Did someone say bubbles?

There has been precious little to celebrate over the last few weeks, but this talk of ‘bubbles’ has chimed with recent events in this gradually ‘unravelling lockdown’ household.

Regular readers may well be aware that we possess a pampered pooch. Originally I was firmly against getting a dog, but years of emotional abuse from the family, including hundreds of cute puppy screensavers ‘accidentally’ left on the family computer eventually persuaded me to give in. She has been with us for over 10 years now and is the second family pet we have had, the first being Harry (Potter), the cat, a beautiful black and white rescue cat who was with us for 15 years until he died three years ago.

I have been on the receiving end of further pressure to get another cat for some time, pressure that increased significantly under lockdown….Reason # 1 for bubbles therefore, is to celebrate the arrival of a kitten. The new arrival, at 8 weeks being clearly much smaller than the dog, has still announced her arrival with some very good claw-laden swipes – pooch’s nose is (almost literally) so far out of joint. It will be a pleasure to see this relationship develop over the coming weeks.

I don’t know if anyone has ever conducted research into the names we choose for our pets and what they say about our personalities, but if all choices that we had on the table had been anonymised, I would have easily known which suggestions belonged to which members of the family. The writer her indoors very quickly went Greek heroine, followed by Greek goddesses and characters from Greek tragedies. Child #1 went straight to Germanic and Norse mythology, before segueing into Japanese anime names. Child #2 made it his job to ensure that the cat got a decent, ‘unembarrassing’ name, immediately vetoing some suggestions, leaving the possibility open to others… Child #3’s suggestions were strong, modern female role model names, zeitgeisty (is that a word?) and feisty. In the end, and after a couple of days of debate, we settled on Lyra (see below for reason).

Reason #2 for celebratory bubbles was the lockdown ‘significant’ birthday of child #3. In the press and on social media not much has been made of the knock-on effects of Covid 19 on many young people, such as a lack of graduation ceremonies or end of school proms, significant rites of passage, or the lack of employment possibilities for graduates…So we did what we could to make the day special. Friends created a treasure hunt round the village in the morning. The weather helped us eat outside in the afternoon and evening, prior to a late night viewing of Sunshine on Leith, the birthday girl’s favourite film. Not the birthday that she would have had in ‘normal’ times, but memorable nonetheless.

Eating: Child #3 loves pasta, so during the week pre and post birthday we had many dishes. Pictured above Asparagus cream pasta, recipe from bbcgoodfood.com I made it child #3 friendly, by using gluten free pasta, garlic infused oil, vegan cheese and Alpro single soya cream.

Drinking: The above Classic cuvée from the Furleigh Estate in Dorset. We first came across it at The Ollerod in Beaminster and ordered directly from the estate. We enjoyed it throughout the birthday celebrations!

Listening to: In the continued search for music that is good to accompany gardening or cooking, I came across Groove Armada. Current favourite songs are: At the river, Dusk you and me and Hands of time.

Reading: The Book of Dust, volume one La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman. Hence the name for the kitten!