It is definitely a Sign of the Times that I am actively looking forward to a hundred mile round trip to the crematorium later this week. It will feel like a little holiday! There may even be masked (I have now made 6 as I have a feeling they will soon be more than just advised, as lockdown opens up) and gloved shopping.
I didn't make ratatouille in the end: S. found a recipe on the BBC Good Food website for pasta with broccoli and sage (she's just bought a load of herb plants), so I did that instead, and it was really good. I think I'll use more sage next time, but definitely a keeper, and dead easy.
For tonight, I think I'll try my s-i-l's recipe for ratatouille with a cheese sauce topping, which is Rather Good.
It's a lovely day: I've got washing on the line which might well be dry by the time I come back from an amble (we had intermittent sn*w yesterday, so I didn't amble, and I think I should).
Today indeed turned out better than anticipated. I cut the grass in the morning and then some seeds ordered weeks ago turned up in the post, so I have spent the afternoon putting those in.
However, it has left me somewhat puggled. I am thinking rather than making a from-scratch keema curry, I may just pour on a packet of beef rendang paste and a tin of coconut milk.
Fairly busy (for now). Did some correspondence first thing. then shower, breakfast and walk to and from Lidl (very quiet). Emails round my deacons (church leadership team), received and read a short paper for a School Appeals meeting later, then light lunch followed by an online meeting with other clergy, lady from the Food Bank, school chaplain, Councillor to talk about how social provision is going in our area (some folk are doing great work). This finished sooner than expected so I had a bit of a gap before the Appeals meeting (Part 1 - next week will be much busier). Wrote up details of clergy etc. meeting to send round deacons, then a couple of shortish pastoral phone calls. In the gaps emailing back and forth to my sister and see what Boris was saying (why did I bother?) Then I cut the lawn (it's not big), now keeping an eye on dinner. It sounds much busier than it was but at least I've felt I achieved something!
As it looks like another nice day, I'm going for an amble before it changes its mind, then I really must have a Messenger chat with a friend in St. John's, who I've been planning to contact for ages.
Supper will be M&S poached salmon, roasted asparagus and carrots and minty* new potatoes.
* My s-i-l brought fresh mint with the groceries the other day, and (as mint does) it's growing like a weed, so we ought to use it up. It's not a herb I've used all that often; apart from making raita or putting it in Pimm's, I'm not sure what to do with it.
@Piglet Lamb meatballs. Make them with some of your chopped up mint, and I promise you will never regret it ever. Delicious.
Mint is also very tasty with strawberries. If you're feeling serphistickated, you can make a cold strawberry soup, but failing that just put your strawberries in a bowl with the mint chopped over the top and scarf greedily. Mmmm.
Sounded much more than it was, though I find online meetings tiring.
My wife's long-awaited plants have arrived from the nursery, inn superb condition. We've just put them in. She has a Welsh class later. (I wonder what the Welsh is for "Zoom" - is it "Zwym"?)
BT, I had an online Welsh class earlier. I’m signed up for Mynediad - entrance - level again.
I’ve read that your brain becomes less
plastic as you grow older, which might explain why I’ve forgotten so much of what I’ve learned in the past.
Salmon seems to be the order of the day - we're having it for tea as well, with roast vegetables and a peppercorn sauce. I did the weekly Tesco's shop this morning.
We won’t go back to supermarket meat and veg again - the farm shop stuff is just too good!
Nenlet1 and her husband have recently discovered a farm shop near them and say how wonderful the meat is. We have one not too far away and should maybe explore the option; I'd like to think at least some small businesses would come out of this well. Our little local pet supplies shop, also a small garden shop, has apparently never been so busy.
Mr Nen and I sat on our patio for morning coffee and due to the scudding clouds and chilliness of the air it was cold enough to need a jacket one minute and hot enough to think about sun cream the next.
When I lived in Dorset I only ever ate farm shop meat, and yes, so much nicer. The beef came from a farm on the way to our weekly swimming session, plus apples and other fruit and veg. Eggs, pork, chicken and goat in another direction from an open farm. That one we usually knew the name of the pork we ate. Rabbit, chicken and eggs plus fruit and cakes were available from the weekly WI market, cheese from the cheese factory shop open one day a week in the cattle market, flour from the local mill, sold in the town shops. This was dairy farming country so I didn't find a source of farm gate lamb.
Today's lunch was yellow sticker finds, a stir fry veg pack from M&S, full price rice noodles and cheap fresh tuna steak I accidentally on purpose watched arrive on the reduced shelf in Tesco's yesterday evening. I have discovered we still have reduced food, but the times of arrival have changed and are staggered. I missed the fruit and veg, stuck at the wrong end of the one way system, and the bread had been out a while.
Joys of this morning's early long walk were the sight of a treecreeper on the avenue of trees, a kestrel sitting on the wires ahead of us in the open fields and some new bluebell woods to me, nearly over but still there and a path the length of the wood. It was a 6.3 mile plus walk, but we found the geocache we were hoping to discover, taking my daughter to 50 finds since she joined (I've got 53 as I joined first). We're doing well with 10 000 steps a day (that was just under 15 000).
What is M&S like in terms of crowdedness/social distancing, @Curiosity killed? There's an M&S fairly near me, about a forty minute walk away, but because it's quite a bit smaller than Asda, I haven't attempted to shop there. But I suppose they must have a system of social distancing.
No one-way system in Marks, screens between the self service check outs, but not as good for social distancing as Tesco's. This is a small High Street M&S Food, with some clothes and narrow aisles.
Tesco's has a station to clean baskets on the way in, a theoretical one way system, with aisles over 2m wide, strips marking 2m, a system for distancing before and at the check out, screens between the checkout staff and customers, and between self service checkouts. Last night people were better with the one-way system.
Boots has blocked off the non-essentials to make a one way system, 2m lines on the floor, screens between counter staff and customers, as has the post office in a newsagents. I posted out a mug order yesterday. Holland and Barrett only allows 2 customers at once as does the haberdashery.
Although the haberdashery is only open on the odd day, they were open yesterday and the husband was outside as we returned from that walk. He said the council wouldn't let them stay open, although he reckoned they sold essential supplies. He may get away with that from tomorrow as they do sell the makings for masks.
It didn't occur to me that Holland & Barrett would still be open. I guess I'm quite cut off, really, so don't know which shops are open, other than supermarkets. I'm limited to which shops are in walking distance of me, which is Asda, and a corner shop I haven't gone in during lockdown, because they don't seem to have a policy for limiting customers and I can't see how social distancing would work. M&S would be an uphill walk in the other direction. I might possibly try it sometime, maybe when I have a face mask - the live bar charts are handy for seeing when supermarkets are quiet.
BT, I had an online Welsh class earlier. I’m signed up for Mynediad - entrance - level again.
I’ve read that your brain becomes less plastic as you grow older, which might explain why I’ve forgotten so much of what I’ve learned in the past.
Well done. My wife has got to Sylfaen level but she really misses getting any conversation practice. Oh to live in Carmarthen or Bangor (mind you, they speak North Walian there!)
Tesco's has a station to clean baskets on the way in, a theoretical one way system, with aisles over 2m wide, strips marking 2m, a system for distancing before and at the check out ...
Waiting to get into Waitrose (!) this morning, I noticed that were all standing on little circles stuck to the floor. (This sort of thing: https://tinyurl.com/ya52q4nq). I did think of shouting out, "Shall we all play long-distance Twister?" but didn't.
Usually there's a queue for M&S, but there wasn't as I headed back from the post office at around 5:15pm, so I took my chances. I did also score some reduced brie, a GF pork pie and some salad, so added a loaf of rye bread and supper last night was bread, brie and salad for me, pork pie and salad for my daughter.
Today's discovery was that the leftover stuffing from Sunday's chicken - mozzarella, mustard and grated cheddar - makes a perfectly good cheat's rarebit.
Tonight's the gammon glazed with the juice of disappointing clementines spiked with lime and tequila marmalade. Carrots Vichy, baked potato and a glass of cider.
You are not going to believe what happened to me yesterday. No-one could have predicted it.
We have been driving a couple of miles to a woodland for my friend to get his exercise taking photos of wildlife of the sessile variety. Plants, that is. I sit in the car reading the Guardian's Saturday Review mags. We do not meet anyone. We have considered this to be OK, but I do worry that someone is going to come up and challenge me. The energetic walkers, the cyclists working their way up the hill, or freewheeling down, that sort of person. I've had a few odd looks from the walkers, as I often park by the entrance of a footpath.
Which is where I was yesterday, though unusually facing downhill, as when we went up the hill a car coming down had pulled in there to let us pass, and we had to go up, turn round by the church, where there were a bunch of people including children, waiting as if for a bus (not a bus route, a lane).
So there I sit, waiting for my friend to reappear, and not being noticed by walkers or cyclists, when a Range Rover comes up the hill, and slows down as it passes. I watched it in the mirror, and saw it pull in to a space a few yards up the hill.
Oh dear, I thought, and I began to rehearse my explanations.
The passenger door opened, and a smallish person got out, moving jerkily a bit like a puppet at first, and apparently wearing a beige tracksuit. I thought it was a child. Then it started down the hill, clearly aiming for my car, and holding a bundle of cloth in front of it. To my astonishment I realised it was not a tracksuit, but a birthday suit. The cloth fell to one side at one point, revealing the person to be a completely naked male.
My car was already locked, and the windows up.
Could I, he asked, tell him where the naturist club was, as he was completely lost.
I attempted to direct him, back down the hill, up the hill the other side, right through the village, and then I gave up, before getting to down the hill by the pub, right again and keep on until morning - no, until he saw the sign. "You are in completely the wrong place" I told him, and he made his way up the road, got back in the car, and it drove off. he had dropped the bundle of cloth and left it. I turned the dashcam, and it fell off its mount.
I called the police. He's got no business wandering the country with no clothes on.
When my friend was back in the vicinity, I went up to the cloth and moved it to the side of the road - a polo short with a t-shirt inside it.
The Range Rover did not return to go to the club, or to pick up the tops.
I couldn't use the dashcam to get the number, as when it fell off the mount it corrupted the file! If the car had been facing the other way I wouldn't just have had the number in the images.
We drove up the road a bit, the children had vanished, and there was no sign of the RR.
A bit of checking showed that there isn't another naturist place up there that I didn't know about.
Last night I heard someone on the LBC talk radio wittering on about national naturist day, which doesn't appear to be now, I find this morning. And, which I should have realised yesterday, but the effects of covid had somehow dropped out of my mind, the local club I know about is closed. As it should be.
I now have this image of a scrawny little man with short greyish hair hopping around like Rumpelstiltskin and can't get rid of it! What was he playing at?
But I'm confused why you would think it a matter for the police: what heinous crime was he committing? Sure, not all of us look good naked but haven't we moved beyond finding a naked body shocking, disgusting or threatening?
He was on a public road, and approached a woman who was alone. Then he did not follow advice as to the route he asked for and left his clothes behind. It did not add up, and I was disturbed. Shouldn't I have been?
I think people are calling the police a lot these days - from what I see on Facebook, a lot of people are calling the police when they see anyone they perceive to be breaking the lockdown rules. Neighbours having parties, groups of three or four people out walking, people taking their cars on what people perceive to be unnecessary trips. People may even have called the police on you, Penny, if they saw you drive somewhere and sit in your car reading a paper! The police aren't following up the majority of these calls, because people generally don't know the details (three or four people could easily be family, for instance) and the main police role is to break up large groups, as they are happening, for public safety. Not sure what they'd do about an allegedly lost nudist! I suspect others who saw him might have called the police too, especially if they were with children. If they got several calls, I imagine the police would look into it.
Well, I've certainly wondered how essential my couple of miles trip would be seen by people whose business it would be to decide. But I think the man missing his essentials had gone a bit further than that. He'd gone over my quite high threshold for calling the police.
Hmm. Maybe - but what I thought was (even more) odd was that he was nekkid whilst in the car. Surely naturists drive to their resort clothed, and remove their clothes once they've arrived?
I suspect he was suffering from sort of temporary fruitloopery, possibly caused by lockdown...
I thought English people were now allowed to drive to exercise: though I suppose someone seeing Penny sitting in her car might not think there was exercise happening.
That was my initial thought, that he might have got the wrong impression as to why she was waiting in a car!
I don’t blame Penny for reporting him, a naked man approaching lone women in a public place is definitely not acceptable behaviour and I don’t think most nudists would do it.
Do you know if the place you are parking is a known dogging site? Because you may have been sitting in one of those car parks that are regularly used for dogging and have been sending out all the signals that suggest you are ready and waiting for a passing sexual encounter. Just you didn't give the correct answers when approached.
One of my neighbours has been calling the police out on people chatting in the street if he thinks it looks like illegal assembly, and as his thinking is quite rigid, that's regularly. It's annoying as it's the only time I get to chat to many of my neighbours, in passing in the street, and sometimes we need to ask things like has anyone else had their milk delivered? As some of us are on the WhatsApp group I set up I know that no-one else did as the milkman's van broke down.
It wouldn't be a dogging site, just a small passing place, only room for one car, and within about 40 yards of a house. Also in full daylight with lots of passing traffic. There has never been any hint of anything like that in the past, and we've been using the spot for years.
My first thought, re the police, was "What's he going to do next, with whom, and where?" Later, when my friend mentioned flashing, which word had not entered my mind, I realised that he had not crossed the police threshold of dangerous. (Not excited.)
And don't forget that he wasn't the driver, he had an "accomplice".
Crikey, Penny - if you'd told us that was a dream I'd have suggested laying off the Stilton before going to bed!
It's another glorious day - amblage will happen forthwith.
Having discovered that the ready-cooked salmon fillets we got last week should have been eaten by Sunday* I'm contemplating disguising them in some sort of Oriental way: if I give them some soy sauce, ginger and garlic and bury them in rice will they be OK?
* We had one package last night and they were fine: they didn't smell at all fishy, so I assume they were all right.
You would be surprised what are dogging sites:- for a while the car park next to my flat, in the middle of town, was well enough known that it featured on the list handed around at Nottingham University when my daughter was there. The lighting has improved a lot since.
Speaking of fishy encounters I, very reluctantly, had to throw away a piece of salmon I had reserved unto myself to stir into penne pasta, a meal I like but Mr Puzzler does not. It had been in the fridge for two days, but I was not sure about it, so I played safe. Fortunately I had some Bolognese in the freezer I used instead. Disappointing.
Never mind the necessity or not for calling the police when an apparently naked gnome approaches a lady, Penny S you gave me a good laugh, which was sorely needed at this time! (I'm presuming you are a lady, Penny S?)
Maybe I've been away too long, or just move in the wrong circles, but all this talk of canine activity had me baffled. I finally had to ask Auntie Google, who explained it to me. I don't think there can be a lot of it around here, probably on account of the cold winters and then the mosquitoes as soon as the winter's done with.
I won't link to it as I'm sure it wouldn't be suitable for All Saints but for anyone interested a search on YouTube for "Fascinating Aida dogging" will lead you to a hilarious song - though, as the singer observes partway through, "Those of a sensitive disposition should leave now."
To change the subject, tea here was breaded plaice, potato wedges and spinach in cream.
Piglet, if the salmon smells fine it is okay, IMO.
I’ve spent the afternoon marking essays on parenting and family policy. The marking marathon is nearing an end now, I hope to finish this week, give or take a few extensions. Next week I need to concentrate on my own end of year doctorate assignment.
I’ve just had an advert for a spectrum analyser appear on a website,I’m not sure what benefit it might bring to my life (I suspect it is my husband’s fault as he is a physicist).
I've had a very pleasant day so far, an online session with my spiritual director, coffee in the garden with Mr Nen and some fun dancy exercise courtesy of YouTube before a shower and lunch.
There's a huge amount of excellent exercise stuff available online and I'm undecided about whether I'll ever go back to real life classes. While I was working I was spending a lot of money on classes and will need to be more circumspect in future.
This afternoon I'm meeting with my small church group, then my online Slimming World group, and another meeting this evening. I shall be pretty Zoomed out by the end of the day.
Comments
For tonight, I think I'll try my s-i-l's recipe for ratatouille with a cheese sauce topping, which is Rather Good.
It's a lovely day: I've got washing on the line which might well be dry by the time I come back from an amble (we had intermittent sn*w yesterday, so I didn't amble, and I think I should).
However, it has left me somewhat puggled. I am thinking rather than making a from-scratch keema curry, I may just pour on a packet of beef rendang paste and a tin of coconut milk.
Just looked in the fridge and it appears I’m cooking salmon and watercress risotto with creme fraiche. I might add some egg.
As it looks like another nice day, I'm going for an amble before it changes its mind, then I really must have a Messenger chat with a friend in St. John's, who I've been planning to contact for ages.
Supper will be M&S poached salmon, roasted asparagus and carrots and minty* new potatoes.
* My s-i-l brought fresh mint with the groceries the other day, and (as mint does) it's growing like a weed, so we ought to use it up. It's not a herb I've used all that often; apart from making raita or putting it in Pimm's, I'm not sure what to do with it.
Mint is also very tasty with strawberries. If you're feeling serphistickated, you can make a cold strawberry soup, but failing that just put your strawberries in a bowl with the mint chopped over the top and scarf greedily. Mmmm.
My wife's long-awaited plants have arrived from the nursery, inn superb condition. We've just put them in. She has a Welsh class later. (I wonder what the Welsh is for "Zoom" - is it "Zwym"?)
I’ve read that your brain becomes less
plastic as you grow older, which might explain why I’ve forgotten so much of what I’ve learned in the past.
Nenlet1 and her husband have recently discovered a farm shop near them and say how wonderful the meat is. We have one not too far away and should maybe explore the option; I'd like to think at least some small businesses would come out of this well. Our little local pet supplies shop, also a small garden shop, has apparently never been so busy.
Mr Nen and I sat on our patio for morning coffee and due to the scudding clouds and chilliness of the air it was cold enough to need a jacket one minute and hot enough to think about sun cream the next.
Today's lunch was yellow sticker finds, a stir fry veg pack from M&S, full price rice noodles and cheap fresh tuna steak I accidentally on purpose watched arrive on the reduced shelf in Tesco's yesterday evening. I have discovered we still have reduced food, but the times of arrival have changed and are staggered. I missed the fruit and veg, stuck at the wrong end of the one way system, and the bread had been out a while.
Joys of this morning's early long walk were the sight of a treecreeper on the avenue of trees, a kestrel sitting on the wires ahead of us in the open fields and some new bluebell woods to me, nearly over but still there and a path the length of the wood. It was a 6.3 mile plus walk, but we found the geocache we were hoping to discover, taking my daughter to 50 finds since she joined (I've got 53 as I joined first). We're doing well with 10 000 steps a day (that was just under 15 000).
Tesco's has a station to clean baskets on the way in, a theoretical one way system, with aisles over 2m wide, strips marking 2m, a system for distancing before and at the check out, screens between the checkout staff and customers, and between self service checkouts. Last night people were better with the one-way system.
Boots has blocked off the non-essentials to make a one way system, 2m lines on the floor, screens between counter staff and customers, as has the post office in a newsagents. I posted out a mug order yesterday. Holland and Barrett only allows 2 customers at once as does the haberdashery.
Although the haberdashery is only open on the odd day, they were open yesterday and the husband was outside as we returned from that walk. He said the council wouldn't let them stay open, although he reckoned they sold essential supplies. He may get away with that from tomorrow as they do sell the makings for masks.
Usually there's a queue for M&S, but there wasn't as I headed back from the post office at around 5:15pm, so I took my chances. I did also score some reduced brie, a GF pork pie and some salad, so added a loaf of rye bread and supper last night was bread, brie and salad for me, pork pie and salad for my daughter.
Tonight's the gammon glazed with the juice of disappointing clementines spiked with lime and tequila marmalade. Carrots Vichy, baked potato and a glass of cider.
I’ve done today’s marking and am about to cook dinner - beef fajitas have been requested.
Glad to get the clarification. I could not work out what it had to do with ice cream.
We have been driving a couple of miles to a woodland for my friend to get his exercise taking photos of wildlife of the sessile variety. Plants, that is. I sit in the car reading the Guardian's Saturday Review mags. We do not meet anyone. We have considered this to be OK, but I do worry that someone is going to come up and challenge me. The energetic walkers, the cyclists working their way up the hill, or freewheeling down, that sort of person. I've had a few odd looks from the walkers, as I often park by the entrance of a footpath.
Which is where I was yesterday, though unusually facing downhill, as when we went up the hill a car coming down had pulled in there to let us pass, and we had to go up, turn round by the church, where there were a bunch of people including children, waiting as if for a bus (not a bus route, a lane).
So there I sit, waiting for my friend to reappear, and not being noticed by walkers or cyclists, when a Range Rover comes up the hill, and slows down as it passes. I watched it in the mirror, and saw it pull in to a space a few yards up the hill.
Oh dear, I thought, and I began to rehearse my explanations.
The passenger door opened, and a smallish person got out, moving jerkily a bit like a puppet at first, and apparently wearing a beige tracksuit. I thought it was a child. Then it started down the hill, clearly aiming for my car, and holding a bundle of cloth in front of it. To my astonishment I realised it was not a tracksuit, but a birthday suit. The cloth fell to one side at one point, revealing the person to be a completely naked male.
My car was already locked, and the windows up.
Could I, he asked, tell him where the naturist club was, as he was completely lost.
I attempted to direct him, back down the hill, up the hill the other side, right through the village, and then I gave up, before getting to down the hill by the pub, right again and keep on until morning - no, until he saw the sign. "You are in completely the wrong place" I told him, and he made his way up the road, got back in the car, and it drove off. he had dropped the bundle of cloth and left it. I turned the dashcam, and it fell off its mount.
I called the police. He's got no business wandering the country with no clothes on.
When my friend was back in the vicinity, I went up to the cloth and moved it to the side of the road - a polo short with a t-shirt inside it.
The Range Rover did not return to go to the club, or to pick up the tops.
I couldn't use the dashcam to get the number, as when it fell off the mount it corrupted the file! If the car had been facing the other way I wouldn't just have had the number in the images.
We drove up the road a bit, the children had vanished, and there was no sign of the RR.
A bit of checking showed that there isn't another naturist place up there that I didn't know about.
Last night I heard someone on the LBC talk radio wittering on about national naturist day, which doesn't appear to be now, I find this morning. And, which I should have realised yesterday, but the effects of covid had somehow dropped out of my mind, the local club I know about is closed. As it should be.
I now have this image of a scrawny little man with short greyish hair hopping around like Rumpelstiltskin and can't get rid of it! What was he playing at?
I suspect he was suffering from sort of temporary fruitloopery, possibly caused by lockdown...
I don’t blame Penny for reporting him, a naked man approaching lone women in a public place is definitely not acceptable behaviour and I don’t think most nudists would do it.
One of my neighbours has been calling the police out on people chatting in the street if he thinks it looks like illegal assembly, and as his thinking is quite rigid, that's regularly. It's annoying as it's the only time I get to chat to many of my neighbours, in passing in the street, and sometimes we need to ask things like has anyone else had their milk delivered? As some of us are on the WhatsApp group I set up I know that no-one else did as the milkman's van broke down.
My first thought, re the police, was "What's he going to do next, with whom, and where?" Later, when my friend mentioned flashing, which word had not entered my mind, I realised that he had not crossed the police threshold of dangerous. (Not excited.)
And don't forget that he wasn't the driver, he had an "accomplice".
I wonder if his accomplice/companion was also in the nuddy?
Most odd...
It's another glorious day - amblage will happen forthwith.
Having discovered that the ready-cooked salmon fillets we got last week should have been eaten by Sunday*
* We had one package last night and they were fine: they didn't smell at all fishy, so I assume they were all right.
(Not saying I disbelieve it in any way, of course, but it would make a wonderful little animated fillum... Penny's MMV, I agree).
Piglet, if the salmon smells fine it is okay, IMO.
I’ve spent the afternoon marking essays on parenting and family policy. The marking marathon is nearing an end now, I hope to finish this week, give or take a few extensions. Next week I need to concentrate on my own end of year doctorate assignment.
I’ve just had an advert for a spectrum analyser appear on a website,I’m not sure what benefit it might bring to my life (I suspect it is my husband’s fault as he is a physicist).
Another day of marking here, today’s theme is ‘evidence based care’ by foundation students. Then my marking is just about over for the academic year.
But first I need to go for my morning walk.
There's a huge amount of excellent exercise stuff available online and I'm undecided about whether I'll ever go back to real life classes. While I was working I was spending a lot of money on classes and will need to be more circumspect in future.
This afternoon I'm meeting with my small church group, then my online Slimming World group, and another meeting this evening. I shall be pretty Zoomed out by the end of the day.