Thursday, January 24, 2008
Back to work
Back on the allotment today having been rained off for a week or so. Half completed trench is now empty again having been full of water last week. Ground has set quite hard on drying. Maybe that is the cold. Dug out the rest of it and started to fill it with leaf mould. Three barrows today and three more should do it. And that should be that for potatoes. Then onto the rhubarb beds - a bit late in the day as it is already sprouting strongly - and then a runner bean trench.
Horse radish looking well with strong green shoots lurking in the crown, just below ground level. Vicious looking, pale green things which belong in some vegetarian horror movie.
Cheam baker must be on a good bag of flour as his bread has been particularly good for the last few days. Light, soft (on the inside) and springy. The French don't do anything quite like it.
BH tried an interesting new soup from Lyme Regis today. Not much more than chicken stock cube, spinach, tinned chick peas, milk and water. Thick bright green stuff. Much better than I thought it would be. We shall try again, maybe including some onions fried in butter to give it a bit more body.
Two odd dreams last night, possibly fuelled by the fancy cake at the rather central London flavoured Italian cafe-restaurant we found in Tunbridge Wells. There is, it seems, a small chain of them and, sad to say, the owner makes occasional appearances as a television chef. Good cake though.
In the first dream, was in a small party arriving at a beach. Got down to the sea which was inky black. Swimming was permitted when the signs were not up, which they were not and there were some swimmmers in the sea. One of them looking more like a fat, black and worn post standing in the sea rather than a person. Then looked up at the beach behind and was rather alarmed to see this black shingle bank rising far above me, maybe a hundred feet or more. Began to get rather more alarmed about whether I would make it back up the bank when the tide came in. Then made it into the water and all was fine. Floated away on my back with my toes in the air.
In the second, was doing something to do with maps on my mobile phone. Something satnavvy I suppose. Then the thing rings. I try to get back to the telephone screen. Keying back just seems to take me back through the maps things. Like the back button in Internet Explorer on a bad day. Then find that I can answer the phone by pressing the green button without bothering to get back to the telephone screen. Turns out to be a colleague from way back to whom I have not spoken for some time. The line is bad and I can hardly hear him - although I can hear him talking to a lady in the background. He wants to arrange a meeting. I try to arrange to meet at Little Ben at Victoria, a place where I have met him before. The phone goes dead and I am not sure if we are on or not.
Part of the second dream may have been prompted by a new sprog 1 toy - a thing about the size of a sardine tin but which can get the Internet. No idea where the rest of it came from.
On the other hand the cake could not have been all bad as I did the DT Soduku on return in very good time. Fairly sure that I got it right, in the sense that I checked three numbers and I have never had a wrong with three rights. First time I have touched one, a Soduku that is, for a while. Maybe as with baked haddock, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Horse radish looking well with strong green shoots lurking in the crown, just below ground level. Vicious looking, pale green things which belong in some vegetarian horror movie.
Cheam baker must be on a good bag of flour as his bread has been particularly good for the last few days. Light, soft (on the inside) and springy. The French don't do anything quite like it.
BH tried an interesting new soup from Lyme Regis today. Not much more than chicken stock cube, spinach, tinned chick peas, milk and water. Thick bright green stuff. Much better than I thought it would be. We shall try again, maybe including some onions fried in butter to give it a bit more body.
Two odd dreams last night, possibly fuelled by the fancy cake at the rather central London flavoured Italian cafe-restaurant we found in Tunbridge Wells. There is, it seems, a small chain of them and, sad to say, the owner makes occasional appearances as a television chef. Good cake though.
In the first dream, was in a small party arriving at a beach. Got down to the sea which was inky black. Swimming was permitted when the signs were not up, which they were not and there were some swimmmers in the sea. One of them looking more like a fat, black and worn post standing in the sea rather than a person. Then looked up at the beach behind and was rather alarmed to see this black shingle bank rising far above me, maybe a hundred feet or more. Began to get rather more alarmed about whether I would make it back up the bank when the tide came in. Then made it into the water and all was fine. Floated away on my back with my toes in the air.
In the second, was doing something to do with maps on my mobile phone. Something satnavvy I suppose. Then the thing rings. I try to get back to the telephone screen. Keying back just seems to take me back through the maps things. Like the back button in Internet Explorer on a bad day. Then find that I can answer the phone by pressing the green button without bothering to get back to the telephone screen. Turns out to be a colleague from way back to whom I have not spoken for some time. The line is bad and I can hardly hear him - although I can hear him talking to a lady in the background. He wants to arrange a meeting. I try to arrange to meet at Little Ben at Victoria, a place where I have met him before. The phone goes dead and I am not sure if we are on or not.
Part of the second dream may have been prompted by a new sprog 1 toy - a thing about the size of a sardine tin but which can get the Internet. No idea where the rest of it came from.
On the other hand the cake could not have been all bad as I did the DT Soduku on return in very good time. Fairly sure that I got it right, in the sense that I checked three numbers and I have never had a wrong with three rights. First time I have touched one, a Soduku that is, for a while. Maybe as with baked haddock, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
# posted by Jim @ 8:22 AM 
