Tag Archives: fish fingers

The Knell of Parting Day

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A knell is the sound of a bell rung solemnly. I checked it up before using it. What I don’t know is how you toll a bell solemnly. You just pull a rope don’t you. The solemnity is in the timing of the successive rings, I would have thought, not in the quality of a single ring. Anyway, that’s my thought on it.

Whilst looking at Gray’s Elegy and picking it over for a quote, I noticed that he composed it by reusing some lines for another poem he had tried to write. I’m glad to find it’s not just me that treats old and unsuccessful poems as raw material for new ones.

Where does all the time go? Twilight has arrived, the sky is holding just a hint of colour behind a veil of grey cloud and it is time to eat and change pace.

That’s probably what I miss most about Julia not being here, Well that and there seems to be more washing up to do. And no tea appears magically by my elbow as I write. However, without her there is definitely no change of pace. I get up. I do what I like. I watch what I like on TV. Nobody wakes me up to tell me to stop snoring. And then it’s time for bed.

She, meanwhile, has been to a baseball game and is currently at a Mother’s Day BBQ celebration hosted by the family of Number One Son’s partner.  They are spit roasting a whole pig. Canadian BBQs are very different to the ones we have in Nottingham.

I’m back from eating now. Quiche and salad, in case you were wondering. The same quiche and almost the same salad as I had yesterday. No, I haven’t developed a sudden love of salad, but we had it in the fridge and I hate wasting food. I am also pretty sure I would hate dying, so it’s probably time to start eating a healthier diet.

Tomorrow I will, I think, start with cereal and fruit. Lunch? It’s definitely time to get round to that mushroom soup. Evening meal is fish finger sandwiches. They are the ones that are marketed as containing Omega 3 and being good for you. This time next year it will be something else that is good for me, so I will just have to read the internet and try to keep up. I’m eating more sandwiches and fewer vegetables now that Julia isn’t here.

Grocery Delivery

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Just as I sat down to blog, a text arrived from ASDA. My delivery is 9 stops away and will be here at 8.58. They have no onions. They are sending ordinary fish fingers rather than Omega 3 enriched fish fingers. I never realised, when I was a young boy, that there would be such things as fish fingers that prevented dementia. If I’m realistic, I still don’t. The correct adult helping of fish fingers is four, according to the internet. Four fish fingers, to me, struggles to look like a meal. Even five, as in the picture, leaves a lot of empty space on a plate.

Paprika Potatoes, Fish Fingers and Mushy Peas – Gourmet Fodder

They are sending filtered milk instead of ordinary milk. It appears to be 25p cheaper until you check the quantity – I am only getting half as much so am basically paying twice the price. They will be getting that back. They will also be getting the carrots back – they are sending a kilo of carrots instead of the swede I ordered. I already have a kilo of carrots coming. Apart from the fact that swedes and carrots are different things, who needs two kilos of carrots? I once told a family member that I thought some of the substitutions were worked out by idiots. They told me that they were actually worked out by algorithms. It’s the algorithms that are worked out by idiots.

The driver apologised for being late but he had had to sort out a problem enroute. He called at an address and found nobody in. When he rang the number on the account they told him they had moved and would like him to go two miles away and drop the groceries at a different6 address. He couldn’t do that because it was not the address on the account and it would have set his timings out. So he rang the office for advice, and they weren’t answering the phone. Eventually he had to ring and tell the people he couldn’t deliver. He was a little upset that someone would be without groceries tonight. Me, I’d just have been annoyed that someone had messed me around, but ASDA delivery drivers, to be fair to them, really do care about their customers.

Vegetables – Carsington Water

Where does the time go? (Part 2)

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Where indeed?

After making avocadoes for lunch (mashed with poached eggs for Julia, with prawns and pink sauce for me (it got too complicated last time I went into detail1) I settled down to a few quizzes, some conversation and, almost inevitably, a nap. Well, the quizzes are meant to sharpen me up and the conversation is meant to be something married people do, like discussing the husband’s shortcomings and planning to buy new cushions. Life can’t all be about being happy and doing what you want.

I then, having finally managed to find out how to switch the sound on, attended a haibun reading hosted by the Haibun Journal as part of Irish Poetry Week. I think this link should get you there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0r0XxIUnPE&t=3s

That took a while, and was quite enjoyable, though I do get twitchy just sitting there listening. haibun that are quite short on the page seem to take forever when read. Then I spent twenty minutes looking for a notebook from last week – it had some haiku in it that I needed and I’ve ben looking for three days. Anyway, i found them and they are now typed up.

I had a look at Failed Haiku as I’d sent them a submission late last month. It went on the last day of submissions and and I’ve heard nothing back. This unusual, but it seems they have had some internet problems. I’d like to know whether it was late, not good enough or just disappeared, but at the back of my mind is the idea that they do an issue every month and the fewer emails they get from whining writers the better.

Fish finger sandwiches for tea, with potato wedges and tartare sauce for me, with wedges and ratatouille for Julia. Sometimes there is a point beyond which I cannot go and I am feeling all vegged up…

A little more TV, including The Coroner, which I quite like, though it isn’t, I admit, the most complex of shows.

Ah well, I’d better get back to poetry, I need an early night because it’s work tomorrow again.