Tag Archives: saltdough

What Happened Today?

Let’s see . . .

I have a complaint about work, but I won’t make it here. It’s a good job I have little choice or I would have walked out a couple of years ago. Working for other people, particularly other people who won’t invest in decent equipment, has a short shelf life and if I were younger and fitter I would have gone ages ago. Slow, second-hand computer, rudimentary camera, toxic work atmosphere. I would, I confess, have walked out two years ago if I could. I still, as plans stand, have just over a year to go. It’s going to be hard.

Wheatsheaf Loaf

I spoke to my rheumatologist today as part of a routine telephone appointment, asking about getting a blue badge, which would make my life easier. I am now booked in for an X-Ray and consultation with a knee specialist. All I want is a blue badge. Give me a disabled parking bay and I will be happy. With that I can start going places again. Next year, after I retire, I can start the X-Rays and stuff. This year I just want to be able to park next to my destination, not quarter of a  mile away. Is it too much to ask?

Cooling the biscuits

Got home to find that Royal Mail had tried to, deliver a parcel again. They tried yesterday and I used the website to rebook the delivery – tomorrow. So today I rang. Couldn’t get past the robot gatekeeper until I made several deliberate errors and they said they would get help for me. Estimated wait time to talk to a human being (with no guarantee of intelligence, even then,) was 50 minutes. That’s right, even after selecting the phone option you are still one robot and almost an hour away from being able to speak to someone. At that point they thanked me in advance for my kindness and consideration towards their staff who are doing their best. That was just about guaranteed to make me sarcastic and, not wanting to spend an hour hanging on the phone, I left. This, of course, is exactly what their system wants you to do.

Saltdough poppies

I have registered a complaint and have to wait 72 hours for contact. This may or may not include Saturday and Sunday. They probably don’t count them in the 72 hours.

Of course, if my suspicions are correct, this is all caused by Spink the auctioneer, who have sent my package to my billing address rather than my delivery address. They have done it something like four times in eight purchases. Once I was in when they did it. Other times I have had to pick it up from the letter office before going to work, or arrange a redelivery. It’s just another aspect of modern life – nobody offers good customer service these days.

Poppies on the windowsill

Today’s pictures are from simpler, yet more interesting times – wheatsheaf loaves, ginger biscuits and saltdough poppies for Remembrance Day.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Yes, we’ve cleared the board of the autumn display and put up some more Christmas decorations. We’ve signed a few Christmas cards the group are sending to other groups they belong to, hat making is under way and we all sniffed the Christmas cake this afternoon – it’s smelling good.

We put the Christmas tree up again. It looks like they had a private party at the weekend and knocked it over. No harm done but annoying all the same, particularly as they left a messy table and a strange smell in the air.

You may note that the tree is decorated with the remains of the saltdough animals we have been using for school visits – waste not, want not.

Apart from that I attended to the bird feeders, as noted in the previous post, wrote a post on kalettes for the other blog, put a goat back in the barn and lurked outside getting cold as I waited to photograph more birds. I came close to photographing a male bullfinch, but it was too quick for me. Apart from that there was little excitement until the table collapsed, flinging tea and telephones to the floor.

As we tried to clear the mess from the floor we were accompanied by wailing about phones. My reply (“That’s why we tell you not to bring phones and electrical equipment to the farm.”) didn’t go down too well. On the other hand, when you’re up to your ankles in tea and glitter you don’t want to know about phones, or hear the eternal “It wasn’t my fault.”.

Initially we were left with a mass of glitter in the joints between the floorboards but we managed to clear it out eventually. Well, Julia did. I lost interest and carried on writing about kalettes.

Great things kalettes, a proper old-fashioned cross between Brussels sprouts and kale (that is important as these days people tend to think any cross is a Frankenstein genetic modification job). It doesn’t need peeling,cooks quickly, tastes mild, is crammed full of goodness and looks decorative on the plate.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Kalettes – new superfood or Emperor’s new greens?