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I've been thinking a lot recently about who is in control of my life. My thoughts have led me to think back about how things were in the past when there were some aspects of my life that I was much happier about.
About 7 or 8 years ago I was in a middle management position at work, enjoying my work reasonably well although even then most of my satisfaction came from my dabbling in living the 'Good Life'. I was often busy in the evening or at the weekend making jams, pickles, chutneys and country wines. I had a few hens in the back garden and I was learning to play the guitar and the concertina. I was a little disappointed that I had had to give up my allotment due to spending 1 1/2 hours a day driving to and from work, Saturday mornings being taken up by my son's football and the inevitable clash between report writing and manic weed growth in May and June. However I had to admit that I did quite well on the work life balance front.
Spin forward a couple of years and I had been promoted to a more senior position. Even so I was still busy enjoying myself in the kitchen on a regular basis. To a certain extent the jam and wine making tailed off when I decided that I really wanted to lose weight and that those things perhaps weren't helping. However I was still happily in control of my life. I was especially happy as I lost 5 stone over about 18 months.
Then things started to go wrong. I had been 'acting up' to a more senior position for a while but had had to step back to my previous role when another person was appointed to the more senior position on a permanent basis. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy stepping back into my old role. That's a long story that I don't want to go into here. I applied for a few promotions in different schools but was unsuccessful. Then I was made redundant. I started working part time for the slimming organisation with which I had lost my weight. At first it went really well and I was successful, both in terms of helping people to lose weight and in terms of earning money. Then a full time management position came up in the organisation, I applied for it but was turned down. Needing to earn money full time I took a temporary position in a school, but at a lower grade than I had been working at before. I applied for more senior management positions in different schools but again I was unsuccesful. Then I started to put on weight again. All this has happened pver the last 18 months and in that time I have also done next to nothing as far as music or self supporting is concerned.
Looking back I can see that when I felt in control of my life professionally I was able to enjoy my life outside of work to the full. Over the last 18 months my reaction to feeling out of control of my life has been to stamp my foot, metaphorically, like a spoilt kid and say if I can't have my way then I'm going to blow everything away. I have sulked on the sofa in front of the TV. I have behaved in a completely self destructive way. Now that I have faced up to this perhaps I can begin to put it behind me. I have been back to the slimming group and lost a couple of pounds. It's not much but it is a start. I'm going to start planning some running time and get back into shape. Hopefully my posts over the coming months will show that I have turned a corner.
Not for the first time in my life I find myself struggling with my weight and eating habits. As a youngster I was 'a big lad' with 'a good appetite' - meaning I was fat and ate too much of the wrong sort of food.
At the age of 12 I got a scholarship to a private school. Sport was timetabled three afternoons a week and it turned out that I was a decent rugby player and sprinter. So with lots of school sport, and joining a rugby club, I kept my weight under control through my high school years. At the age of 18 I was a stocky, but fit and lean, 12 stone.
Then I went to university and gave up sport for student politics. The weight piled on without me really noticing it until I left university weighing over 16 stone. Through my twenties and early thirties my weight varied between 16 and 20 stone. From time to time I would try to eat more healthily, or go to the gym, but it was always a struggle.
A couple of years ago my wife and sister-in-law persuaded me to go to Slimming World and I got my weight down from just over 18 stone to just under 13 stone. I kept it there for about a year and in that time I took up the challenge of running a marathon, which I did in May this year.
Since then though my weight has shot up again. While I was training for the marathon I started eating the wrong food again. I was able to get away with it as I was running over 30 miles a week. Since May though I have hardly run at all. To make matters worse I have not been able to find a full time job since my last contract ended in August. Feeling miserable I have allowed my eating to get even worse.
I have decided to train for and run another marathon next year. This time I will make sure that I am committed to the next race as well so that I don't stop running after I've done one. I am still eating badly though. It doesn't make me feel any happier. In fact I feel worse after eating badly but I don't think about that when I'm putting the food into my mouth. I know what I should be doing but at the moment I am finding it easier to make the wrong choices than the right ones.
I made my first sloe gin in 2006 and did it again in 2007. Last year I didn't get round to it and recently I realised that I've only got about half a bottle left. So I decided that I really must make some this year. The books generally tell you to pick your sloes after the first frost. I seem to remember that I tried that in 2005 and couldn't find any sloes. Instead I pick sloes anytime from mid-October onwards and stick them in the freezer overnight.
Yesterday I went out sloe picking. I had my mind on a couple of spots to try but as it happened I only visited one. I was amazed at how many sloes were on the bushes - I've never seen so many. In less than two hours I had picked 4 lbs of sloes within half a mile of my front door. I'd been planning on picking 3 lb to do two bottles of gin, now I've decided to go and gather another 1/2 lb of sloes and buy an extra bottle of gin.
Basically sloe gin is just regular sloes and sugar steeped in regular gin. There are all sorts of variations in quantities but I am going with 1 1/2 lb of sloes with 1 lb of sugar to one bottle of gin. This comes from 'Preserved' by Nick Sander and Johnny Acton, an excellent book. Any gin will do as the sloes and sugar will dominate the taste of the gin anyway. I'm using Tesco's blue and white stripey value gin at under £8 a bottle.
The sloes went in the freezer last night so this evening I will get them out. Then they need to be pricked several times each. Traditionally this is done with a blackthorn spike, I will be using a pin. I have heard of someone using a wire bristled brush and rolling it over the sloes on a tin tray. Apparently this is very quick. Once pricked the sloes are put into a large container, I use a demijohn, with the sugar and gin. Then give it a good shake once a day or so to help the sugar to dissolve and leave it for about 6 months to infuse. Then you can bottle it and leave it another 6 months before drinking it. However my wife's cousin once drank hers from the container it was infusing in after just a few weeks, she said it tasted fine. Connoisseurs say that it gets better the longer it's left. With the bumper crop I've got this year maybe mine will last long enough to find out if they are right.
Update
This slow gin was really too sickly sweet. I have since found other recipes with significantly less sugar to sloes and gin. I must get round to writing about that and making some more sloe gin.
Hello and Welcome to the Uncruliosity Shoppe!
Hopefully somebody will find something that I write here interesting at some time or other. Unlike many bloggers I do not have a single all consuming passion. I'm afraid my interests are many and varied, my posts are likely to range all over the place.
I am a husband and father of three children, a football coach, a morris dancer, and allotment holder and a chicken keeper, a one-time marathon runner who might do it again, a homebrewer, a jam maker, a keen cook (when I can keep my wife out of the kitchen for long enough), a reader and bookcrosser - and that's just what springs to mind at the moment.
Hope to see you again soon.
Farewell
