back to life, back to reality…
And it’s the middle of the month already! It’s all been grand but tiring, and the five nights away at the start in total had definitely taken its toll by the time I got home, not helped by late trains in both directions; Lord, the joy of getting up at 5am to catch the 6am to York only for it to break down and require replacing while I stood on an outdoor platform in the cold working out what time the next connecting train from York was, and how much it would eat into the hour long cushion I’d built in for breakfast (enough that I had no option but a Snickers and a can of cherry Coke for breakfast, so not a complete disaster).
FrightFest Halloween served to round off the film festival season, for me at least, and after a busy few days over in Whitechapel catching up with the real world (and thanks to an extremely generous caller, sustained mainly by Konditor & Cook brownies and Kipferl biscuits) it was time to come home and start getting organised a bit more decisively. The Christmas pudding is made and stashed with the Christmas cakes, work kit has been inventoried and restocked for the winter, the tax return is almost complete (I can’t be the only person who hangs back until mid January even if I’ve pretty much finished it) and the dedicated Christmas blog page is nearly done! I do still need a new picture for it and I’m not promising anything this year, but we’ll see.
The Black Friday sale preparations continue apace including (already!) the slightly tumultuous arrival of my chest freezer – yay! I’ll be the first to admit that I got a bit swept up in the excitement and wound up buying one twice the size I’d planned thanks to the bargain prices, but since the company line was that the delivery people would unpack it and put it where it’s going in the house (within reason), I was blissfully – and a bit naively – unconcerned. What I didn’t know was that they would only do this in the opposite order – removal of the box may only take place once an item is in situ, therefore if the box outer is too big to go through the gap needed to put the item in situ you should expect a big Fuck You and a boxed 250 litre freezer dumped in your hallway. On the plus side, now I have three different kinds of Ben & Jerry’s and a big carton of Cornettos almost within reaching distance in my home office as I type, and I can play with the box. So fuck you right back, Curry’s.
The weather forecast for the coming week is taking a turn for the crappy (as befits the back end of November, to be fair) and we’re certainly well into the autumn now but it’s worth remembering that it really isn’t that cold and nobody needs ten layers of clothes – yet. What we all do need, and which I really shouldn’t need to point out to fully grown men (and thankfully rarely do, but an isolated incident this week has sent the subject hurtling back into my consciousness) is thorough washing of the underarms. That means: a) firm scrubbing with hot water and soap using the fingertips or a flannel, followed by b) drying and an application of a decent anti-perspirant. Not one or the other – both. If we only do one or the other, in an hour or two we (including me) will again smell like the monkey house at Flamingo Land on an August Bank Holiday weekend. Please – for love of all that is holy – sort yourselves out. That is all.
Song of the Week has accompanied some of the seriously hardcore batch-cooking and freezing that has taken place over the weekend; I made 150 proper meatballs and a half gallon of tomato sauce yesterday as well as Italian Wedding Soup, a big pot of pea and ham and a pan of cardamom butter chicken the scale of which has never before been seen in this house to celebrate my freezer ownership. This in addition to a Christmas pudding, a giant bag of crumble topping (having the wherewithal to get a crumble in the oven in under ten minutes is almost as important to me as running water, although not as important as wifi) and a lot of cookie dough balls. Gosh.
The above necessitated the usual kitchen disco and some appropriate vintage classics; Thanksgiving approaches on Thursday the 22nd which for me (being British) means the traditional screening, which I always mean to get to and always miss, of one of my all time Top Ten films Planes, Trains and Automobiles at the Prince Charles Cinema. This year is no exception sadly, but there’s always YouTube. And I’ll be back in Victoria one month from today – woohoo!
More soon! Not unsurprisingly, I have things to wash up.
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