The trip to Perth yesterday afternoon was most educational. I learned three things
- Keith has an insufficiency of playlists and Julie Covington for a whole album is a bit depressing.
- neither of us can work the sat nav in my new mini. It refused to accept the desired post code, substituted another and spent the last hour of the trip telling us to do a u turn. We could not work out how to switch it off and had to mute it, which resulted in a stream of passive aggressive text messages on the console. It was still at it today and I had to park at the bottle bank and have Lachlan diagnose how to switch it off using a FaceTime call.
- the one thing that can drive me to panic shopping is not fear of shortages of toilet roll or bleach, it is lemons. As the news updates rolled in yesterday Keith became increasingly morose about the prospects for next year’s marmalade if the Seville oranges don’t make it through and I became aghast at the thought of garnish free gin. I’ll not lie, we stopped at a retail park outside Edinburgh and I bought a gazillion lemons, limes and oranges and a giant bag of salad.
As well as pork for Keith’s pork pies, which he assures me will be made tonight, a whole beef tongue was purchased. I have been put in charge of this. Crikey. Today saw a further butchery raid and the turkey and has also been secured. I shall be making stuffing tomorrow. We will not be vegan this year.
This morning started unaccountably early. There seemed to be a mass toilet visit at 4 and then just when I had dosed off at 4.30 Keith swore loudly and leaped out of bed declaring he had forgotten to switch off the Aga (we were having a new H pot fitted). He had not forgotten, but that was it for me. I decamped to the spare room in search of peace but found myself watching the stars instead, which were very bright, and a lovely dawn. A trip to Kelso secured 2 sides of salmon for making gravadlax (another tomorrow job), some flowers for the table (tomorrow is starting to sound a bit full if I’m honest) and a few other odds and sods for stockings.
The final jumper arm is now complete, you will all the thrilled to hear, so that’s just sewing up, knitting the neck, washing, pressing and monkey to deal with. I sprinted back from the sewing garret in triumph just in time to light the fire for my evening Zoom catch up with old uni friends. Zoom maliciously cut us off mid flow so a further call is being planned.
Keith has booked us lunch out tomorrow and, apparently, after 2.30 we are to be devoted to fun and relaxation. I may have to break out one of my good jumpers! I hope Julie Covington isn’t invited.
Live from Ruthven 