Tag Archives: mushroom curry

Saturday 29th November 2025 – I HAVE DECIDED …

… that tomorrow and all subsequent Sundays until further notice, there will be no alarm call. If Isabelle the Nurse comes along and finds me still in bed, then she will have to sort out my legs while I’m lying there, and after she’s gone, I’ll go back to sleep. I can’t go on like I am at the moment.

What didn’t help was that, after the football, it was a terribly late night. By the time that I’d finished everything that I needed to do, it was long after midnight when I finally crawled into bed.

There was no difficulty falling asleep either, and there I lay, dead to the World until BILLY COTTON shattered my peace.

Ohhh! How I wish that I could have stayed in bed. I was feeling absolutely shattered. It took a good ten minutes for me to summon up the courage to leave the bed and stagger off to the bathroom.

As well as washing myself, I filled the washing machine with dirty clothes and let it loose while I wandered off for my medication.

In the kitchen, there was yesterday’s washing-up to do before I could do anything else. How I hate waking up to that in the morning, but it gives you some idea of how tired I was last night that I left it. However, once I’d done it, I could make my hot ginger, honey and lemon drink with which to take my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone but there was nothing on it from last night. Not that that’s a surprise, seeing how tired I was. What I did instead was to … errr … crash out on my chair.

Isabelle the Nurse took me by surprise when she arrived. Pressing the doorbell as she does when she arrives awoke me with quite a shock.

After she had given me the final injection of this series, she sorted out my legs and then wandered off. It took me another good ten minutes to be able to stand up and go to make my breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN and although there was plenty of interest, there was nothing that was worthy of a note in here.

However, our author did put me on the trail of a book written by John Horsley called BRITANNIA ROMANA, written in 1734. It contains information about what was known about the Romans at that time, and also visual descriptions of the remains. Judging by what Codrington has been telling us, a great deal of infrastructure was still standing in Horsley’s day but had disappeared by the time of Codrington.

When I’d finished breakfast, I went to rescue the washing from the washing machine and hang it on the clothes airer. And that almost killed me too, so back in here, I crashed out yet again.

When I came round, at about 11:30, I began to assemble the radio programme that I had been preparing. It took a while, but it’s now finished and ready to go. And so I watched the highlights of Barry v Hwlffordd from last night.

After I’d stopped for my disgusting drink break, I began to make my Christmas cake. And I’ve ended up with two because I made far too much batter. Does anyone want a spare Christmas cake?

It took over three hours to prepare them today, and of course, the week during which the dried fruit had been soaking, and they went into the oven on a low temperature for three and a half hours.

While the cakes were cooking, I made a start on another radio programme. This is another complicated one and is going to take some assembling. Sorting out the music is quite a task and I’ve still not finished that part yet

Back in the kitchen, I switched off the oven and checked the cakes. They are cooked to perfection, and now they need to cool down for a week or so before I can marzipan them, and then another week before I can ice them

But I’m definitely ill and I’m at a loss as to why. I’m totally exhausted, I ache in every conceivable place and I’ve lost all of my energy and enthusiasm. In fact, I’m really surprised that I’ve managed to do so much today, despite how ill I’m feeling.

So ill that, in fact, I made a very small portion of mushroom curry and yet most of it ended up in the waste bin. No dessert either. I just want to go to bed.

But seeing as we have been talking about baking a Christmas cake … "well, one of us has" – ed … you have to bake it in a fan oven turned to 120° for three and a half hours
When I lived in Crewe, I mentioned it to a local girl who wanted to know the details.
A few days later, I asked her how she had got on with it.
"It was a waste of time" she replied. "I tried what you said but after ten seconds, the cake just slid down to the side."

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Thursday 29th June 2017 – I’VE JUST DROPPED …

… half of my tea all over the floor.

Well, half of the curry anyway. So never mind – I have a couple of small tins of mushrooms and so one of them went into what was left and it didn’t end up too bad.

Mind you – I’m not surprised that that happened. I’ve been half-asleep all afternoon what with one thing and another.

Sleeping on the sofa might be comfortable, but it’s regrettably not as comfortable as my big new bed and while Rosemary said that she had the best sleep that she’s had for ages (so much so that she’s going to buy a new bed as soon as she returns home) I was tossing and turning for much of the night.

The alarm was programmed to go off at 06:00 and I was up and about long before then. But women take their time of course and it was 06:55 before we hit the road. Rosemary has a long way yet to go and not much time to do it either, and this wasn’t really the time to be hanging about.

I led her out to the edge of town and from there she was off on her own. I stopped to pick up a baguette and then came back for breakfast.

For most of the morning I was working on the blog. I’m into March 2012 right now, and the modernisations to the earlier modernisations are proceeding apace too. But the more that I do, the harder it’s going to become because I’ve been doing the easy stuff first.

After lunch on my wall, I went into town again. The Bank had told me that my bank cards are ready to be picked up and so I went to fetch them. I need them for shopping tomorrow.

I went to look at the Marité (she’s back) and to make a few enquiries about potential voyages. The girl at the reception desk didn’t know too much about the voyages so she referred me to the website.

One thing is for sure, though. And that is that they don’t go to anywhere exciting. I was hoping for a trip to the Roaring Forties and maybe a lap o two around Cape Horn. But I’m told that I would be lucky if I had a trip around the bay here.

Somehow it’s not the same.

One thing that did catch my eye on the quayside was a huge pile of scrap metal. All old cookers, fridges, a few engines and – an Iveco lorry that had been cut into bits.

The writing on the fridges was in English – and then I noticed that the lorry was a right-hand drive vehicle. So this pile of scrap has come in from a British possession somewhere, and I seemed to have missed the ship that brought it in.

That is, unless it was the load brought in by the Whatsit the other week and has yet to be moved.

Armed with the bank cards – and a citron sorbet fom the ice-cream shop I walked back up here for a rest – and, as I said earlier, a kind-of drift in between sleeping and waking.

And then I dropped my curry.

So a good sleep tonight (I hope) back in my bed and then shopping tomorrow. Now that I have access to my cash I’m going to buy a little hi-fi. I know that I said that I wouldn’t spend very much before I went to Canada, but I’m missing my music.

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Thursday 15th June 2017 – I BEAT …

… David Bowie into the bathroom by 35 seconds this morning (I know – I counted them) and so by the time he started to croon “Wake Up Little Sleepy Head” I was already riding the porcelain horse.

Breakfast saw me demolish the last of the muesli (I had some supplies and so I made some more) and by 07:35 I was sitting on the sofa with the laptop on my knee.

This morning I spent part of the time dealing with correspondence. It’s backing up rather, and I had a rude reminder from someone about a form that I needed to fill in relating to Caliburn’s accident. And so I did that, bunged it all in some of those prepaid envelopes (I bought a supply of those) and posted it all in the post box opposite the magasin de presse – the newspaper shop where I buy my baguette.

Lunchtime was spent sitting on the clifftop overlooking the harbour entrance. It was cooler today and slightly windier so I stayed out there with my book for quite a while. In fact, it was after 15:00 when I came back here. And seeing how nice and comfortable I had been, I … errrr … closed my eyes for a while – in fact a darn while longer than I expected.

Tea was a mega-curry night. Onions and garlic fried in a saucepan, with a tin of mixed vegetable, a tin of mushrooms, a pile of peanuts, s bucket-load of bulghour and a selection of spices. Add to that a gallon of gravy browning and we had a meal fit for a King. Four Kings in fact, because there’s enough for three more days so that’s sealed in the vacuum jars in the fridge.

And apart from that, what else have I been up to?

Well, you know this 3D animation program that I’m messing around with? It’s quite good but its models are not transferable over to other 3D sites (but then it’s free, and not a couple of thousand quid so that’s understandable) and models from other sites are not transferable to it. But there is a program for building models and props from design primitives, and the finished products may be exported into *.cr2 format.

This program is likewise free and I downloaded it years ago, but it was so complicated that I abandoned it after several weeks of going nowhere. Its controls do not correspond in any way whatever with normal mouse controls and keyboard short-cuts and has no logical sense whatsoever (for example – to “Ring” the edges of the polygons that make up the design primitives, its CNTRL + … errr … K. What’s the logic behind that?).

Anyway, during one of my lengthy searches on the internet, I came across a series of no less than 24 videos that give a basic introduction to the program. And as the narrator freely states “this is only a basic introduction – there’s much more that you can find out about it elsewhere”. Yes, 24 videos as a “basic introduction”!

And so I’ve been gallantly working my way through them all. 8 videos so far, and I’m still on “control manoeuvres” – we haven’t actually done anything yet.

I have a feeling that this is going to be yet another long hard slog.

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Monday 15th May 2017 – BY ‘ECK!

vegan mushroom curry granville manche normandy franceThat was a gorgeous tea!

We started off with some boiling water with turmeric and some drops of lemon juice. And then heaved in a cup of rice.

While that was doing, I chopped up a couple of segments of garlic.

When the rice was cooked, I tipped it into the sieve and rinsed it through with some cold water. Then I added a knob of soya margarine (Alpro as it happens) into the pan and melted it. When it was up to temperature, I heaved in the garlic and the rest of the tinned mushrooms that I hadn’t used yesterday on my pizza. And then some curry powder to taste.

Once that was all frying away nicely, I tipped into the pot a small tin of mixed peas and carrots – water and all – from the European Tinned Food Mountain and left it there to simmer. And when it was well away, I added two teaspoons full of gravy browning. Meantime, the rice was rinsed with boiling water from the kettle, put on a plate (yes, a plate! I’m stopping being uncouth and eating out of saucepans!) and stuck in the microwave.

And here you are – one quick mushroom curry with rice. And it was gorgeous.

“But why use a saucepan for frying?” I hear you ask. Well, that’s because Bane of Britain has done it again. The little portable halogen hob that I am using (and with which i’m almost as impressed as with my galvanised steel dustbin, Rhys) isn’t a halogen hob at all but an induction hob. Apparently you need special pans for it and most of the new ones that I bought the other week aren’t suitable and won’t work with it.

So yet more expense! Anyone want a brand-new wok, frying pan and saucepan? Never been used!

Last night I had a good night’s sleep. Right up to the alarm which was nice. And I’d been off on my travels too. I was preparing the accounts for a well-known media personality (and I’ve forgotten who it was now). He had two cars, both of which were mark 3 Cortinas – one grey and one purple – and I had to figure out a way of working them into the accounts so that the Tax authorities would agree to the expenditure. There was something about having to change over the ownership of the two vehicles at precisely midnight at the end of the accounting year so that there would be a smooth, seamless change. Anyway, I took the purple one for a drive and slid off the road into a stream somewhere. I could lift up the front end of the vehicle and swivel it round but I was still unable to move it so I needed to seek help – which was something that, for some reason or other, I was very reluctant to do.

After breakfast, I had a good relax for a while and then set to and moved the European Cardboard Mountain down to Caliburn. It took me about 10 trips to move it all downstairs and I was pretty exhausted afterwards. I had a spectator too – my mate from next door – so I went over and gave him a stroke. His name is Gribouille apparently and he’s either 4 or 5 – hi mummy couldn’t remember. We had quite a chat and I told his owner that if ever she needed a babysitter for him when she goes away, I would be the first to volunteer.

Back here I had a coffee and put my feet up until lunchtime – it had taken a lot out of me. Cardboard is heavier than you might think.

I know that I said that I would go to the dechetterie this afternoon, but I decided against it. No point in making a special journey out when I have to go out shopping on Saturday, if not before. It can wait until then.

And so instead I sorted out all of the rest of the rubbish, put the waste in the communal bin downstairs and all of the recycling into the recycling bins across the road. While I was there, I brought up the coolbox from Caliburn and put the contents in the fridge. I’ll wash the coolbox tomorrow.

Talking of washing, I washed one load of china that had come with me from the Auvergne. There’s quite a bit to do and I’m having logistic issues until I can buy a dresser. So it’s “bit by bit”. And then some more tidying up. Piles more stuff for the bin but I’ve also found some medical receipts for which I can enter a claim.

My post has caught up with me too, so there was a mountain of that to go through. But it looks as if I’ve been told the wrong address for the apartment, judging by the postman’s scrawl on the envelopes. I’ll need to check with him when I see him and confirm it.

So I’ve had tea, so it’s a quiet rest and read a book for a while before another early night. I have the Bank Revisited tomorrow.

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Tuesday 3rd January 2017 – IT DIDN’T TAKE ME LONG …

… to have problems with my new laptop, did it?

Last night I went to switch it off and we had the “there are 102 urgent upgrades to perform. Please don’t switch off your laptop”.

And so I didn’t – I went to bed instead. And despite being on my own I had a bit of a miserable night and it took me ages to go off to sleep. And then I was waking up on several occasions during the night. It was all very uncomfortable.

Breakfast didn’t take long, and then back down here to start up the laptop and “upgrade 89 of 102 in progress. Please don’t switch off your laptop”. And so I didn’t.

Instead, I found other things to do and eventually the new laptop finished its upgrades. And so I restarted it. Now, the mouse is doing all kinds of things except what I would like to do, and a manual cable mouse is only complicating the issue. I’ve no idea what’s happening here. But you’ve no idea just how much I’m fed up about this. It never rains but it pours, does it?

But here’s a thing – I’ve not set a single foot outside the building today.I had the remains of my loaf for lunch and so for tea I had rice, vegetables, mushrooms and onions. And that was nice too, even though I forgot to add my gravy to it.

So tomorrow I’ll have to think about sorting out this mouse problem as well as going shopping. The Carrefour beckons, and I fancy some oven chips, beans and vegan sausage. I hope that the Carrefour can sort me out.

I have new housemates tonight, and they all look quite respectable so I hope that they won’t disturb me too much. Maybe I’ll finally end up having a decent night’s sleep tonight.

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Friday 28th October 2016 – I’VE HAD A BAD DAY TODAY

In fact, I’ve spent most of it asleep.

It all probably stems from last night. I told you that I was going to have an early night, and indeed I did. And I wasn’t awake long either. Soon away with the fairies.

The trouble was that it didn’t last long. I was awake after about an hour and with people coming and going throughout the house and talking in raised voices, I couldn’t go back to sleep again. I ended up working on two pages of my website, adding some stuff from 2015 – this one and this one.

I was eventually able to go off to sleep and I slept right through until the alarm went off. It was something of a stagger up to breakfast, and then back down here I lay on the bed and dozed.

I missed my little window to go and pay for my room, as I was fast asleep during the bistro’s lunchtime opening hours. But I did manage to make it to the supermarket on the corner to buy some stuff for lunch. So much for the mega-shop that I had planned, and so much for my trip to the footy ground to buy my ticket for tomorrow night (it’s an all-ticket match). I’ve missed the football for this weekend then.

I spoke a little to Liz this afternoon, and worked on another page of my website. This is astonishing, isn’t it? I dunno where this motivation is coming from.

But apart from that, I was back asleep for most of the afternoon. Until I had a rude awakening from the cleaner that is. Now I have clean bedding and a reasonably clean room.

The bistro was closed this evening when I went past – I went to Caliburn to pick up some food. For tea I had a mushroom curry with rice and it was so delicious. And there’s enough for tomorrow too. And tonight I had another doze too.

But now I’m off to bed. There are hordes of new arrivals this weekend so I hope that they all behave themselves.

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Wednesday 31st August 2016 – FATE HAS A VERY STRANGE HABIT …

… of dealing with its own issues without very much input from oneself, no matter how hard one might try to interfere with things. And in the end, one quickly discovers that one didn’t even need to interfere at all.

And so it is with my accommodation, because the situation has resolved itself without any input from me, no matter how hard I tried.

I was told this morning that I can leave the hospital today. My blood count is back up (and over) to 12.2 – the highest that it has ever been, and there was no infection in my blood. And when do I come back? The answer is – 13th October – in 6 weeks time in fact. And then I’ll be required to check in every 6 months or so. Consequently there is no need at all for me to stay in Leuven and I can go back home.

Except that I am not going home at all. I have a cunning plan, and it certainly does not involve Belgium.

I had a bad night at the hospital, but then, that’s only to be expected. I always have bad nights at the hospital. I didn’t get off to sleep until about 01:30 and I was wide awake again by 05:30, tucking into a nectarine and a banana, followed by a coffee.

A blood sample followed (I didn’t mention the fruit), and then breakfast, and then we had the endless stream of visitors. And this was when the news was given to me about leaving.

Having had my lunch (I’m not going to miss out on this) I set off for home, remembering half-way down the hill that I had forgotten my vegan cheese in the hospital fridge. And when I arrived here, I had a phone call – could I go back to the hospital and allow them to take out my catheter? Yes, who forgot to have it taken out then?

So back up the hill to the hospital, remembering on the way that I had to collect my vegan cheese from the fridge. Sophie, my third-favourite nurse was there and she took it out without even a wince. The best one that I’ve ever had. Then downstairs and bumped into Evie who was going home, and we had a long chat.

From there, I walked back home, remembering half-way down the hill that I had forgotten my vegan cheese in the hospital fridge YET AGAIN.

Back here, I put things in motion and as a result I’m leaving here on Saturday afternoon, and leaving for goog too, 12 days before my time is up. And where I’m going on the train, you’ll all find out in due course. But it’s not back home to Virlet.

I’ve had my tea – mushroom curry – and now I’m having an early night. I have so much to do now for the next few days.

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