Old, but still as good as new

I just got a windfall.  No, I don’t have an aged aunt who has bestowed wealth on me in her will.  I didn’t even receive any cash.  But I felt as giddy as if someone had just given me 1,000 Sterling or Euros (the same these days).   The reason: I didn’t, after all, have to buy a new electric fan oven!  I mended the old one.

It hadn’t looked promising , the mending bit.  I spent a couple of mornings trailing round to find a replacement.  But, once I saw the prices, and that the new ones did just the same as my 15-year-old one (only less digital clock on the cheaper models), I beat a path home and examined the broken door components of my defunct one a little harder.   The devil is in the detail, I thought.  After gingerly positioning the glass, spraying with WD40 and sweeping away some rust fragments, I decided it needed a new screw.  One screw vs 1,000 Euros. In these hard-pressed times,  a  no-brainer.  

Since Xmas my kettle, toaster, vacuum cleaner and washing machine have all given up, or need repair.  Things don’t have the shelf lives they used to, do they?  But wait, were goods ever made more robustly than now?  My dad has a 25-year-old Miele dishwasher that’s still going strong.  But thanks only to his ingenious system of screws and latches holding the door on.  

The point is perhaps not that our goods are less well made (though they clearly are in some cases), it’s more that we aren’t inclined to mend them as our parents were want to do.  But in these credit crunch times, and for the first time I can remember, I felt the urge to ‘make do and mend’.    

Contemporary austerity is beginning to be reminiscent of that of 1950s, post-war Britain; the era of utility design, when the simple, the well-crafted and the practical, yet cheap, were showcased at the Festival of Britain. My parents visited the Festival on the South Bank on their honeymoon.   I remember their Ercol dining furniture, built to last despite being economical.  Their and their generation’s mentality, coloured by the Ration Book, was to seek to mend, not junk things.   Purchasing something would have been a really special occasion. It takes a good deal of growing up to realise the wisdom of war-time ethos and a hard dose of economic reality today to bring us to our senses.  

Sure, not everything is mendable.  It’s not as simple in design as its forebears of the 1950s.  Technology has overlaid simplicity.  But while I could indulge in the excitement more than the relief of saving euro 1,000, I wondered if those who can’t afford, either now or way back when, would have felt that way.  I think not.  For them, it would be make do and mend, or nothing.  

Nowadays, we don’t make do and mend within the home, we ‘recycle’ at the bins.  Manufacturers go to great pains (because of increasing EU law making) to tell us how to recycle their goods, and with guilt assuaged they can sell us more.  But recycling could start in the home well before any bins need see our cast-offs.  I, for one, am mending my ways.

Time to digest the news? He has!

“Why aren’t there many black people mum?”, my six-year old asked when he watched past US presidents with accompanying wives take the rostrum at Obama’s inauguration.  

My mind raced through my knowledge of the American Civil Rights Movement, Dr King, Jesse Jackson and the few black people the world has got to hear about who served high up in US administrations  - Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice.  Somehow, I had to do a potted one liner of all this; an elevator pitch-length answer to  my son.  It also needed to be a complete answer so that he wouldn’t come back with another question just as Obama was to come out and take the oath.

A few days later, I reflected on this incident.  As parents, we face a barrage of questions daily.  As our kids grow older, we might worry about being exposed to ridicule if they have a superior knowledge of the subject in question.  But, when they are very young, our responsibility to answer honestly is all the harder.  

We need to impart our knowledge (not bias or prejudice) of often complex issues in a short and age-appropriate way.   Younger children can have penetrating minds and a clarity of expression that is hard to reconcile with their age.   Most won’t take a brush off  for an answer.  A glib response while you’re rushing to pack a lunchbox is bound to be challenged.      

Don’t think because they are young, that you can avoid questions about world affairs for a good few years to come.   They overhear ‘credit crunch, ‘Gaza,’ ‘Obama’ , ”Tsunami’ and ’suicide bomber’ from us, chatter in the playground, or news on the car radio during the school run.  So it’s best to be prepared for the inevitable questioning, which can often come some days after their inadvert overhearing of a news item.

But how to find time to keep up with the news?  Busy mums have to multitask as it is, and then there’s brain time spent thinking  ’what are we going to eat tonight’ and remembering ”Oh God, I’ve got to take the cat to the vet’s’.   There’s precious little time to think about the minutiae of what’s going on within our walls, let alone in the world.  

Well, we’re going to have to make time because our role is to be an educator, or rather a facilitator, for our children too.

My method of keeping abreast is to read the Economist each week (weekly round-ups I find better than daily doses of news) and to use Alltop.com as a portal to gather the best feed and reads.  I used to think I was keeping up with the news by scanning the BBC site headlines.  But I realised I was just sidetracked by gruesome items like the death of Baby P in Haringey, that so gripped the British media before Christmas. 

So I stopped clicking on the sensational and started reading analysis. We need to make time to understand, for example, the reasons for the credit crunch and where it’s taking us, and not just relate the fact that Bank X is the  next to go under.    

There’s another reason why keeping up with analysis and debate on current affairs is important, even if your average daily conversation today is about Postman Pat or Dora the Explorer.  Kids grow up and leave home faster than we think.  And it won’t be much fun being an empty nester with an empty head!

Click SHOP to see my sale items.  I sorely need some help clearing out my spare room (guests coming soon!) and it’s full of great quality brand baby and kids’ gear.  So please lend a hand, spend a little and help me shift some stuff!  

I’ve slashed prices across all items and not all are for winter, so you can plan ahead and grab some bargains for summer, as newborn gifts and even party bags!  

See Shop for details of how to buy in Malta and from overseas.  Just leave a comment here or on the shop page to ask questions, get quotes for overseas delivery and so on.  I’m online a lot, so can get back to you quickly.

Sale on till end Feb… 

Back to a regular blog post in the next day or so!   Oh, and I’ll be tweeting too soon, so I can give you updates on new items on sale and closing bargains.  More news later in the week on that.

Today was a cold, hurricane-force, wet day in Malta.  I sat most of the morning decked in treble sweater layers at my laptop.  There are no useful solutions to providing ambient room temperatures here.  I tried to ignore the rattling, crashes and bangs as hassiras (cane blinds) and flower pots were destroyed by the wind.  

Having got to 2pm in a deep chill, I had had enough.  There was only one way to keep warm, and that was busy housewifery.  Web 2.0 zero work is fun, but not without central heating.  Baking, ironing , cleaning and hacking logs proved more suitable activities to generate some feeling in my toes and fingers.   For once, having been forced into manual labour and away from cerebral work, I began to see more merit in the housekeeping than mere heat generation. 

All these tasks are things from my childhood and I took a trip down memory lane as I went about them.   I remember dark winter afternoons returning home from school to find a welcoming waft of dinner to greet me in the hall as I dumped soggy mittens and welly boots.   For just about the first time  in his six years, my son found the same welcome.  I felt a warm sense of duty fufilled as he chirpily asked what it was that smelled so good for supper.  

Earlier, as I waded through some tough ironing of heavy-duty, linen table runners and napkins, left crumpled since Xmas, I remembered my mother’s fastidiousness at having crisp, fresh laundered sheets.   The time spent ironing turned out to be therapeutic and productive. 

Log chopping was my dad’s affair, but today it was mine.  I had to do it outside the front door, in the alleyway, on tarmac, as I’d have broken my  brittle limestone patio otherwise.  The narrow venue had good acoustics and soon I had most of my little old lady neighbours craning their necks out of barely-open doors to see what the hullabaloo was all about.  Reassured, they gesticulated at the leaden skies, smiled, and retreated.  

Later, the gas delivery men bashed on all our doors to see whose empty bottle was left out.  We all popped our heads out again, laughed, found the owner, ‘Griet (short for Margariet), who had been out back in the garden saving blown away washing, smiled again and bid eachother goodbye till fairer weather.  So I got to see the neighbours too.  What a camio of village life both incidents made on a cold, damp day.  Scenes that could easily have been played out a million times over the past 50 years in Maltese village life.  

All in all, my abandonment of the computer screen to seek some warmth had proved a valuable part of my day, if not in monetary terms.  I felt heartened to have rekindled good thoughts about my past on a day that felt so despairing.   I feel more energised to return to my client work.  

And how appropriate as the new years starts.   The mythical King of ancient Rome, Janus, who was placed at the start of the calender (hence January) was depicted with two faces: one facing backward to past events; the other forwards to the future.    Sometimes, spending time recalling the best of your past can put the present into context.  Finding the odd, small daily task that links us to our past can be a reassuring crutch in these uncertain times.

It’s the time of year when we all navel gaze and dig deep. It’s winter.  There’s little on the horizon by way of holidays, warm weather or good news, and we’re probably trying to make sense of our goals for the coming year. 

We yearn to make 2009 work out better than 2008. We plan for the unpredictability of life. We’ve been spendthrift and are now spent up. We’ve overeaten yet are now undernourished (the fat, sugar, alcohol and caffeine of the past month taking its toll). We’re likely taking stock of our age, career, family, job, commitments, commute, friends, income, weather, location, health, sex life or whatever. 

So what better way to work through all these issues than by doing something simple and even mundane, yet, as I will explain, so cathartic, as roasting a chicken and then making stock? Not the kind of self-help advice you’re looking for I know, but believe it or not, making stock has a powerful, primeval way of letting you take stock. Here’s why…

For your Body

You’re going to have to make time to cook raw ingredients, rather than junk in some ready meal. You’ll be eating some lean, white meat – if the chicken is organic and free-range, then all the better. This is at least a good start to the year after the indulgences of the festive season.

The chicken carcass has a lot going for it as it can keep you going all week: cooked chicken & rocket ciabatta; drumstick in your lunch pack; enough bits to toss with some tortellini; or mince some up to make chicken patties.

Then dump the remainder in a pot of water with a celery stick, bay leaf, onion, carrot or more or less any veg lurking in the bottom of your fridge, and simmer for around 1.5 hours to make your stock. Use the stock, fat skimmed off, for risotto, soups, pasta sauces, and more. And hey presto, you’ve almost got through the week on one frugal, economical chicken! 

Your body will be feeling better already. Stock is a powerhouse of nutrients (fat skimmed off). Your purse will be feeling better as you’ve kept the food budget economically low for a week. 

For your Mind

If you’re going to cook a whole chicken, then it’s probably going to be shared with others. Cooking for others means sitting down to eat in company rather than grazing at the breakfast bar.   It gives us time to talk over and make sense of our day with others. Kids at the table can learn greater social skills and develop stronger relationships if they sit and eat regular meals as a family. 

Cooking is manual labour which is wonderfully destressing. Following a recipe is linear and simple compared to dealing with the machinations of office politics over the water cooler. Prepping and cooking time can be a capsule of time for yourself in which you can drift off, imagine, plan and have a million conversations in your head. 

In conclusion

In this age of want and waste rather than food and frugality, there is something to be said for making a chicken make so many good meals in a week.  It takes us back to some Ur-alt time that started in prehistory and ended somewhere in the 1970s when cling film, Betty Crocker packet mixes and the microwaves hit the scene. Picking the last bits of chicken off its bones and rendering the carcass brings us closer to our roots and makes us part of the continuum of mankind. 

So instead of fretting about your New Year’s resolutions, get down to roasting a chicken and you’ll find you’re well on the way to getting body and soul on track to tackle whatever 2009 throws at you.

I have a dismal record of keeping my New Year’s resolutions.   I revisited my 2008 list, drafted in an email to myself last January 13th, and I’ve managed to do part of only one in what seemed like a fairly reasonable list.   That part of a resolution was to start a blog and keep at it.  I only rekindled the whole exercise from around mid September.  It took me 9 months to even start to adhere to one resolution.  So why do even the most appealing of resolutions seemed doomed to fail?

The inherent problem with New Year’s resolutions is that most are born out of fear or desperation, which aren’t exactly the right motivators to get us going.  We feel depressed because we’re overweight.  We get guilt ridden that we’ve paid for the gym but failed to go.  

To succeed, big resolutions need plans hatched in November, or quite frankly, any time of year that suits.  The pressure the New Year puts on our resolve makes any attempt to keep to our resolution a task of Sysiphus.  Quite pointless.

To avoid early disappointment, opt for the little things that can make you feel better instantly, and that are definitely achievable.  It’s far better to commit to whittling away at the DIY every other weekend, remembering people’s birthdays, punctually, in the coming year, or ensuring you make time to talk to your kids rather than at them, than attempting gradiose resolutions doomed to failure.

And there’s another caveat to consider: to be truly successful, we need our goals to be connected to our past and our future.  We shouldn’t rely on an all or nothing approach – a one-shot-a-year - to changing ourselves.  The building blocks of success are found in our everyday lives, not gathered up once a year. 

To manage successful and lasting change, we need to have a passion that drives us and something to be excited about.  Bemoaning our state of health or berating ourselves for the error of our ways won’t put us in the right frame of mind to resolve to do anything.  Try visualising yourself succeeding, but not under the influence of  New Year’s lubrication, and there’s every chance you can attain a life- or way-changing goal, but at some point in the year, just not from January 1st. 

It took me to September to realise that commiting to a blog is a major resolution.  It was only when my passion and drive to create it kicked in at some point in month nine, I began to realise my ‘New’ Year’s’ resolution.  I now consider 1st January a rather unimportant date in my diary.   And I feel all the happier for it.   And this year, well, I’ve made only one resolution – to remind myself not to make New Year’s resolutions.

I have only one employee.  My cleaning lady.  My ‘lady who does’.  It comes hard to let her go, to put it euphemistically, at this time of year and just after I’ve given her a Christmas box.  But I won’t be taken for a ride.   

What this is all about though, is not whether corners are cleaned and cobwebs removed (which they aren’t), but my need to take control again.  It’s a small, perhaps trivial example of my decision to get a grip on aspects of my life that have eluded me.  In 2009, I’ve decided to opt for a Do-it-yourself approach to everything possible.  

Mad though it seems, DIY can free us, not chain us.  Even menial house work has its merits if you adopt the right attitude to it.  DIY means you don’t have to rely on someone else; you don’t have to put up with their delays, unpredictability, unprofessionalism, or un-whatever.  In the process, you can learn new skills and about yourself. 

There’s a SlideShare presentation I came across recently entitled ‘Employees Suck’  that makes a good case for DIY.  If you drill down the deck, it turns out to be a checklist on how to foster an idea so it becomes a viable business.  The presentation’s clarion call is: “Figure out how to do the [business] idea really, really cheaply.  So cheaply that you don’t need to rely on anyone else’s money.  Do it yourself.”

Cutting out the middlemen helps you take control; a really good feeling I find.  I am starting the year with two creative projects of my own to nurture and then sell at a price I value,  rather than selling my hours like an employee.  

You’re never in control as an employee, as my cleaner has just found out.  So with recession around,  investing in some DIY skills will not only help you hedge your bets if you find yourself ‘let go’ this coming year, it will also help you realise your own social, intellectual and monetary capital.  

Of course, learning and doing means you are going to have to find or make time to do things yourself, but with with recession out there, more of us are likely to have time not cash these days anyway.

Although this will sound Scrooge-like, I have to admit I don’t particularly like the Christmas holiday period.  If it lasted a mere day or so, then I could probably come to love it.  But from my perspective as a micro business and self employed, Christmas and its trappings hurt my turnover for a good quarter of a year and not because I am out buying oodles of presents for all and sundry.  I count the cost well before Christmas,  not in the new year. (By the way, I am not a Scrooge, and do buy gifts, but do try to keep them within the bounds of reason – see my post on the £10 Xmas present  for why). 

My issue is that from early November at the latest, my projects dwindle, my clients cease to engage, my asssigments are pushed ‘to the New Year’ and my overdue invoices remain unpaid; and not just because of the recession.  Now, if you’re employed, not self-employed, Christmas must seem heaven-sent.  You still get your salary irrespective of the enforced holiday period, while I barely earn anything from mid November to mid January. 

Even when I was in employment in London in the early ’90s, I’d opt to stay working between Xmas and New Year.  I prefered to take my holiday when I wanted (during sunnier months), not because a religious festival dictated that I do so in December.  I am not religious and don’t ski, so can’t think of any reason why the end of December should be an ideal time for me to take holiday.

I felt particularly in tune with super blogger Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist when she gave her annual rant about Christmas in the workplace earlier this week.  She stressed a point she apparently makes most years questioning why we go along with the joliment and obligatory shutdown of Christmas irrespective of our personal religious sentiments.  She is Jewish, and doesn’t celebrate Christmas.  But when in employment she had to take holiday over Christmas and receive  religiously-correct ‘Happy Holiday’ cards in lieu of Christmas cards. 

Ironically, I received a proper Christmas card from old friends in London who are Hindi.  I left them off my Xmas card list a few years back as I didn’t wish to offend.  But they sent me one out of respect for my supposed affinity to the Christian celebration.  I guess the celebration is considered by even those who don’t subscribe to it as a time to look up old friends (lest auld acquaintance be forgot, and all that).

As you count the cost of Christmas in the new year, spare a thought for those who  have to count its cost months before the event as well as months after.   I don’t sell Santas or baubles;  I sell consultancy, and that’s not on people’s spending or wish list in the run up to Christmas.

Not just for Xmas but for life

It’s finally arrived.  A pristine issue of my Dec-Jan issue of Maisons Cote Sud, a French deco magazine.  My husband gave me a subscription to the magazine as a present four years ago.  All in all, a magazine subscription is the ultimate 11th hour present solution – quick to buy online, no wrapping required.  It’s a hardy perennial of a present, not an annual one off.  

You just have to know what mag would interest the recipient.  Horse and Hound, Olive (the Beeb’s upmarket foodie mag), Model Railways, or whatever, there’s a magazine for everyone! 

A magazine has a certain touchy-feeliness in this age of digital digestion of news and communications.  And although you might feel it lacks some ‘wow’ factor as there’s nothing to unwrap on the day, it can make more of an impact than a physical  gift on the 25th.  Here are my reasons for loving glossy new print. 

For me, mag flicking is a quality of life thing…

Cote Sud’s arrival signals leisurely coffees perched at my breakfast bar (young son permitting!) and 15 minutes of sheer bliss as I leaf apart its new pages.  I have often received books for Christmas, but rarely do I have time to read anything cover to cover since my son was born six years ago.  Atonement lies in dust on my bedside table, paused at Chapter 3 since September. 

There’s nothing better than the sound of the postman squeezing Cote Sud in through the letter box.  Its distinctive bi-monthly heavy thud on the doormat resonates with quality moments.  It matters nothing that it’s all French to me!  The photography speaks volumes through a dull, rainy day transporting me to die-for interiors in Provence, Umbria, and even Argentina.  

 In 15-minutes tranches, I can forget my own DIY chores while I gloat over stylist-manicured sets in houses that I can only dream of.  I can ignore my rather neglected patch of slimey limestone patio, unkempt plants and crumbling plaster walls. 

I’ll have to renew the subscription myself this new year, but I know that it brings some valuable ‘me time’ in an otherwise hectic life.  And that’s worth the cover price I think. 

If you’re stuck for last-minute gifts and hate shops, this is a present that is not just for Christmas but for life.  Make someone’s whole year brighter this Christmas day.

The saying goes that Rome wasn’t built in a day. And I now know why. If the Church (aka Catholic church) has anything to do with buildings, things take a long time. While it’s obvious the Roman church has vested interests in buildings in Rome, it is quite unbelievable that ecclesiasts in Rome should have a say over humble village dwellings in Malta. But they do, and big time. Here’s how I know.

A few posts back (word-of-mouth marketing) I mentioned that we’d seen a house in our village that was supposedly ‘for sale’. The owner (who would have to get eight members of his family to agree to our offer, which is unlikely anyway), told us that the Church owns 35 per cent of the property. Clearly embarrassed, he said he’d contact the Maltese curia to find out if they’d agree to sell their stake to him in order to make it a freehold purchase for us.

But, neither of us had reckoned on the Curia taking up to two years to reply. Apparently, the Maltese church has to ask Rome whether they can sell their stake. We’re talking about a crumbling stone farmhouse, unlived in for years, and which is likely to disappear altogether if it’s not rennovated soon.

It’s a bit like waiting for the puff of smoke from the Vatican – will they, won’t they? Who knows what criteria the person or persons in the Vatican will use to decide on the fate of a stone heap 1000kms away. In this day and age, it’s incredible we’re even talking about this. I know how Henry VIII felt now.

I’ve crossed the house of my list. Meanwhile, I do feel for the Maltese guy representing his extended family. He just wants to realise some capital from the place while he and some of the eight are still alive to use the cash. He is prevented from doing so because of some arcane property rights and laws. It’s the same story Malta over. And such a waste on an island of limited land and where monstrous new builds rise Phoenix like every month.

I am sure in these hard times he could have done with the odd thousand Euros or so. He said he’d knock on our door first if he gets word from Rome. But I might be closer to God myself by then having given up on God’s earthly intermediaries.