Apologies……

Apologies to regular readers of my blog for the lack of recent posts. Christmas came and went but was hotly pursued by the judging for the annual FreeFrom Food Awards which has always happened in my house in Lawn Road in North London. Three weeks – five days a week – 600 odd products – 70 odd judges working through two sessions a day…. Wonderfully stimulating and exciting but total immersion. I am sure that many of you will have been following their progress on Cressida’s busy awards Twitter, Facebook and Linked in pages.

And, only a week later, the big move….

As many of you may be aware, after the unexpected death of FoodsMatter’s webmaster and my partner eighteen months ago, I had decided to sell Lawn Road, our home for the last 40 odd years…… And indeed had done so last year, but on the understanding that I would not complete on the sale until after we had done our judging. But now we had! So we were on the move…

However, there were 14 rooms in Lawn Road, excluding an enormous loft, a workshop, a boiler room, a garden house and two garden sheds. And we had been there for 42 years….. Need I say more?

Thanks to a concentrated three month campaign working through Dawson’s Auctioneers, EBay, Freecycle (of which I am a huge fan), the local charity shops and, if all else failed, the recycling centre, I did manage to empty the house without having to actually bin anything. (I have been Freecycling so determinedly that I now have my own personal followers who snap up almost anything I offer!) Mind you, I have ended up with a massive number of bulging boxes which will now remain piled in the garage at my new abode for a year or more.

This is because I have now bought a house in Highgate – on the opposite side of Hampstead Heath from Lawn road and only four minutes walk from the heath itself – which is actually larger than Lawn Road! However, I have work to do on it and, once that is done, I will have the lower half of the house giving onto the garden. Not as large a garden as Lawn Road but one with considerable potential and one that is already filled with birds! Which is why the boxes will remain in the garage for some considerable time….

More about the new house in due course. For now, more about another rather more famous house and then, back to the world of allergy. A report on an excellent allergy symposium hosted by the Food Standards Agency last week.