Breakfast at Random

I was up relatively early this morning, 7ish -- early for a Saturday, I should say -- so grabbed Neuroticat, who had been making one heck of a racket downstairs for no reason other than the fact she's not being given any attention, and went into the kitchen to make coffee. OH was sleeping the sleep of the just. While the coffee was percolating, I wandered outside into our snowy garden where our standing army of feathered friends was already shivering and waiting for their breakfast. I sorted them out (cat food mainly as they had wheat and sunflower seeds already) and watched with my coffee how Mr Booze and his family raided their notional breakfast table. Greenfinches, chaffinches, and of course Mr Kropotkin the revolutionary robin were also in attendance. Onkel and Tante Ju, the humungous pair of wood pigeons, waddled in a little later, and our latest arrival, Mr Glint the magpie, also made a brief appearance.

Today, the plan is to wrap up warm, then slip and slide through the snow to the allotment to harvest our kale, which after the frosts we've had should now be nice and sweet. Tonight's dinner will be an old seasonal German stand-by: Gruenkohleintopf -- a kind of chopped kale stew or casserole with onion and potato and a chunky sausage. I'll also pick up a red cabbage to be eaten raw as a snack, my favourite. Then onto the supermarket for staples before the panic buying sets in -- the UK being in the sorry state it is, the arrival of 26cm of snow in some places (though only maybe 5-10cm here) is causing dozens of schools to close, trains and buses to be cancelled, and milk and bread are flying off the supermarket shelves in expectation of a 40-hour blizzard that of course never materialises. It is like this every winter, and every winter I could laugh like a loon.

At Random's, OH has got up and is keeping the home-fire burning, mainly because my knee joints are still so inflamed and creaky that I can't actually properly kneel down to load up the stove and light it. I compensate by doing standing-up homework jobs like hoovering and general tidying up, but I have to say the continued cropping of new erythema lesions on my legs -- a big fat one on my right knee started blooming two days ago and makes the knee swell up -- plus the constant joint pain and fluey malaise that comes with systemic inflammation is starting to get me down. I'm not used to chronic unwellness, let alone this autoimmune bullshit. I mean what gives?

However, I did remember that I had started a tidy little herbal pharmacy in the summer and autumn and I thought, well, let's try some self-care here. If anything, the placebo effect will be excellent. I looked up chamomile wraps online this morning, pulled out the big paper bag full of my dried chamomile flowers and started a brew.

Sieved the chamomile out, squeezed it and then dunked my leg tubes in this tea. Then I pulled them on. Full-on chamomileage, lesions, you've got nowhere else to go. You're surrounded, soaked in the stuff. Chamomile will simply bore you into going away. I'd like to believe that.

Note to self: plan a proper herb patch on the allotment in the spring. Harvest birch and nettle leaves when they come out -- read that these are good for rheumatic complaints. I also read somewhere else that flagellating a rheumatic limb with live nettles was good too but I'd better check the provenance of that webpage. It sounds a little... deviant.