A fragment.

Last weekend, I worked on Friday morning, and spent the afternoon dashing about a neighbouring town visiting shops and having the damage to my shoes from the recent lunch time escapade repaired.  The rush hour congestion on the journey home made me run too late to catch a train I was planning to take, and so I was an hour late for an evening out with friends.

T stayed at home looking after B, and I travelled (by train) to a town about twenty minutes' travel away and met one of my friends at the station.  We joined the other two at a pub in the town, and after a drink we headed off for pizza.

The pizza place was already full as we had got there late and none of us that thought to book ahead. And so we headed off deeper into the town to a restaurant that used to sell pizza, but is now a curry house.  Much curry eating ensued.  The order was messed up insofar as one of the vegetarians was served meat, but other than that, it was a good meal and we were all happy with it.  There was, I remarked to a fellow diner, a worrying profusion of things on the menu that had been shot.  Though, I commented, I don't see how much could possibly be left after shooting a quail - perhaps they are killed some other way. Such as by being steam-rollered?

Apparently, shooting is exactly what happens to the little things.  And presumably also to the hare, grouse, and venison that were on the menu.  I had okra, and very nice it was too.

Through dinner we chatted about old films, old friends, old enemies, and old times.  We all went on a trip to walk along part of Hadrian's Wall a couple of years ago and would dearly love to repeat the experience, or something like it.  It was one of those perfect trips that will, I fear,  never be matched.

After the meal, I missed my train and had a drink with the friend who waited with me.  It was a good chance to catch up since we hadn't seen each other in a while.

On Saturday, I did some work on the allotment.  This was quite a feat when you consider that someone had screwed our back gate shut.

When you have a toddler, any few minutes you can grab to do something like a past-time are very rare and precious things.  So when, after doing some housework and eating some breakfast, I grabbed my tools and gloves from the shed, chucked them into the wheelbarrow and marched down the garden intending to go out of our back gate and into the allotments, you might imagine that I was somewhat less than impressed to find that the back gate wouldn't open.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the shaft of a screw could be seen between the gate and the post.

Swearing a little (ok, quite a lot), I had to take the long way round to the allotments with my tool case to try to take the screw out of the gate so that it would open.  I did manage to get one of them out, but the second resisted me with all of its 3 1/2" and I had to get T to remove it.

Mini-Friday is the best day of the working week.

I went for a walk at lunch time today. It's a shame that lunch times are short because the weather was gorgeous and those trees that weren't in full blossom are already budding into spring foliage. Lost in conversation, and delight at having the opportunity to mentally link together roads that had previously existed miles apart from each other in my imagination, I managed to forget just how much my shoes were killing me.

I tend to wear sensible shoes for driving, but enjoy wearing heels in the office. I am only 5'4", so the extra few inches is usually a bonus when it comes to things such as spotting colleagues hiding at the other end of the building. I love high heeled shoes and have quite a collection of them; I can't actually walk in all of them for more than a few paces, but I don't care. It's probably not healthy, and I should probably get help, but oh how beautiful my deep red suede sandals with 6" heels are. One day I will even dance in them. But I must learn to walk properly in them first.

I digress.

Heels + urban hiking = much pain and wrecked shoes. Also funny looks from colleagues whilst hobbling a bit when doing the coffee round.

Still, my feet will fix themselves, I can get the shoes mended, and I'm quite convinced that nothing I do would surprise my colleagues any more.  Besides; it was worth it for finding somewhere new to go for a stroll.

T came home early to look after B as we had no childcare for him this afternoon. I think they both enjoyed themselves though T did have to get some work done too. In fact, he has now been doing it all evening, and is still not finished.

We had a dinner of cod florentine, oven baked curried celeriac chips, and peas.  I forget how much I love celeriac in between having it!  Hopefully I will have some success with it on the allotment later in the year - tomorrow, I'd like to do some digging if I can find someone to watch B for a while.

A rainy Sunday

I am a bit worried about T's foot. He has done something to a nail that has all but been pulled off at the base - too much information, perhaps, but that is life. If it were me, I'd put a plaster over it and forget about it until I was able to deal with it effectively. But because it is his and not mine, I just worry.

Today has been less successful, due in part to the weather, and in part to it being Sunday. T doesn't like Sundays. Also he is coming down with another cold - as am I, but I tend to shake things off pretty quickly.

The weather forecast was once again correct (for this neck of the woods, anyway), and when it wasn't threatening rain, it was in fact actually raining. And it was more action than threat.  Whilst the feeling of cool rain on hot skin whilst working hard is truly one of my favourite things, I am sure that work on the allotment today would have been reminiscent of the scenes in WWI films involving Ypres, or the Somme; just with less blood and more squirrels. And so the allotment has been left for another day - it's just such a bloody shame that the dark evenings mean that I can't work on it after I've finished at the office during the week. I leave work early on Fridays, but at the moment, I couldn't possibly do the digging without someone to watch over B. As wonderful as the allotment is, it is still full of extremely dangerous things for a toddler such as short stakes sticking up that could be easily fallen onto, or glass cold frames. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

After not going to the allotment, we spent much of the day at home, popping out only to go to our local Lidl. I can count on one hand the number of times I have been there, and I am always surprised at how good is is. We had steak this evening; reasonably priced, and it tasted like good meat though after T had cooked it for the same length of time as the fish fingers for B, the texture left a little to be desired (oh gods, I hope T doesn't read this - he'll never cook for me again)!

We also purchased a tub of duplo-type bricks for B to play with. He already has a few Thomas the Tank Engine bits and bobs that are made to fit with this sized brick, and we thought that he might enjoy having more to build with. Now, B is only a few days past two years old, and so we were not too surprised when his interest only went so far as putting together and breaking apart a couple of bricks at a time.  B did rather enjoy pushing trains and tractors through the simply enormous (what can only be described as a) triumphal arch* that T built for him.

T and B shared a bath that involved lots of bubbles both as foam, and blown using bubble mixture by me. B ate only the biscuit of a strawberry cheesecake that I presented to him as a sneaky way of getting him to ingest fruit and calcium (I really do despair). I had a long and supremely enjoyable bubble bath of my own.

And that about sums up today's events!

*Think Arc de Triomphe

A lovely Saturday

Today has been fun.

The day dawned misty and damp with a cold wind and grey clouds. I knew that rain had been forecast for later on, and so after a quick breakfast I pulled on my boots, grabbed a spade, and headed down to the allotment.

It was quiet - but it was still before 9am and I imagine that the households surrounding the allotment on all sides were still concerned with the business of getting up and breakfasting. The silence was a good thing for me; it has been an intense week at work, and as well as making a start on preparing the soil for planting soon, I was looking forward to having the physical and mental space to simply be. Not to be anything in particular; just to be.

The membrane that was laid before Christmas was pooled all over with water that had clearly evaporated and been replaced a number of times; the puddles were ringed with a greenish mould and contained flotsam and jetsam that can only have come from larvae. As I peeled the plastic back from the earth and saw the various creatures scuttling, sliding, and flying away from the tide of dank water, and the cold light, I remembered how small a part in all of this mine is.

It is easy to lose yourself in enjoyment of the smell of the soil and grass as you drive your spade through it. It is difficult to describe the pleasure produced by the slightly sharp and gritty sound of a spade pushing into the resistance of the earth.

I forgot the time, and just worked until the arrival of rain eventually blinded me by covering my glasses. My mum came to help, but we didn't dig for long before we headed back to the house to wait for the rain to move on.

We dug again later, and then, after she had gone back home, I spent the rest of the day with T and B. T cooked a lovely meal, and B had a fun day too.

This evening I have helped a friend out with an Excel problem, chatted to another couple of friends using social networking, and written this blog all whilst watching Star Trek and drinking wine.

Happy days!

Apathy and anticipation

A long day at work today has resulted in general apathy towards the kitchen on my part. T never really has anything but apathy, and so, pizza is on the menu tonight.

I am tired. I have not been getting as much sleep as I ought to have been and since I start work quite early, it can't really continue. The problem is that once I get stuck into something, I find it quite hard to stop unless it is impossible to continue. Currently, it is family history; an interest to which I return periodically when some new lead shows up. And they have been showing up in a tantalising, almost reachable, but not quite, kinda way.

Perhaps I'll do some more whilst the pizza is coming...