Today I’ve decided to have a lazy Sunday, which is most probably appropriate as the clocks went forward last night. So far I’ve stayed in bed reading for an extra hour. Ok I’m reading trash – well, young adult fantasy novels to be precise – but the key thing is that I’m reading it on my new Kindle. Yes, I finally decided to splash out and get myself an eReader. I had not been convinced, since you can’t share books around and it seemed a bit expensive just to buy books for me to read. But there are now loads of cheap ones on there (although they are not normally by the popular authors) and many of the classics are free. I find it easy to read as well: the screen is clear and it’s not like reading a PC screen, where I find it hard to take in the information that I’m reading. It’s also easier than a book to hold and carry around. I bought it last Tuesday and so far I’m on my 4th book, although I’ve downloaded quite a few more to it.
The weather has been good and I have been working in the garden. I’ve managed to clear virtually all of the winter and autumn debris and have finished my cutting back, with the exception of the laurel bush in the front garden which I need to cut back hard again. The whole of the back garden is done, and most of the front. I’m really pleased. It’s all looking good – far better than it normally does at this time of year. I’ve even been able to sit out in the sun and read! Shame about the lawn though. I think I just have to give up on that.
Have you ever noticed how life has its rhythms, and that over time those rhythms change? For example, the shape of our days now is different to how it was a year ago, and that is different to 3 years ago. Part of that is due to the change in our patterns for walking the dogs, as both are still suffering with joint / muscle problems so are not having 2 long walks a day. They now have an off-lead walk of about an hour together in the morning, then Max has a swim in the afternoon and Jez has another lead walk in the evening. Even that may change now the clocks have changed, though, as we have been taking Jez out about 7.30pm as she loves walking in the dark. I’m not sure what she’ll make of the lighter evenings and whether we’ll change the time of her second walk. We’ll have to see. I have also found it easier to relax since I was laid up after having the operation on my foot: I find I’m able to sit down and read for an hour without feeling too guilty.
I’ve been doing a lot more cooking of late, especially baking, although the more I do the worse I seem to get. In the past 3 weeks I’ve been trying to make flapjacks. I started out with a recipe from a Guardian article about making perfect flapjacks, where the reported had supposedly tried different combinations of ingredients to come up with the perfect flapjack. Well, the first attempt didn’t work as the oats didn’t bind together properly, but I put that down to the fact that I didn’t have quite the right oats. So the next week I tried to follow the recipe having got the right oats and didn’t like the result at all: far too many quick cook oats which left a floury texture, although the mixture did bind quite well. This week I’ve used 3 types of oats in my own mix and the result is really good. I think one final tweak with the quantity of quick cook oats and I should be there.
I also made a carrot cake for the first time yesterday. Chris has always said he doesn’t like carrot cake, but only because he doesn’t like the idea of carrot cake. This was a Mary Berry recipe (I treated myself to Mary Berry’s Baking Bible a few weeks ago) and involved banana as well. The resulting cake looked a bit odd before it was topped with its cream cheese topping, but tastes good. Chris says the topping is a bit sweet for him, and come to think about it the last buttercream filling I made from the Mary Berry book was a bit sweet too, so I’ll have to remember to watch the sugar content in her recipes.
I’ve also been trying to set up a better list of recipes that we like and those to try. The number of cookbooks I have has risen again and I can’t keep track. We have eaten some really good food recently though. Last night I made a Sri Lankan chicken curry from Rick Stein’s ‘Far Eastern Odyssey’ which was very hot but really tasty. I have noticed a common thread in a lot of the food we are eating at the moment though: chilli. Everything nowadays seems to involve chilli. Oh, and either lemon or lime. But I’m not complaining – I like all three.
I’ve continued with my photography too, although only spasmodically. On Friday I finally decided that I would try taking some photos for this month’s Guardian Camera Club assignment on Photographing the Recession. When I walk Jez at night we sometimes do a circuit that takes in Soper’s Lane and York Road, on the corner of which stands the site of the old Poole Pottery factory that closed a few years ago. They are starting to pull it down, so I thought it would make a good subject. I ended up with 6 photos I was pleased with, so have submitted those. You can see them on my Flickr account if you want to have a look: Flickr . Other than that I’ve been trying to catch photos showing aspects of Spring. The problem is that there is little to photograph over Canford Heath where we normally walk. I did manage to get some really good shots of a buzzard at Upton Country Park earlier in the month though.
Well, that’s about it. Time to go back to my reading.
