As you were

Trapped in the strange limbo of the A-Z challenge, I've nonetheless been doing other stuff this past month.  Even if it doesn't feel like it.

First, a warm welcome to the new followers and friends.  This is where reality hits and you all discover just how tedious and ranty I can be.  To give you fair warning, this blog's title is not merely alliterative.  It is descriptive.  Who'd have thought?

Drama - is my bread and butter, so you get a lot of stuff about rehearsals, casts, costuming, directing, performance and so on.

Dice - gaming is another passion and I currently run four online games using D&D 4e rules.  It also covers my attempts to build an RPG setting.  Mikelmerck.  So dearly loved, so often the bridesmaid.

Damsons - is a kind of catch all phrase for my ongoing attempts to organise my home and garden.  We have a damson tree which fruits heavily and is a kind of emblem for the chaos that ensues when I try to keep things under control.

The next few days are going to be interesting.  At the end of this week, the Malfi cast have their final rehearsals and then perform on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.  Based on recent efforts, the audience will have a treat in part one and a horrible let down in part two, so that needs to change fast.  I am no believer in things being all right on the night.  I prefer solid preparation, but then I'm stodgy like that.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, some of the cast appear to think differently. 

Costuming for Malfi  is on target with the exception of boots.  I need many, many pairs still.  Failing that, we may just have to go with black shoes, but it will be wrong and will grate horribly.

Dream option

Likely reality

First though, I need it to stop raining long enough to mow the blasted lawn.  Unfortunately, I have a special relationship with the weather gods.  If I even think about getting the mower out and finding the extension cable, clouds rush to my aid and prevent my doing anything so energetic.  While this is a great excuse, I'd like to get the grass cut before it becomes impossible to find my way into the house.

Post picking.

About 2 kilos of damsons waiting to become wine.  A further 3 kilos are sitting in the oven turning to mush and awaiting stone removal.   Later in the day, when I'm feeling strong.

Day of the damson

Operation Plum Cascade is now pretty much over, but the damsons remain.  Today will see them picked, pulped, jammed and otherwise converted into stuff-what-we-will-consume.  As I've mentioned, they are not easy to prepare.  Only by cooking will you ever extract those stones.

Damsons fall into that exciting category of fruit that it's nice to have, but troublesome to deal with.  Others are quinces and medlars.  Both are old-fashioned fruits for which there is little real use, but they have considerable charm.  Quinces take preparation to new heights of difficult.  They are rock like, even when ripe.  The Victorians used them as a moth repellent and to add a pleasing scent to clothes and bed linen and I can see why as they're all but indestructible.  The only time I've ever prepared them, I wrecked our kitchen cleaver.  Still, they have an allure.

Medlars are even stranger.  Here you have a fruit that you have to pick and allow to rot before it can be eaten.  This process is called bletting.  It a slightly arcane feel to it which I find irresistible.

And of course, this is the time of year to be ordering bare root fruit trees.  Tempting, very, very tempting.

Damson Massacre

The wind stripped both plum trees last night and quite a few damsons bit the dust as well.  I'm not sure whether to be happy about this or not. 

Having spent a lot of last weekend with my husband finding innovative ways of using plums I'm not that sorry to have had the plum issue taken out of our hands.  The damsons I do feel a little guilty about.  They make amazing jam.  It tastes like warmly spiced plum all by itself and has an old-fashioned feel to it.  Damson jam means autumn and the start of my favourite time of year.

They're a horror to prepare mind you.  There is no way to de-stone the blighters.  They have to be cooked.  The stones rise to the surface and can be skimmed off.  So all the books say, and despite my misgivings, the books are right.  They do rise and you can skim them off.  It's time-consuming and my glasses steam up watching hawk-like for the rising of the stones and wielding a slotted spoon.

Random Introduction

Enough with the nervously idling on the side of the blog pool.  I've given in.  This is mostly going to deal with three of the things I enjoy most, but leaving space for the odd tangental rant. 

The title may need a touch of explanation:-

Drama - is what I do for a living.  Mostly.  Not me, personally, on the whole.  I teach kids how to do it.  Mostly this is life-affirming, invigorating and all sorts of good stuff.  Other times it really is not.  Often in the space of the same five minutes.  I'm directing two productions this coming year and mentoring a student through her own first production.  All of this starts tomorrow, but the plotting and planning never stops.

Dice - refers to gaming.  As in the playing of board games and RPGs with friends.  Also the playing of RPGs online with people I don't know - although at least one has become a good and dear friend.  RPGs, for the uninitiated stands for Role Playing Games.  The idea being to be heroic and save the world from whatever your evil genius Game Master has cooked up.  To do this, you need dice.  Many of them. 

Damsons - apart from the obvious joy of alliteration, that's about cooking in general and the concern I have right now that the damson tree will be blown apart by the freakily high winds we've had today.  This is a worry because something must be done with a tree-full of damsons. 

The general theme will be what's going on with those three main things at any time.  A simple system, but mine own.  Bet it doesn't work out like that.