Running for MacMillan

This weekend will see me Running for MacMillan. A poster on an forum that I use lost her husband to cancer recently and during his last weeks they had great support from MacMillan nurses. 

MacMillan nurses provide practical, emotional, medical and financial support for terminally ill cancer patients. We would like to help them help others and one way of doing this is a sponsored run. 

Around 100 of us are taking part, most of them in UK but some in other countries. I started training about 12 weeks ago, never having run before. 

Happy Mothering Sunday

It is Mothering Sunday today, although we are not really celebrating it. Having spent the last 18 years abroad, all of my Mother's Days have been celebrated on a different day. It is getting very complicated now as UK celebrate on one day, the Swiss and the Germans on another and the French on yet another day. So it happens that I can be wandering around a town centre and am struck by the cards and signs in the shop windows advertising the approaching Mother's Day. At which point I fall into a short-lived panic that I have forgotten before realising that it is the wrong country.

My mum should be receiving a delivery today, I hope she is home when it arrives. Sometimes the whole point of Mothering Sunday is forgotten in the hectic of buying a present and having it sent, remembering to phone if one lives far away or arranging the perfect lunch for our mothers. We celebrate Mothering Sunday to celebrate our mothers, not to show off our ideal gift buying talents or to send the biggest bunch of flowers or the most extravagant box of chocolates.

We simply want to say Thank You to our mothers. Thank you for being there, for giving birth to us, for struggling through the first stressful years when you did not know why on earth baby was crying, and you had tried everything to stop us. For the terrible twos when we lay on the floor and wailed because the new buggy just would not go over the threshold of the door, causing you to threaten to take the buggy "straight back to the shop". For the school years, when you had to help us with out homework and surely had to resist swigging a bottle of wine in the airing cupboard when we just could not understand fractions.

In my case, I have to thank my mother for bearing me through the teenage years - surely the worst? - when I spent the O-level revising break lying in the garden with a Mills and Boons book hiding between the pages of my English worksheets. For the worry when I did eventually leave home, had my hearts broken for the first time and came home to be comforted. For the encouragement to go out again in the world, to have the courage to go to Germany and work as an au pair.  For the joy and happiness you shared with me when I finally fell in love with someone who  loved me back and treated me well. For not throwing things at my head as we planned the wedding, even if you did insist that it was The Done Thing to Have a Bus. For sharing the day of my wedding and making it one of the best of my life. For being there when I had a miscarriage, and telling me that it would be all right. For worrying and praying with and for me when I got pregnant and gave birth to your first grandchild, then two years later your second. For the babysitting that is done not out of a sense of duty, but with love and affection and much messy baking.

When I became a mother, I realised what my poor mother went through all those years and was grateful. If this is the day of the year to show that then I am happy to send her flowers and chocolates. It does not mean that I do not feel the same way the rest  of the year - even when I roll my eyes like the teenager still buried deep inside me who only comes out to be exasperated at my parents.

So, Mum. This post is for you. Thank You.

Avec la bise, lave ta chemise - it is washing day

I don't think that I have blogged about La Bise, the bitingly cold Northwind that whistles down Lake Geneva from the Alps. Probably because if La Bise is blowing, my fingers are too cold to type.

Anticyclones (whatever they are - I am copying from the fascinating Winds of The World section on WeatherOnline.co.uk) over North West or Central Europe push the air through the gap that Lac Leman was formed in, whooshing down to the end of the Lake where some silly fool decided to build Geneva. Gust can reach 7bft, which I have discovered means 60km/h. That is faster than you are allowed to drive in Geneva, I wonder if La Bise will get a ticket.

There is a saying in this area, "avec la bise, lave ta chemise", if you have La Bise, get your washing out.

For the last couple of days going outside means wrapping up in several layers. The strength of the wind makes the lake look very blue and pretty which would be nice if we could stand still long enough to admire it.

I took some photos on Friday when I was on the school run of the Buvette that is open but too cold to frequent. Here's hoping La Bise dies down soon.

Baking Soda Bread Rolls - an experiment

After recently discovering how easy Soda Bread is to make, I decided this morning to attempt to make Soda Bread Rolls.

Not out of any Domestic Goddess tendancies, but MrT had left to go to the Geneva Autosalon and I had forgotten to ask him to get bread before he left with the car. It being cold, and me being too lazy, a walk to the bakers was out of the question. But I was hungry and it is Saturday so I wanted a Decent Breakfast, not just cereal.

Baking bread is time consuming but as I recently discovered, Soda Bread is pretty quick as there is no yeast to be patiently awaited on rising.

My favourite Soda Bread recipe, cobbled together from several sources and adapted to suit what the store cupboard offers is incredibly easy. 450g flour (half/half plain and wholemeal), a tsp of sugar, a tsp of sea salt, a tsp of Baking Soda and as much buttermilk as needed to form a dough, around 270ml I think.

Preheat oven, put ovenproof pot into oven to heat up, bung all the dry ingredients into a food processor, whizz around then add the buttermilk. Speed is now the essence, as the buttermilk reacts with the Baking Soda.

Normally at this point I form a flat round loaf and place it into the floured pot. This time I made dainty little rolls




Place the rolls into the pot and put the lid on. Into the oven they go, for around 35 mins. I have been told by an Irishwoman than when the soda bread sings to you, it is ready.

Scottish made soda bread is obviously as tone deaf as their maker, as there was no singing coming from these little suckers, but they did smell heavenly.



As you can see, they turned out pretty good and they tasted as good as they smelled. All in all the preparations took me about 5 mins, added to that the heating of oven and cooking they are ready to eat in about 45 mins.

That is about the time it takes me to look halfway respectable in the morning.

Swiss Sirens

Am currently sitting by the lake watching DS and his friend play while their sisters are at football practice. I was feeling smug as I felt the gentle rays of the sun on my face, listened to the waves lapping on the shore. Rather blissful and idylic.

Then the atomic air raid siren sounded, shattering the tranquil moment.

The Swiss test their sirens once a year to ensure they are still working.

I can hear the sirens in the towns miles away reverbating across the lake.

Do I have time to empty my atomic shelter?

*Update*
I emailed a recently arrived friend to let her know that the sirens are merely a test, she replied,

'yes what ARE these sirens? I was wondering whether we were meant to be heading to the nuclear bunker

Or whether it was an alarm because.... the sun is shining???

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