Friday 13 June 2008

One Local Summer week 2 (and some ramblings)

I did a little better this week - I didn't burn anything, for a start.



(I love my plates too, though they don't go with anything in my house. I live in mortal fear of dropping one and no longer having a set.)

Here we have toad in the hole, made with beef and horseradish sausages which I bought and froze when the farmers' market was up the 'wood a couple of weeks ago, and also with milk, eggs and flour purchased from the aforementioned Whiterow Country Foods. I know I should really stop at the other farm shop on alternate weeks, for the sake of fairness, but they don't have the awesome salad Whiterow do. Today they had bags with actual flowers in. I was very excited, but also very skint, so I may have to have that next week.

I am quite proud of myself for even making sure the flour was local, and intend to use it later in the summer for making pasta...or, yknow, for making Mr Z make pasta. The broad beans are also from Whiterow. As I was shelling them, it occurred to me that I can't ever remember having fresh broad beans - only frozen ones, that are grey. These were vastly superior. I felt very stupid when I realised one doesn't eat the fuzzy pod as well as the beans, so we didn't have many - but those we did were very tasty.

And then for dessert, I had some raspberry and elderflower sorbet from Mendip Moments. Yum.Whenever I have their ice cream it reminds me of the cows surrounding the turbanned man who was sitting cross-legged on the top of Glastonbury Tor when Mr Z and I visited last year.




And here is the other video I took that day, just because it made me laugh a lot when I watched it again just now.




That's what that big, ancient, stone tower is for! That girl nearly got a big kick in the face because she wouldn't stop prodding.

Some ramblings for this week.

Crows are mean. Mr Z pointed a pair out to me the other day, hopping around the corner of the guttering of one of the houses that backs onto our lane. He told me they were after the eggs or the chicks. I was horrified and disbelieving, but the very next day, I saw a crow carefully extract an egg from under the eaves and fly off with it. Gits. The local robin has been sitting on our fence post chirrupping for days now, with increasing desperation, and dievboming the cat, and I am starting to worry that it was its nest.

Zoe's finished her degree. I was lucky enough to be in London for her art show yesterday and got to see her final film pieces. They were very good, but I maintain that nothing in this world makes me feel as stupid as art - most of the time I just don't get it. I got Zoe's alright, I think. They were quite personal to her. I can't believe it's been three years and she's finished already.

Hotels are strange places. I rushed and rushed across London on Wednesday night, trying to get to my hotel room in time to catch most of the Apprentice final. At first the guy on the front desk seemed unable to find my booking, so off he went and messed around with some papers, and came back grimacing, "It's not really a problem." "Good," I replied, with a bit of teacher-eyebrow thrown in for good measure. In the end, they upgraded me to an executive suite (still no fridge, but the bed was about 6 feet wide - I slept in a star shape, I think - and it had a sofa bed, a flatscreen on a swivelly arm and two sinks, and would have slept 6 if they were a close bunch of people).
Anyway. Rushing. Apprentice. I couldn't turn the TV on. I decided it must be broken but didn't want to look stupid, so I tried everything I could think of before ringing reception, only to be informed that the switch to turn the power on to the TV was on the headboard of the bed (which was on the opposite side of the room).
Of course! Where it always is...

Cowboy boots are in, in London. I saw 3 pairs before I even got to my hotel. And the next day, more, and on men too. Most of the men I saw were in pointy shoes. I like outfit spotting in London. It's so dull in Bristol - I feel guilty being mentally acerbic because it's so obvious that most of the completely random and unknown people I am dissing like I'm some sort of Vogue editor don't care what they put on their backs, and therefore it's not really fun. People in London make an effort, even when they want to look like they don't. Hence, dishevelled skinny model types with hair carefully teased and spritzed to look unbrushed, and about 5 layers of baggy jersey in an "I just tossed on clothes until I wasn't cold anymore" type arrangement - a look totally ruined, in my opinion, by flesh coloured tights: completely at odds with the overall effect, but subtle enough that they don't really notice unless you're hypercritical.

I might be hypercritical. But only of people I don't know. And a woman accosted me at Victoria station yesterday to ask me where I got my dress from (I neglected to tell her it was from ebay and gave her the original shop details) - so I may be mean, but I have a little bit of style, at least in the eyes of the odd person here and there.

I own red and white spotty shoes. It had to happen sooner or later. They're quite sensible, for me.

I'm marking. The examination season has begun. Bye bye to life for the next 3 weeks. It prompted me to open up my funnies file from last year and these seemed worth sharing -
  • They did not stop the death penalty because they are stupid and they piss me off, so I can't be arsed to write in more detail.
  • She wasn't a violent person - on the contrary, she was beautiful.
  • Trial by Ordeal was a system where God would decide your fete. ["Thou shalt have thy fete on the second Saturday of July, and thou shalt have bunting and balloons and raise money for cancer relief"].

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