… my culinary prowess today. And considering that I have been doing it in the house of someone who is a fully-qualified chef with years of commercial experience and who actually ate what I prepared, then that’s something of a feather in my cap and no mistake.
This morning Rachel sent me a message from work to the effect of “why don’t we have a curry for tea?” and I took that as a hint.
There was plenty of time to make one too because there wasn’t a great deal on the dictaphone and I’ll attend to that in due course.
So once I’d raised myself from the dead, had my medication and checked my mails and messages I set to work.
Yesterday I’d been thinking that I ought to stir my stumps and head out earlier, but when I saw the rain cascading down in sheets, I was glad that there was something to do.
It’s difficult cooking in someone else’s house because you don’t know where everything is, and Rachel doesn’t have the types of spices that I use but I managed to make something quite respectable in the end.
Not too spicy though because Darren’s palette isn’t the same as ours. It reminds me of another time and place when we used to have these communal meals. I’d take a lentil and pepper “curry”. All of the French people would be gasping for breath and fanning their mouths while the British people would be going “what’s this insipid nonsense?”.
When it was ready I heaved the cats out, much to their disappointment, and then headed for the mill.
First task there was to find enough cardboard to wrap an amplifier. Three years ago in Ottawa I’d bought one of the best bass amps ever made but I hadn’t sent it to Europe, planning to do it the next year. But Covid had put paid to that idea. So hopefully, this year it’s going back with the sunroof that I have ordered for that Ford.
Eventually we headed for home where everyone enjoyed my curry. And then I transcribed the dictaphone notes. I had to catch a train so I ran. We were on a railway station. It said that there was an additional train running and would be in the station in a couple of minutes. I had to run down the platform, run across the bridge, run down the other side and jump aboard. Whoever I was with, I remember saying that I couldn’t have done that a year ago. The train was one of these multiple units, the type that plied between Stoke on Trent and Manchester in the 70s. It was pretty crowded but I found a place to sit by the door so that I could say goodbye to whoever I was with and the train pulled off. Somewhere along the line there was a girl who had some kind of connection with me, whether she was an adopted daughter or cousin or something I dunno but she was big for her age. We’d left her somewhere; When we returned on this train she’d dyed her hair. We made a few comments about her hair, that kind of thing. She was wearing these jeans with holes in the legs. I was talking to some Indian guy. He was wondering why I seemed to have had preferential treatment about seats and so on on this aeroplane. I showed him a voucher that I had which showed that I was a member of some kind of flight plan with this airline. He rummaged through his papers and found that he had one as well. I asked him why he never said anything. He replied that it was all too late by now to do anything.
And now I’m off to bed. Early as it may be, I’m busy tomorrow. The feed truck missed a customer today so they need several sacks of grain delivering to somewhere around Fredericton. it’ll be a good run-out again.
However there’s been a heavy cold going round the mill and the tyre depot and it’s my turn to come down with it. I hope that it’s just a 24-hour thing and I can shake it off tonight. But having no immune system, it’s not so easy.
We’ll see how things develop.
