Tag Archives: beans on toast

A New Medal

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I had beans on toast for breakfast. Eating them with one hand whilst working the keyboard with my other hand, I became aware that the transfer of beans from plate to mouth was not going well, and my shirt was becoming an unintended intermediary.

Although I thought I managed to wash it down before leaving for work it seems I was mistaken as small orange patched reappeared on my shirtfront during the course of the day.

Things got a bit more interesting when I got to work. Someone wants to know where his £80 items is. It appears to be at his house as it was delivered a week ago and is showing on the Royal Mail website as delivered, signed for and photograph. It’s either a very inept attempt at fraud, or a slightly dysfunctional family. If it had been me I would have been asking after two days – it was sent Guaranteed and that is a service with next day delivery.

Finally – the visit I had been waiting for. An elderly gent arrived with some medals for mounting. Although he last saw active service in the 1960s, the Government has just sent him a medal to recognise part of his service. It is the Nuclear Test Medal for those involved in the Nuclear Test programme of the 1950s and 60s.

There are 22,000 people eligible for the medal, though it’s likely that many will go unclaimed.  This one will be mounted with his other two medals and will be ready to wear on Remembrance Sunday. The medal office is making a determined effort to get all the medals out to survivors so they can wear them for this year’s parades.

Unfortunately, they haven’t been quite so quick at getting out the guidance on the order they are to be mounted in and I am either going to have to rely on Wikipedia or ring the Ministry of Defence helpline on Monday.

It’s the first medal I’ve seen with the head of King Charles on it (the Coronation medals aren’t out yet) and the first Nuclear test medal I’ve seen, so it’s been an historic sort of day.

Nuclear Test Medal 1952-67

List your top 5 grocery store items

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The title is taken from the writing prompt WP has decided to start sending me every day. That’s just what I need, more spam. You’d think that human wit could develop a system where someone with over 2,000 posts on their site, and a record of almost daily (though admittedly erratic) blogging didn’t get a writing prompt.

If it said “Write better!” 0r “Eat less!” I would accept it, but I rarely feel in need of a subject to write about. And I certainly never switch the computer on with the thought “I hope I have more spam waiting for me.” in my head.

The truth is that I have enough, including the annoying pop-up that pops up to remind me that for a reasonable sum of money I can buy something to stop annoying pop-ups.

Ironically, one of my top five grocery items is not Spam. I need bread, milk, margarine and marmalade. I’m not sure about the fifth. Beans?  Bacon? Carrots? It’s difficult to think of a shopping list without them. Cheese?

It’s not as easy as it seems. The problem is that I need them all and if you buy them, you need pickle and parsnips too.

So many groceries, so little time.

Eggs . . .

The final list is bread, bacon, beans, margarine and marmalade. I will leave the pickle alone and can cut out milk as I forgot to order tea. The five things interlock nicely and, as an additional bonus, are also awesomely alliterative.

However, I have to point out that it is not a sensible way to eat and, if you were to follow this eating regime for too long you would probably develop scurvy, an a longing for variety.

I used a picture of cake, to remind myself of the need for a varied diet.

Meanderings

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I started the day with a clear plan. So far I have had a bacon sandwich and three cups of tea, replied to comments, written a haibun prose section (which came to me as I was outing my socks on) and caught with paosoren, a wide-ranging blog relating to Australia. I now know a lot more about poisonous caterpillars and slouch hats than I used to. The plan had also encompassed reading more blogs, but I’ve had to shelve that. It’s mid-day already and it doesn’t seem to be much to show for a morning’s work. Of course, as the “morning” started at 9.45, I can’t expect too much. It could have started at 6.45, but after looking at the clock and thinking for a few minutes I decided that 6.45 was too early to start on Sunday.  Even if I had got up at that time I would probably have fallen asleep later in the day, so I wouldn’t have gained much.

I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory regarding the wakefulness front last night. After posting, I went and watched the last half of a programme about Victoria Wood. As Julia decided to go to bed when it finished, I used the “plus one” channel to watch it from the beginning again. Unfortunately I only manged to get part way through before falling asleep. As a consequence, the middle years of her career are still a mystery to me.

It was interesting to find that she was a hard-working perfectionist who said that lots of people could do what she did. This reinforces my belief in hard work and determination being the way forward. It’s a shame I wasted most of my life thinking you needed talent to be successful. That, it appears, is just the icing on the cake. The ability to be successful without having talent certainly explains a lot of things I have seen on TV over the years.

Daffodils in Nottingham

Nearly 1.00 now and time to make lunch. I’m not entirely sure what it’s going to be, but I have a few minutes to think. After my disastrous failure to order the groceries online, we are a little short of provisions this week.  However, we have beans. We have bread. If I was in the habit of representing my menu choices diagrammatically the intersection would be beans on toast.

The picture of a Herring Gull perching on the head of the Cook statue at Whitby can be taken as a metaphor for our history of colonialism. Or it might just be that I was looking for a bird photograph that didn’t have a robin in it.

That was taken in April 2017. The daffodils are from April 2018 and the Magpie from April 2019. \by April 2020 the photos are all downloaded from the Library, or feature food and eBay purchases. I haven’t been getting out much.

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