Month: April 2020

It is still rather early in the day, so if I were to comment on the not so famous five’s behaviour thus far, sadly it has not been so good as yet. Just getting them all to get dressed was a complete and utter nightmare. It actually took Caleb 20 minutes just to pull up his pants. And that was with being constantly asked to pull them up! Aaliyah and Tara are at present arguing and Amritsar is writing in code!. Thor screams!

On a sunny day like today, the morning sun blazes into our south facing living room. The room has two doors. One into the internal hall and dining room and the other towards the entrance hall and front door. The latter is made from wood and bevelled glass (a prism). You can guess where I am going with this? Yes, we have the occasional rainbows that pop up here and there! Now, given the swing angle of the door earlier, Remus and I found a couple of colourful streaks on the mosaic floor by the front door. I know, it’s hard to spot Remus, isn’t it?

Bless him, he has just reached 400, so quite a way to go! At least it will keep him occupied for a while. Even with him constantly forgetting where he is up to and Daddy and Dadda are being forever prompted as to what number he was on!

Aaliyah has just vomited! Daddy has given her some water and told her to not suck her fingers so much or let the dogs lick her face as often as she does!

I’ve just put out another load of washing and Tara has helped out by pre-mopping the kitchen floor for me! She does like the mop for some reason, though she is not enamoured by cleaning the house in any way whatsoever. But I realised that her help with the kitchen floor means that I just have to give it a very quick once over when she is done! Simple and thank you Tara.

Daddy is trying to work from the living room table at present! And Thor keeps pestering him ‘what was I up to daddy, what was i up to’?

We were awoken this morning with their usual bed invasion. The time was about 5.45am. It is only 9.45 at present, I feel that the day has been long already! Aaliyah has just run into the kitchen with an ever so angry cry, she looked at me and has just run back out to the bottom of the stairs in tears! Clearly I am the last person she wants to see just now!

Remus is whining away beside me for his dinner! Can you believe that he used to be fed at 4pm! He is wired on a 23 hour clock you see! His and a Graces dinner time has been moved forward in increments of 30 minutes again, again and again!

Aaliyah is now in just her nickers rooting through the recycle bag! Where are your clothes I ask! No answer! She has just pushed the general rubbish bin over. It’s going to be one of those days, I can see it!

‘Settle down Remus’ I say ‘it’s too early’. Thor is now up to 500 give or take! Well done, though the truth is he has consistently missed his 40’s through 80’s, but he is counting with such confidence, I cannot fault his enthusiasm!

Welcome to my diary of a gay dad. Just in case this is your first view to my blog, a small introduction for you. We are a family living life here in ‘The Shires’ of England. My name is Andi and my civil partner is John. We have five children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old.

We are pretty much like any other family really! For the fact that we are two men, that is irrelevant. We chose to become a family with the help of surrogacy. We looked at surrogacy at home, but decided to go abroad and use clinics in India, Thailand and finally Nepal on the roof of the world.

Given last minute changes (for us) in the surrogacy laws of India, Thailand and Nepal, we were among the very last people to go through this process in all three countries!

We were assisted in our plight with three different women who came forward to be our surrogates! They did need to prove to us that they were single and making this decision for themselves. This we requested so that we knew that any payments made to them were solely for them to help enrich and improve their own personal situations and that of their own immediate children / families. We found out later in our third pregnancy that the agency and clinic in Nepal had lied to us and that the surrogate (Susheila) was in fact married. That upset us as we did not know if her husband had in any way coerced her into this kind gesture purely for financial gain! Our egg donors were completely separate to our choice of surrogates!

Certain things we tried to control as best we could, other things just happened and our ability to control them was just not possible.

My book, telling our true life family saga called ‘Eighteen Moons’ tells the story of my eight months stranded alone in India with two small babies, up against the bureaucracy of both the Indian and UK authorities and then our five month struggle in Thailand after surrogacy had been criminalised and finally five months spent in Kathmandu, Nepal, waiting on UK passports, just post the devastating earthquake in 2015. Available on Amazon by simply searching Eighteen Moons.

As extraordinary as the story was, it is a 100% non fiction account of what my family went through to ultimately become the loving family that we are today!

My diary of a gay dad very much shows you who we are now and is also eighteen months in the making at this juncture, I can also add that my second book ‘Thirteen Moons More’ (an edit of this very diary blog) tells the story of our family life in that fledgling year, just before the three youngest of our crew joined their sisters at ‘Big School’. Also available on Amazon.

Our story continues as always here at andiwebb.net I thank you for reading!

Dadda’s homegrown Grape Jelly

This photo may be a couple of seasons old now, but our grape vine yielded plenty of grape juice last autumn. In an earlier entry I explained how the grapes were picked and juiced, so I won’t repeat myself. But please note that the juice was boiled / pasteurised and immediately frozen. It’s ruby red colour makes this jelly look a little like my homemade crabapple! Hence my confusions of last week! So here we go!

Grape Jelly

Ingredients:

1ltr Grape Juice (Welche’s brand is fine)

100ml Lemon Juice

500g Apple Pulp (passed through a sieve)

1.5kg sugar

Method;

Sterilise your jam jars, jam funnel and ladle in your dishwasher. Place all of the ingredients into a heavy saucepan and bring to a rapid boil, stirring occasionally. Skim occasionally with a metal spoon and a small bowl. Boil for 20 minutes. Check your gel with your wooden spoon! On this occasion I might just do the ‘old fashioned’ droplet of liquid jelly onto a cold plate chilled in the freezer, as you want to be sure of the guaranteed set before you jar up. Let it cool and test it with a spoon or your finger by pushing through the droplet and seeing if the mixture stands up on its own! Once confident of the set, pour into your jars with your funnel, leaving the obligatory 8mm space below the lid. Secure your lids tightly and resterilise for 20 minutes in a large pan or a steamer.

This amount of ingredients made only 7 x 320ml jars due to evaporation.

This is a great tasting jelly. In fact, I admire above most others! The flavour is delicate, yet complex. A true king of jams! Enjoy…

Our Grape Vine on the Terrace

Fresh Mint in the Planter

Not sure what these are called – any suggestions?

After the Peach Blossom Fades

Red Acer Aplenty

A Vista through the Willow Tree

Another View of the Grape Vine. My Grape Jelly recipe to follow!

Was it early last week when I made the grape jelly and black cherry jam? Well, I haven’t completely forgotten about these two glistening red gems.

I have both recipes in my head and I am about to share them with you today, this Easter Sunday. Oh! Happy Easter to you. I am not particularly religious and like politics, I dare not share a view on this, my blog. Enough said!

Black Cherry Jam:

Ingredients:

1kg frozen, pitted black cherries

650g apple pulp (for a good set)

100ml Lemon Juice

1.5kg sugar

Method:

Make your apple pulp, or if like me you have previously done this and put it in the freezer, defrost overnight, along with your frozen Cherries. Now, I’m using this amount of apple in this jam as cherries release a lot of juice! Your jam will only taste of cherry, so do not worry about the apple taste as there will be none! The apple is only there for its ability to gel your jam. No expensive shop brought pectin! Okay, we’re good to go!

Sterilise your jam jars, jam funnel and ladle in your dishwasher. Then, in a heavy based saucepan, add your cherries and lemon juice (from a jar). Bring to a slow simmer for 10 minutes then crush gently with a potato masher. Add your apple pulp, stir with a wooden spoon and continue to cook for a further few minutes. Pour in your sugar and stir until dissolved. The mixture will become glossy in appearance. Cook your jam for a maximum of 20 minutes, on a rolling boil. Stir every couple of minutes to avoid any pith burning to the base of your pan. Remember that there is a good amount of evaporation and that gel can be tested by letting the mixture drop from the side of a wooden spoon in those last minutes of cooking. It should fall in loose clumps! After the cooking time your jam is ready to jar up. Remember to close the lids tightly and resterilise the jars for 20 additional minutes.

Yes, another jam flavour that sits very well with us grownups. Great drizzled on pretty much anything for a sweet treat to enjoy!

Homegrown Grape Jelly recipe in a short while!

Okay, we’ve almost hit lunchtime in our day. The obligatory warm, hot cross buns were had for breakfast, very seasonal. Now, the chapatti dough has rested and I am about to roll out 12 small ball shaped pieces into a thin circle for griddling. About 45 seconds each side and voila, the perfect accompaniment to our lunch of veg curry with a veg samosa on the side! I didn’t fancy rice, a bit too heavy for this gloriously sunny day. And it’s not like I don’t have the time, is it?

The children all playing nicely in the garden for now. I’m expecting screams any time soon. A lovely fellow blogger Anna Dusseau who runs a homeschooling website kindly shared her ‘ideas for homeschooling this week’ (last week) and we are going to try out a few of her suggestions next week! But we have been inspired by her no 7 on the list ‘Study Den’, though the den has been erected outside in the garden as the weather is so good.

Amritsar has just run in screaming as Tara pinched her. Thor has now joined her saying that Aaliyah hit him with a stick. Tara is now shouting for the polystyrene eggs as she wants to do the egg hunt now, not tomorrow! No, I say, she has gone off in a huff! And don’t worry, polystyrene eggs get swapped for mini chocolate ones. But more about that tomorrow!

Back to the idea of lunch – I had better get out my rolling pin! More later!

A little update on lunch! An exotic taste of the Sub-Continent of India. Pur veg at its best! Served up with lashings of orange squash!

The Chambers Brothers. The black power movement, Vietnam, the back seats of our car! This timeless classic resonates whenever we go on a long car journey. We were supposed to be leaving for Cornwall on Saturday. But the holiday cancelled, we all have to get on with things by staying at home now, don’t we?

Blessed with a large back garden, we are all (excluding daddy) playing in it as I speak. Well, I am actually doing my first sunbathe of the year and the children are running around like crazies! Tara just pushed Caleb, driving a toy dumper truck into our mobile speaker! Thankfully it still works, but with a few new scratches on it. Did I say, everything gets broken in our house, sooner or later!

So, as we are not driving anywhere anytime soon, that is bar Caleb in his dumper truck, we have been playing our song on the mobile speaker – The Time Has Come Today (HEY)! It’s the best song for counting the beats as the word ‘Hey’ comes in every so often and then midway it changes to ‘Time’! The song is really very well arranged. So we all wait for and sing the ‘hey’ and then the ‘time’! Silly really. But fun.

I do hope the children all sing when they are older and this song certainly helps them to count the notes and follow the music! Damn it, I’ll just say – we all have lots of fun doing it together – the whole family,

If you’ve not heard it a while, or simply can’t recall it, just ask Google or Alexa to play it for you, that is presuming you have Spotify or Amazon Music. As ever, thank you for reading, each and everyone.

I just found some old pictures on my PC that I took whilst living on the JVLR (Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road) in Mumbai. A rather long and ever so slightly smelly link road connecting Mumbai to Powai, a suburb.

I remember that period was quite difficult to deal with regarding my internment there. At that time I felt close to a nervous breakdown. Of course this did not affect my relationship with our two beautiful girls, but I felt devastated when my close friend Kayla returned to the UK. I felt very alone! Just me, 2 beautiful girls, their smiles and the two Indian nannies Manju and Nikki. Thank you for being there Manju and Nikki!

Tonight sees the full moon at its peak for this month, a super moon. However given the relatively cloudless skies, here in ‘The Shires’ this evening, I have just spent the last twenty minutes, taking the time to admire its evocative glare. Here in the crystal clarity of the countryside.

What with the lack of artificial light, the garden is illuminated with a frenzy of sparkles, which are dreamlike within their lustre.

The woodland beyond has taken on a magical, almost fairylike feel.

Okay, I’ve finished my cigarette now and I am heading back inside for a glass of white wine.

So, if you are not entrapped by the glare of the city, spend a minute out there and moon bathe for a few moments. It can be very contemplative.

Tonight’s blog is going out to our nanny Sindy! She has read this diary as well as participating within it from the very beginning (Eighteen Months ago now)! What a coincidence!

It seems fitting that tonight’s full moon should prompt me also to consider this!

Sindy was the very first person to purchase and read my book ‘Eighteen Moons’ available via Amazon (just search the title). The book tells the true story of just how my very special family came to be, fighting unforeseen odds and prejudice. We really did surf the final wave of international surrogacy in India, Thailand and finally Nepal on the rooftop of the world.

We do miss you Sindy, in this time of self isolation. Thank you so much for today’s ‘at arm’ visit at the front door to give the little ones their Easter hunt eggs and the girls birthday gifts. They all wanted me to write this to say thank you and that they loved you and missed you! I look forward to your return once we are through these awkward times!

Another thank you to Sindy is for tonight’s picture! One of the very few ever taken of the entire ‘not so famous five’ standing together without all hell breaking loose!

We hope you and your family are well at this time of uncertainty and worry.