| Sat 1 | If you’re like me you find whole roast duck a bit of a pain to carve. So why not joint it before cooking? Remove the legs and wings; cut down the sides to remove the spine, and then cut the crown (breasts plus) down the middle. Roast as normal, but it doesn’t take as long. And you have ready portioned pieces. |
| Sun 2 | No cooking needed today because cold duck salad with ciabatta rolls, and summer pudding. I made the latter on Friday and we started it last night; and there’s still a piece for breakfast tomorrow. God bless whoever invented summer pudding (it seems probably a Victorian). |
| Mon 3 | Decadence: Eating the end of the summer pudding for breakfast; with cream of course. |
| Tue 4 | Last night’s full moon: invisible as usual due to cloud cover. It was a supermoon – appearing extra large due to the moon being at perigee. Known variously as a Buck Moon or Hay Moon (other names also apply) depending on which pagan beliefs you follow. I prefer Hay Moon as it resonates with old farming practice: haymaking in July and grain harvest in August. Modern farming has however moved things by breeding earlier ripening corn, so grain harvest is often now over by mid-July. |
| Wed 5 | Well at long last we got some rain overnight. |
| Thu 6 | You open a can of beer and it goes everywhere. But it was all of a piece with the day. Bah! Humbug! |
| Fri 7 | OK, so it’s expensive, but there’s currently an abundance of summer fruit in the supermarket; and I cannot refrain from partaking. Strawberries; raspberries; nectarines; peaches; gooseberries (two varieties: green and red); blackberries; blackcurrants; cherries. So lots of (alcoholic) fruit salad and delicacies like gooseberry & strawberry crumble. What’s not to like? |
| Sat 8 | Today was what one of my Irish friends would call a nice soft day: warm, but grey, damp in the air, some intermittent light rain. Actually not at all unpleasant. |
| Sun 9 | A good butterfly day; the Buddleia is paying its way. Over lunch we had Comma, Red Admiral, Large White and a small very bright brown/orange something which declined to sit down and be identified but was probably either Meadow Brown or Hedge Brown. Sadly only one of each, but better than nothing. What was interesting was that the red admiral alighted on my (bare) knee of a few seconds; and although it tickled a bit you could feel the extra pressure as it took off. It’s surprising that something that small exerts enough force taking off that one can (just) feel it. |
| Mon 10 | Tea was rather redolent of the Feeding of the Five Thousand. But instead of five loaves and two fishes, we had five buns and twelve sausages; and only two of us. No, we didn’t eat all the sausages; half will be devoured cold tomorrow. |
| Tue 11 | So they do exist! Finally today I saw two swifts in the distance; the first this year and they’re about to leave for Africa again. We had dozens when we came here; now we have effectively none; that’s habitat destruction in action. And also this afternoon something flew like a bullet across the garden: from the calls before and after it was sparrowhawk. |
| Wed 12 | A day of meetings. Just like being at work. |
| Thu 13 | Morning phone call with dentist-ette. Senior guy thinks my crown should be redone as there’s a large gap; but has stitched her up with doing it, at no charge (as it is new). She and I know there’s little tooth left to fix the crown to; so any work may have undesired consequences. In my world it’s not broken, so don’t fix it. She reluctantly agreed. My risk as if it goes tits up, it’ll cost me. So I get Monday back, and she gets at least 90 minutes to see people who really need it and are paying. |
| Fri 14 | Rain! |
| Sat 15 | What a day! (1) The Boy Cat is in hospital. The vets don’t know what’s wrong with him, so they’re keeping him in. Why is this always on a weekend or public holiday when you have to go to the 24 hour emergency vets 10 miles away? (2) Later in the day I hosted an excellent literary society talk. (3) And the wind has been blowing hard all day: at least force 6, gusting gale force 8. |
| Sun 16 | More rain this evening, but much less wind. |
| Mon 17 | Breezy, but a lovely day – and another excellent butterfly day. Sitting outside for an hour after lunch we had: three Red Admirals, a Peacock, a Comma, a Meadow Brown (I think), two Large Whites, a Hummingbird Hawkmoth, and at least one other I didn’t get to look at closely enough to identify. Plus what I think was a Blackcap singing in the bushes. |
| Tue 18 | The Boy Cat is home. N fetched him this afternoon. He’s much better, but still a bit wobbly. From the x-rays they think there’s some area of problem on his lung; not clear if bacterial, viral or parasite. So he’s on loads of meds and if x-ray isn’t clear in a couple of weeks he has to have further scans. Already major ouch of the credit card so hoping the insurance coughs up. |
| Wed 19 | Oh joy! Yet more meds for the Boy Cat. |
| Thu 20 | Comes the gardener. He cut the hayfield so we now have something approaching a lawn again. And I harvested the couple of dozen stalks of wheat (and 2 or 3 of barley); it’s now hanging up to dry before being threshed. |
| Fri 21 | The gardener when he was here yesterday lifted our potatoes. Nothing startling: we’d just stuck a handful of shooting spuds in a spare space and ignored them knowing anything we got was a bonus. Well we didn’t get a lot, but enough for a meal tonight and a few left to go in curry during the week. But how nice to have real fresh potatoes, with mud on them! |
| Sat 22 | It’s that time of the month again … Last evening: a tiny sliver of crescent moon bright in the sky at sunset. Today: persistent fine rain all day. |
| Sun 23 | Quite a reasonable photo of one of our foxes on the trail camera this week. It’s clearly still moulting, but otherwise looks in good condition – and as inquisitive as ever! |
| Mon 24 | Leftovers risotto for tea: a small piece of cooked steak, cooked peas & beans, cooked onion and tomato, some salad (mostly tomato), and some chicken stock. Essentially all it cost was the Arborio rice, a few flakes of Parmesan and some gas. A considerably more than acceptable free tea. |
| Tue 25 | Boy Cat has his repeat X-rays booked for the middle of next week at our usual vets (the joys of a group practice). This prompted the senior vet to ring up to see how he was. Judging by the noise of altercation with the local alpha male 10 minutes earlier he’s fighting fit – I reckon he’s about 90%. |
| Wed 26 | The weather people need some new, better quality, seaweed because, yet again, there was no rain. There was supposed to be rain for the last few days. Instead of which we’ve had a couple of really nice days with the buddleia awash with bees and butterflies – six red admirals at one time. Update. No sooner had I written this that the rains came! |
| Thu 27 | I do not understand. Yesterday we were both fine until after late lunch when No got back from the hospital. By mid-afternoon we were both feeling grumpy and out of sorts. Today I woke with a headache and feeling totally wrung out – just as if I’d had only 3 hours sleep; when actually I’d had about 7 hours. N it turned out felt much the same. And it persisted all day; sufficient that, having done nothing all day, I retired to bed early. Why I do not know; such are the mysteries of the cosmos. |
| Fri 28 | Wonderful. You go to do a simple update (like type this entry) only to find that your site won’t load! And there are no clues; it’s guesswork to find the cause. |
| Sat 29 | Something must have happened today, but whatever it was didn’t impinge on my consciousness. |
| Sun 30 | Why is it that a perfectly working, good quality, biro suddenly decides to stop writing on a particular area of the piece of paper? It’ll write OK elsewhere on the page, but not here! And neither will any other biro. If the paper is coated, then it’s coated all over, so that can’t be the explanation. Sometimes it is on ordinary copier/printer paper (on which it works OK 99% of the time); sometimes on postcards or the like. The only logical explanation I can find is that there are tiny, invisible, grease marks (fingerprints?) on the surface. |
| Mon 31 | One of the problems of getting old is that the medical stuff becomes relentless. Today I accompanied N to an appointment with her nephrologist. Last week N had a different appointment at a different hospital. Later this week we both go to the optician; then next week I have an audiology appointment. And that’s without the Boy Cat’s escapades; he has to go to the vet on Wednesday for his repeat x-rays. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. |
