pumpkinstrokemarrow

The other evening, feeling the grey cells to be in good form, attempted to resume reading P. H. Wilson on the Thirty Years War, a hefty tome more than a couple of inches thick.

Given that I had retired for the night by this point, the weight proved rather challenging when lying down so put it down again, and then, having left it alone for some weeks, picked up the Kindle for consolation. There my investment in http://www.gutenberg.org/ paid off and within a couple of minutes I had got the Kindle off 'Great Expectations' and onto Melville's 'Typee', not read for some years, and a book which Wikipedia tells me was the author's début effort and far more popular than the rather denser 'Moby Dick' during his lifetime. Certainly entirely suitable as a bedtime read.

But then, in the morning, moved to buy another heavy tome which, impressively, arrived the following day, with the label illustrated. Clearly a complicated operation, involving lots of long codes which were all-bar-one unintelligible. So I thought it likely that depot 676 (MTCH) was probably in Mitcham. But what did 'HDNL' stand for? What is a round sector? Is that to do with the warehouse or the distribution side of things? Why does it need two bar codes? One for me and one for the book?  And then, in a final flourish of distribution technology, underneath the label I found a number of small plastic slips, looking rather like miniature elastoplasts but not stuck down in any way, just systematically lodged between the very sticky label and the packet itself. What on earth were they for?

All of which reminded me that if Amazon were to run tours for geeks I would go for it like a shot, there being lots to interest a former IT person. But it would need to be a tour for a small number of the right sort of people, together with a proper guide with time to accommodate our various interests. Our visit to Sellafield a couple of years ago was a complete waste of space on account of failure on both counts.

On the gastronomic front, having forgotten our two-for-one vouchers, paid our first post-operative visit to ASK. Pleasant ambience, very much like Pizza Express or Carluccios. Bruschetta not too hot, with the tomato goo cooler cold rather than warm, which is quite wrong for me. Pizza of the thin kind and good, with quite enough goo on the regular version not to need the £1.50 worth of supplement on offer. Tiramisu OK, enhanced with a glass of pudding wine, this last having arrived on chain restaurant menus. The world moves on. And 10 out of 10 for the DT. Sparkling and fully equipped; the best yet. All in all, another good lunch.

Followed up later the same day by mashed potato soup. Take half a tenderloin and chop it coarsely. Take two onions and chop them finely. Simmer the lot for a couple of hours. Add good dollop of mashed potato and stir it in. Simmer for a few minutes more and serve with thawed out, buttered white bread.