Harvests and Mystery Chefs

They’re getting bigger every day. Soon time to dust down the chutney pan and load up the shopping trolley with vinegar. It’s that time of year where if I forget to go out in the garden for a few days, I’m then inundated with armfuls of produce that I “have to do something with - QUICK!”. We’re novices at this growing lark so I’m sure we’ll find other ways of staggering our crop but for now we have umpteen lettuces, umpteen courgettes growing into marrow and give it a few months - a squillion apples.

I set about looking for recipes and came across this site which made me laugh. I was looking at it’s silly flashing icons while making one of the recipes for tea and then it started dawning on me. This all looked familiar. I seem to remember this funky cookery show on TV from my youth. I’m sure it was on late at night advocating anarchy in the kitchen backed by loud guitar music. But there’s more to it than this… I go back and look at the site some more. Oh yes, there were 2 crazy “mystery chef” characters. Then “plink” the missing piece of mental jigsaw slots in. There’s mention on the website of an incident where the “Mystery Chefs” were guesting on another TV show and threw a plate of spag bol over Johnny Vaughan while he was presenting a link. Why should this ring a bell? It was me who booked them as guests on that show!

 

I’m “IT”

My cyberfriend over at The Cottage Smallholder left me a comment saying she’d “tagged me for a meme”. Eh? ???

Oooh eck, I think I’m in this blogging thing over my head. What does all this mean? I wikipedia’d it and ferreted around for a while and concluded that she had been most kind in including me in a game of virtual playground tag involving answering interesting questions about oneself and giving your blog a bit of a plug at the same time. Nice one! Here’s the meme - y-thingy-mabob:

What I was doing 10 years ago:
Trying to set up a theatrical agency in the front room of our house in Coventry

On my to-do list today:
Well now, I unexpectedly find myself with a bit of “me time”. R has started Tuesdays at nursery today and she’s now in the “big girls” room for 3 year olds which is the one before they start school (I’m trying not to get emotional). So she’s not here. Mr. P has taken a v well earned day off work and has gone fishing, so he’s not here. I have the house to myself which is a very rare occurrence. Trouble is, there’s the weekend away’s washing to do, the whole house needs cleaning and tidying and various piles of clutter need sorting. Obviously I don’t want to do any of this housework, so the rest of the day will probably be spent faffing about at the computer, followed by a huge wave of guilt for not having done anything constructive.

 

Haze n Hoolies

I worked with a TV Director once, who used to insist on having a smoke machine on every shoot with him. At the time, I thought he was a prima donna, especially as we were only making quite a cruddy programme on where folks should holiday in the southeast of England. I re-thought my opinion of him during my run this morning (I’m sure he’s been worrying about it all these years obviously). I looked up to see this amazing effect, where the sunlight was diffused across the whole sky, shining through the haze of the morning mist. My description won’t do it justice and I didn’t have my camera on me. I think the technical term might be “diffused light” or something (photographers help me out?).

I started to understand why artists and photographers get inspired to capture such things. My friend says her daughter looks different when she’s at our house. I’m sure it’s all in the light - we live at the top of the hill, they live down the shadier bottom.

Talking about being on the top of the hill, it’s blimmin windy today isn’t it? I thought my sheets could do with a bit of an airing. It was like something out of a bad 70s sitcom trying to peg them out on the line with them flapping and whipping in my face. Then continuing in the frank spencer / selwyn froggit vein, my laundry bag blew away and got stuck on top of a hedge. It was threatening to blow off and away down valley but for one thorn that was holding it in place.

Cue R & I whooping, laughing, shouting and running about trying to find a long stick and banging into eachother because our hair was blowing into our eyes. I managed a quick snap before do the rescue op. It was very exciting. Well, for us. Two of our resident dog walkers were watching the lambs nearby but missed all the hullabaloo because the wind was whistling so loudly in their ears.

 

Ironing’s Never Been So Much Fun

I’ve not posted for a few days. I’d been doing it late evenings when I have my best “me time”. Last week I’d had a bit less “me time” as I was going to bed / getting up earlier for my new morning jogging regime (haha! Still can’t quite believe I can say me and jogging in the same sentence) .

Last night I found a new distraction. Ironing whilst watching iplayer. I tell you it’s all rock n roll round here. Ironing’s bad enough. Made slightly more bearable by watching telly. 9 times out of 10 you’re just watching whatever mindless drivel is on at the time. But NOW, wey hey. I know I’m probably slow on the uptake compared to you other cyberkooks but my new laptop lets me choose what I want to watch whilst doing the most boring job on the planet.

When I worked at the BBC a few centuries ago, I went to a seminar hosted by a man who had just met with a fella none of us had heard of at that time - Bill Gates. Apparently Bill had said that the media was going to change beyond all recognition in the future. We wouldn’t need to buy newspapers to read the news, we would call up whatever news or entertainment content we wanted to consume and watch it not on screens but on other convenient surfaces like our fridge doors or kitchen tables. Sounds like he knew what he was talking about that Mr Gates. I bet we’ll be hearing more from him soon

Who would have thought, when I was a fresh faced and eager media miss in those days, that I would be reaping the rewards of that technology in quite this humdrum way. Where’s Mrs Gates when you need her, to come up with some way of deleting the need for ironing?