Tag Archives: progress

An Excellent Apple Crumble and an Amusing Book

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Today started reasonably well and has ended up not being too bad.

That’s probably not the most inspiring opening, but it’s a fair summary. I have managed to get another submission done, have polished up a few bits for another one, tries writing a new form and still had time to cook.

We had shop-bought fishcakes tonight, with roasted cauliflower and cheese sauce (using the remains of the cheese sauce from yesterday’s Welsh Rarebit), potato wedges and sweetcorn. It was tasty, reasonably nutritious, and beige. I didn’t photograph it because the light golden brown fishcakes were the most colourful bit. The sweetcorn had faded to magnolia (it was half a tin left over from the fish pie), the cauli was off white and the sauce was made with white cheese and Dijon mustard, so was light beige.  It would not have looked good on film.

After that we had apple crumble, which is basically a beige topping on a magnolia base. Again, tasty but uninspiring in a photographic sense.

Apart from that, it snowed. Several times. There wasn’t much but as it fell on frozen snow we could have done without it.

I’m sure other things happened in between, but I’m having trouble recalling them. All I want is another 41 words and I can sign this off and go to bed. Then, later in the week, I can have  another blood test. The amount they have been tapping off recently you’d think I was made of the stuff.

Number One Son bought me a book club subscription for Christmas and the first one just arrived – The Diary of a Nobody. If I believed in fate anything like that, I’d think this was a message from a higher power. I am reading a chapter a night and picking up a few tips on diary writing as I go along.

 

 

Poor Time Management

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I really meant to do better, but I’ve loafed the day away and left myself with 23 minutes to write a post. It’s a very poor example of time management. It is also an example of my failure to learn from misadventure, as I have done this before, and always say I won’t do it again.

Tonight I also went out to have a go at photographing the moon, but it is currently cloudy and the photos were not good. This is very vexing. Julia is currently trying to get to grips with it, and though she is producing interesting photographs, they aren’t actually pictures of the moon.

It does, however, match the pattern of the rest of the day. I have had to book another ASDA collection because I can’t get one at TESCO. This not satisfactory, as you can probably guess from my previous post.

I have tried the on-line ordering system for my prescriptions, and find that it is going to take a week. This normally takes two days but there is a Bank Holiday and a weekend in between, plus two days to process it (as usual) and an extra two days for the pharmacy to do something that should take them 20 minutes. Such is “progress”.

bunch of white oval medication tablets and white medication capsules

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Something else happened today, but I can’t remember what it was, and only have six minutes left.

Two of the pictures are herbs from the garden and one is a picture of pills.

I might have been going to moan about the Bank Holiday, but I can’t remember now, It hardly seems worth the effort when I’ve just had six weeks of aimless days.

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Bay Trees – early stages

Looks like I need to paint some woodwork.

An Expensive Mistake

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This is probably the best example you could have of how out of step I feel with modern life. Apologies is you are becoming tired of my view on this subject, but I have to blog or burst.

On Monday afternoon we went to the new East Bridgford Garden Centre. A perfectly good local garden centre has been taken over, new buildings erected, a massive car park built and a slice of retail Hell has been grafted onto the Nottinghamshire countryside.

I’m sure, from the crowd of people, that it will be popular, and that it fills a need in the lives of many people. This need isn’t necessarily for plants as most people seem to have left without visible purchases. It is also providing a lot of jobs, though they are mainly, it seems, for teenagers. Older people, as in people in their thirties, don’t seem to have much of a place here.

We didn’t see any of the staff who used to work at he old centre and Max the Parrot has gone too. It appears that he went to live elsewhere during the building work and liked it so much that he decided to stay.

A likely story. I think he was handed his P45 as part of the move from Garden Centre to slick corporate retail outlet.

Anyway, back to the fish and chips. They were a familiar and, we thought, safe, choice in a rather confusing cafe.

They gave us a “locator” for the table – a high tech version of a number on a stick. The tea arrived, just ahead of the meal. My thoughts were that the tea could have been a bit quicker and the main meal was available quicker than I was expecting.

The staff were quick, efficient and cheerful and the locator seemed to work well.

And that was as good as it got.

The fish portion was small. The chips were large, though not numerous. The tartare sauce came in a cheap paper cup, the watercress garnish was a bit of an afterthought. And the peas…

For £10.95 you expect a goodly dollop. What we got was a smear. Julia’s photograph exaggerates the size of the portion. I wasn’t sure whether it was the promised pea and mint puree or just a leftover from a poor attempt at washing up.

Fish and Chips East Bridgford

Undoubtedly the worst fish I’ve had for years

The good news was that the sauce was tangy, the caramelised lemon was juicy, the chips were well cooked and the pea and mint puree was delicious, even if it was brief.

Bad news – the fish was the worst I’d had in thirty years.

It was small, thin and had a pasty consistency with only a few discernible flakes. Mainly it was tasteless, and in parts was so bland as to be unpleasant, which probably explained why there was salt on the plate when the meal arrived – an attempt to introduce flavour.

It took me back to market day in Uttoxeter thirty years ago. I had fish and chips in a cafe – the fish was thin, bland and, as I got to the centre, still frozen.

I really don’t know what to say. It wasn’t good value from the quantity point of view, and it was inexcusably poor from the quality point of view.

Surroundings were clean and bright, staff were great but the food is the important bit, and it was dreadful.

It’s very unlikely we’ll be going back.

 

Road to Recovery

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I’ve been stretching and exercising and generally paying attention to my legs, which has improved things greatly. . I am now able to walk more or less painlessly and only need the stick for balance. At that point it seemed like a good idea to take a trip to the park and walk round the duckpond.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

We got off to a bad start when my poor, stiff legs refused to cooperate, and only just made it to the first bench. Julia went for tea, biscuits and duck food while I sat and watched wildlife. Things are starting to happen in the park, with lots of leaves breaking out and a plenty of birdsong. I managed to miss photographs of all the singers. The best I could do were various blobs lurking, out of focus, behind twigs. A Long-tailed Tit spent a good ten minutes doing this. I can only assume there is some evolutionary benefit to annoying photographers.

Alternatively, bearing in mind the possibility that birds sing simply because they enjoy it, maybe Long-tailed Tits just enjoy winding me up.

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Red Crested Pochard
Robin, Arnot Hill Park

There are at least six pairs of Greylag Geese on the pond, though it’s difficult to tell as they lurk behind the island. There are also six Red Crested Pochard – two pairs and two single males. The only nests we can see so far are two Coot nests.

Coot Nest – Arnot Hill Park
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The Odd Couple are still hanging about, but I don’t hold out much hope of breeding success.

Eventually, having taken tea and biscuits and tutted at the antics of various hellish toddlers, we set off and completed the circuit. I did need a bit of assistance from the stick in the last few yards.

Four hundred yards round a duck pond is hardly an expedition, but it’s a start.

 

The madness goes on

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I’m just taking a break from filling out an Equality and Diversity Pre-Qualification Questionnaire.

As you can guess, it’s the sort of thing that is dear to my heart and always at the front of my mind. At the breakfast table this morning we spoke of little else…

Well, that might be an exaggeration. In fact the only true part of the paragraph above might be that I ate breakfast, and that wasn’t at a table.

Why, you ask, am I filling out etc…

Well, you may remember the old days, when you did a job and got paid for it. Things have moved on since then, you now have to fill in forms, have purchase numbers, wait the best part of two months and have an Equality and Diversity Policy.

They call this progress.