… 2 kilos of carrots washed, cleaned, peeled diced blanched and draining ready to go in the freezer.

It’s a good job that I made some room in there. But when 2ks of carrots are cheaper than 1kg it makes sense to buy the bulk offering.

The freezer will be full of carrots and I’ll have them coming out of my ears but I’m not going to turn down an offer like this.

It’s possible to buy frozen carrots of course but I find that they are pumped too full of water, go soggy and taste like damp cardboard when they are cooked. It’s much nicer to freeze my own.

They aren’t the only vegetables that I freeze. Brussels sprouts and broccoli are regular candidates. And I’d freeze a lot more if I had the capacity.

It’s not just the vegetables that are freezing. I’m freezing too. In fact, I’ve put on a jacket as I’m typing because it’s perishing. What the hell happened to summer?

It was cold last night, but not as cold as thins. Cold enough though for me to be in a hurry to go to bed and although it was after 23:00, it wasn’t after 23:00 by much

And once again I was soon asleep, and slept right the way through to all of … errr … 04:15. After that it was a night, or rather, a morning of tossing and turning until the alarm went off.

At some point I must have gone back to sleep because when the alarm went off I was doing something around Leicester – I’m not exactly sure what. I was in a bedroom with a load of bunk beds in it like in the military or something like that but I can’t remember now exactly what I was doing. Of course when the alarm went off I forgot absolutely everything except these little pictures and images that I’d managed to keep.

That was what I dictated anyway and it probably means something to someone, but not to me. The only time I ever made it to Leicester was with Shearings on a feeder.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and brush up, but cut myself shaving (or, rather, reopened the cut from the previous time). Consequently I was bleeding everywhere for most of the morning, making more of a mess.

Back in here I listened to the dictaphone to find out where else I’d been during the night. There was something to do with a football match. A player had to be brought onto the field after about 67 minutes. He needed taking to the stadium and the only person there was someone’s father who could do it. However he was a pretty bad driver so the footballer wasn’t interested in going with him at all. They had to use all kinds of persuasive powers to have him step into that car at the appropriate time as well as using all kinds of threats and violence against the other player in the defence to make sure that he did the job correctly without any obstructions or hindrance. But it was a nerve-wracking time to have these substitutes organised when they weren’t even in the stadium and the match was well under way.

That’s all pretty meaningless nonsense too. But it all underlines the fact that Zero never ever came back after that night a week or so ago and that TOTGA and Castor seem to have gone for ever. They haven’t been around for ages.

And that’s sad – my three favourite young ladies deserting me like this. It seems that everyone these days is voting with his feet.

So bleeding profusely from the upper lip and the nurse gave me the injection of Binocrit to thin my blood. That makes a lot of sense. And he had a good moan again this morning about the state of my puttees. They were washed only two or three days ago but he thinks that they should be washed every day.

But he’s had that. As if I have the time to be doing stuff like that. I have more than enough other things to do.

Like eat breakfast of course, which I did immediately after he left, with fresh toast cut from the loaf that I made yesterday. And my medication, including the Kardegic to thin my blood out even more, so as to keep up the bleeding from my upper lip.

After breakfast I had a play around with my shopping order, completing that and sending it off. They had the olive oil in again so I ordered another bottle. That’s three bottles that I have in stock now, but sometimes it’s hard to find and I have to buy the full-price stuff. There’s a ton of difference in price between a proprietary brand and LeClerc’s own..

All they were short of was mushrooms. No 250 gramme punnets but they had 500 grammes ones so I bought one of those and I’ll have a mushroom soup with the extra mushrooms tomorrow for lunch

While we’re on the subject of lunch … "well, one of us is" – ed … after I’d sent off my order I went for lunch, and had one of these chocolate bread things that I made yesterday.

The taste and texture is certainly different, but it’s not disagreeable.

So –
Boil up 400 ml of water
Keep it bubbling on a low heat and add 35 grammes of cocoa powder and mix well in.
When it’s mixed well in, take off the heat
add
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
25ml oil
150 grammes flour
mix it all up very well, put in a large bowl to cool.

While it’s cooling –
in an smaller bowl start with 80ml warm water
5 grammes yeast
20 grammes sugar
Dissolve it all together

when it’s dissolved properly, add it all to the larger bowl
add 200 grammes flour

Mix it all up together as if you were making bread.
Cover and leave for 40 minutes

then divide into 10 and make into balls
leave another 15 minutes
Then bake 180°C for 30 minutes
dust with icing sugar.

They you’ll have the strangest bread rolls you’re ever likely to have, but you won’t be disappointed.

This afternoon I’ve been radioing. Having put my Hawkfest out of the way and preparing for a live album concert, there’s a special programme that I want to do in between all of this.

At the start of the year next year it will be the birthday of someone who is not at first glance associated with rock music but has inspired a whole generation of kids, and many musicians took their inspiration from him.

There are a great many rock and folk tracks that contain either outright or otherwise more subtle tributes to him and his creations so this afternoon I’ve been tracking them down.

Not just the songs either but the details and the quotes from the musicians.

So I’m going to be working on this special radio programme next, fitting it around the preparation of the normal run of programmes. I have to keep cracking on regardless with those.

My cleaner was here this afternoon cleaning up and we had a really good chat. And then the LeClerc delivery guy came with my order so I had to knuckle down and do some work for a change. I’ve still not put everything away yet.

Tea was a vegan salad with chips from the air fryer with some of these vegan nugget things, now that I’ve bought some more.

And having written my notes, I’m now off to bed.

But talking of the radio, earlier in the year we had a snowstorm here so we made a public service announcement "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car on the even-numbered side of the street to clear the road for the snowplough" so everyone went and moved their car.
The next day we announced "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car on the odd-numbered side of the street to clear the road for the snowplough" so everyone went and moved their car.
On the third day we announced "Because of the snow, snowploughs will be out. Please park your car ….. " and there was a power cut
"Drat" said one guy. "I don’t know where to leave the car today."
After thinking for a while his wife replied "I suppose we’d better leave it in the garage then"