Monthly Archives: January 2010

The chick pea curry was a great success, even though I have no real liking for chick peas.  I like my pulses to be nice and soft;  al dente for me just means it’s something that’s going to get stuck in my denture.  When I get my turn at the curry table I shall make dahl as a side dish to a nice tomato rogan josh.  That’s lentil/garlic/curry powder mush and a chunky tomato/basil/coriander salad all dressed up with a good dollop of rogan josh paste (medium hot) from the supermarket.  Served with a plate of nice crunchy pita bread.  A survivor from my student days.

Tonight, following the lead from Graham’s recovering but still delicate tummy, I’m cooking cod in parsley sauce, served with mashed potatoes and petit pois.  Both nights we’ve had a good quality creamy fruit yoghurt for dessert, aimed at restoring tummy balance.

We’ve searched our memories without success of the past few days to find the reason for this tummy upset.  Graham is distrustful of café food, and wonders if the salmon fish cakes he had a few days back might be the season but, really, neither of us think so.  It’s interesting to note that Graham’s father was cursed by a life-time of tummy troubles.  He did nothing to help it, and maintained a ‘healthy’ appetite for meat pie and chips right to the very end.  Graham is taking a different approach to the condition, and is very careful with what he eats.

I’m delighted of course to be told “I prefer your cooking to eating out” even if I do revel in burger van greasy food once in a while.  Just so long as I am able to indulge my sinful appetites now and then I’m happy to keep on dishing up good, nourishing, digestible food until I drop.

The living room is furnished once more but is lacking the rug because we’ve been told to avoid putting a rug on the new varnish for at least nine days.  I rather like the clean, sparse air that results but Graham hates it.  Next Saturday is rug day, then, and will signal the finish of the living room make-over project.  I have promised champagne.

Graham’s enthusiasm for hard-wood flooring is nicely rejuvenated but I’m wondering if perhaps we ought not to wait a bit to see how the cork sheeting fares before committing to a whole-house reflooring job.  Fortunately, when the stairs and landing are done, it’ll be time to turn our attention to the garden, and exterior painting.  That’ll give us time to live with the cork, and the cork with us, before embarking on bedroom make-over operations in the autumn.  Cork is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive flooring option; there’s nothing more expensive than the wrong choice, though.

And Dolly?  Well, she’s soldiering on through it all, just as you’d expect.  Now the living room is restored she’s happy to find her floor cushion back in the approved position by the big radiator.  She still gives us hell once a day of course, complaining about everything and anything.  It’s an old lady-cat thing, and we can live with it.  Thankfully, so can she. Hopefully for a good few more years.

Woke to a world brilliantly beautiful under a dusting of snow and bright blue-skied sunshine.  Still beastly cold, and the snow stayed where the sun didn’t hit, but a good, fresh day to be out and about.

Even if only for a neighbourly impromptu gathering in the street outside on the way to Sainsbury’s.

They’d been restrained with the salt/grit in the supermarket car park but even allowing for Saturday haste, drivers were tolerant of unsurely footed old blokes with sticks.  Well, of this old bloke, anyway.  I think the broad smile and cheery wave may account for some of it.  They probably don’t fancy the bad publicity and extra paperwork involved in “Impatient motorist mows down OAP”.

Graham is much improved but couldn’t fancy a coffee shop lunch so we got stuff and bolted back home to soup and bread.  For once I was entirely satisfied with soup and a small bit of bread.

Tonight is his night to cook.  I offered to take it over, allowing him more time to rest up, but he insisted, and has elected to make a chick pea vegetable balti-style curry.

“But we don’t have any balti serving dishes,” I said.

“You’ll just have to pretend.”

“And this is not a no-alcohol establishment.”

He gave me an appraising look.  “Have another glass,” he said.  “That’ll make it easier to pretend.”

“Another glass and I’ll be able to pretend anything.”

A little while later, he told me it’s not going to be a balti.

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s closer to a dopiaza.”

“Oh.  Pour me another glass and I’ll be able to pretend it’s anything you say.”

Graham announced the fitness of the living room floor for walking purposes today.  Dolly was the first to act on the information:

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Dolly reflects

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“What do you think?” Graham asked for the umpteenth time.

“Beautiful.  It’s the return of the 70s wet-look.  My mother polished linoleum for a lifetime in pursuit of a shine like that.”

“What?  You mean it’s too shiny?”

Oh. Good. Grief.

Actually our DIY man wasn’t feeling too chipper today, and stayed home in the warm, claiming an “upset tummy” as the problem.  Poor soul, he was feeling poorly.  Stayed home instead of coming out with me to the doctor’s. It was blood testing day;  they hadn’t told me to bring a urine sample so I was obliged to undergo the indiginity of peeing into a tiny sample tube.  I was so anxious to avoid making a mess that I could produce no more than a couple cc’s.  I made light of it:

“Sorry, luv.  Best I can do at short notice.  Will this be enough do you think?”

[gratifying laughter] “Well, if it isn’t, they’ll ask for more.”

And off went the bloods and sample to the hospital for testing.  I’m to start phoning first thing Monday or Tuesday morning to get an appointment and diagnosis of the results.

When I emerged from the surgery it had turned grey and windy and very cold so I decided against Sainsbury’s, motoring instead to the local Tesco at Neath Abbey for petrol and some goodies suitable for a tender stomach.  First time I’ve bought petrol since just before Christmas and I was flummoxed to find that the price has gone up to £1.14p a litre.  So instead of filling the tank I stopped when the counter tipped over £30.  Just as well I don’t do a lot of motoring these days.

By then it really was collar-clutching cold so I came home into the warm, bearing goodies.

“Coffee?” asked Graham, who was waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Please.  What’s that you’re brewing for yourself?”

“Hot water.”

“Oh dear.  Poor luv.  Don’t drink too much of that or it’ll make you fat.”

I paid for that crack not five minutes later when I sat at my desk and promptly spilt a mug of very hot coffee over myself.

I’m always reassured to discover that there is some justice in the world, even when it’s at my expense.

Little justice was meted out at the Iraq Enquiry on Tony Blair’s day, sadly.  He emerged all smiles and happiness, just like the Tony we used to know and loathe.

And, finally, the thought came to me in an idle moment that, had Holden Morrissey Caulfield been non-fictional, he’d be older than me today.  If someone hadn’t smacked the tedious little prat upside the head with a sharp brick, that is.

Like I say, it’s somewhat gratifying to discover a trace of justice in the world. With or without the brick.

Well, OK.  I fully admit it, I often feel like I’m on a different planet from the people about me.   Graham excepted, of course, but then everything I say that isn’t directly about Graham tends to be a long way apart from Graham.

When the feeling gets to be too strong I just sit here, blank of mind and still of hand, and there’s nothing in me that I can coax onto paper.  Then it’s time to stand still for a while, see without seeing, hear without hearing, and let the rest of the world catch up with me.

Or, put another way, sometimes I need a day off.

Actually, I’ve not missed much.  Two-and-a-half world events seem to have bounced up, and that’s not so much really.

Firstly, Steve Jobs bounced on to the stage to announce the much-anticipated igadget of the decade, to be known henceforth as iPad.  Looks like nothing so much as an iPhone that’s been sat on by an exceedingly heavy large animal of the hippopotamus kind.  And of about as much use.

Next, and it’ll be a matter of sadness to some, the death of J.D. Salinger at the age of 91 has been announced.  To me, and this’ll come as no surprise to those who know me, it’s news of only passing sadness.  Ninety-one is a good age;  shame he didn’t do more with it since Catcher.  It’d have made little difference to literary history if that self-same iPhone-destroying hippopotamus had sat on him just after publication in 1951.

Finally, and I can’t bring myself to grant it more than a half-point in my list, I caught most of the US president’s State of the Union address.  Sad.  Nothing else to say about it.  Just sad.

And so, on the day when Graham put the final coat of varnish on the living room floor–nothing should be allowed to look that shiny–and the fumes dissipate into the damp Welsh January air, I lift my head to look about me.

Ye gods and little fishes but what a mess we are making of our poor old world.

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I’m taking a day off today and will be back tomorrow.  I don’t promise not to take another day off tomorrow but that’s in another world, over a horizon of sleep and a further rotation of the globe.

Take good care.