Stylish Blogger Award

Debs has kindly nominated me for this award, and in return I have to tell you 7 things about me. Well the ones that are printable are minimal so after a lot of thought, here they are, in no particular order.

1. Despite years of depression when I was younger, I am by nature a fairly cheerful person.

2. I have Raynaud's disease so when I'm cold my fingers and toes turn an attractive purple colour. When they get chilblains, they swell up and look like undercooked sausages. So attractive, though they're not as bad as they used to be when I smoked.

3. It was my birthday last week and despite the circumstances, I had one of the best birthdays for a long time. Sunshine and friends did a fabulous job. The downside was that I had my first hangover in I can't remember how long...

4. This flat has a name plate outside saying Flowerpot House.

5. I envy those who believe in an after life. It sounds such a comforting idea. But given what I've seen of life so far, I think that's far too simple. However, I do believe that those you love never leave you.

6. I am hopeless at exams. I have avoided them ever since school.

7. I have few regrets – I don't think they help in life. But I do wish when I was younger, that someone had said, “You must sing. Write. Dance.” That would have saved a lot of years of angst. Still, on the bright side, I can appreciate it all the more now.

And as you are such a discerning lot, the first seven people to make comments are entitled to this award. Go for it!

I recently volunteered to take part in a trial for treatment of Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder.

I hadn't realised how much weather can affect me until several years ago when we had a(nother) lousy summer, then I got food poisoning. By late September I was feeling terrible, and rang a girlfriend in desperation.

“Can we meet for a long weekend?” I said (she'd just moved to Bournemouth: a long way from Cornwall.

She agreed to look into it and rang back the next day. “You've got a choice,” she said, with a catch of excitement in her voice. “It's a week in Spain or ten days in Menorca.”

We opted for the ten days, said goodbye to our respective partners and did a runner. Typically we arrived in the middle of a storm and spent the first day freezing, the next day going to a market and buying thick sweatshirts and wondering what the hell we'd done. The next day the sun came out......

That really set me up for the winter and I returned home tanned and beaming to pick blackberries in the greyness of a Cornish October. Now we have Mollie (whom we would not leave behind) but anyway finances rather preclude any foreign jaunts, so I am now sitting in front of my lightbox, getting my daily dose of light (there being none from the sun), and reading my booklet on ways to beat SAD. This includes Getting Outside – not a problem given a) my propensity to cabin fever (inherited from my mother) b) itchy feet and c) Mollie. But there are suggestions for beating negative thinking, Trying New Things and eating sensibly.

I'm charting my progress. So far I've joined the most amazing choir which has lifted my Thursdays beyond belief. As I was having a wobbly time, I tried the ways to beat negative thinking (and I think that helped), but a good sing helped more than anything, followed by a chat with new friends over coffee afterwards. I do eat reasonably sensibly anyway

So, does the lightbox work? Well, given the weather we've had over the past month, I haven't being dragged down into dire depression, put my head in a gas oven or murdered my husband. So I think the answer must be yes.

Do any of you suffer from SAD and/or tried a lightbox?

The Bread Man

This is not Himself's bread, but comes courtesy of Madison&Mayberry. But it serves to illustrate one of the problems to do with breadmaking.

Himself is now on his sixth loaf of bread in the last few weeks. We’re talking home made bread here, and not with a breadmaker.

The whole process takes between an hour and two hours depending on how long the yeast takes to rise. First the flour – this can be white, wholemeal, granary, organic, non-organic or a variety of those mentioned. This is weighed then mixed with the yeast which can be dried or fresh and mixed in hot water with a variety of ingredients which can include, at various times; salt, sugar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, malt extract or none of these things.

It’s put in a bread tin and left to rise. I get confused with the varying methods – sometimes it rises once, others twice when it is pummelled (sorry, kneaded) and put back in the tin. The actual cooking of the bread takes about 35-40 minutes.

Every time it comes out of the oven it smells delicious. Every time Himself cuts a chunk off the end, covers it liberally in butter and says, ‘Mmmm. Best ever, Pop. This is JUST RIGHT.’

And every time I say, ‘Good darling.’

The next day, at breakfast time, he eats the toast and goes very quiet. Bottom lip protrudes.

‘What’s the matter, darling?’ (though I can guess by now.)

‘It’s the bread. It’s no good.’ Beginning of Sulk.

‘What’s the matter? Tastes all right to me.’

‘No.’ Sigh. ‘It’s rubbish. Too *heavy/crumbly/light/didn’t rise enough/rose too much (select one of these or a selection of all).’ Another sigh as he eats another piece. ‘I’m going to have to make some more.’

The bread is then either thrown out or given to various friends/relations who are less discerning or throw it in their bin.

This has continued over the weeks, interspersed with times when he eats Tesco organic sliced granary bread (it has to be that or nothing). I have made various comments about Waste (that flour is expensive, to say nothing of the cooking time) which as you can imagine, haven't gone down well.

At the moment he’s actually quite pleased with his loaf and is munching his way through it.

Unfortunately I can’t eat it. I find it like Cranks food when it first came out. (For those of you too young to remember this, their bread was Lead Like to say the least.)

As a friend of mine said, “depression is very much like a Cranks cheese scone. It takes a long time to go away.”