Respekt, init?

So I was glad to go out for "lunch", albeit primarily liquid, for the big birthday celebrations yesterday as I had to get out of the house. I was about to start eating my own hands.

The Royal "We" popped to the supermarket yesterday morning and braved the rushes of people expecting South Wales to resemble Antarctica for several months. Still, it never hurts to be prepared. I was very much impressed with the Scouts on their winter camp that BBC News 24 were showing having a whale of a time in the snow. A great bit of PR for the Scouts, I thought and lets face it, the youngsters could do a lot worse than enrol in one of Baden-Powells troops. My Sister-in-Law runs a Guide troop (I think they're called "troops") and I think it's a very good thing for our youngsters. The modern twists on traditional skills are fantastic and I think any opportunity for interaction and skill sharing between generations is a massively important thing. Should be compulsory, I think.

In said supermarket (stay with me) I picked up a lovely big ham joint. That'll keep us going for a while, I thought.

So, yesterday lunchtime, I set it to cook in the slow cooker (best invention known to man - or woman) with two colour onions, a couple of cloves of garlic and the left over from New Year wine and beer. Just the stuff that had been started and not finished. That was what got me thinking about respect. I think the people less fortunate than ourselves and the people struggling to feed families on rations had an awful lot more of it than us.

It would have been very easy for me to pour the wine dregs down the Belfast sink and chuck out the bottles for recycling, or worse, in the refuse. But I put it to one side and treated it with some respect. In turn, it gave me a ham joint so utterlyscrumptious that I had to leave the house to get away from the delicious stink. Getting it out of the pot at 9 o'clock last night was an issue, though. I knew it was succulent, so I stuck my biggest knife right through the middle of it, blunt end up, and attempted to lift it out onto a plate.

20 minutes later I finished picking pieces of ham out of my hair after the blunt edge of the knife slid through the incredibly tender meat and showered me with it. (Of course I ate it! You would too!).

But there's still more respect I can give it, so I turn off the slow cooker and leave the yummy juice to cool overnight in a freezing cold kitchen. In the morning, then, I can easily move the fat off the top with a big spoon and then it's into ice cube bags and the freezer for the most yummy and usable stock in the world.

It's really easy to just chuck stuff away without much regard for where it's going. Chucking stuff "away" doesn't mean that it disappears off the face of the earth. It just becomes someone else's problem. The term "disposable culture" has been overused by many dreadful politicians but it's a mindset that's very difficult to get out of. I've been doing a lot of intricate bead work over the last few days and have found myself cursing if two of my sequins are stuck together and I only notice after I've sen them on. I want every single tiny beautiful sparkly one of them to be used to it's very full potential. I think this might mean that I either have Tourettes or my sense of respect might be coming back.

Carrier Bag Envy

Birthday present for Batty delivered. Result; even better than expected. Not many people get their birthday surprise spoiled by a national newspaper. But then I've never been asked to tell a national newspaper what gift I've got any of my bezzie mates for their birthdays either. And not that many of the bezzie mates have ever bought ME flowers on THEIR birthday to say thank you for their present. All of those things have happened in the last week.

I was secretly hoping to receive for some flowers, not that it's a regular occurrence (although I should say that my husband is rather good in the flower department), but I didn't think I could really put the purchasing of flowers down on the "essentials" list. I was hoping for them so that I could photograph them to use them for my handmade birthday cards. Now I can. And, as usual, they're not the usual sort of flowers that one would photograph for cards. Which usually means that they'll turn out weirdly better than expected.

I collected the two Battys from the train station after their marathon sale busting shopping spree. Of course, as they bundled their many bags into the car, they were begging for forgiveness. I must be honest I did feel a pang of jealousy at all the lovely bags, despite not knowing their contents. The boots (the main reason for the trip) were placed on the holy feet before I'd even pulled off. As I was told of the wondrous bargains (and some of them really were wondrous) I must admit that in order to suppress the envy I smothered it with smugness. I don't need any of that stuff, I didn't have to go out all day slip sliding around our Capital spending money I don't have on stuff I don't really want.

My fabulous friend I talked of yesterday told me that she doesn't like the sales because the retailers don't treat the items with nearly as much respect as they do when the items are full price. That's a really good point, isn't it, actually? All the reduced stuff is chucked in tote bins, thrown on rails. But hey, if some one's offering you the chance to buy something you've been after for ages at a really reduced price ... It's just a shame that they have to present that way. Maybe it's some psychological trick to make us feel like we are at a jumble sale and more likely to part with our hard earned cash?

So that's the key, really, isn't it? It's only a bargain if you really want/need it in the first place. The sales are wonderful if you're going for something or things in particular. Batty #2 bought dramatically reduced trainers for her kids because they needed trainers; the other ones were getting too small = bargain. Batty #1 had been eyeing up these fabulous boots for 9 months at least; craved them, saved for them; got 60% off the price = bargain. There's a lot to be said for the sales and who on earth am I to say don't go? The truth is, in this year of evaluation (which is kind of how I'm looking at it) that I might take the opportunity to decide what I might buy in the sales next year, if anything.