Ceps Maniac

Yesterday was a sunny, fresh autumn day that had immediately followed a wet day. Those are the ideal conditions for a bit of mushrooming. You can tell when mushroom conditions are perfect: lots of waterlogged cow pats, preferably with a shiny little pool of water on top. This is not where mushrooms are found but watery cowpats are a good omen.

So, with such perfect conditions, the Sous Chef and I decided to go out and see what we could find for our  mushroom risotto. He was particularly keen to find some Penny Bun Boletes (Ceps or Porcini mushrooms) but other boletes would be fine, too. Boletes are not like the mushrooms with ridges or gills underneath their caps, a bolete’s underside looks like a sponge, with lots of pores. We tend to find beech and birch boletes, and slippery jack (another good ‘un), but it’s ceps that are the best.  When it comes to other mushrooms, the gilled sort, we have a few set favourites that we can recognise with confidence but we also took along two books on mushrooms to help with identification on some borderline cases. These gilled types are the ones that contain the deadly-poisonous varieties so while boletes are pretty safe, with the others you have to be sure. Really sure. (some make you feel unwell, others can kill you without warning. Kidney failure). So you have to be sure.

Through the first half of the walk we found lots of interesting but sadly inedible mushrooms and a few poisonous ones, too. We collected some unknown ones to check the sporeprint (place the cap on a sheet of paper, check an hour later what colour spores it drop. This can help narrow it down a bit) but that was just for scientific curiosity, not for eating. It was getting late and still no ceps. The Sous Chef was getting increasingly anxious to find some ceps (“you’re ceps mad, you are”)and eventually we were not disappointed. We found four remarkable specimens and felt extremely pleased with our find. Woodland wildlife likes a penny bun bolete as much as we do, so they often get pretty nibbled but we found some in good condition.

It was some time later we bumped into a group of 6 walkers who had a basket chock FULL of boletes. It put our meagre find into the shade. But hey – we had three large boletes and a small one, enough for our risotto and any more would just be greedy.

A train ride home and a hot bath followed by a creamy wild mushroom risotto, cooked with the day’s find. Delicious! I flippin’ love autumn.

Yesterday’s exam

I’ve spent the past two weeks talking nonsense, about interrogative themes, intersubjectivity and interpretative reportoires. Not to mention the paranoid-schizoid position, the pre-reflexive self and the quoting of opinions of existentialist philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Heidegger.

This revision has driven the Sous Chef potty, as he tries to seem interested. Later stages saw him test me on concepts, theories, studies but mostly, what I need more than anything to get a decent mark in this course, is the right-sounding waffle. Psychology generally, has been dominated by the scientific, statistically significant, replicable results type psychology but this course has been the voice for the qualitative, touchy-feel, airy-fairy, postmodernistic waffle side of psychology. It’s driven me batty but in the last three weeks it all started to make some sense.

The exam was yesterday morning. One chap was severely reprimanded for bringing his revision notes to the exam desk (admittedly, he was found reading them before the exam had actually started but even so. How desperate and/or stupid is that?)

The exam was three questions in three hours. Each part had a choice of two questions and you chose one from each section. As soon as I read the options, all the information fell out of my head. I went totally blank.

I ate some fruit pastilles to calm myself down and read the questions again. I kept re-reading them and realised I was getting nowhere so just started to scribble some notes for a plan on the first page.

I wrote out three essay plans/brain dumps in the first half hour (I like to get all the info out before I start any proper essay writing) spaced apart to allow essay space between for about three sides of essay and then set to it, 50 minutes for each essay.

The first essay was on unconscious and conscious processes in the formation of subjectivity and started on it. I’d got about half way and checked the time: it had been only 15 minutes! the time was going really slowly, I had plenty of time, so I relaxed and started to enjoy myself.  Yes, I was enjoying the exam!

The second essay was on attitudes  and the last on intra-group processes. I was doing swell until somewhere, midway through the final essay, just as I was starting to critical evaluate the theory of Groupthink (Janis, 1972) that I totally lost the plot. Mid-paragraph I had no idea what I was going to say next, no point to bring out and I was in a dead-end.  One packet of Rolos later and I decided just to change the subject to Phenomenology, drag in some stuff from a chapter on the Fundamental Attribution Error (something about not splitting the world into discrete objects but looking at individual/group identities as a whole rather than separate things) and at 5 minutes before the end, wrote “run out of time“, added some bullet points of good ideas and a quick conclusion that may or may not have had anything to do with the preceding essay.

Ok, so that last essay went rather badly, but I did manage two decentish essays before that. On the strength of my previous exams and assignment, I would need only 55% or better for a 2:1 (a First is sadly out of the question, as I didn’t get a high enough grade average in my assignments – a tutor who declared herself a ‘tough marker’ back in February made me doubt I’d manage a First anyway, so it’s not a big surprise). I won’t hear what my exam result until 18th December, but with a threshold as low as 55%, which I achieved for sure, there’s no need for nailbiting.

Just one more assignment (a biggish one, due 24th November) and my degree will be finished. Hurrah!

Revision and a Robert’s

That TMA I was trying to write, I got a respectable 82% in it. Go me! And now I knuckle down into revision for the exam later this month.

Revision is boring. But also interesting. But mostly it’s  boring. Each evening I get home, I get changed out of my cycling togs, have some food and then drag myself off somewhere quiet, to read up on what the Discursive Psychological perspective has to offer on our understandings of intergroup conflict or similar nonsense. I find myself dropping “interpretative repertoires’ and ‘intersubjectivity’ into conversation with the Sous Chef and so far, he hasn’t tried to quietly murder me for boring the pants off him (yet).

I’ve allocated 14 hours per chapter, with 9 chapters in all. The exam is Tuesday week. Mind you, it’s not been entirely wall-to-wall revision. As an end-of-course gift to me,  I took a day off work to go get myself measured up for a custom-made bicycle frame. It was a little undignified having my inside leg measured (33 inches) and locating the top of my thigh bone required some sharp prods into an extremely well-padded area (yes, my saddlebags are on me, not the bike) and then endless bicycle-speak to ensure I get exactly what I want:  Top tubes, bottom brackets, seat stays, crank lengths – the potential for making a complete tit of myself was pretty high, but I think I managed not to completely sound like an idiot, particularly with the Sous Chef being fluent in bicycle-ese and stepping in whenever my vocabulary failed me.

So, three or so months from now, I shall have my own custom-made bike. The only question now is: what colour should I go for? I’ve provisionally asked for black, but I’m quite taken with burgundy. I could go for a three-tone bike, or one with flashy designs, but I don’t want it looking too desirable (read: worth stealing).

On the train home, The Sous Chef said: “with you getting a Robert’s [frame] like mine, that’s rather like being married”.   – Erm, is it? I thought getting married involved a ring, some vows and a wedding-type event, but I might have that wrong.  If getting married involves buying a £900 bicycle frame and cycling around the world on it, then I guess that explains why fewer people are doing it these days.  I have no idea how his mind has constructed that little logic but it’s quite sweet.

As it is, I’m very excited about my Robert’s frame and hope it’s a new era in a very happy and loving relationship. There’ll be some bumps along the way and we won’t always have a tail wind but hopefully we can have a great ride anyway.

on having children

ok, I’m actually procrastinating, as I’ve an essay on trait theory to write and I’m supposed my first draft done by the end of today.

I’ve always known I would want to have children some day. I’ve never gone through that baby-fever some women speak of, where it becomes an obsession and they stare wistfully into the prams and pushchairs around them. That might be because I’m not actually a big fan of infants (they get interesting when they can start to speak and you learn how they’re making sense of the world) and yet I’ve known that some day I’d like to be a mother. It’s hard to put into words but it’s about that guardianship of someone, passing on the baton of life, raising them to deal with the world and hopefully equip them with the skills and resources needed to thrive. It’s a big task but it does comes with love to sweeten the deal. As a non-parent I realise I can imagine all sorts of wonders and imagine the blissful happiness of holding a swaddled infant, safe in ignorance of the difficulties, the stresses and the periods of intense boredom that are nearer the truth, but it’s not about babies. A parent is a mentor and wanting to be that is something I’ve felt for as long as I could remember. That is why it is with regret that I look at my life and think: where are my children? How come I haven’t got any yet?

The Sous Chef and I have had several conversations about children. Even before we were a couple, we would spend evenings talking about life, pasts, hopes, futures. He knew how I felt about children and I knew how he felt, too. That is why, the day after we first kissed and I realised the attraction went both ways  that he was ready to call the whole thing off. He told me “perhaps we should just stop this right now, before we get in too deep. We want different things”. He knew already that I wanted children someday and he was very sure he did not. He would have dreams in which I announced I was pregnant and he felt despair and wanted to run under a bus. Telling me this made his message plain: no children. Not with me.

Calling it all off might have been sensible but I had already fallen in love with him and knew I would not be able to walk away. Love is a terrible and beautiful affliction. Decisions that used to be easy become very hard. I spent a long time thinking about coming to terms with remaining childless. Would I become bitter when it all becomes too late? How would it affect our relationship in later years? What if I get that baby-fever? I do not have the right to insist he become a father for my sake. If I stay with him and never have a child, I must be sure I know that that was ultimately my decision. I cannot hold him responsible for my decision to stay.  And still it was hard.

Over the course of the relationship, we talked of children occasionally. Whenever we visited friends of his (who have four terrific children) and his brother (who has two wonderful daughters) I’d bring up the subject (it helps when you have positive exemplars of children to broach the subject) and each time he confessed he could see there were rewards to parenthood but having children would happen ‘with great reluctance’ on his part. He feared it, even though he could also tell that people with children have an extra dimension to their lives and this dimension continues. Having children isn’t just having a baby, it’s a person who will one day be fifteen, twenty, fifty years old. Infancy is just the first stage.

Over time he spoke more acceptingly about children. He seemed to have started applying that ‘what if…’ to his own life. He started to speak less in absolutes and seemed to have warmed to the idea, but I knew our current situation was not conducive to having children. I had a degree to finish We still wanted to travel. There were obstacles that just had to be moved out of the way before having children becomes a possible prospect.

Since his saying he is no longer completely opposed to the idea of having children, I’ve felt that I’ve had to handle this delicately. It’s fragile and I feel I need to keep him at this point until my degree is finished and we’ve traveled together for a year, as planned. Only after all that can we even begin to think about bringing a child into our world.I am afraid that when we get back from our travels, he’ll have changed his mind. Asking him to be a father is something I don’t take lightly and he is free to change his mind at any time.

A few evenings ago, we’d had a fair amount of wine, and the subject of children came up again. This time I heard him say he most certainly wanted children and he hopes I really am up for that sort of challenge when we get back from our big trip.

cripes!

of course I’m up for it. It looks like he’s thinking of being the primary carer with me out earning money for the family. I confess this will almost certainly make me very jealous and becoming the main breadwinner is a terrifying prospect but I think it’s worth giving it a go.

I love it when a plan comes together

The Sous Chef and I just got back from a cycling trip in Brittany (but sans cycle computer so we have no idea how many miles we did). The Sous Chef proved worthy of his name, as we cooked some excellent dishes on our new primus optima stove (including spaghetti carbonara, risotto, fried bananas) which is no mean feat with limited ingredient options and only one heat source. We’re planning to take the stove with us on our round the world cycle tour, as it burns on anything (even petrol if necessary).  Since we’re carting all our provisions around on bikes and up every hill it means packing very lightly and being smart when it comes to what foods to carry and when to buy. As it turned out, we cooked out every night except twice.

Although I’m a bit of a polyglot, French is not really in my repertoire. I realised that I can say more useful things in Russian than I can in French and I don’t consider myself a competent Russian-speaker by any means (about the level of the average person’s French or Spanish, I’d say). Still, we managed somehow and people never snubbed our pathetic attempts at pronunciation and were always extremely nice to us.

My linguistic skills did come in handy on our second restaurant meal on the last evening in St Malo, though. We found a Restaurant Javanaise. Within a minute I noticed that the staff all spoke Indonesian so rather than struggle with French we communicated in Indonesian. Easy! The food was excellent (if you go there, have the Rendang Padang Asli, it certainly tasted ‘asli’ (authentic) to me which is more than I can say for any other Rendang I’ve had since leaving Indonesia). It was great to be able to communicate freely for a change.

I got my essay back that was driving me crazy for its vague question and my inability to tie it all together into a coherent piece of writing. I expected a not so terrific mark (maybe 60%) but was amazed at the 78% I got. I’ve reread it and still don’t think it deserves that much, but then I’ve had essays I think are better than their received mark too so I guess it evens out somehow.

I’ ve also now got the materials for my next course which runs concurrently with this one for a while (so I’ll be revising for an exam AND doing an assignment for the other due on the same day as my exam. Eeeep!!) but once that course is done, I’ll have finished my degree.

And here’s the perfect timing. My final piece of work to submit for my degree will be sent on 24th November. After that, no more uni work to do. I’ll be free. Meanwhile, the Sous Chef is to be made redundant and we’ve been waiting for the official notification of timescales for when he’d be actually unemployed. There’ve been some changes and it seems he’ll be free as of December. This means I finish sooner than expected (I thought it’d be January) and he gets paid for longer than expected (we though it’d be October) and we both achieve the freedom we need to travel at about the same time. Whoop!!!

All we have to do now is figure out how to rent the house out, where to keep up our stuff, buy the equipment we need, plan our route around the world (hmm South America or New Zealand start…) plan the visas and organise the finances. Easy  (and all while revising. Oh God)

burglars

Has anyone here been burgled? What’s worse tha being burgled? Confronting a burglar has to be, I reckon. Better to be out of the way when it was happening.

Last night, The Sous Chef went out for a drink with his pal and since I had an essay to write (it’s making me miserable. Really) I stayed at home to carry on procrastinating.

At about 11pm I heard a noise downstairs. I left my youtube video tutorial on making buttercream roses (these things are vital to research in depth when an essay is due) and shut down the computer and went toward the bedroom (which has a view of the stairs. Anyone coming up them would have to turn around to see you).

I figured it must The Sous Chef back from the pub downstairs so started to get ready for bed (I was half-planning to put pin curls in for the night, started to brush my hair, getting the pins ready).

“He’s taking a long time” I thought. I stood in the doorway looked along the landing and even though I was sure I’d left the hallway light on (there is a switch upstairs and a dimmer switch downstairs) for the Sous Chef, it was now off. Strange. I hit the switch again and nothing happened. Someone must have put the dimmer down to zero downstairs. I could hear movement down there. At first I thought it must be the The Sous Chef, but why was he staying down there so long? I wondered whether I was mistaken about the light and Iwas actually hearing noises from next door.

I strained to listen but the sounds of someone moving about where definitely in the house and I really was sure about the light.  It was ages and The Sous Chef would have come upstairs by now or seen the light on and said something. He usually gets in and comes straight upstairs or might have a glass of water from the tap but there was just movement downstairs and no attempt at water or stair climbing.

My heart in my mouth I looked around the room for a suitable weapon in case whoever was downstairs would come upstairs. Nothing. I wondered whether to stay absolutely quiet so as not to disturb the burglar or to make noise hoping the burglar would prefer to get away with loot than have a confrontation. I know that generally burglars would rather get out then get violent. I was hoping this was true this time. I wondered whether I could climb out of the window if I had to.

From the doorway I stood silent and had a good view of the stairs. I assumed any burglar would not venture upstairs and from the bedroom doorway I could see the stairs and potentially the back of the head of anyone coming up them, except the light was off,with just a bit streaming across the landing from the bedroom.

Then, my knees trembled as I was sure I could see a pale shape coming up the stairs and the back of someone’s head. After a few seconds I recognised The Sous Chef’s shirt and then his head turned round, he saw me and laughed.

I wasn’t laughing. I was so relieved I burst into tears. He’d really frightened me. He was (drunkenly) doing his ’stealthy ninja moves’ up the stairs. I have no idea why he thought that was a good idea. The bedroom lights had been on and curtains wide open when he got home so he should have known I was up.  If he thought I was asleep there was no need to turn the dimmer switch to zero downstairs and why was he taking so damn long to start climbing the stairs?  I had thought it was him at first but when the movement stayed confined to downstairs for so long I figured it couldn’t be him. He was very apologetic and expressed a heartfelt relief that this is not America and we don’t have guns in the house (not that I’d buy one if we could).

With hindsight I should have hidden under the bed. A burglar wouldn’t look there for any valuables and if it turned out to be the Sous Chef I could have frightened him back. Next time, next time…

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

I hope it’s not the case, but it rather looks like I  have early signs of carpal tunnel syndrome. It’s not been properly diagnosed by a doctor but google, combined with my complete lack of medical knowledge confirms my suspicions . My wrist is sore, I get a burning sensation at night, weakness in the fingers and it is aggravated by prolonged use of the computer.

Waking up in the night to a burning sensation in the wrist I felt rather panicked. I cannot afford to have my right wrist out of action when I have four more assignments to type and a 3 hour exam in mid October.

So, to hopefully prevent further damage and let any inflammation go down, I’ve moved the mouse over to my left hand. This is a bit weird and I keep missing icons I want to click but I have started to get used to it and now feel reasonaby ambidextrous in mouse-use.  However, it is seriously affecting my typing and even handwriting skills. My brain has been running the logarithm: “plan as if right hand, execute with left hand” but what this does is make me want to do the same when I’m typing. typing requires each hand to cover its own domain on the keyboard but now they hesitate as to whether they’re being a proper right hand or a pretend one. Even my using a pen is now strange as my brain keeps checking that it’s ok to be using this hand.

I’ve also installed a little programme called workrave which can be set to schedule microbreaks (I have mine set for 1 minute every 10) and rest breaks (I have 7 minutes every 45). My computer locks me out during my breaks – albeit with warnings. I can override if I’m about to put in a winning bid on ebay but generally I do as I’m told. It’s pretty nifty as it forces me to take regular breaks (which I just never do otherwise). Can’t say I’ve noticed it improving my wrist-ache or numb fingers but it certainly means I drink a lot more tea. I’ve never been so well hydrated.

Anyway, minimal typing for me. I’ve got to save my delicate wrist for typing up the next assignment (2000 words on conflict and prejudice and what social psychology has done to help with it – from what I can see of the cat-fights between soc psychology schools of thought, they’re perpetrators themselves)

another hazard of cycling in Brighton

Had a bit of a close shave yesterday on my commute to work. This time it wasn’t through the  careless driving of a 12 ton bus, or a skip lorry or even a bazzed up car. Not even a careless pedestrian crossing the road with their back to traffic and not looking over their shoulder. This hazard was much smaller but no less deadly

I was cycling along a rather narrow bit of cycle lane (so narrow that large vehicles tend to be using it too, so I have to keep well to the left to avoid getting a clip round the earhole with a wing mirror or something). As I was cycling I heard above me a simultaneous thump and click. I couldn’t think what it was until a stunned/concussed herring gull fell out of the sky onto the kerb, very narrowly missing me (it made  me jump out of my skin!). I instinctively hit the brakes and veered to the right and nearly ended up underneath a van. The seagull must have flown into a roadsign, judging by the noise and subsequent inability to remain airborne. its plummet to earth looked rather inelegant.

I don’t know what became of the seagull. It wasn’t dead by the side of the road on my homeward journey so I assume it was just a bit stunned. It’s going to have quite a headache, though.

wall has collision with cyclist

The Sous Chef has had a bit of an accident. No broken bones but he’s got a deep cut on his head that looks like a bullet hole,  scraped his thigh and shoulder badly and won’t be having a manicure on his index finger for quite a long while.

It seems that on a recent cycling trip to France with his old school buddies (on which he had a wonderful time) it was on the ferry home that he decided he was going to drink himself completely stupid. This left him unable to properly operate a bicycle and apparently he cycled (albeit slowly) into a low wall and removed a fair amount of skin and some wall in the process.

I didn’t know this of course, until 2.5 hours after he was supposed to be home already. Just after midnight there was a knock on the door and there he was, standing looking extremely meek, with a piece of bandage taped to his face and blood down his cheek and leg.  Fortunately the friends he was with had a first air kit packed and could patch him up and stop the bleeding. The patient was inebriated enough not to feel any pain. He fell off his bike three times that night.

Since then, the Sous Chef has been rather subdued. I’m a bit worried about him. I don’t know whether the accident put the wind up him regards cycle safety or whether he feels a fool for having got himself too drunk to ride his bike or if it’s something else. He just seems a but fragile at the moment. It makes me want to reach out and hold him closer.

It was silly of him I know but what can you do but patch him up, kiss him gently and pack him off to bed? I’m just extremely glad to have him home with only surface wounds.

Unfortunately (for me) he’s away again now with his brothers on another cycling trip so I got to see him him for only a few hours Sunday and Monday night before he was off again. How much do I miss him now. I hope he’s having a good time, (but with a little less alcohol).

I’ve only seen him really REALLY drunk twice in over 4 years and when he does get drunk he becomes very childlike. He smiles a lot, he is sweetness but a bit clumsy. He doesn’t get loud or sweary or angry or sings. He just turns into a sweet little boy. It’s so very endearing that I can’t bring myself to be annoyed by it. Perhaps it’s better not to encourage it when he’s got to cycle home in the dark, though.

I can’t wait for him to get home again (another four days of waiting).

another TMA done

god knows how I managed it but I finally finished my Big Ass-ignment and have posted it off for marking. This TMA is the biggest piece of work in the entire course (it’s an independent piece of research, involving recruiting participants for interviews, transcribing, analysing, literature searching and writing up the report). The size of the assignment is reflected in its importance to the mark, as it’s double weighted. It’s worth 30% of my total coursework mark and there were many many many times when I thought I would not be able to do it within in the deadline. It’s been intense but I’m kinda proud that I got it finished in time

A general idea of its contents:

I have to ace this one if I’m to stand a bat’s chance of getting a First.  Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve aced this one. Ah well. I even know where I’ll have missed most of my marks but I ran out of time. That’s going to break the pattern: my assignments so far on this module have gained me 66%,  77% and then 88%. Unless I have achieved a piece of groundbreaking research, that pattern is about to come to an end. I’ll be happy with anything above 65%, though. I bare pass still gives me a chance for a 2:1. I’m  not going for a Nobel prize, after all.