Busyknitter

……and it’s really very, very good

Quietly and without much fuss, my older son is growing up. While he doesn’t have the complex needs of my youngest, he’s never been what you might call an easy child.

We call him the “just-in-time boy”. He walked at 18 months, just when the Health Visitor would frown whenever she saw him. He started talking at 2.5, a week after Speech Therapy was mentioned. I’ll gloss over toilet training – suffice it to say we were lucky to find a tolerant playgroup. Reading was a huge struggle until suddenly at the end of Year 1, the lights went on.

And so on.

A lot of this I am sure is related to his mild dyspraxia, which makes any new physical task very, very dificult for him. It’s been obvious to me for years, but was only formally diagnosed last year. He’s learnt to cope over the years by avoiding anything that he finds hard, including some very, very basic skills and also by avoiding difficult social situations (who wants to be the only kid at Boys Brigade camp who can’t spread jam on bread?)

But this summer, things seem to be coming together at last. Here is the list of “firsts” clocked up this weekend.
-successfully cracked an egg into a bowl
-volunteered to do the washing up and made a decent job of it
-went out for a 2-hour bike ride without wingeing about being tired.
-tied his shoelaces (he’s starting high school next week and they don’t seem to make football boots with velcro!)

Phew!

I’ve been baking bread for nearly 10 years now. Personally, I blame Worthing. We moved there in 1996 and found that there was nowhere, just nowhere to buy even half decent bread.

I think I’ve come to realise that Worthing is more typical of the situation in England as a whole and I’d just been fortunate up until then. Growing up in Brighton, we used to buy our bread at the incomparable Raven’s bakery on Ditchling Road (mmmmn, those almond slices….) . At uni in Newcastle and after that living in London for a few years, there were always plenty of decent sources of bread (actually Fenwicks Food Hall in Eldon Square, Newcastle was always good, they used to be supplied by a Polish baker based in Gateshead). The North West is not too bad as well. Our local supermarket stocks breads from the Village Bakery in Melmerby, Cumbria and also the best rye bread I’ve ever come across which I think is made in a Ukranian bakery in Bradford.

But Worthing, oh Worthing! The problem was that there was nowhere to go but large chain bakeries and the mega supermarkets. And what do you get? Wholemeal bread that you can’t slice because the loaf squishes into a pulp whenever a bit of pressure is applied with a knife. And white bread that’s no use apart from as a substitute for cotton wool to take off my mascara.

So I started making my own. For a while , I used to bake 3 or 4 times a week, so we didn’t have to buy any extra. Now that we’re back oop north, that’s dropped off a bit, but I still bake a large batch at least once a week.

Bread books
The classic work is Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery (see link on the side panel). Lots of history and a whole chapter on the use of salt in bread! It describes methods of making differnt breads, but doesn’t give many recipes as such.

Recipes galore in my other book, The Sunday Times Book of Real Bread, published in 1974 and now long out of print. I spotted it in a second hand bookshop and it’s a brilliant source of ideas.

But my basic white bread recipe is from my battered, old copy of Delia – slightly amended over the years to make larger quantities.

We went to the Forbidden Corner in North Yorkshire yesterday with lots of other families from ASDfriendly. This place is truly amazing and rather bizarre. A folly, consisting of woodland, mazes, underground tunnels and catacombs with all sorts of things to see, do and find. [I'll post a link to their website, just as soon as I've worked out out to make it work with the blog software]

Older son and Mr BK had an absolute blast, particularly the lad. He shot off as soon as we arrived with a friend’s daughter and a sheet of clues. Over the next couple of hours, I caught glimpses of them running here and there, but we couldn’t keep up with them.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see as much as I would have wanted, as T didn’t really “get” the place. And there was an unfortunate incident near the beginning involving a jet of water, which freaked him out a bit. So we pottered around the quieter, water-free areas and I’ve resolved to go back unencumbered by children some time.

Mr BK took a few photos. it’s hardly a representative catalogue of the day out, but here goes;

this, apparantly is a painting on one of the mens urinals:

Summer Cricket match

Part of the folly

He actually took more photos of the drive home. We took a short cut across Coverdale, which was a lovely road;

though we did encounter a few of these:

This is what happened to T 5 minutes after leaving for home;

Ask anyone who knows me at all well what my favorite food is and they should tell you without hesitation that I am always eating apples, all day – every day.

Any variety will do (except Granny Smiths, nasty acidic objects). But you just cannot beat a fresh, sweet, juicy English Apple. So I always look forward to seeing the first Discoveries in the shops. They’re not as tasty as Cox, Russet or Katy. But they are the first. And here they are:

The rear wheel has a slow puncture and I need to replace the inner tube. And I need to put on new handlebar tape (currently clutching bare metal as I ride). And the gears need a little tuning. But I cannot go out into the yard without T following me. And if I go anywhere near the bike shed, he assumes we are going out for a nice ride and will throw a complete paddy if we don’t. And I can’t do the work after he goes to sleep because it’s dark by then.

My poor old boneshaker is going to fall to bits pretty soon.

Eek, I’ve been tagged:

Three things you like about yourself:
My optimism
My energy
My nose

Three physical things you don’t like about yourself:
First grey hairs
Flabby tummy
Too hairy

Three things that scare you:
Flying
Big hairy spiders
Dying prematurely and leaving my children motherless

Three of your everyday essentials:
Touche Eclat
Apples
The Internet

Three things you are wearing now:
Jeans
Touche Eclat
Wonderbra

Three of your favourite bands or musical artists:
There is just no way I can narrow it down to three and I’m not going to try

Things you want in a relationship:
Loyalty
Lots of laughs
Trust

Two truths and a lie:
I once cycled to Iceland
My singing voice spans three octaves
I’m good at cribbage and terrible at chess

Three physical things that turn you on:
Eyes
Brains
Warm feet (unlike mine)

Three of your favorite hobbies:
Knitting
Reading (precious little time these days)
Keeping active (ie running, cycling, swimming etc, etc)

Three things you really want to do right now:
Go to a Prom (Henry Wood, not American high school disco)
Get my son to sleep
Climb Ben Laga

Three careers you’d consider:
Lighthouse keeper
Ice cream van driver
Galley slave on round the world yachting expedition

Three places you want to go on vacation:
Norweigan fjords
Lundy
Peleponnese

Three things you want to do before you die:
Learn to pray more and better
Hold a conversation with my autistic son
Replace the hall carpet

Three people to pass it on to (none of whom have blogs, so I will have to email them):
Mr Busyknitter (sorry about the naff moniker!)
Eyeliner
Caroline

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Need I say more?

Borrowing my brothers house Staying in someone else’s house is like having a taste of their life for a a few days. They’ve got much better kitchen knives than us and a fabulous, huge cooker with a special wok burner and everything. Funny acoustics though, impossible to watch telly if anyone is even breathing loudly anywhere in the house. Must be because they’ve stripped out most of the carpets.

But its good fun going through someone else’s DVD collection. we have now introduced our 11-year old to the complete World at War, St. Trinians and Carry on up Your Convenience!

The house is a little smaller than ours, but has precisely the same layout of rooms (Victorian Terrace), which meant that my ASD 3 year old found it quite easy to adapt to, even slipping into his home habit of spending most of his waking hours in the hall and on the stairs. However over the course of the 10 days we were there, he seemed to become increasingly stressed with things.

London Bigger and smellier than ever. Not a good place to be in with an autistic 3-year old in the rain. Especially when your chance of getting a parking space on the street where you are staying is roughly equivalent to your chances of winning the lottery.

Seeing Old Friends This was a really good bit of the holiday, as we used London as a base to visit old friends all around the South East. The best day out was a trip to Woodbridge in Suffolk, where we lived till last year and S was able to catch up with his best friend from his old school. It was also really good going back to Worthing where we lived before that and fantastic that S had a really good time with his best mate from those days (amazing considering it was 6 years ago and he was 5 when we left)

Driving the downside to all the visiting, we spent hours and hours in the car, many of which were a matter of trying to get in or out of London (45 minutes to the North Circular, 1 hour to Blackwall Tunnel, 2 hours straight through Central london to the A24!)

Sightseeing Not a massive feature of the holiday, considering we were in one of the major capital cities of the World. I had taken T’s bike trailer, so took him out on a couple of cycle tours around North London. Among other things, we went to Hampstead Heath and saw the giant table and chair.

As a family, we did one trip to the British Museum, only made possible by getting a minicab to the door and a black cab back (minicab wins hands down – slightly cheaper and conversation with Afghan driver much more interesting). Mr BK went round with S, so they could have a proper look at things. I looked after T, who basically whizzed around at 100mph, so my memory of thre treasures of the museum is a bit blurred.

We also went to Regents Park Zoo, this time only made possible by being allowed to used the disabled parking bay right outside the zoo entrance, despite not having a blue badge (thank you zoo people). It was quite a good trip, but we couldn’t do justice to the place as T got restless after only a couple of hours

Respite My wonderful, oldest brother trekked up from South London and enabled us to have a proper night out, first in months and months. Morroccan restaurant in Upper Street followed by visit to pretentious bar and then much friendlier pub. Got home around midnight to find brother and both children still awake, happily playing a game of flicking corks off the upstairs landing to see how far they bounce! Apparantly even T got involved in the game and joined in.

Going Home Early It wasn’t an awful, awful holiday, though there were some pretty stressful moments, that are already receding into dim memory. But in the end, we all agreed that we just needed to get home. Which meant letting everyone down from ASDFriendly that we’d arranged to meet. So sorry guys, glad you had a good day out anyway.