15th June 2010 (Tuesday)

Two days! Goodness, you probably thought we were already well on the way to decomposition by now. Actually we’re a bit sleepy but just fine.


Hm, Sunday. Grocery shopping in the morning, rolling about at home in the afternoon? Probably about covers it. Fell into a coma in the evening watching Poirot… lordy lordy, but those murder mysteries are supreme in their restfulness. I’ve noticed it’s always at the getting-them-all-together-in-the-drawing-room-for-the-climactic-announcement that I finally succumb to sleep. Probably because it’s at this point that it’s evident that once again, nothing of interest has happened and now cannot. There’s always going to be some ridiculous concoction that no clue has been given about and it’s all utterly uninteresting, so zip presto, fall asleep. And what a deep sleep. Gosh. Absolutely dead to the world, it was a right chore to get up to bed.

Monday- was a holiday. Strangely, they celebrate the Queen’s Birthday here by skiving off work – perhaps it’s an old convict thing, I don’t know. We spent it by going to the beach in the morning (it was too windy for me so I spent quite a bit of the time in the car sunning myself while the other two flew both kites), and most of the afternoon playing about at home, though we did make a brief trip to our lock-up to get some winter clothes out. Fantastic – it’s like shopping only with all the strain taken out. You already know everything fits and you don’t have to pay any money, just grab armfuls of clothes and get out of the place. Love it. In the evening we watched ‘Avatar’ which we’d borrowed from Anna the other day – surprisingly engaging. Well I guess our expectations were pretty low. Were astonished by what good nick Sigourney Weaver is in… she’s 61 and really doesn’t look any older than she’s done for the last… oh, 30 years at least? I know there’s tricks and means but still, impressive.

Then today… what a fast-paced life we lead. Littles took her giant Anteater to school for her News day and it seems she did reasonably well somewhere along the line as she finally collected her 10 stickers for being a ‘good listener’ and got a stretchy green frog as a reward. Only I didn’t know this until we were half way home, and she insisted on going back to the classroom – at this point I still had no idea about the background, just that there was ‘a green frog’ somewhere in the classroom, she didn’t know where, no idea where it came from or what size or form it was only that it was incredibly important. Thank heavens Mr Harris (her teacher) happened to be there and explained things to me, AND he kindly gave her another frog because she was mightily distressed and said never mind, good listening anyway. Phew.

Pumpkins have come into season, so we’d got one and I’d decided to try out a pumpkin and ricotta lasagne. Well, you know, one quite often gets pumpkin and ricotta tortellini and there never really seems to be enough stuffing, so I thought a bit more would do nicely. Same deal, right? Well… you can have too much of a good thing. All a bit too much… pumpkin, really. I wonder if it could be used in inbetween-sized quantities, like maybe a cannelloni for starters or something. Mind you we never have starters, so that’s a waste of time. Still, no pain no gain – I guess that’s one more of the myriad mysteries of the world solved. It won’t be going onto Top Nosh, is all I can say.

Well, much love all round. Hope you’re all doing well. xxxxx