The Twiggly Hoose Blog

A wee photographic retrospective....

2008-05-30T08:44:00.013+01:00

As we've not updated this blog for months, we thought we would do a wee photographic retrospective of life between March and May 2008....

Twiglet and Daddy working hard on the 2008 Turner Prize....

Twiglet's 2nd Birthday - April 16th 2008 - Presents Galore! HUGE thanks to everyone who helped to make it a very special day...

Twiglet makes a friend at Edinburgh Zoo...

And meets some long-lost family members....

A lovely visit from the Welsh contigent...the cousins all together...

At Loch Lomond with Auntie Elaine....

Twiglet with his best friend Maura...

Our first (and so far last!) barbeque of the year...three weeks of constant sunshine and we buy a new barbeque! Cue thunder, lightening and torrential rain...but we would NOT be outdone by the elements! (Note rather fetching gazebo style groundsheet artfully draped over washing line....)

Move over Monty Don....

Things trying to grow! Yay! (cherry tomatoes, dwarf beans, salad leaves, spring onions alongside some admittedly sad looking tulips....). Note the very clever bamboo gizmos created by Richard which Baden Powell would be justifiably chuffed with...

A new member of the family......

2008-05-28T20:19:00.006+01:00

Well, apologies for the delay in updating this blog. Life in the Twiggly House has suddenly gone from being not-particularly-interesting to, erm, a bit more interesting. 'Interesting' to the point of being (to engage in some Anglo Saxon terminology here), a bit of a headf&ck.

We were delighted to discover in early April 2008 that we are expecting a little brother or sister for Twiglet; a little jelly-bean we have nicknamed Squiglet. We were absolutely thrilled, neither of us are the right side of 35, and we have always wanted Twiglet to have a sibling.

Due to my thrombophilia (a genetic condition called Factor V Leiden which only needs treatment during pregnancy to prevent clots in the placenta), I was seen promptly by both the haemotologists at Wishaw General, and my obstetric consultant and midwife. Scans were run - very exciting, though following a fairly disasterous pregnancy history, also quite a worrying time for all.

We got to the big 12 weeks, wonderful. Started to relax, to enjoy the feeling of a brand new life growing inside me, to plan for the future of our soon-to-be-expanded family.

Then the blow....the horrible, deathly silent, hear-a-pin-drop, watch-their-concerned-faces moment that I found out, during my 14 week scan, that there could be a problem.

During the scan, the sonographer measured Squiglet's nuchal fold. This is an area of fluid behind the neck. At 14 weeks, this usually falls within the range of 2 - 3.2mm and causes no concern. Squiglet's fold measures 4.8mm.

I was rescanned by a doctor who confirmed the measurements, and whisked into the 'family / counselling room' where my knees promptly buckled. I didn't want to cry in front of Twiglet, who was with me, but the tears came thick and fast.

There is a 30% chance that our darling child has a chromosome abnormality. Very high odds indeed, as a 'normal' 35 year old usually classed as 'high-risk' is around a 1 in 125 chance.

If there is a problem, there is a 70% chance that Squiglet has Down's Syndrome; a 20% chance of Edwards Syndrome and a 10% chance of Turner Syndrome. With all of these conditions, defects of the heart, the kidneys and the abdomen are common. Edwards Syndrome rarely allows a child to live beyond 10 months of age. Most people are familiar with the effects of Down's Syndrome. Even should the amniocentisis results come back clear for these three disorders, further anomoly scans will need to be run to check for heart, kidney, stomach and limb problems.

To say we were devastated at first would be an understatement - heaven knows how I got Twiglet and I both home on the long bus journey back to Bothwell. After a week of knowing, and learning, and understanding more about what we face; things are becoming clearer.

There is still a 70% chance that everything will be fine and/or ultimately treatable. No problems with Squiglet's heart have as yet been seen (difficult, though not impossible, to do at a 14 week scan) and femur length and head measurements are all looking normal. The increased nuchal measurement MAY resolve itself. But that 30% still looks awfully big, and very very scary.

We have chosen to have the amniocentisis test on June 10th. This carries a 1% chance of a late miscarriage but, when you look at the stats, that is nothing. We simply want to prepare ourselves - and Twiglet - for what is to come as best we possibly can.

If our beloved baby is a special child, then he or she is a very precious gift who has been entrusted to us for reason.

Snow, concrete marmalade and not making fudge..

2008-03-03T14:15:00.007Z

It has been almost suspiciously quiet here at the Twiggly Hoose. Apart from a few kitchen catastrophes, very little has happened.....apart from SNOW!

Yes, no sooner had I decided to think about starting off my dwarf beans on the kitchen windowsill, the heavens opened and sprinkled us liberally with the white stuff.

Twiglet is very impressed with snow. Having only seen about three flakes in his 22 months, this morning was extremely exciting.

'What's that, Ellis?'

'Ooooh....Ooohhhh.......*manic laughter and much pointing*'

' Snow...can Ellis say snow?'

'Nooooooooooooooo.....*more manic cackling as he tries to climb out of window*'

No sooner had we got downstairs and he stopped yelling 'Noooooooo!!!!' long enough to guzzle half his Weetabix and smear the other half over the table, the chair and his hair; he was attempting a somewhat gung-ho escape from the back door clad only in his vest.

We got dressed, spent 10 minutes looking for mittens, gave up looking for mittens and put socks on his hands, and ventured outside into the snowy loveliness.....

He kicked some, he threw some, he tried to eat some....fortunately, it wasn't yellow.....he wandered off.....

Then he fell over. I couldn't take a photo of this, as I was laughing too much. Bad Mummy.

What else has happened recently?

We made marmalade. Well, I say marmalade...what we actually got was something that could be used as building foundations. One thinks one missed the setting point of said marmalade by, whooo, about 5 minutes. There is still a knife stuck fast in the jar. What we did manage to taste was, indeed, gorgeous; and the actual process of marmalade-making was much easier than I thought so I feel another stab at this particular pastime should be considered soon.

I thought I would try and be clever and make fudge for my mum for Mothers' Day. It looked easy enough in the cookbook. Here is a picture of said fudge....

Mmm....yum.

Note to self: Buy flowers next year.

A rant about Tesco - yup, it's chickens again...

2008-02-06T23:54:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7230959.stm

OK, you might think that I'm just banging my eco-friendly hippy drum again....but what the hell do Tesco think they're doing?

Even if you take the whole animal-welfare issue out of the equation, the only possible way they can make these sort of discounts is by buying in chicken from places like Brazil. We don't know much about the hygiene, food standards etc of imported meat from outside Europe, and the Food Standards Agency only actually check a few birds being imported (under 50% of cargo is stopped and searched, and only one chicken from each container is checked, so millions of chickens are going unchecked).

Have the supermarkets leant on the UK Farmers (broiler chicken producers or not, they are still people and still need to earn a living, I concede) to such an extent that 3p a bird is no longer viable for them? The farmers are struggling as it is. Many would become free-range producers, but simply do not have the outdoor space to allow this. They WOULD be committed to breeding less birds indoors and thus improving conditions, if the price paid by the supermarkets was enough to let them actually make a profit, and therefore a wage.

Even reducing the chicken to £1.99.....3p to buy a broiler chicken, maybe a few pence to wrap it in plastic and polystyrene - they are still making an absolute fortune!

I would appeal to people to think twice about buying 'bargain basement' chicken - for your health, for local farmers and their families AND for the birds themselves. Buy something else instead.

Just refuse to buy chicken from the supermarkets until they sort themselves out and start being fair to farmers and give the farmers the opportunity and finances to choose what they would like to produce.

You deserve to know what you're putting in your children's mouths - and a pile of non EU regulation antibiotics, water and growth hormones wouldn't be the sort of thing you'd put on their toast, is it?

Primroses, Mud and the Escape of the Little People

2008-01-31T13:29:00.000Z

What a week we've had here at the Twiggly Hoose. It has rained constantly since Sunday due, in no small part, to me spending some of my hard-earned Child Tax Credits on a garden fork, sieve thing and some cheapy primroses for my hanging basket. The primroses got planted up on the kitchen table, Twiglet transferring most of the compost very successfully to the living-room carpet, walls, paintwork and, I suspect, his stomach judging by the mess on his t-shirt and face. Still, at least it is organic compost. And I always wanted a red and muddy-brown swirled carpet - 70s style is making a come-back, after all.
The garden fork and sieve remain in the boot of Davey the Dilapidated Hyundai from Hell on the grounds that retreiving them means wading through what used to be the garden (but now resembles a Lido, I fully expect to see German beachtowels strewn all over my path very soon) to the chaos that is the World's smallest and fullest garden shed.
My primroses do look very pretty though, I am the envy of the local pensioners.

Stuck in the house all week with a bored, listless toddler does not make for particularly interesting reading. Books have been torn, Fisher Price Little People have been despatched through the letterbox, dinner has been thrown in disgust across the kitchen. The living-room looks as though it has been ram-raided by 200 Haribo-crazed toddlers with ADHD. Fingers have been trapped and hair has been coated in Weetabix. (I have discovered that Weetabix would make an excellent eco-friendly and biodegradable alternative to super-glue).

Favourite Twiglet phrases this week:
'Dooby Dooby Daaaaaaaaaay'
'Baaa Baaaaa BUGGY!' (no idea what this is supposed to mean, but it is, apparently, hilarious).
Still no real, proper, big-boy words. Apart from, when asked by a lady what his name was, he fixed is huge blue eyes on her, smiled his bestest smile and sagely said 'Bugger'.

We did do some cake-making. Well, I say 'we'... I did the work, Twiglet smeared flour across every conceivable surface and consumed so much raw egg that I'm amazed Edwina Curry didn't pop by with the Health Visitor and a contingent from Social Services. Twiglet decided that he preferred the Welshcakes uncooked, obviously. And, after my disasterous attempt at multi-tasking (nattering on phone, using a too-hot and very cheap frying pan and trying to clean a squirming Twiglet), so did I.

Got a very nice email from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall this morning, as I'm sure did around 177,000 other people who have committed to the Chicken Out! Campaign. We have been asked to take a photo of the free-range aisle of our local supermarket to send in to the site. The camera is ready for our soujourn to the delights of Asda Hamilton tonight, the jute bag and ultra-cheapskate shopping list is waiting in the hall....all I need to do is actually locate said free-range aisle, as last week it seemed to have disappeared completely. Does anyone have satnav and a magnifying glass I could borrow? A sherpa hanging around, perchance?

On a good note.....it has been snowing today. Everything is so drenched with rainwater that, of course, it hasn't stuck, but we are due more snowfall tomorrow and Saturday, so the Farmers' Market might have to miss our presence this week.

On a bad note....Saturday is actually Imbolc, the first day of Spring in the Pagan calendar (Christians celebrate it as St Bride's or St Brigit's Day, incidentally). One has a feeling that I will not be skipping happily around a green and pleasant garden praising and thanking the Goddess for the first warm rays of sun. I will be cowering indoors with a mug of hot-chocolate watching Wales get pumped to within an inch of their overpaid lives in the Six Nations.

A chicken, some cheese and a big hole in my wallet where money used to be.

2008-01-20T13:23:00.000Z

Farmers' Markets. They're not for the likes of us frugal types.

Yesterday morning, off we set in Davey The Dilapidated Hyundai from Hell to the South Side of Glasgow. Destination - Queen's Park.

I had decided that it was going to be load of rubbish but, wisely, kept these negative thoughts to myself for fear that Richard would dump my cynical self on the side of the M8, somewhere near Easterhouse; and then drive himself and the Twiglet to the nearest McDonalds Drive-Thru for a slap-up breakfast of saturated fat and sugar.

Parking up on a rather exclusive looking street of grand three-storey houses; my first inclination was to grab some nearby leaves in an attempt to camoflauge the car...a rusting, battered, barely road-legal Korean pensioner-wagon stands out like a sore thumb amongst the pristine 4x4s that look as though they have never encountered a puddle, let alone a muddy farm-track.

Twenty minutes of trying to rugby-tackle Twiglet into the equally battered (though fortunately not rusting) second-hand McLaren buggy (that DOES look as though it has seen many a muddy farm-track, although the most it has seen is the occassional trip to the Co-Op), we give in and let him walk. This is usually the best option in the long run, as within minutes he is bored of holding our hands and chooses the solitude of the buggy.

Despite my initial reservations, the great and the good of Organic Farming are well represented with around 20 stalls selling everything from very expensive bread to very expensive Ostrich burgers. The place is packed out....and this is serious Birkenstock and Quinny Zap territory. With my ethically-produced multi-coloured scarf and jute shopping bag, I thought we fitted in quite well; until I noticed that other children were called things like Verity and Ruthven and were certainly not dressed head-to-foot in second-hand Cherokee.

Chickens were, oddly, somewhat thin on the ground. We found one stall - a Pig Farmer, strangely enough - with a stash of these most rare of birds. Once I'd fought off a number of ancient shoppers wielding purses crammed with twenty-pound notes and seriously full carrier-bags, I was able to procure a chicken the size of a budgie for £8.10. I asked the farmer whether they had seen an increase in chicken sales since the Chicken Out! campaign had gripped the nation. He smiled at me knowingly......my money was in his (somewhat dirty) paws, and I was suddenly horribly aware that he might have popped into CostCo on his way down, rebagged the lot and would be giggling like a manic all the way to the bank come Monday morning.

Whilst these thoughts were spinning through my addled brain, I found myself parting with a further £4.50 for some apple-smoked mature cheddar (well, the lad on the stall did have a very nice smile) and £3.00 for some wild boar sausages for Richard who had been terribly well-behaved and restrained in the face of such epicurean delights (and with a very empty stomach to boot).

Returning to Twiggly Hoose, we packed Twiglet off to bed for his sanity-sleep (my sanity, not his) and set about hacking the chicken into pieces. And, fair play - the bird does seem to be free-range. No flabby bits, no acres of fat, no hock-burns. The nicest breasts Richard has seen for a very, very long time. Allegedly.

The breasts are frozen for two meals (yes, they are that big). The quarters for another meal. The wings have been saved in the freezer for when we have enough to recreate our favourite Chinese take-away's salt and chilli chicken wings. The carcass has made stock and chicken broth. All in all, I'm feeling pretty impressed with ourselves. Four meals from an £8.00 chicken,that's less than £1.00 per head. So there, it can be done.

Asda - hang your collective heads in SHAME!

2008-01-16T21:15:00.000Z

So...off we went to Asda (we have a choice of Asda or Tesco, so...well, not much choice at all really) to undertake the hellish endeavour that is the Weekly Shopping Challenge.

The Challenge

- To find a spot in the parent-and-child parking.

- If unsuccessful in this (which is usually the case), to walk through parent-and-child parking area without peering in through car windows making observations regarding lack of car-seat / style of car ('A toddler in a 2-seater Audi TT? One thinks not!') and generally getting into a foul mood before reaching the hallowed (though draughty) entrance hall of the Mecca of Consumerism.

- To head straight for the Whoops counter without looking as though we are desperate.

- To contain angry indignation when Whoops counter is, inevitably, empty bar three sad looking yoghurts and some ham that looks like the pig committed suicide in 1956.

- To procure as many reduced loaves and rolls as we can fit in our woefully small freezer without feeling the need to batter some doddering old person to death with a half-price baguette ('They are ALL 20p, love. ALL of them. And that's 20 of our new pence, y'hear?')

- To fill trolley up with nice, sensible healthy foodstuffs without looking smugly at the people with 18 children and a trolley full of additives

- To get the whole weekly shop (without the evil disposable nappies) in at under £20.00.

Thanks to the lovely Messieurs Fearnley-Whittingstall and Oliver; bare-bummed, hock-burnt and generally depressed chickens are now COMPLETELY off the menu for all three of us. Not just the fresh stuff, we're talking anything with chicken in it unless it is free-range. Same with eggs. No mayonnaise, no cakes, no quiche - unless they can prove that the chicken is free-range.

Considering the media attention and general hysteria the C4 programmes on chickens generated, I skipped happily off to the poultry section eager to see that the business brains of Walmart had bowed to public opinion and, never slow to jump on any passing bandwagon, would have rows upon rows of free-range chickens just bursting with happiness with the memory of their long(ish) and blissful lives.

How wrong I was. There were two sad packets of chicken legs. 'Ahhh' thought I. 'They must have sold out already'. So I scanned the area for where the free-range whole chickens would be, so I could check the (no doubt hugely, though trendily, inflated) prices would be. Then I looked harder. Then Richard started looking. Then even Ellis wondered why my face had gone a peculiar shade of violet, and he started looking....(though I think he just liked looking at his reflection on a piece of well-polished steak, to be fair).

Asda Hamilton do not stock whole free-range chicken. At all. Not one.

I wanted to demand an explanation from the manager. Richard convinced me that my mood was not condusive to an intelligent and well constructed ethical argument, and suggested I write a letter.

I'm afraid, dear reader, that Citizen Twiglet crumbled, and agreed.

On Saturday we are off to the Farmers' Market in Queen's Park to see what they have to offer. Originally, we were only looking to source local free-range poultry and eggs; however we will now also be pricing their fruit and vegetables. Asda have, potentially, lost the majority of our custom. All the tins and dried goods I can buy in Lidl, so a big fat (organic) raspberry to the country's second largest supermarket.

On a plus side - a few excellent advances to the frugal / sandal-wearing hippy cause......

- Have swapped the George Foreman Lean, Mean, Dust-Gathering-In-The-Cupboard-Because-It's-A-Bastard-To-Wash machine for a huge bag of really nice clothes for Ellis, courtesy of Freecycle. The lass in East Kilbride was lovely, and even threw a potty in for us. (Ellis now has a very funky item of headgear, it seems).

- The composter (now known as Davros) turned up this afternoon. He is settling in well into his new surroundings, squashed between the rusting barbeque and the fuschia bush. Richard's company are kindly donating their shredded paper to the cause, and Ellis's on-off relationship with fruit and vegetables means that plenty of green matter will be added on a regular basis.

- The shopping came in at.....(drum roll please....) £20.10. That's enough for a week, easily...and thanks to my obsessive compulsion to write detailed menus for the week, there will be very little - if nothing - to be thrown away.

Little steps, little steps.....

Village People reform for one-off Glasgow show...

2008-01-14T20:40:00.001Z

Introducing Twiglet.....

2008-01-12T23:00:00.000Z

The reason he is known as Twiglet will become apparent later, if I can be bothered....

Watch out, watch out...there's a Hoodie about.....

Here's the Boy Wonder in his new Yule pyjamas as bought for him by his Nanny and Gok in Wales....(the smile is probably because he'd just hidden three slices of toast in the DVD player...)

2008-01-11T17:27:00.001Z

Well, erm, here we are then. The Family Twiglet. Richard, Jacs and Ellis (and a couple of hundred house-spiders the size of large cats, and a pot-plant called Alan).

2008 is a new start for us and, hopefully, a step towards the life we really, really want to live. We can't afford to run away to the Highlands and buy a wee croft just yet (although I am seriously considering communal life, shame I lack any kind of transferable life skill) but we CAN be more frugal and think more seriously about what we buy, and why we buy it.

This whole thing started way back in Summer 2007 when we went camping in Dumfries and Galloway with only £4.00 per day to spend. Rather than throwing my toys out of the pram, I decided to look at it as a challenge, and see how far our money could stretch. Further than we thought, it transpired. I have very fond memories of Stilton and Broccoli packet-soup from a flask on a windy beach, of discovering a lot of wonderful (and free) Neolithic sites, and just relaxing outside the tent of an evening playing cards and watching the stars come out.

So...yes...2008 is all about...

- Reducing food waste by getting a composter, and planning menus each week to ensure we are only buying what we need.
- Looking for local suppliers wherever possible (although easier said than done, despite living in the apparent 'Garden of Scotland') to reduce plastics and food miles.
- Growing our own - we're planning more herbs, tomatoes, spring onions and possibly some dwarf beans.
- Going free-range. Completely.
- Mending and Making-Do, scrabbling around charity shops and being best friends with Freecycle.
- Asking 'Do I need it, or do I just want it?' whenever the evil,sweaty paws of rampant consumerism threatens to drag my wallet kicking and screaming into daylight.

So, all that remains is to wish you all a very happy, healthy and peaceful 2008 and ask you to keep watching this blog and sending us good vibes for success in our frugal endeavours!

Brightest Blessings from all at Casa Twiglet, somewhere on a badly designed council estate uncomfortably close to Glasgow.