Tag Archives: lentil pepper tomato sauce

Sunday 26th March 2017 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… gone out this afternoon but for some reason or other I wasn’t feeling up to it.

I’d had a late night last night and had a little awakening some time before the dawn. But I went back to sleep again and the beauty of it being Sunday and no alarm was that it was 09:45 when I finally awoke.

To find bright blue skies and a gorgeous sunlight pouring into the house. In fact, the temperature reached over 20°C in the attic, without any heating at all.

A leisurely breakfast followed as I slowly came round to face the day, and then after a while I attacked the sorting out of the attic. Everything that I can think of taking – with the possible exception of some food to tide me over for the next few days, was all boxed up and ready to go. And seeing as it was a bright sunny day, I vacuumed the place again with the vaccum cleaner thingy that I have.

That took me up to 13:00 and I should be now have been at Le Quartier. But sod that for a game of soldiers. I wasn’t up to it and so I stayed here and had a butty and a rest to gather up my strength.

Liz, Ingrid and Rosemary were on line so I had quite a lengthy chat with everyone. And by this time it was 16:00. I can’t sit here all day idly doing nothing. I started to move the boxes from here and from the bedroom downstairs.

I gave Caliburn another tidying out and then put the boxes in the back. I fetched a pile of stuff from the downhill lean-to and put that in there too. 12 boxes in all, and all of that took well over an hour. By the time I had finished and crawled (and I DO mean crawled) back up to the attic I was finished. From deciding that I needed a coffee to actually summoning up the force to make it, it took me an hour.

But I’d had a visitor too. A young boy who told me that he was looking for diodes and things like that. But it looked mighty creepy to me.

Tonight I finished off Ingrid’s stuff (the lentil, pepper and tomato sauce stuff was even yet better tonight) and once I can do the washing up, I’ll be off to bed.

But I bet that it’s going to be another hour before I can summon up the energy to do that. I’m clearly not well, as we all know and I must stop harping on about it.

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Friday 24th March 2017 – CALIBURN HAS RETURNED!

And I should know, because I had to go and fetch him back. Of course that meant that I had to take back the little Skoda hire car but that’s no big deal.

Caliburn has had his rear end fixed (they even repaired the towing light sockets that I broke about 5 years ago but I didn’t say anything) and not only that, the nearside was stripped bare, all of the rust and stone chips ground out, the bare metal treated with anti-oxydiser, everything stopped, filled and sanded down, and a coat of primer then a coat of paint and then some varnish.

All of that came to a mere €283 – well, my bit did anyway – and I was expecting it to be more than twice that.

It’s true to say that you can see the join between the old and the new paintwork, but I’m not bothered about that. Caliburn is 10 years old and showing his age like I am. I just need him to keep on going for as long as I do without dropping to bits – that’s the plan anyway. Spending less than €300 to keep the bodywork together sounds like a good investment to me.

Last night was not so good. I went off to sleep easily enough but was awake by about 04:30 and struggled to go back to sleep again. By 06:30 I was up and about, and drinking my morning coffee when the alarm went off.

It was cold, damp, wet and miserable too, and so I lit a fire. I’ve decided that I need to keep warm no matter what while I’m here. It’s not as if I’m short of wood, as Terry keeps on reminding me.

I didn’t do much though this morning – spending a lot of time thinking about this and that and tidying up a pile of files on the computer that I have here – the old one with the smashed screen that I use as a desktop computer with added mouse, keyboard and external screen (the HDMI socket of the DVD viewer in fact).

Lunch was the rest of Ingrid’s delicious soup and then gathering my wits, I decided on a plan of attack. I fought (and I DO mean “fought”) my way into the verandah and the lean-to.

And there I really did hit the depths of despair because everything that I had set aside all those years ago – everything from Expo, the crockery and cutlery that I had bought specially – well, it’s all in a lamentable state having been stored in the verandah and the lean-to for 6 years. I should really have unpacked it all years ago, but I really didn’t have anywhere to put it.

Anyway, that really depressed me. I started dumping stuff into plastic bags to take to the tip – piles and piles of it – but that was soul-destroying and I lost all enthusiasm. The freezing cold and driving rain didn’t help matters either. I ended up with nowhere to put anything.

Instead , I went and fetched Caliburn, and then came up here for a warm by the fire and some more of Ingrid’s pepper, lentil and tomato sauce to go with my pasta.

Now I shall endeavour to fight off the depression that I’m in and go to bed. And hope that I can sleep too. It’s been a long hard day and the next four days are going to be even worse.

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Thursday 23rd March 2017 – COURGETTE LEEK AND POTATO …

… soup for lunch. Tea was lentil, pepper and tomato sauce for my pasta, all followed by a raspberry and banana dessert.

The Lap of Luxury, you might think, and indeed you would be right because I had a Meals on Wheels service today. Ingrid came round with a pile of goodies that she had made this morning, especially for me!

Last night, my bunged-up nose and me were in bed early enough and I was soon asleep curled up under the quilt. I had to leave the bed at one point, but here’s a thing – when I went back to sleep it was until the alarm awoke me. And it’s been a while since that has happened.

Pouring with rain outside and cold, wet and miserable inside. I held off for a couple of hours but there’s no point in killing myself for no good reason – I ended up lighting the fire. And it soon became warm in here too. I meant to do some more packing but I couldn’t find the enthusiasm (no big surprise here). I just sat in the warm.

Ingrid came round at lunchtime with my food parcels and in exchange I gave her the big vegetable steamer that I was intending to use on my woodstove. No point in my keeping that now – it may as well go to a good home.

After Ingrid left, I carried on with a little (just a little) desultory tidying up but not making progress, and at 16:00 I rang up to enquire about Caliburn. Apparently he’s still not ready and won’t be done until tomorrow afternoon. And so I curled up in the warmth again.

I had my tea, with grateful thanks again to Ingrid, and then a little relax before going to bed.

But I need to organise myself much more than this. It’s all very well saying that I have nowhere to put anything until Caliburn comes back, but while this s true, I could be doing other stuff. But the weather is getting me right down. I can’t do anything when it’s cold, damp and wet.

I need a change.

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