The Bells Have Made Me Deaf

New pan, new van, new man, new tan.

Tonight is the night. It’s actually cloud free and a bit nippy and if it stays that way the views should be good. The expected Leonid meteor shower is supposed to be one worth staying up for… mind you with a 4.45am (GMT) peak in this part of the world, I can’t quite decide whether to stay up or set the alarm.

Just as Spock is about to kill Captain Kirk with a stool… the type you sit on… they put the ads on so I go to stir dinner only to miss the crucial moment when he changes his mind and comes to his senses. Oh the predictability is so predictable. I gave up hope of a new plot minus William Shatner and switched it off.

Warning that wasn’t on the pack….
When chopping fresh turmeric, wear protective clothing.
The fingers on my left hand now look like I’m on 60 Woodbine a day. There must be a claim in there somewhere. If only I had the number of one of those lecherous companies who deal in misery suits and captivate the poor with their promises of wealth via accident. I really have nothing against compensation when doled out to those genuine cases who are due some recompense. I do pity those small businesses having to fork out for extra insurance in case Joe Blogs causes an explosion by smoking in a non smoking area full of highly flammable chemicals.

So the moral of the story is…. wear yellow marigolds when handling volatile spices like turmeric or bird eye chillies and be thankful it’s Friday.

MY mobile phone got a virus and kept downloading porn.

[image:549:l]This morning I was emptying the ashes from the stove. One of the hazards of burning turf is that the ash retains heat for longer. Peat ash is also incredibly dusty so I decided to let the ash pan sit on the hearth until they were completely cool and could be stuck in a plastic bag ready for the bin. This meant there would be no ash pan meantime and so I improvised. In the back of a cupboard was a biscuit tin full of my now dead Aunt’s spoon collection. It was just the right size. Perfect for the job. There aren’t too many houses with a Luxury ash pan!

The next problem was the unwanted clatter of silver plated souvenirs now piled up on the tin lid with nowhere to go. Spoons from all over the world. The whole family responsible for bringing her one from wherever they roamed. I started to wonder if she actually liked them or just tolerated them as handy gifts from a family who lacked imagination and simply kept buying more spoons even though she now kept them in a box in the cupboard. Passed on to lucky me when she died I haven’t the heart to throw them away nor the interest to do anything with them and so they will stay in a box taking up cupboard space just the same as other inherited collections of useless china trinkets which I haul out every five years to reminisce…

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I’ve watched a couple of the latest Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall series, The River Cottage Treatment, with avid interest. It’s almost cruel to educate some people as to the source of their food since they don’t tend to associate little bouncing lambs with those supermarket chops wrapped in cling film. The outcome of making them aware of the connection seems to have a mostly positive result in making all (them and us watching) more conscious of what we pick up in the supermarket.

Processed foods are something I’m dead set against but like everyone else, fall into the convenience trap because I can’t be bothered to cook. I blame that lethargy on the processed food but until the energy is found to break out of the cycle, on and on it goes.

I want to break free… I want to break free

While in England, I picked up yet another Indian cook book with great intentions of filling the freezer with home made convenience dinners (minus all those nasty additives) but as yet all I’ve done is leaf through the pages while producing excessive amounts of saliva. Come Sunday I’m going to do something in thick creamy coconut sauce (probably chicken because chicken is all I’ve got!). Coconut sauce is one of those exotic things that turns any old hen into a bit of a dish. Who knows what it would do to the rooster.

Americans can’t pronounce the word ‘aluminium’.

This realisation struck me as I listened to my neighbour struggle in her kitchen with a roll of aluminium foil, also affectionately dubbed ‘tin foil’. It sounded such fun, I almost got out my own stock of the shiny stuff to rattle back at her.

All together now… al-oo-min-ee-yum.