I’m a practical sort of person.  Even if you didn’t know me, you might guess how I spend much of my time by taking a look at my hands.  They are frequently a little bruised and battered from sewing and cutting things and, truth be told, when I have things on my mind, I’m a bit of a picker.  If I’ve been painting and dyeing things, then all of this might be revealed a little more than usual, because the stain tends to stay in the cracks and crevices, doesn’t it?  It doesn’t worry me.  I get out the sugar scrub just as my Mum would have done and usually, in a day or so, it’s gone.

Yes, I have a large box of latex gloves on my worktable but no, I can’t work in them.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, I read about Noelle’s Elderberry Cordial and thinking about the last drops of berries sitting outside on the trees in our garden, I just had to give it a whirl.  Bless her, she shared her recipe and yesterday I set to work.

 

 

Result, a couple of hours later, we had about a litre and a half of aromatic cordial.  Thank you, Noelle, it’s delicious and remarkably easy to make.  Next year, though, I’m not going to wait until the last gasp of summer to gather the berries, but get out there when the trees are dripping with them!

 

 

I was also left with a pair of the most vile looking hands you can imagine.  Believe me, they are way better today than yesterday, for I have washed and scrubbed away at them at every opportunity.

 

 

They still look dreadful and I’m wondering just how long it’s going to take for that grey-blue stain to wear off.  Because, although I wouldn’t normally give it any thought at all, I didn’t think ahead to what’s happening in the next few days.

 

 

Tomorrow, I’ll teach a group of country ladies who will hopefully appreciate the situation, for I’m pretty sure they’ll have done something similar themselves.  Though I’d rather not have close attention paid to my hands when I am so conscious of their appearance, I hope they know me well enough to be able to look beyond some grey-blue fingernails.

But what about Thursday?  The day after tomorrow, when we are invited to a vernissage in a small Swiss town where everyone will be elegantly dressed and many hands will be shaken?  I didn’t give it a second thought.  I hope that I’m not destined for a weekend of explanation about the “holunderbeere” auf Deutsch.

Surely, they will be clean by early next week when Tra will play a concert and we will be in rather grand company.  Maybe I’d better sneak some Ferrero Rocher in my pocket to distract the honoured guest?

Or perhaps I’d better just get the Domestos out?

 

 

 

Actually, I could have written a whole blogpost on the difficulty of taking a photograph of my hand.  Out came the tripod, the self timer was switched on and about thirty photographs taken before I got just a handful to use here.  Where was my hero when I needed him?