The Sunday Salon – The Ninky Nonk in my living room (plus Night Watch Review)

Happy Easter everyone! This year is a rare Easter for us in that we’re actually at home, since my dad moved to North Wales about 4 years ago we’d spent every Easter up there, but as Easter doesn’t actually fall in the school holidays this year we’re delaying our trip by a few weeks.

As we have two autumn born children we usually celebrate Easter by buying them a ‘garden present’ as it’s pretty pointless buying them a garden toy for their autumn birthdays or at Christmas. This year was a pop up Ninky Nonk (I’m pretty sure that Ninky Nonk is a global phenomenon now but still only parents of the under 5 are likely to know what I mean, so for those that don’t, the Ninky Nonk is a fictional train on the children’s TV programme, In the Night Garden, made by the same people who made Teletubbies and I’ve heard described by it’s makers as a gentle interactive nursery book).

Our Ninky Nonk is a series of pop up tents that join together like the train, the kids love it. Boy Lacer who is really in the age group In the Night Garden is aimed at loves ITNG but so does his big sister Girl Lacer. Shame the weather was no where near nice enough to play with it outside today (it was snowing, although unfortunately not settling), so the Ninky Nonk was set up in our living room, taking literally all the floor space.

As well at the Ninky Nonk the kids off course got some Easter eggs; Girl Lacer got a small Smarties egg, a gold foiled chocolate bunny and a soft rabbit from us and Boy Lacer got a goats milk chocolate Easter egg and hen (he’s cow’s milk protein intolerant), that required some sourcing! In the end I got the goats milk chocolate online from Kidmenot, me and Girl Lacer have also tried it (in our position as chocolate connoisseurs) as I had also ordered some minibars of chocolate which turned out even more mini than I had thought. Boy Lacer likes it, although I think he prefers the little packets of dairy free chocolate buttons you can get from Sainsburys, Girl Lacer likes it (she likes any chocolate though) and I think it tastes ok to. As well as chocolate and presents from us, there were also presents from the mother-in-law, chocolate eggs for me and Mr. Lacer and little goodie bags for the kids, with the mother-in-law thankfully making sure Boy Lacer’s was dairy free (more dairy free chocolate buttons from Sainsburys). I also got an egg from Mr. Lacer and I have now consequently eaten too much chocolate (how come I can be more controlled about rationing the kids chocolate than my own?) and feel rather dodgy.

So it’s a good thing I haven’t got much to do today other than eating chocolate (groan, never again) and reading. I finished reading The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

I gave my initial impressions last week and they haven’t much changed; I had thought the prose a little clunky and it remained so, although that was probably largely due to it’s translation. But now for a proper review:

The Night Watch is the first of a trilogy by the Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko; it tells the story of the battle between Light and Dark on the streets of Moscow, where Others, people with magical powers prowl the streets undetected by normal humans. Told from the perspective of a Night Watch agent, Anton, an Other aligned to the Light, the book takes the shape of three stories, although all three are linked with each other, climaxing in a final battle (as all these sort of books seem to do).

Written with great imagination, the creation of a parallel world hidden from the rest of Moscow’s citizens has been very well done. Describing the effects of magic on the everyday world, I particularly liked one of the earliest scenes where Anton is on the metro and he’s looking at the vortexes above some of the passengers head, formed when another human curses another (i.e. “You’re a stupid idiot” etc. etc.) they cause anything ranging from depression to a migraine, obviously ficitious but I had fun imagining some of the vortexes I would have caused recently lol. The creation of the two Watches; the Night Watch created by Others from the Light and the Day Watch created by Others from the Dark was also well done. The two Watches are at truce with each other, fearing what an all out war would do to the human world. The three stories tell how the members of Night Watch are manipulated.

Overall though this book wasn’t really for me and I won’t be rushing to read the next two books (although I might one day). Reading the book I had a sneaking suspicion I was reading the book 10 years to late, I think I would have loved it when I was in my early 20s, being Russian would also have helped as there are lots of references to Russian pop songs I haven’t heard of. But now there’s just a bit too much introverted soul searching for me, in some scenes when the main character was spending page after page pondering the various machinations between Light and Dark I was incredibly tempted to skip to the next bit of action! Not my book of the year, by far but an ok read.

So it’s only midday (this weekend has been a long weekend, in more ways than one) and I think I may actually have time to start another book, although I feel like something light and fluffy (unusual for me) although I have just the thing on my TBR  mountain (a well meaning but unfortunate Christmas present). So  I think I’ll lurk around the Salon for a bit longer and may be back with my first impressions of ‘light and fluffy’, just keep me away from the chocolate!

“Mummy, that lady’s doing it better than you”

The lady in question was of course Nigella Lawson, although thankfully only in photo form. I was making Hot Cross Buns (yes I know I’m a day late) using Nigella’s recipe from Feast and it was a rare recipe showing multiple photos of Nigella actually doing it (mmm, that phrase could pick up some rather depraved Google searches) and Girl Lacer was comparing what “the lady in the photo” was doing with what mummy was doing whilst she was helping me finish the buns off. Making Hot Cross Buns is one of those recipes which you do solely because you probably haven’t got anything much better to do, it involves so many steps and is at times fiddly (hence the photos) but as an activity to do on a snowy Easter Saturday it rates fairly highly.

The photo’s selectively showing the ‘best’ crosses, as the crosses were the fiddly things, probably hampered by my blatant disregard for actual tablespoons (I must get a set of proper measuring spoons) meaning I got the proportion of flour, sugar and water wrong and my cross mixture was too thick, so it was difficult doing the crosses.

The actual buns, well even Nigella admits in her introduction they’re only an approximation to the real thing, they’re smaller in size, appear to be distant relatives to rock cakes and they don’t taste quite right, although saying that they still taste nice.

For the record my favourite hot cross buns are made by Waitrose, particularly the Bramley Apple ones and my hot cross buns do not beat those, however they’re in stiff competition with the less superior Sainsbury’s Hot Cross Bun.

All this yeasty bun making is making me look forward even more to the release of Jane Brocket’s (creator of the Yarnstorm blog, see my blog roll to the right) latest book in the summer, Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, she describes testing buns for the cake in her blog here, delicious, I think I know what I’ll be making when I get my hands on a copy!

Edited to add (24.3.08) – I made the hot cross buns on the 22nd March, a batch of 15, 9 were eaten on the day, the remaining 6 were put in a tin, none were eaten the next day as we were too busy eating chocolate, when tried the day after although still strictly speaking edible they were pretty horrible having morphed into something more like dense fruit cakes rather than buns, if I try hot cross buns next year it’ll be a different recipe.

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 11

After last Wednesday’s awful Torchwood episode, tonight’s episode was far far better, probably I think one of the best this series and it was written by Chris Chibnall and I can’t normal stand his episodes. Tonight’s episode, Adrift was everything the previous episode From Out of the Rain wasn’t, showing great team dynamics, it showed the relationship between Gwen and Jack and Gwen and Rhys superbly, when Rhys tells Gwen “Sometimes, I really hate you” you’re up there with Rhys, hating her too, even though you know she’s got a lot on her plate.

Anyway sorry I’m getting ahead of myself, Adrift tells the story of a missing boy that Gwen is cajoled into investigating despite Jack’s insistence that she drops it. Great script, beautifully shot (specially the scene in the lighthouse I thought) and lovely orchestration (and I don’t normally notice things like that), ok I’ll stop gushing now, but one final point, I’d been reading comments on other blogs about Jack and Ianto’s relationship not being as physical as the other relationships on Torchwood, well lets say that’s been corrected this episode.

Dawdle Mode

This is going to be one very boring Easter, for the last who knows how many years we’ve always spent Easter at my dads but with Easter not actually falling in the Easter holidays this year, no way would we go from London to North Wales then back again in one long weekend, not with two small kids in tow anyway. So we’re at home, broke and the weather is absolutely miserable.

The family highlight of today was me going to Waitrose for some bread, yes really. Girl Lacer wanted to go with me, even though the weather was blowing a gale, Boy Lacer was undecided when given the option of staying in with daddy or going out with mummy, whinging “I don’t know!”. Eventually the lure of an afternoon playing computer games with daddy kept Boy Lacer in and me and Girl Lacer went out, with the promise that we’d look in the toyshop as well.

After having a go at Girl Lacer yesterday about running off after nursery, Girl Lacer was of course the opposite today, going very very slowly, not too bad on the way there, a little tiresome around town as it was very crowded and very bad on the way home as I was lugging my shopping over my shoulder which was causing more pain in my injured arm and facing us was the biggest, blackest rain cloud I’d seen for a while and it was heading right for us. It hit us just as we were turning into our road, but we got soaked and frozen to the bone (it was more like sleet / hail) just on that final road. There were some cracks of thunder which prompted me to explain to Girl Lacer why trees were dangerous in thunder storms, this slowed her down even more, not fear, just stopping to look at all the things that could fall down!

Yes, I was the stupid runner in shorts and tshirt this morning

Sitting here still shivering, I went out for a 40 minute run this morning, my aim being to run up a very large hill, run along it’s plateau a bit and then run down. I knew it was cold out there but remembering that last time I’d gone out for a run in a jumper I’d got a little too hot and sweaty, today I went without, the run was to be a straight forward run there and back, so I thought I’d keep warm enough. The run up the hill and along the plateau went fine, the run down though I started to get problems, my arm, which I’d injured in an non-running related incident involving a train last weekend was starting to hurt (I think the run down was jarring it) so I had to stop at 30 minutes, only half way down the hill, meaning I had a good 15 minutes walk back, I got some weird looks from all the wrapped up dog walkers I can tell you. The previous run I was bright pink from over exertion, this run I was bright pink from frost bite. Still even though the run was 10 minutes shorter than planned I still managed to beat my distance record for this year, 3.8km, previous best was last week when I ran 3.7km in 35 minutes and last weeks run was mainly on the flat.

Torchwood Series 2 Episode 10 – Yawn

‘From out of the Rain’ had everything going for it to be a good idea, sinister travelling showmen escape from a period film and go around stealing peoples’ last breaths and I thought the two principal bad guys were quite good and imaginative. In reality though this episode had nothing that can make a Torchwood episode good, a good Torchwood episode is about the team, it’s about the dynamics between them with a bit of action and sci-fi thrown in. This episode was all about the story which had way too much exposition (if I saw another scene of them talking in the board room I’d have fallen asleep) and yet not enough explanation, there was virtually nothing about the team except a little titbit about Jack’s past which (highlight to read spoiler) actually had nothing  to do with the actual plot (sorry, I spoilered it because I didn’t want to remove the last bit of potential interest this episode actually had).Basically the premise of this story would have made a reasonably ok, one off TV drama with some random investigative type characters investigating it, but as a Torchwood episode it was disappointing.

Bleurgh!

Sorry for the brief absence, I’m suffering from a bad allergy attack due to some mice taking up residence in our flat due to the cold and I’ve got an IBS flare up, my body doesn’t like me at the moment basically. I even missed Torchwood last night as I went to bed early, but it’s on the DVR so expect a review soon, although possibly not tonight as Mr. Lacer has been fussing for weeks about how tonight there are *shock* three programmes he wants to watch at *shock* the same time; House, Ashes to Ashes and Trial and Retribution and our DVR ‘only’ has two tuners and the tuner on our TV doesn’t work. I’m like, well we’ll just have to not watch one of them, you know like in the ‘good ol’ days’ before video (although I remember Mr. Lacer telling me a story once about how when he was a kid there was once two programmes he wanted to watch at the same time and this was pre-video, so he set up both the tellys in the house next to each other and watched both programmes simultaneously, a bit of a sad TV addict then and a bit of a sad TV addict now). But anyway back to tonight, thanks to the ‘miracles of 21st century technology’, i.e. BBC iPlayer, we’ll be watching Ashes to Ashes later on that, problem solved.

Other than sneezing and an unhealthy emphasis on TV, I have been doing some crafty stuff. I’m still working on my embroidery, I have now in my collection Doodle stitching by Aimee Ray.

I was sold by the picture of the bird on the lower left hand corner of the cover, I call them ‘Charlie and Lola birds’  as one features in an episode of the cartoon where Lola’s trying to learn to read, although I’m sure Lauren Child (or the cartoon production company) didn’t come up with them, they’re a timeless design. Anyway the birds feature on a design for the most beautiful quilt and mmm, whilst I’m a novice at embroidery I’m a complete “Argh my god!” at quilting, although I’d love to have a go, I’ve always liked the quilts I’ve seen in shops like Zara Home and I’ve always been majorly put off by the price but now I can totally see why they’re so expensive. So I thought I’d better start off with something a little bit easier, so I had a go at the bookmark suggested in the book, although I didn’t follow Ray’s suggested design, instead taking one of her designs for a ribbon from the book and adding a ‘Charlie and Lola bird’ at the top on one side and then doing some of her paisley designs on the other side. (Just tried to take some photos, unfortunately my ‘proper’ camera needs recharging and as good as my Cyber-shot camera phone, it’s close up shots arn’t that good). Anyway I was fairly pleased with it, working on card is fun.

I’ve also been making a necklace, I’d had no prior necklace making urges but I was browsing the Boden site (favourite clothes company for me and the kids – when I can afford it) and they currently have a lovely kids necklace and bracelet set.

Forget about getting it for Girl Lacer, I want it lol! Anyway a bit too close to the end of the month for that sort of thing, so me and Girl Lacer were shopping yesterday morning, so we dragged poor Boy Lacer into a nice bead shop near us and ok, my attempt doesn’t have as many strands or beads or include a bracelet but I’m fairly pleased with it and it only cost in total £2.02! I’m not sure now about the metal heart bead (see below), I think the necklace would have been better without it, even though I love necklaces with those sort of beads normally, other than that, like I say rather pleased. I think if I get the chance (and no kids accompanying me) I may return to the bead shop and pick some beads for a similar but more complex project.

And finally (and back to the embroidery), what Mrs. Lacer is getting really excited about is the delivery of a package from Sublime Stitching I ordered a few days ago (so yes I know being an international delivery it’s going to take some time). I am particularly excited about the Day of the Dead designs I ordered, particularly the sugar candy skull, I have plans for that.

Oh and another finally (sorry), I also have a new cookbook in my collection, In the Mood for Foodby Jo Pratt, well anything featuring a picture of someone eating a chocolate covered ring donut complete with sprinkles (my favourite Krispy Kreme donut) on the cover (recipe not included) sells it for me. Haven’t cooked from it yet but it looks nice, a rather girly cookbook with some nice looking recipes and rather refreshingly for me, as I normally buy family orientated cookbooks full of recipes on how to get your kids to eat their 5-a-days, there is not a photo (I recall) or mention of children in sight. I had gone into the book shop to check out the new Ainsley Harriett but sorry Ainsley you are definitely not doing it for me anymore, I used to be such a fan and I still think his Gourmet Expresses and Low Fat Meals in Minutes (Delia, there are so many chefs who got there before you on time saving cookery) are excellent, but he seems to have changed track and it’s not for me.