
I think the woman here feels that the wallpaper is Jim's fault, but in his defence, they had to find somewhere to hide in rather a hurry. There must be something in the air in that episode actually, as the bloke who hires Jim has these curtains:
And twinned with this settee:
And he's not even a bad guy. So yes, anyway. That was The Rockford Files in soft furnishings. I've moved on to Due South, which does rather well in curtains for the most part. Ray wears horrendous shirts, mind. Still, at least they're not brown. Why the seventies loved brown so much is a question that will likely never be answered. And I think that I will shut up now.
So anyway, I spent four hours on Friday climbing hills and crawling through thorn bushes, on a hunt for sloes. Everything was early this year (the blackberries and elderberries have already all gone), so it wasn't easy, but my mother now has a copious supply of sloes, and some gin (or probably gin), and goodness only knows what will happen next. She told me that she wanted "about a pound" of sloes. I asked how much that was, since I had no intention of going equipped with a set of scales. She very helpfully suggested that it was about half a kilogram. Yes, thanks for that, Mother. For the record, in case you should ever need to know, "about a pound of sloes" is roughly equal to "rather less than I picked". So she's going to make even more sloe gin than intended, despite a: not knowing how to make it, or b: whether or not anybody is going to be fool enough to drink it.
Elsewhere, I have now finished watching The Rockford Files - or season one of it, anyway, which is all that I have. I heartily recommend it, if you're in the mood for seventies detective shows. Rockford is a terrific character, ageing, beginning to slow down a little, finding fisticuffs both harder to partake in, and harder to recover from, and increasingly suffering from a life with a very irregular income, and an increasingly dodgy future. If that sounds grim, then it's not really. It's often very funny. James Garner is a terrific lead, in the quite brave position of a heartthrob who is showing that he is no longer in his prime. But blimey, the décor. I shared a picture a few weeks ago of a brown, stripy apartment:
The show also appears to have a real fondness for appalling yellow floral wallpaper. In one episode there's this:
Which comes with matching curtains, as you can probably see by the wiggles off to one side. Who the hell looks at a pattern like that, and even finds it good for a wall, let alone for matching curtains?! Oh 1970s. What were you smoking? And then in another episode there's this:
I think the woman here feels that the wallpaper is Jim's fault, but in his defence, they had to find somewhere to hide in rather a hurry. There must be something in the air in that episode actually, as the bloke who hires Jim has these curtains:
And twinned with this settee:
And he's not even a bad guy. So yes, anyway. That was The Rockford Files in soft furnishings. I've moved on to Due South, which does rather well in curtains for the most part. Ray wears horrendous shirts, mind. Still, at least they're not brown. Why the seventies loved brown so much is a question that will likely never be answered. And I think that I will shut up now.