What to do today?

Well, I never ever ever have trouble with that question. More trouble with deciding what not to do. 

Yesterday I mostly did

• sewing - wait and see, the fabric I am using I call my bird poo fabric. 
•  jigsawing- done the edge pieces, and a bit more sorting
•  cooking - roasted the best bit of ham ever for a while - I soaked it overnight in cold water, rinsed  and drained it well. In a large pan, added the meat, clean cold water,  a vegetable stock cube and the last bit of a bag of frozen  chopped carrot onion and celery  - mire poire. I'm not a fan of aromatics so no bay leaf was added! I slowly boiled it for two hours. Then took it out of the pan, patted it dry and knifed off the top layer of fat. I mixed a few spoons of honey and mustard bought a few years ago from Chain Bridge Honey Farm - a lovely place we visited when on holiday up there. I added two sachets of cafe demerara sugar ( Needs must  - have run out! ) and a glug of proper maple syrup. I scored the rest of the fat on the ham and spooned on half the honey mix and popped it in a tinfoil lined roasting tray, in a hottish oven for ten minutes, then repeated with the rest of the glaze.  It was delicious kept warm whilst my hassleback potatoes cooked! Friends who follow me on instagram have already seen my photo of the most glamorous one. Here is the uncropped shot! The ugly one at the  top back tasted the best!!!

• Bathroom cleaning did the bath, then ran myself a bubblebath as I cleaned the rest of it
• Had a bath feeling smug at the cleanliness of my bathroom. It never fails to amaze me piss me off, that both menfolks in this household think it's perfectly acceptable to have a shave in my beautiful showroom shiny sink literally minutes after I've finished cleaning it. 
• Leg shaving - this one does warrant it's own bullet point, despite it occurring in the previous bullet point. Also as the Little Red Hen ate all the bread she baked herself - *I* cleaned the bath. therefore *I* can do what I want in it!    took some time being of gorillesque proportions,
• Re rinsed and wiped the bath clean. 
• Social media chatting with real life people I hold dear and internetty friends - never met ( yet ) but equally as dear. I'd attended a zoom thing with our very best drinking buddies and had a really good laugh, really good chat and just so lovely to see them all too. Im going to call it Zoom Club. It was based on a theme of Lancashire V Yorkshire. Reeeeeeally good fun. Everyone picked a team and had food accordingly. Except us! Not that we were killjoys! I'd ordered, as a treat, some good old fashioned Lancashire fish n chips ( also available in Yorkshire )  but the timings were out! They were scoffed in record time! Actually both I and the HG are halfy halfy  L and Y. I'm comfortable with a foot in either camp! I shared this dialect quiz that my friend sent me;  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html and it was quite accurate! Have a go...the cynic in me wondered about the influence of internet algorithyms too mind. 
• Telly watching - Whizzed through BGT. Laughed my head off at In for a penny - it's silly and funny. I watched a couple of the new season of Manifest when I was up with the dog - instantly reminded of how the main characters annoyed me so much - yet am hooked! Later on the telly was on with that Van de Vilk thing but I wasn't paying it much attention. I was group chatting with a lovely bunch or real life folks calling ourselves 'Meet for Breakfast' because that's what we do when not in lock down.  We were being challenged quiz wise and I am going to challenge the Cheese and Wine lot when we next have Zoom Club. 
• Dog training - some training in the garden on the stop whistle and then again via zoom with my real life dog walker/trainer and the rest of Bluebell's friends. Latest trick I have to perfect with her is called paddling - now she does this a little bit already. I don't know who was more knackered afterwards, me or her.  We do sit and wait, recall, tricks, down, left paw, right paw, roll over, turns, bowing, heel work, sit and stay, leave it, - sitting her in a circle of toys and treats and then she has to only get the one I ask her too ( hmmmmmm ), stop,  agility - as far as I can in the house - my zoom doesn't work outside, so we weave through obstacles and then jump over the makeshift jump the HG adapted from the outside one.  basic retrieve and retrieve the toy by it's name! I have probably missed out things the trainer merrily asks us to do in her sing song voice! I miss our real Sunday class. Zoom is a great alternative but there's nothing like meeting the eye of another humiliated owner as your dog shows you up bigstyle in front of everyone! 
• Time in the garden - didn't do anything gardenny, mostly chatted to the neighbours, picked up after Bluebell and photographed Alfred and Alex. 
• Ignored cravings for cake, massive cake and cream!
• Went to bed without falling asleep in the chair!

Alex

Alfred, but from the side!

Alfred from the top. Lots of teeny flower heads make up one flower head! I'm not convinced, you k now, that he is an alium because the ones in the front ended up with a huge ball shaped flower head like a dandelion clock.

So Monday is sunny so far, the washer is on, the dog has been fed and I'm in Blogland with S2 of Afterlife on. Bluebell is currently zooming up and down the room with a three legged purple octopus in her mouth. So far, the mysterious benefactor remains mysterious! 

 Lots of love from

Rachel *life in the fast lane* Radiostar xxx