Never Quite Enough Time

Can’t say I’ve noticed fuel at the pumps to have ever been cheaper in France but that is quite some diesel price at a supermarket. The food shop was a bit of a shocker as well.    We brought the cupboard basics with us, quite literally, everything we were allowed to and we were shopping to a list.    Granted some wine featured but breaking £225 for a week’s groceries for two, with all stock cupboard items covered, is a bit steep.    Then there’s the daily bread and breakfast pastry order……. Admittedly, a generous trip to an artisan bakery for 24 hours, but 2 x tradition baguettes, 2 x pain aux raisins and 2 x strawberry tarts came to EUR 18.50 (apparently that is £15.87).    On the plus side it gave me EUR 1.50 in change from a EUR 20.00 note.    I find I am hoarding (or, at least, seeking to acquire) coins right now, both sterling and euros.    I may be paying by phone/card 90% of the time but when I need cash, especially coin...

So S packed up the car, locked up the house and picked me up from the office.   DFDS ferry across from Dover to Dunkirk with an estimated 12 hour drive (inc some breaks) when we get to the other side.    Experience has taught us that the premium lounge on this crossing is well worth the expenditure.    It is peaceful.    Sometimes too peaceful as the Steward could do with more clientele to be attentive towards but this time she had 3 couples including us so we weren’t the sole focus.    The offer of Prosecco as we walk in is always nice but equally always declined.    All alcoholic drinks being off the menu due to the drive to come.    There is, however, no shortage of snacks (cakes, biscuit, fruit, pastries and crisps) and other drinks (both alcohol/non alcohol, hot and cold) to help ourselves to and there is a little menu of filled baguettes/sandwiches/pizza/leek and cheese tarts to select from. Having discovered that a ...

  Prepping seems to have become mainstream of late.     Government Ministers, no less, are exhorting us to try and buy a little extra so that should something go awry we each have an additional degree of household resilience.     I think that is what Dame Angela Eagle was suggesting.     In all fairness the Government website can’t be accused of going over the top - link below (though I’ll come back to water later): https://prepare.campaign.gov.uk/get-prepared-for-emergencies/?title=household%20emergency%20plan The emergency kit they suggest for homes includes the following: Battery or wind-up torch  – torches being safer than candles. Portable power bank  for charging mobile phones. It’s not that we can rely o landlines now. Battery or wind-up radio  to get updates during a power cut – a car radio can be used, however in severe weather it might be safer to stay inside.  Spare batteries  for torches and radio and a backup batte...

  I’ve been reading the ‘Edge of England Landfall in Lincolnshire’ by Derek Turner.     First published in 2022 but it just hadn’t come up on my radar before now. To be fair these days when it comes to books I seem to be largely reliant on Amazon to tell me what they think I might like to read or, at least, be inclined to purchase from them.    This is a sorry state of affairs and I’m a long way from convinced that the Amazon algorithm has actually grasped what may or may not be of interest to me. This is probably down to my own rather eclectic ordering mix for myself and others.    So I may well only have myself to blame as to Amazon’s recommendations.    Perhaps more pertinently, it is years since I took a book out of the Library or even actually visited one come to that.    It is also some months since I visited an independent bookshop - that would be Heffers in Cambridge when we went to Ellis Brigham for an adjustment to S’s ski...

I watered the garden and pots, pruned one of the pear trees, planted up agapanthus, made squash soup for the freezer, dehydrated Braeburn and Cox’s apple rings, bottled (canned) Williams (Bartlett) pears and Bramley apple sauce and the, now seemingly, weekly litre of passata (or something I am calling passata - my apologies to any Italians). The main squash bed has been cleared and most of those squash are in the greenhouse for their final cure.    Three, now two, were placed in the emergency ward that is the kitchen windowsill.    One, the soup sized one, is now precisely that.    There are another two larger ones in slightly shadier garden bed where they will stay for a few weeks longer.  There is plenty more to do in the garden and in the house come to that but I was already at the stage of only having time to deal with what was immediately in front of me and really could not wait. Then there was the ironing to do.    That was, however, de...

The microwave stopped working.     It just refused to cook rice, or anything else come to that, but the rice was where it gave up.     Granted we have had it a while.     It was at the time of purchase an all singing and dancing microwave, grill, oven combination. I believe the additions had been used by others or, at least, another but I have only ever used it as a microwave.     For a moment, quite a short moment, I wondered whether I could manage without and bask in the additional worktop/counter space that would give me.    Well additional space up to the point where I decide I should join those raving over air fryers.   I use the microwave for: - Cooking rice - usually where needed fairly quickly.    16 minutes to be precise.    My preferred method is the absorption method on the hob.    This is not least as I often do something else in addition to just water, be that with orzo, stock, spice...