Meatballs

We started the day off with a cash crisis.

Last night at work it was very quiet indeed. This would not constitute a problem for a more organised person, but I find that somehow money only ever stays in my possession for a very short time.

I am not quite certain exactly how I manage it, but inevitably I go into each new working day from a point of having entirely disposed of the income from the previous night, and invariably have got nothing left.

Some days it is even worse, because I have borrowed money out of my cash box float, and then I have got to earn something before I can get back up to nothing again.

We have got lots of things to pay for this week, not least things like the mortgage and the bits to fix both taxis for their MOT certificates, and the new licenses, and all sorts of other dull but necessary expenses.

In addition to all of those, we have got to drive over to Yorkshire tomorrow to collect both children for the exeat, assuming that both of them are still alive, since it is some time since we have heard from either of them, although I did notice that Lucy had bought a new jacket on my Amazon account, so she must have been alive last week at least. After we have retrieved the children we are meeting Lucy’s grandparents for lunch, and this thought reminded me that we had got nothing in the house that the children would eat.

In fact we didn’t have much that anybody would eat. A detailed inspection of the fridge revealed four dubious eggs, some drooping and elderly celery and the last of a kilner jar of homemade pickled courgettes. The latter has been there for quite some time, because we don’t really like them very much and only eat them in a really boring sandwich emergency, but it is worth observing that they do keep well, we have had this jar since the summer of 2011, and have been eating them a lot whilst we have been busy over the holidays.

The freezer had some beef burgers that we bought and although the children thought that they tasted all right, they made the house smell so nasty during the cooking process and then for the whole of the following day, that I couldn’t bear to try again, although I have kept them in case anybody ever invites us to a barbeque on a night when we are not working. As well as that there were some takeaways that some friends left with us once and it turned out that we didn’t like, but have kept in case anybody ever drops round who would like to eat year old frozen unidentifiable Chinese takeaway. As well as these treasures, there was a homemade curry fitted to the shelves in the door, and four bake-them-yourself bread rolls.

Clearly this constituted a crisis that needed resolving with shopping.

It took some time, because we had got to go down the back of the seats in both taxis, which was lucrative, but in the end we managed to raise £23.10, and Mark went off to the farm to make my car work again, and I went shopping.

I did a careful tour around the local shops, buying things in the cheapest places, which I know upsets farmers because of the milk, but there was no margin for other people’s economic considerations on a limited budget, and secretly I was jolly grateful in such emergency circumstances that Morrisons had squeezed a cheap deal out of somebody else on my behalf.

When I got home I made meatballs with some reduced-to-clear pork mince and some of the spices we bought in the little Thai shop in Blackpool last week. I made mayonnaise with the eggs and cut some chicken into pieces and fried it in spiced batter. I bought cheese and olives and put them in tubs with tomato flavoured oil, and by the time Mark came home the fridge was looking healthy and I was feeling virtuous, and the house smelled pleasingly of spices and cooking and warmth.

We went off to work and for our swim then, and work was suddenly, unexpectedly busy. This was a real, if unexpected, relief, because I had had to top up the back of the seats money with a pound out of my float money as well, and so had started the night in negative equity: but everything came out all right in the end.

The picture is Mark mending taxis at the farm. I thought it was more interesting than a picture of meatballs.