Visitors

 

See above. We had special visitors this weekend  - our lovely son Ian and his equally lovely girlfriend Sarah. They came up to Sheffield from London to attend a wedding. Here they are in their glad-rags just before I ferried them to the town hall in Clint. The official part of the proceedings happened in the city's registry office.

Today, Sunday, meat was of course off the menu for Sunday dinner so I had the bright idea of making a vegan pie. It had to be big enough to serve six adults and a baby of sixteen months.

The pie contained sliced leeks, small florets of broccoli, fried onions, courgette slices, flat leaf parsley and a cheese sauce that I made from vegan milk, cornflour and grated mature vegan cheese. It  turned out well and the vegan chef was duly impressed.

We ate it with roasted potatoes, Scottish baby potatoes, roasted carrots and leeks and garden peas with vegan gravy. It was well worth the effort. 

Dessert was a "Bosh!" vegan carrot cake from Sainsburys along with sliced English strawberries.

Here is my massive pie, with its delicious vegan filling hidden from view. You will just have to imagine it. I didn't follow a recipe. Just used my noddle...

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/xSGfb6c

Dream

I am not a big one for dreaming - well at least not for remembering dreams. They float away and disintegrate like smoke. I just cannot hang onto them. However, this morning as wakefulness approached, a disturbing dream happened and some of it has remained with me. 

I was sitting in the corner of a sunlit cafe with some other people. I don't know who they were. Then who should walk into the cafe but the legendary Welsh blogger , John Gray.

He was a slightly younger version of his present self. His beard was neatly trimmed and he smelt of scented shower cream and shampoo. His skin gleamed as if it had recently been oiled.

This was the first time that I had ever met him and I reached out my right hand for a manly handshake, saying, "John, how lovely to meet you!"

But he ignored my gesture and silently swooped down to kiss my cheek. It would have been my lips but I managed to shift the target at the last moment when I realised what was happening.

He seemed affronted when he sat at the table and I was so shocked that I didn't know what to say. This was, after all, the first time in my adult life that I had ever been kissed by a man.

I suppose it wasn't really a dream. It was veering towards nightmare territory. I hope that readers of this blogpost will not read stuff into it by suggesting murky psychological undercurrents.

Anyway it shook me out of my slumbers and I came downstairs for a pint of tea and a bowl of honey nut cornflakes with slices of banana to watch recorded images of the amazing Platinum Jubilee concert from Buckingham Palace on our television set. Even so, the dream refused to disappear entirely.

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Best Laid Plans

 I chose to work my birthday so I could have this weekend off. 

My plan was to support the Jubilee Street Party but mainly I wanted today off, so I could pack.

I was due to fly to Spain tomorrow morning.

My flight now has been cancelled, cancelled by an early morning email

Like so many have been done over the last week or so.

Bugger.

I’ve lost my car parking fee which is a shame 

But I’ve managed to get a refund on the hotel.

The flights I’ve changed to a different airport so my summer Sitges trip is now an autumnal Barcelona city break, but that has cost me!

And so, I’ve got over a week in between now and my trip to Rome on the 17th to fill….

Answers on a postcard.

I shall start by the cinema on this a rather glum day

The Quiet Girl , the first Gallic feature film

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/VFovbUC