I don’t have long because the soup maker is on and the timer is running. I don’t have long and it’s difficult to type with my fingers crossed. (I haven’t used the soup maker for around seven years – doesn’t time fly – and I’m not sure that I have done it right. However, the die is cast and we will just have to see what it turns out like. Tomatoes, water, onions, red peppers, celery, garlic, cumin and chilli. What could possibly go wrong?

I was in trouble earlier this afternoon, as I went to visit the shop and Julia was expecting me back at twelve. I don’t know why, I only mentioned it vaguely in passing. It was an aspiration in my mind that became written in stone in hers. That seems to happen a lot these days. What do I say? Three men in a  shop, several customers passing by, talk of coins, and the time just flies by.

Edward Lear Stamps (1988)

Ooops, I have to go now, the soup maker is bleeping at me. No, it’s stopped, so I will finish this before serving soup. I didn’t include lentils because I wasn’t sure they would cook properly in 21 minutes. I will have to look it up, or experiment. The trouble is that you have to make at least a litre at a time, which is a lot of soup. It’s three cans Or about two pints. It’s easier, despite my attachment to the weights and measures of my youth just to go with the flow. I drink beer from bottles these days so a pint means nothing to me, and the soup maker is marked in litres so that’s whay I use now. Except for milk. I still do that in pints too. and fuel. Sold in litres, converted to pints in my head, at which point I sigh heavily and remember the days I could fill the tank of a Ford Escort for £4. Of course, I forget that I only earned £15 a week after tax. Times change but the ramblings of old men plough  a familiar furrow. I remember once saying that if I ever started talking about prices of today relative to the prices of my youth I would like to be put down.

A first class stamp is now £1.35. You could have a night out for that when I was young. Three pints of bitter, a packet of cigarettes nd some chips on the way home. I was a simple soul . . .

Stamps, stamps, stamps…