Parking rage

Today I broke the law. I pulled up and stopped on a double yellow line for approximately 2 minutes whilst I waited for Wavey who had run into the post office. I know it's not big, it's not clever, and it's definitely not legal, but in my defence m'lud so many people do it all the time and nothing ever happens to them. Typically I got caught by a traffic warden. So unfair! I am such a law abiding person but the one time I decide to take a chance I got caught. To add shame to misery, I shouted at the traffic warden. Well, when I say shouted, I might have commented in an angry manner through the closed windows that I was just waiting for someone and would of course move on quickly. Two times round the block and still no sign of Wavey, I ended up turning round and parking exactly where I'd started from at home. Should have just stayed there in the blimmin' first place! 

That traffic warden must have thought all his Christmas-es had come at once as he walked from my car to some other poor person who'd just pulled up ever so quickly and started pointing and shouting at them too. 

I walked up to meet Wavey to explain and what should I see but two cars parked on exactly the same bloody yellow lines I'd been parked on! And where was the evil traffic warden? Nowhere to be seen! Well actually he was further down the road waiting to catch yet another person out who'd parked on some different double yellow lines. 

Today's lessons:
1. Do not park on double yellow lines, even if only for 2 minutes as you will get caught out
2. It's not at all big and clever to shout at people in authority even through closed windows
3. Parking rage is the new road rage

*hangs head in total and utter shame*

Scotland the brave

Last weekend I braved first class train travel to head up to bonnie Scotland to spend the weekend with Fizz in her homeland. The journey up there is amazing, I was like a 5 year old, nose pressed to the window, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the gorgeous scenery and beautiful blue skies. Also in the carriage were some of the POSHEST people I have ever heard, they may have been related to the Queen they spoke so posh! And I got free tea and coffee and I could have had sandwiches and flapjacks and crisps but I wasn't hungry - shocker!

First up, bet you didn't know that Fizz has the most amazing view from her house, literally the whole sea! Well okay, maybe not the whole sea but it certainly felt like that as I threw open the blinds each morning:

Not only that but the tiny wee village has a windmill, a church, and a ruined castle! 

We spent a lot of time walking and exploring and showing off various sights and hidden beaches and lovely towns.

We ate loads of yummy food, often too much yummy food, but we found the most amazing salad bar in St Andrews. Should you ever find yourself there I'd highly recommend the minted broad beans, the tex-mex tuna, and a regular freshly squeezed apple juice. And there's some crackin' charidee shops there with some very bargainous items with big labels but small prices. Gotta love richie-rich towns! 

Did I mention that I took the sunshine with me? Every single day the sun shone, it was glorious blue skies, the weather was truly amazing. Scotland is not exactly famous for its sunny days and blue skies so this was something of a miracle. Clearly I am the sunshiney blue sky bringer. 

On our final day we had a very special date with this dude:

Maybe it was the blue sky or the sunny day but all the animals were on top form. The sun bear did a biiiiig stretch in front of me, the lions were grooming each other and having some quality time together, the wolf was hiding in his den, and the pandas were totally awesome! I never thought I'd get to see a panda so close up, the female literally walked right in front of me, well ambled more like. Utterly cool. 

Fab weekend! Thanks for having me, Fizz! 

Weekend variety show

It's been a fabby long Easter weekend. We've frankly been incredibly lazy, not at all the usual weekend of doing house jobs, garden jobs, pottering around inside the house jobs - total laziness rules. Long sleeps in, breakfast in bed every morning, lots of lounging around, lots of family and friends visiting, pretty damned brilliant all round really. 

With laziness comes lots of television, films, and books. In no particular order this is what has been playing in the big flatscreen in the corner:

Brighton Rock
The updated version with Helen Mirren and John Hurt. This is one of my favourite books and the original film version with Richard Attenborough as Pinkie is up there as one of the finest ever so I was a bit nervous about this but it was pretty good. Mods! Rockers! Flick-knives! Threatening mobs! What more do you need from a weekend movie?!

The September Issue
I planned to watch this on my own as was pretty sure that Wavey wouldn't like it, it being fashion and all. Initial mockery was soon replaced with complete and utter interest and we were both thoroughly absorbed. Such an interesting film. And to see Anna Wintour smile and laugh was a bit of a shocker! I'm sure we enjoyed it for different reasons but an all round winner. 

Vicky Christina Barcelona
Second viewing of this and still loved it. Gorgeous scenery, beautiful sunny skies, beautiful people, Penelope Cruz being utterly bonkers, full of sass and hilarious. And definitely want to go to Barcelona now. 

On the tv:
Much of the usual that we have going on, a whole lot of series recorded, we're forever catching up. Watched the first of season 3 Made in Chelsea, still awful, still cringe-y, still hi-bloomin-larious. Keep it coming! Watched the last in the series of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, pretty much the same as above, awful, cringe-y, hi-larious, and a wee bit eeek-ey. Not my choice but Easter is a huge footy weekend so we must have watched Match of the Day at least 70 times...

Book-wise I'm still reading Warm Bodies which is about a zombie in love with a real live person. Don't mock it til you've tried it, it's a really good book!

In other news we finally got around to sorting out our cds and admitted that we didn't listen to a massive pile of them. We've sold them on a website and made £28! Which is not too shabby and will go straight into the holiday saving fund, wooooo! A whole other heap are going to the charidee shop, and the ones we have left now fill 2 biggish drawers and have actually been put in A-Z order. I know, I know, I shake my own head at the geekiness of it but I tell you, since we've done that the stereo has been on constantly as you know where to find stuff straight away! 

Weekends are truly the best! Next weekend I'm off up to Scotland with Fizz so stay tuned for the tales :D  

A wardrobe classic

Little black jacket 

If you could afford one, how would you wear your's?

Baking the 21st century way

Call me a traditionalist but I am strictly a gal who bakes and makes using books. I love looking through the books with all their glossy pictures, I love reading the introductions and hints and tips and little stories that are part of the author's story. I like the feel of books and looking at them on my kitchen book shelf. 

Today I broke with tradition and baked using my laptop:

 It got a bit messy. And a lot frustrating as the laptop was taking up precious worktop space and my awareness of needing to keep it away from flying ingredients was making me hyper clumsy. Only a few splatters hit the screen...hopefully I got all the ingredients in the right order and the chocolate simnel cake to eat over the long Easter weekend will be as delicious as it looks in the photo. Only baking time will tell. 

There has to be a way of incorporating the laptop into your cooking though. I'm sure lots of people use the internet for recipes etc - do you print them out and then use them? Do you keep the laptop in another room and have an able kitchen assistant to call out the ingredients and instructions? I have a really teeny kitchen, there's no space for a table for the laptop to live safely away from flying ingredients. How does everyone else do this 21st century baking and making? Feel free to share...

This is an emergency...

Our boiler has broken. The day before the weather is supposed to turn back to freezing. An engineer came out to look at it today and it turns out our boiler is "at risk" due to some dodgy pipework that points in the wrong direction, oo-er missus. Oh and it's so old and the engineer was so concerned he rang the company to check that it didn't contain asbestos. As you do. Yikes, cripes and an eek and eep for good measure. So basically we're in limbo land. They won't do a permanent fix until the dodgy pipes (oo-er missus, you know the drill) are fixed, there's a leak inside of it which is causing the water to drip onto the electrical circuit which is what's causing all the electrics in the house to trip everytime the boiler starts...add to that the nightmare complication of who has time off when in order to be here for the engineer to come out...all in all, it sucks. Bad timing. The boiler broke the day after I moved in originally and we had no heating for days. Is it me? Am I the jinx? Or is our ancient, possibly needing to be condemned boiler to blame? Why do we have to have a boiler emergency right now? 

I tells ya, 2012 sucks arse so far. If it's not one thing it's something else entirely. I feel like we take one step forward and about 27 back. Or to use my ma's analogy, we keep on falling waaaaaaay down the biggest snake on the board of Snakes and Ladders. I think it's about time we were due a break. I don't know how I expect this to come about, but I do, and soonish rather than laterish please. Come on 2012, show me that you're better than this! Show me the non-arse, show it to me baby! 

You say tomay-to, I say tom-arto

It's hard to believe from all the recipe books I have that I've never before had an American one. And it's challenging me. I'm all down with measuring things in cups, but when the recipe calls for strange things like garbanzo beans I'm totally stumped. One google search later and I find out this actually means chickpeas. And today I had to add cornstarch which we call cornflour. There is a little glossary in the back but the author missed out the garbanzo beans translation, perhaps she thought that was the name everywhere? 

For all the confusing terms though there are some really yummy recipes in there. Tonight we had cherry tomato and feta cheese clafoutis with a lovely colourful salad. Essentially it was a french version of a quiche but without the pie crust. It was very very tasty and made even better by sprinkling with herbs out of our garden. Followed by rhubarb crumble and custard made with rhubarb from the garden. Yummo! 

Oh how I love food. I could talk about it all day long...