End of a Long Week

Hip Hip Hooray - Thursday's Here

I honestly don't know what got into me this week, but I have been dragging myself from bed to work to home and the computer to bed and back again, and that seems to be the sum total of my activities. Hopefully I will have more energy tomorrow when I go wandering off to the market, do my photographing, shopping, chatting and socializing, and then come home to cleaning and cooking.

I love having friends like Cactus,
they certainly help to get my weekend started on the right foot.

I arrived on her doorstep an hour late - I did warn her that I was doing a good deed and completely reinstalling the operating system for my old Toshiba laptop (9 years old, 6 gig hard disk memory, floppy & cd drives, 1 usb port and infrared). There is actually nothing at all wrong with the computer except that it was just not powerful enough for my needs, but for a complete neophyte... it is perfect, and that is who is getting it, once it is restored to its original pristine glory.

The neophyte is my computerless aunt. Computerless because she spends all her money looking after, and finding new homes for, all the animals that get rejected from the animal shelter. The first time I ever visited her she had about 6 3 week old kittens who needed to be bottle fed, a regular posse of about 18 cats, 11 dogs and 4 donkeys. Except for the kittens and the donkeys, all the other animals wandered in and out of the house and got on perfectly well.

Cactus, perfect hostess that she is, poured me a glass of white wine and then stuck me to work dealing with the salmon fillets that were our dinner. That was actually not too onerous a job for me, I sat and sipped and peeled and then sliced a lemon. The rest of the prep involved instructing her to turn on the oven grill, pour some olive oil in an oven tray (disposable by preference), slap the fish in skin side down, grind some pepper on top, plonk the lemon slices on artistically, sprinkle some olive oil onto the fish and throw the tray into the oven.

As we choked on the smoke that came out of the oven we dealt with the broccoli and cabbage (steamed and boiled respectively), got out the plates, and 8 minutes later most of the smoke had floated out of the open doors and windows, and dinner was ready (smart girl, she had already roasted some new potatoes).

The only thing needed was a sprinkle of salt and we had a delicious, healthy dinner.

To complete the Englishness of it (well, what could be more Brit than boiled cabbage?) we had cheese for dessert - a lovely, perfectly ripe French Brie... who needs more than that?

Driving home, I came to the unpleasant realization that up until now I have been moaning about nothing when I complained that winter was here. Tonight my teeth chattered so badly that I couldn't hear my indicator lights... So the first thing that happened when I walked in the door was to put the kettle on so I could fill up my hot water bottle. If you hear sloshing, it is just me readjusting it to warm another part of my anatomy.

Pity I can't type with it balanced on the top of my head!