Tea and cakes and things I like

Ok, I’m calm now about work. Everything’s ok really, I just needed to vent. Venting is good.

Tomorrow I’m off to France, to relax, drink hot chocolate and wine and eat croissants and cheese, not all together naturally. I shall also be knitting, as I’m finding myself addicted to it, and hopefully writing as part of nanowrimo. Trouble is, I’m without a plot at the moment. I have a few ideas kicking around, but nothing’s jumping out at me right at the moment. I suspect that when I relax a bit more things’ll start moving again.

Oh, one more thing: I am now referenced on the interestingly named arseburgers website. Excellent. Delicious, delicious crisp sandwiches.

Bye for now, T&C

The carriage was quiet at first. Just me, my cappuccino and my book.
Then the old ladies came. Some alone but most in pairs, they shuffled along the aisle, halting every few steps to regain their balance, dragging their bags on wheels behind them. There was a chill in the air: the train heating is only on during the summer months, and the frail bodies of the elderly ladies did little to alleviate the cold. If one person is supposed to give out the warmth of a heater, these were malfunctioning single bar electric ones.

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I just bought 28 pairs of knitting needles for €10 inc. postage.
12 are coloured plastic which I will probably re-sell.
16 are vintage coloured aluminium, which are the ones I wanted. There are a few duplicate sizes, I may re-sell a few of these.

I’m very excited. I hope this doesn’t become a habit.

When I was living in New Zealand I drank quite a lot of a yummy local vodka called 42 Below. (delicious with a dash of lime and some soda water).
I also developed a taste for a yummy fruit called a Feijoa, a South American native that’s pretty hard to describe I’m afraid - I’ve tried before, and failed. Suffice to say that it’s delicious and I’ve found them in this hemisphere once (at a farmers market).
Imagine my joy today when I found that The Celtic Whiskey Shop stocks 42 Below vodka, and they’ve brought out a feijoa flavour. It’s very feijoa-ey. The glass you see above has a mixture of vodka and fizzy water. It’s delicious. Nice and strong.
Mmmmm. Booooze.

So I finally got my hot port. (at 9.30pm rather than 10.30am, a much more respectable time of day to be drinking).
It was warming and spicy (thanks to the cloves) and not too sweet (no sugar added). It’s the perfect drink for a winter’s evening and I expect to be drinking it a lot more.

Shot of port
Slice of lemon with 4-6 cloves stuck into it
Hot water
Brown sugar / honey to taste

Mmmmmm.
I’ve been craving one since 10.30am. Is that wrong?

A new invention that I can see many, many possibilities for.
Mainly involving hot beverages.
A kettle that you can switch on by text message.

Imagine - you wake up in the morning, text the kettle, and by the time you make it into the kitchen you’re halfway towards the morning cuppa. Brilliant.

I do, however, see a few problems with it:
Firstly - a little part of me can’t help but think that this is a similar idea to the teasmade, a wonderful thought but one that doesn’t actually get used.
Secondly - what if someone had been at the kettle before you texted it and had used all the water?
Thirdly - I fear that it would result in a massive increase in my phone bill.

Maybe I don’t really want one.

I finished it!
OK, I started it last winter. (well, spring really, to be fair to myself). However, I made it all with my own fair hands and I deserve to be proud.
Next it’s a dishcloth or some socks, not sure which yet. Depends on finding the right yarn, there are no good wool shops in Dublin.
(hmmm, note to self, maybe Dublin needs a good wool shop)

Delicious apple spice tea. Not too sweet, was a tea, not a “fruit infusion”. Nice glass too, although the saucer was unneccessary.
Theatre was excellent.
Bewleys is a great location for that sort of thing too - intimate, with a sort of french cafe type feel to it (that might just be the type of chair), and any theatre that serves me tea I can drink during the performance is fine by me.

Recovering bulimic?
Miss the bittersweet taste of stomach acid?

When I was at primary school we were taken on many school trips to Amberley Chalk Pits, now called Amberley Working Museum. I only vaguely remember it, so decided it would be a great place to go and visit on the last trip home.

It was great. In an eccentric English way. Completely nuts in other words.

The printing room had loads of old (and working) printing machines and typesetting stuff.
There was a telephone exchange where you could ring a phone the other side of the room and watch the machinery connect you.
There was a wood turner.
The radio and communications display had a guy sat in a booth with a ham radio, listening to another guy talking in Conneticut. He was very pleased about this. Amazed in fact. I feigned interest (hi Lucy) but I think he saw through me, and if I could have heard his inner thoughts I’m sure he would have been muttering something to himslf about young people and the internet and no respect.
There’s a big collection of old buses at Amberley, and a working train line.
The walking stick maker was off that day, but the clay pipe maker was in, making his clay pipes and telling us all about them.
The elecricity display was cool - they had a medical section with home ECT machines.

The kinda sad thing about it was that it’s staffed by volunteers, who are all about 80 now and, well, a little bit odd. I’m not sure what will happen when they start dropping off.

The main draw for me is that part of A View To A Kill was filmed there. It plays the Zorin Enterprises mine. I remember being very impressed by that as a child, although it did make the suspention of disbelief a bit tricky when I watched the film. The thing is, in any other struggling museum that had been used as a film set, you’d see the whole area dedicated to it, with a life sized Roger Moore manequinn and all. At Amberley, they put the railway tracks back to where they should be, let everything grow over so it looks nothing like it any more, and try to forget about the whole thing. Well, that’s not strictly true: There was a poster display about it. Literally. A poster made up of a couple of press cuttings glued on to a large piece of cardboard. It was quite sweet really.

Anyway, all in all it was a lovely place to spend an afternoon. The only thing that let it down was the cafe. I had high hopes for a good pot of tea and some homemade cake. The photo of the best they could do is below. It speaks for itself. I’ll bring a real picnic next time.

From my weekend at home.
I promised.
They were really good.
Light and crispy and held the gravy in.
Not that I had gravy, but if I’d chosen to start eating meat products, damn, they would have held that gravy well.

ok, that’s the bed and board covered.