Daylight Hours

There have been a couple of things I have wanted to achieve over the last two weeks, and both of them require daylight. This greatly restricts when I can do them, cos it's winter and dark when I get home.

I have been anticipating Saturday (today) when I can get on with them. However, I woke up a little bit worse for wear after all the fun of last night. So the first thing I did was stay in bed until the sun had moved quite a long way across the sky. Then I  eventually made a start to my day.

Unfortunately I soon discovered that both my tasks for today are not really the sort of thing you want to be doing with a thick head. First off I had to fix the fence that got a bit damaged in the strong wind of a couple of weeks ago. Which involved hammering. It turned out to be nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. I could hammer quite gently and not make too much noise. And amazingly, I didn't bash my thumb once.

The second task on my list is proving more problematic. Recently I have started making videos of me playing the piano to share with my friends on das internet. And due to my antiquated camera I have to do this when it is light outside. I made some when it was raining one afternoon and it looks like I am playing by candlelight in the middle of the night. So I have a little play on the piano, and realise that I don't have the concentration for playing well, and I really don't fancy thrashing out my new Placebo cover with this headache.

There is only one thing to do in a situation like this - make a cup of tea.

Seventeen Minutes

I made a risotto this evening. And it was lovely. I was guided by a recipe of Jamie Oliver. (It would be inaccurate to say I "followed" the recipe.)

Let's start with the ingredients. The recipe called for raw prawns, which is fair enough. And having watched countless shows about all the amazing seafood our country produces I was happy to get prawns. However the only uncooked prawns I could find in the supermarket were from Thailand. Why?

I don't know much about wine, so when I saw a bottle that said "Good Dry French Wine," I thought, "That's the one for me." Ordinarily, I wouldn't know which wines are good and which are not. But this one said it was good. I couldn't find Parmesan, so I used cheddar. I don't have any olive oil in at the moment, so that is Morrison's own sunflower oil. And that isn't a real lemon either

Why didn't home economics teach me something useful, like how to chop finely?

At this stage it didn't really fit in the pan anymore. Then I had to add peas, prawns, cheese, butter and more peas.

Jamie says this is where the magic happens. Leave it alone and it will become creamy. Okay then.

A hearty portion.