Saturday, or Friday, I Forget Which Day it is... Snippets No 14.

I hope no one minds me coming back with a 'light' and normal post. I haven't done a 'Snippets' for a long time, and as I am wrestling manfully (or should I be politically correct and say womanfully) with a stupid computer that keeps freezing and saying 'non responsive' I am doing a whole mixture of stuff here today.

Firstly I plan to do a little Martha-Stewarting with some traditional English ideas for summer. (Believe me when I say the rain has been just awful this past week. I am very glad to think no-one has come here on holiday because if you have I am afraid you will take some very wet memories home with you.)

As several of you know, I live in a very old house. Over five hundred years old. Sometimes it leaves much to be desired, but when it is hot it seems to retain a coolness which can be quite desirable. However, in summer the kitchen is not for lingering in, only for preparing food quickly, and taking it outside to eat. Under the heavy beams the kitchen is dark and the stone slabbed floor is cool, but outside beckons.

On rare, perfectly still evenings of high summer, there is food to be cooked outside, over charcoal. Plain cuts of best-quality meat, well marinaded in oil and wine vinegar, with some fresh herbs and seasoning, and grilled very hot and fast, served with a tossed salad and garlic or herb bread.

 In July the kitchen is full of bowls and baskets of fruit, heaps of strawberries and raspberries, gooseberries and loganberries and cherries, red and white and black currants, glistening and richly-ripe.

They may be made into jams and jellies, pies and puddings, creams and fools, sauces and purees and cordials, or else bottled and frozen and crystallised or otherwise preserved for eating later in the year.

But best of all, eat them at once, whole and raw and fresh and in great quantities, greedily, steeped in sugar and thick, yellow cream!

Or in that fragrant, juice-seeping, parcel of perfection, Summer Pudding.

Summer Pudding

Line a basin with slices of white, crustless bread, leaving no chinks between. 

Take 1 lb raspberries, half a pound of red currants, a quarter of a pound of black currants (and some strawberries if you wish but they must be soft a ripe). Rinse and prepare carefully. Cook with 4 oz sugar for five minutes, to dissolve the sugar and free the juices.

Take out one small cup of juice, then fill the basin with the fruit. Top with more slices of bread, then a plate and a heavy weight. Chill overnight. Turn out gingerly (very carefully!). Pour over the reserved juice. Serve (with cream!!!).

Why not take a boat on the river? There are blue skies with a puff or two of cloud, warm sunshine, the lightest of breezes. Glide gently downstream, hands dabbling through the weed-fronded water. Come to rest against the bank, under the shade of over-reaching willows. 

Spread a checked cloth upon the grass. Open the wicker basket with a creak.

Rat and Mole had such a picnic!

There is food to be eaten of delicately patterned bone china plates. Dainty, genteel, afternoon tea. Cucumber sandwiches, with white crustless bread, sliced paper thin. Creamy egg and cress sandwiches with brown bread. Tiny strawberry tartlets, served with clotted cream.

********

I was recently reading about all the uses of 'vinegar'. It is quite incredible what you can use it for. I'll share one or two, but if anyone has anything at all they need fixing, just let me know and I will look it up in my book of 1001 Uses of Vinegar.

Keeping flies away from you swimming pool: Pour vinegar around the sides of your pool and it helps keep flies away.

Cleaning the base of an iron: Use a paste of vinegar and baking soda to clean the sole plate of your iron. It will be smooth, clean and shiny and will not harm any surface.

Insect repellent: Drink a couple of spoonfuls a day to keep mosquitoes away - your perspiration will be unpleasant to them. If you rub or spray yourself with vinegar, it will keep ticks off. They may get on you but they will not stay...and no, once it dries you do not smell like a vinegar bottle!

Substitute for eggs: When baking, if you find you are short of eggs, substitute 1 tablespoon of white vinegar per egg. This seems to work for cakes and muffins.

********

Dan and I are doing okay. Spankings are a little like hen's teeth at the moment but happily he is still remembering without any bratting, urging or outside interference from me that I need at least a weekly spanky session, which in this household can mean any type of spanking you care to envisage, and then some.

So last week, when he said he was going downstairs to make an early morning cup of tea/coffee, and to be ready with the paddle when he returned, I decided to try something out on him and watch his reaction. 

Corner time is not something we do. In fact, once upon a time I was very much against it. Now I say "Do whatever is your thing". See how easy-going I have become? 

So whilst Dan was downstairs I hopped up out of bed and stood wedged into our only habitable corner in our bedroom. We are up under the eaves, and I am tallish, so it wasn't ever so easy. I stood with the paddle clasped behind my back and waited patiently. And waited. And waited some more. Good grief what a boring exercise. You will be pleased to know I got out the vacuum later that day and gave that corner a jolly good clean!

Dan eventually arrived back in the bedroom and put the tray down. He was completely silent and I didn't say a word, just waited for him.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I am in the corner waiting for you."

"Well you have me totally baffled."

"It's meant to clear the mind and prepare me for my spanking. I think."

"Well you look bloody ridiculous. Here's your coffee."

Friends, it was a dismal failure. I climbed back into bed.

"What were you hoping to achieve? People don't actually do this do they?"

"I thought you might like it. After all, how many men walk into their bedrooms to find their naked wives in a corner holding a paddle they hope to later be spanked with?"

Dan couldn't reply because he was laughing to much and I was feeling a little miffed because his reaction was not everything I had hoped it would be.

"Some men get their wives to stand in a corner before a spanking. But others do it half way through. And others do it at the end."

"Does it do any good?"

"Maybe. I was able to see which parts I needed to dust. There were quite a few dead flies in the very corner where the carpet meets the walls. It was a bit chilly standing there with the window open and a breeze blowing in."

"Ami you are ridiculous. Get over my lap. That's the best position as far as I am concerned."

See? Hopeless!

He warmed me up really well for the paddle which slammed down and made me squeak at first. Then, horrors, my body started jerking up to meet it and Dan said he legs were getting wet which made me blush crimson, although it is easy to blush crimson when you are face down and studying the carpet. 

These days I don't seem to be able to squeeze out any tears. They are apparently reserved for the 'one in a blue moon' occasion when I know my bitch/troll has escaped from the depths and requires Dan to fight it back down there again. 

"Is that enough?" I was asked.

I thought about it. 

"No. I need more" I told him.

Dan happily swished away, but eventually he said his arm was tired. So no stress relief or any other kind of tears for me, even if my bottom did feel rather fiery. 

"I much prefer using the paddle on the 'rose' side" Dan informed me. "It leaves pretty patterns."

Well thank you dear husband! Hmmm....

Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome. And I mean ANY ideas or suggestions. Or comments! My life is not very exciting at the moment! It is very hard NOT to 'control'. To just hope he will pick me up on a few things. Not too many. But the odd thing would relieve the monotony. What does a girl have to do around here?! I don't want to go back to how we were at the start, but I would so like a few more spontaneous, any time but in the morning, and any place but in the bedroom, spankings. Any ideas?

Horrors! I just looked for a picture of a paddle on Google images and found my very own picture taken with my very own camera on our very own bed!!!! What the heck?!!! Did anyone realise this could happen? This puts a whole new slant on things! Looks like my day just gets better and better! Ronnie, if you are reading this, I hope your "bottom" hasn't gone viral!!!  LOL LOL LOL

We are just going to sit down to a tea of fried chicken, fried sliced potatoes with onion and corn fritters.

Having spent the last few days at a health spa with very healthy and very green and uncooked food, we are both starving. The food was bland, raw on the whole, and totally uninteresting. I even had to fight to obtain salt and pepper. The spa side of things was good and I had a treatment or two and did lots of healthy things like swimming relentlessly up and down the huge and enticing pool while Dan went to work sorting out the management in a large construction company. It was great except we got lost trying to find our way home across half of England when they closed the slip road on to our motorway.

Hence the cheerful and fattening tea.

Bye until next time!