Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

The Monday Book is non-existent this week, along with a few other posts, due to the following series of unfortunate events:

My sister and her family came for a work trip to my parents’ house. Their house is small, so I got a hotel to avoid overstuffing the house with people. The hotel turned out to be a stress-adder as I had to fight for a working television, bathroom light, and wifi access. But I wasn’t going to spend a lot of time in it, because this was a work trip with my sister.

My parents like stuff.

My sister and I began cleaning out the garage–which consists mostly of putting things into piles to be looked at later by one of the parents.

We were allowed to dump some broken things.

We found a dumpster guarded by a guy who was higher than a kite and nice as nine-pence. He had dropped a big box of carpet tacks very near the dumpster. He warned us to drive over the high cement curb rather than use the driveup to the dumpster.

I managed to avoid the carpet tacks and we waved as he danced in the rear view mirror, wishing us well. To date no carpet tacks have taken down my tires but we remain vigilant.

My sister and I took my mom to lunch and her favorite thrift store as a break from cleaning the garage.

My sister left her phone in the thrift store.

Someone stole it.

We got a crash course in how to have a phone: regular plan, pay as you go, second-hand. It proved interesting.

We got my sister set up with a new phone. We did not return to cleaning the garage.

Families are exhausting–kinda fun, but exhausting.

We’ll get back to the blogs on Friday. Meanwhile, please enjoy the schadenfreude of other people’s families.

As usual Jack is very late, but he’s in the aftermath of Covid – – –

My Grandad used to make home-made country wine, which is a bit surprising as he was a strict tee-totaller. If we have the history correct, his father seems to have run a pub in the west of Scotland before abruptly moving to the east and becoming the driver of a horse and carriage for a local wealthy family – – that may explain things.

When Wendy and I got married and moved to a wee village near St Andrews we would take our beloved dog Rabbie for walks and gather the fruits of the hedgerows – blackberries, elder berries, elderflowers etc. I remembered my Grandad and his hobby and started doing that myself.

Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t – –

When we moved away I got rid of all the paraphernalia and forgot all about it.

But this last couple of years during Covid lock-down Wendy persuaded me to get back to my old hobby.

It’s no longer so much Elderberry, Elderflower and Blackberries, but more dandelions, violets or whatever juice is in the fridge. It’ll be a couple of months before we know if any of it’s any good, but you get a reasonable sense when you are sucking the tube to transfer from the carboy to the bottles – –

I have to admit that I wasn’t sure if I could remember the process but Dr. Google was a big help. So was Wendy who gathered most of the equipment and helped with the bottling and corking.

And so we wait – – and nothing’s exploded yet!

If we offer you a bottle please don’t feel obliged to try more than a mouthful!