Ms Modo, trifle soup and the Wacky Races

It's been a busy weekend here, we finally got the new ( mounted !) chain harrows and blew the exhaust manifold off the tractor. Gemma forgot to book her riding lesson - possibly because she was so involved with trying to work out exactly what a vorpal sword is so even though her finger is okay now she still couldn't ride. It was cold and windy on Saturday and Harvey was spooking in the yard which is never a good sign. Still I was wound up for it so got lunged anyway. I'd managed to borrow a camera for the day to take the place of my phone which is playing silly beggars again - it's probably full of hair and haylage, so I'll have to try to find the time to try to clean it out. Gemma got the honour of sitting on the crate freezing her butt off and taking photos with the wind whistling in her ears ( some dedication there).
If you're reading this - don't forget to book your lesson !
Once I got the pics uploaded to the computer - well that was an eye opener. The neckstrap sits in the wrong place which makes me lean forward, my shoulders are rounded and, as I'm holding one-handed, I'm twisted. There's actually more bend in me than there is in the horse ! My butt is pushed back and my left toe sticks straight out. Add to that the fact that the wind inflated my coat and you get a pretty good idea of what Quasimodo's rather more deformed sister may have looked like if she rode. I was horrified, obviously more work to do there. If my old instructor saw that she'd probably go and get her gun.
Sunday saw us trying that again - this time not holding the neckstrap and with much critical instruction - that's what I needed obviously. Better results all round.

The travellers returned from their trip to Germany on Saturday night collected from the college by John and coming home bearing Mother's Day gifts of Baileys and Jamaica Rum ( Thank ye kindly) There was also the inevitable row as the ones who'd returned proceeded to spread various belongings around the house and the bedroom that the other two had managed to keep clean all week. Apparently Germany was Ace, Amazin' and dead good. My son dashed off to see his girlfriend who he'd missed all week and my daughter fell asleep. Some things don't change !

It was my youngest daughter's birthday on Thursday and we'd decided to make a sherry trifle for the weekend. Now this is something I have only ever tried to do once before - I failed then and never tried again. Maybe I should have got advice from my Mother before diving into it this time but, of course, I didn't. My eldest made the sponge - her first ever, that part was a sucess. I added fruit and mixed jelly and sherry. It didn't set. A whole day in the fridge and it's still liquid. Add another jelly mix with half the water plus another helping of sponge. Another day in the fridge and it's still liquid. I was all for throwing the lot away and calling it a bad job but we decided to plough ahead with it anyway. My youngest made custard while I was out and she couldn't get it to thicken, that was because she misread the instructions and used a teaspoon instead of a tablespoon so once that was spotted it was easily fixed. End result - a raft of custard and cream floating on a sort of fruity sherriified soup. Looked weird but tasted fine.
Apparently where we went wrong was in adding the sherry to the jelly - it should have been soaked into the sponge instead. Ah well, we live and learn and, according to my daughter, we now have an excuse to try it again........

Horsewise Monday was a write off - the weather was foul: cold and very windy. I stood at the bottom of the ramp and watched a stray bucket spinning in the field while the blue tarp flapped madly on the haylage. I'd just aboput decided to turn out and leave it at that when I saw one of next door's ducks flying backwards. I've no idea what the windspeed was but I've heard of roofs being blown off sheds etc so obviously I made the right choice. By the time I got home it was raining horizontally as well. I've heard there's a forecast for snow sometime this week, the way it's feeling at times it really wouldn't be so surprising. Weird that last week I was in t-shirts and this week I'm shivering in my yard coat.

For some reason there seems to be a shortage of "normal" vehicles in our area lately. It's as if everyone is trying to outdo each other for weirdness. Today's hack was another episode of "spot the spook" - we had tanker trucks, tractors, an ambulance ( complete with flashing lights and siren) and a roofing truck parked half across the road with a pot of boiling tar and a ladder with a coat hanging on it ! We also spotted vans with ladders on them, skips, buses and a milk float. Surprisingly we got very few spooks ( could be they are bored of all this strangeness) the boiling tar had to be snorted at and sidled around but I really don't blame them there - it stank.