Generally Gemma

Just call me Titchmarsh, Alan Titchmarsh

This time last year that pair of hands had no idea what they were doing.

I had to explain and show them every step of the way from the seed planting, to the care of the seedlings, to the planting out and staking.

Yesterday I got home to this, the I am concentrating face. To find that G was now an independent gardener planting out his seedlings with no help or guidance from me.

Perfectly confident in what he was doing, muttering away to himself about possibilities and planting distances and things that he will need to check in his book later. Completely contented in his work. Hard to believe that his time last year he was all questions and whys like a child.

The last time I saw a look like this was in old pictures of Daddy in his garden years ago. Nice to think the knowledge and the love of getting your hands muddy gets passed on.

From little acorns

Well, G is now in year two of his gardening phase and it looks as though he is still interested in it! This year he went through seed catalogues and made decisions about varieties and quantities and planting time all on his own. He has been well and truly bitten by the bug which means I can now quite cheerfully abdicate my position as head gardener of the household!

We have tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chillies, sweet peas, sunflowers and butternut squash on the go at the moment. And I think there are plans for a few other things too, namely some salad leaves, although he still hasn't decided what sort.

Planting seeds is still something that amazes me. That you plant that little brown spot and up comes a plant that will produce actual food for you to eat. That something G and I have nurtured in our home will sustain us through out the Summer. It fills me with a secret thrill. And although I moan about the amount of space his seedling take up it is really quite nice to see him so engrossed in something that doesn't involve a round ball of some size!

The top picture was taken just after Easter when they hadn't been out long. The one below I took last week. I can't believe how quickly they grow. How from tiny little seeds they grow to huge triffid like proportions! Fingers crossed that at some point over the next few days G can plant them out! It won't be long before they cut out all the sunlight from the room!

Have hat ...

... will travel! FA Cup Final tickets arrived at G's Mum's house on Saturday! Our excitement no knows bounds! Although I have been told that I may be sitting on the other side of the stadium if I wear my jingly jangly hat!

Irish soda bread

250g (8oz) plain wholemeal flour
200g (7oz) plain white flour plus extra for dusting
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
25g (1oz) of butter
300ml (1/2 pint) buttermilk or skimmed milk

1) Sift together the two flours, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar, then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

2) Quickly stir in the buttermilk and mix until a soft dough is formed.

3) Turn the dough on to a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth.

4) Shape the dough into a round and place on a lightly floured baking sheet. Cut a cross in the top with a sharp knife, sprinkle with a little flour, then bake in a preheated oven at 200 Centigrade (400 Farenhite, Gas Mark 6) for 25-30 mins.

For the flour, I used seeded granary, as I don't ever really have wholemeal in the house and it worked fine. I think I may have been a tad enthusiastic with the cross on here too!

I'm also afraid I don't have the cup measurements which I know America uses as I'm afraid this is an English book.

The recipe is from Quick Cooking for Diabetes, which although I don't have diabetes I do try and follow a low GI diet which is what this book esentially is. A lot of our meals come from it and most of them are really tasty and actually do cook and prep in more or less 30 minutes. 

Fresh

I woke up at an obscenely early hour on Sunday morning. Which is something I haven't done for a while and with a lack of anything decent to read I thought I would get up and have some breakfast. But alack, alas! The cupboard was bare. So, then I dithered about putting the bread maker on but gave up on that when I realised even the shortest programme wouldn't fulfil my urgent need. Then I vaguely remembered reading in a recipe book about a soda bread that didn't use yeast and took a scant half hour in the oven. Just the ticket I thought!

I even broke out the Cornish marmalade with honey that a kind soul gave me for Christmas. Delish! Deffo on the remake list at the Generally Gemma household! G was astounded to be woken up with tea and fresh bread in bed. I think he wondered if he stumbled into the wrong house the night before!

four things

Ruth tagged me for this and I haven't done a meme for simply an age so here we go!

4 movies I'd watch again

When it comes to films I am an absolute sap and terrible for ones that I have loved since I was a teenager. The great test to G and I were which films to double up on from video to dvd when we bought the dvd player a few years ago. Most of which these are!

Dirty Dancing - I love and adore this film and mouth the words along with the cast. I am a sad predictable young lady. Interestingly this is one of the films that the first time I watched it was a recording M made. She used to stop recording during the "sexy bits" It wasn't until I went to uni and watched an official copy that I realised bits had missed out!

Grease - This is a total memory film for me. When Bro and I were younger and lived abroad with no English tv a friend sent us this and we nearly wore out the tape. Singing along to it, him the boys parts and me the girls. Apart from the end of Summer loving when we switched because he could hit Sandy's high note and I couldn't!

Anne of Green Gables - I love this set. Although not strictly a film it is my go to watch whenever I feel miserable or I'm alone for the weekend. I don't think I will ever tire of it. "I don't need diamond sunbursts or marble halls, I just want you" <swoon>

Jungle Book - G always buys me the Disney films as they are getting released on DVD and this was one of the more recent ones. I'd forgotten how much I love it. Again a lot of good memories tied up in this one!

(At this point G insists I mention The Goonies. His all time favourite and one that since meeting him I too can now quote from!)

4 places I have lived

This is always an easy one for me!

Spain, Marbella - when my Dad took early retirement he wanted somewhere he could sit in the sunshine and drink beer. I don't think he was terribly fussed about where it was but due to us pesky kids it had to have somewhere with English speaking schools of which twenty years ago Spain had many. (20 years! I can't believe it's been that long!) So we packed up again and shipped off. And it was the best decision he ever made for us as a family. For many years I was angst ridden about it. But now, looking back it was idyllic. I love it there and in so many ways it will always be home. Whenever I go back the feeling of relief and the weight that lifts off my shoulders as the plane touches down is incredible. In fact I think it might be the only place on earth where I feel totally relaxed.

France, Paris - We lived here for just over a year before the move to Spain and my entire family hated every single second of it. Bro and I weren't happy at school, Daddy wasn't happy at his job it wasn't great. So much so in fact that I swore I would never go back. A few years ago though G won a competition at work and we did go for a long weekend. I don't hate it anymore. And whilst it will never be my favourite place in the world I will say that I would like to go back again!

Germany, Frankfurt - This was the first place we lived after we left England and I think pretty much we were all fairly happy there. In fact when we started talking about retirement as a family it was where Bro and I wanted to go to back to. We lived in the mountains just outside Frankfurt in a little village and we learnt to ski and sled and there was a pool. It was a great place and a lot of our family Christmas and Easter traditions stem from the years we spent there.

England - Well I was born here and now I live here. In fact now I live where M grew up around the corner from Granny who still lives in the same house that she brought the family up in. I love it. And I will never regret the decision I made to move back here. Even though I don't think I will ever totally English, the closest I can get to feeling anything is European, England is home and I feel rooted here and connected here in a way I don't anywhere else.

4 TV shows I watch

West Wing - But only on DVD, I don't think I could handle the strain of only having one episode a week!

Come Dine With Me - Is a terrible programme where four amateur cooks who have never met host dinner parties for each other and score the hosts efforts. It is inevitably a disaster at some point and I find it compulsive!

Gilmore Girls - Again only on DVD as I don't seem to able to find it anywhere on Brit tv. I love this! So funny and fast paced. But my rental people only went up to season four so I am dithering about ordering the rest from America.

Doctor Who - I missed this when I was younger as we weren't really in the country. But I am a complete convert to it now. Especially as my lovely David is in it. <swoon again>

I watch an awful lot of rubbish on the television. Especially now that I knit or sew whilst doing so I find I can't concentrate terribly well.

4 Places I have been

Well, this is a difficult one as really I haven't been anywhere terribly exciting. Living abroad meant that most of holidays were spent in England with family and when we moved to Spain, well, we were on constant holiday according to Daddy!

Disney World - was the one big family trip I remember. I loved it. I want to go back. I loved how you could behave like a complete child there and no one would think the worse of you. G on the other can not think of anything worse! So who knows if my plan to go back will ever come off!

Sierra Nevada - This is a ski resort just above Granada in Spain. We went as a family once. I was overcome with altitude sickness. It turns out that travelling from sea level to many thousands of feet in one day is not a good plan. I was sick and then I passed out in the arms of a gorgeous ski instructor. So it wasn't a dead loss!

Cambridge - I tried to go to University there but I dropped out when I became a bit of a mentalist. I love it there though. The amount of history, the gorgeous buildings, the river. There is nothing like punting down the Cam on a Summer's day with a pint of cider. Some of the happiest and most terrible times of my life happened there.

Cardiff - Well, what can I say. G is Welsh, not so much in voice but very much so in spirit. I think I might quite like it which is a good job really as the grand master plan is for us to live there one day.

4 things to eat

                        

I am currently on a diet and this is a cruel, do you hear me CRUEL section!

Chocolate - I am and always will be a complete chocoholic. When I was at university I had a part time job at an extremely posh chocolate shop. It was always going to be a kill or cure situation. All it did was give me a taste for terribly expensive chocolate. To this day the promise of a Charbonnel et Walker champagne truffle can make me do pretty much anything.

Tortilla - Omelet with potatoes, onion and garlic. I am very particular about it and I bemoan the lack of a decent one in this country. Having said that there are only three places in Spain I will eat it either. It has to be fresh, not out of a packet, dry and with nothing but egg, potato, onion and garlic, preferably cold. The best one ever is made at the horrific little hole in the wall of a cafe near M's house. It is a complete dive but they do the best cafe con leche and tortilla in the world. It is my first stop on every visit to Spain!

Peanut butter and cucumber sandwiches - The food of champions, enough said.

Fish - Of any size, shape or description. In an ideal world, prawns, that you shell yourself with mayonnaise and a glass of cheap pink fizzy alcohol. G hates fish. I hate him for hating it. I live in hope of converting him.

Chips - skinny ones, fried not oven cooked with lots of salt and mayonnaise.

And I wonder why I'm not a size zero!

4 places I'd rather be

Spain - my spiritual home, lying on the lilo in the pool in the sun with a good book.

In bed - with a good book

New York - not to live but I'd love to go for a visit, I've never been and I really really want to.

Anywhere - so long as my Daddy was there.

4 things to look forward to

Summer - flights to Spain for two weeks! Bliss!

The Weekend - Bro is moving in with his girlfriend and we are helping. It is so lovely to see him so happy. Not so lovely seeing him loved up. It make me want to vomit!

FA Cup Final - Please, please let us get tickets and nothing go wrong.

The Future - I don't often think so, but at the moment, yes, I think good things are on the horizon.

I have no idea who to tag! So if you fancy it, please dive right on in!

Theme of pink

Pinks and purples seem to have been following me around of late. I think it is as an antidote to all the blue and blokieness of the football that seems to have taken over my life recently. It is terribly difficult to get on to the computer at home at the moment as G has been desperately checking message boards and official sites to see if there was any ticket news for the final! Fingers crossed though it seems we may be sorted now.

So little glimpses of girl colours and taking pictures have been all the solace I have had this week.

It is amazing the things that crop up when you least expect it. These reddy pink leaves above are a bit of an oddity. I don't remember this bush having any colour like that on it before and the other day when I was in the garden it just seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

The hyacinths are on their way out now sadly but G was incredibly excited about them. Last year he was all about the vegetable growing but I think he might be convinced now as to the necessity of bulb planting. I just need to remember that for next year we need to clump things rather than plant them in rows. Grouping rather than clumping perhaps, clumping does sound terribly clumsy and that is not what I intend!

I think the pink must have filtered into my subconscious too when I was making colour choices for sashing for this project which has been languishing for far too long! Yes folks it has been pulled out from the depths of the quilt box and is being worked on again. Looking at it now I can't believe I've left it so long. But it does illustrate the point that no matter the year or the season, I always love this combination of pink/purple blue.

Semi Final Day

Please forgive this terribly image heavy post but I feel a need to populate it with as many pictures as possible. Yesterday was the FA Cup semi-final which here in the UK is quite a big deal. For G it was an even bigger deal as for the first time in something like eighty years, his boys, Cardiff City Football Club were in it, with a chance of going to the final. So when yesterday dawned with a more than faint covering of snow we were all rather horrified.

However, by the time the tube pulled out out of the darkness the clouds were on the way to clearing to a bright yet cold day.

I had never been to the old Wembley Stadium so I can't really compare but the new place is fantastic!Made even better if I do say so by the addition of a very large banner!

I'm not Welsh, I'm English and proud but even I felt a sense of pride when I saw this banner knowing that I was there to support the Bluebirds. Their fans are giving a rough reception at a lot of places due to their reputation for being somewhat unpleasant but yesterday there wasn't a sign of it to be seen.

I did feel the most incredible shiver of excitement when I saw this too. The inside of the stadium is quite dark and when you look through the doors to the pitch itself it seems even more vibrant!

We were on the ground level with amazing seats and an incredible view.

And when it started to fill up our side was a sea of blue.

G was beside himself with nerves and excitement.

I can't actually remember much of the match. Cardiff scored after nine minutes and there was much excitement and jumping about. I remember that. I remember the two semi nekid men in our row who really shouldn't have been. I remember singing, oh much singing! Other than that it is pretty much a blur. An ecstatic one that seem doesn't real due to this:

THEY DID IT! They won! They are in the finals! On the train on the way home, G, his Mum, Brother and I were all saying how it really didn't seem real. How after all this time of supporting quite a poorly performing team that causes them so much heartbreak that they actually produced the goods.

I'm thrilled and excited too obviously. But not so much for the same reasons as them. I've only been following City since I met G and even then I have a lukewarm relationship with them as they do seem to take over our lives at times. But to see this

was indescribable. He was so overjoyed that I had a tear in my eye. I love Cardiff City in spite of myself these days and it is because they do this to my boy.