We had quite a pleasant weekend. We were expecting people to lunch on Sunday. So, on Saturday we headed off to Chatsworth to lay in Sunday lunch supplies. No worries with the meat or veg. But I was looking for a nice, plain sponge to make trifle with. Chatsworth had loads of sponge cakes. They were all flavoured. Lemon drizzle, plum and coconut, raspberry and red currant. Not a plain cake to be seen. Right then. Off we go to Sheffield. The Builder needs new safety glasses (new government regulations, I think, requiring construction workers to wear safety specs on site). While he's sorting that out, I shall potter around in Waitrose. Where there were suitable cakes -- but they were full of e-numbers and strange, chemical sounding things that I couldn't pronounce and which I certainly wasn't going to eat. Hmm. A quick fly by the allotment where The Builder dug up a trug of potatoes and I gathered a small number of runner beans and some beetroot (beetroot doing remarkably well this year!). And so home, via Sainsbury in Chesterfield to continue the cake hunt and to lay in supplies of beer and wine (they tend to have good deals on the beer and a much better selection of wine than Waitrose, for some reason). No cake. This kind of buggers the trifle plan. But wait. How hard can it be to make a plain cake? Not hard at all.
The rest of the afternoon found me baking. I baked the plain cake. Coated it with home made raspberry jam, added allotment grown raspberries, sprinkled a healthy glass of sherry over it all, made a creme anglais style custard and poured it over, and decorated it all with more raspberries and whipped cream. Hmmm. Where to put it. No room in the fridge. Aha -- down in the cool room, on top of the beer. Then I made a chocolate cherry cake, using morello cherries from the allotment. And then I made a summer pudding, also made with fruit from the allotment. A good afternoon's work.
Sunday morning brought WEATHER. Lots of weather. We sat up in bed and drank tea and watched the wind and rain at play in the garden. Kind of cosy (if the wrong month for that sort of weather, really). But we must get up and get moving. Not only was the weather was starting to clear but there are people approaching! Taffa came on the train and The Builder collected her from Chesterfield. Gareth and Freyja were working so couldn't come. I roasted a chicken and a rather nice piece of topside. I made a broad bean and pea flan, based on a 17th century recipe that Chris Payne fed us with last January. We made an ENORMOUS platter of roasted vegetables, another platter of roasted vegetables and a large pot of purple rataouille (red cabbage and red onions turned everything purple!). Carol came, without Paul who was at their house on Harris. Gill and Peter came, with Claire and Alex. My work friend Linda came. Bea and Steve came later, after Steve's daughter's flight had finally left (this is at the time when airports are in almost total disarray following recent security alerts). We had some roast vegetables, some ratatouille and a little bit of flan left. Then they got stuck into the puddings. We had one piece of chocolate cake and some of the fruit from the summer pudding left. The trifle bowl was practically licked clean! It was a good afternoon. Most people left around 4, mooching on to other places in the area to visit friends they don't see all that often. Gareth came to collect Tabitha and eat his secretly saved dinner after he finished work. As I say, a good afternoon and evening.
I do enjoy having Sunday lunch parties. Although I do sometimes wonder if it might not be better to have them on a Saturday. I was strangely tired on Monday morning. Saw The Builder off on his way to work and retired back to bed with another cup of tea and my book. Was enjoying the book and was still a bit tired, so decided to take the train to work. Abandoned the remains of the tidying up to be dealt with later (although there wasn't too much; The Builder had done the bulk of it on Sunday evening). Ambled off to the bus stop. Bugger. Just missed the bus. No worries. There will be another one along shortly. Got to Chesterfield just as the Sheffield train pulled in. Bugger, the ticket machines are all broken. Join queue for the ticket office. Trot onto platform -- just as they closed the train doors. Bugger. Oh well. Never mind. There'll be another one along in -- in HOW MANY MINUTES?!?!?!?!?!? Forty?!?!?!?!?!?! Oh well. That'll get me in just after 09:30. That's all right. As it would have been, except that the 09:18 train to Liverpool Lime Street was delayed by 20 minutes. Sigh. Still. It made it quite a short day.
Last Friday, I called into the opticians to complain that I couldn't see through the near vision part of my varifocal glasses. If I want to read, I have to take them off. Renders them somewhat useless as varifocals, then. I've only had them a month and they've never been right. They decided that perhaps the prescription wasn't quite right (No! Really?) and booked me in for a retest. So I left work at 4 on Monday (I said it was a short day!) and went to have my eyes redone. Comprehensively redone. Most thorough eye test I think I've ever had, concentrating entirely on my near vision. The prescription was indeed wrong. Not that they said that. They said that my vision had changed slightly. I think they just made a mistake -- remember that the glasses haven't ever been particularly useful. They've taken them away to have new lenses put in. Just as well I came on public transport in the morning. I can see well enough to get home on a train and a bus. Wouldn't want to drive without my glasses though. Had to squint to read the station signs!
Clarissa has handed in her notice and told the Admissions Office that she is going. Who am I going to have lunch with come September?
A plumber has finally been to look at Niagara Falls next door. He's going to fix it tomorrow. Allegedly!
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