My own, personal, private long weekend

I've been quite busy since I got back to work a month ago.  There have been loads of meetings, more desk shifts than I would normally expect, and some quite long days.  So I arranged to take Friday off as time in lieu.

We morphed quite quickly into doing Saturday things.  The sun was shining. The sky was blue.  The breeze was gentle.  We pottered about in the garden and did some general tidying. We went to The Nettle for lunch. We pottered about a bit more. The washing flapped lazily on the washing line.  The ducks, then later the chooks wandered around in the garden. It might almost have been early summer, except that it was a tad on the chilly side for summer.  But pleasantly mild for early spring.

We pottered about a bit more on Saturday itself.  We ambled around locally and bought supplies for the weekend. The weather wasn't as good, so we didn't do much in the way of pottering in the garden. We pottered inside instead.  We caught up on a few telly programs that we had recorded and not got around to watching. I did some baking. I didn't do any of the cleaning and tidying I had intended to do. It was a lovely, lazy day.  It might almost have been a Sunday :-)

Then it was Sunday. A day of sunshine and some very heavy showers. Some quite startling hails showers. And quite a lot of wind at various points.  Every time we thought that we might get into the garden to carry on weeding and tidying up, or that we might go to the allotment for some leeks, beetroot and sprouting broccoli, the clouds turned immediately black and it rained.  So we gave up on those ideas and turned our attention to gluttony instead.

I had made a slow cooked beef and mushroom stew in the slow cooker with some shin that I had bought in a value pack from Marsh Green.  It was sitting there, waiting to be used for something.  So I made some suet pastry and encased the stew in the pastry then steamed it for several hours.  And so we had this for Sunday lunch:

followed by this:

It was, of course, far too much for two to eat at a sitting.  There is lots left for today and tomorrow.

So that was it.  My own, personal, private long weekend.  And very enjoyable it was too.

I have a quieter week in prospect.  And it was a beautiful morning when we got up today.  The sun was just coming up in a clear, clear sky.  The sky was tinged lightly pink. And everything was as white as white can be.  I have dug out my winter clothes!