I am very pleased to be able to tell you that by lunchtime today my headache had completely cleared up, helped along a bit by slightly excessive consumption of drugs. Fortunately I have travelled abroad enough to know that the recommended amount in the UK is considerably less than the recommended amount anywhere else. I considered that today was definitely a Turkish headache.
It was such an enormous relief not to have a headache that the day felt splendid, and I got all sorts of things done. I can tell you that there is absolutely no pleasure as glorious as not being in pain, I buzzed along contentedly, pegging washing out and washing the breakfast pots, all without a single agonising pulse starting from the back of my neck.
I was so very pleased with myself that I made a risotto to have in our flasks for picnics, and after that I made the Christmas cake.
I had an exciting time with this, because I have improved on the recipe a bit this year, at least, I think it will probably be an improvement, tiresomely I won’t properly find out until Christmas.
I usually bake just with wholemeal flour, but for the Christmas cake I have used a third of chestnut flour and a third of coconut flour instead. These promised on their healthy-looking brown paper bags to add a nutty flavour to my baking, reasonably enough. It is lovely to have reached an age where I can find such an idea exciting, how awful to be eighteen and to be obliged to have drugs and music and erotic adventures in order to be thrilled by life.
I stirred in black treacle and mounds of brandy-soaked apricots and cherries, and shoved it in the oven underneath a tent of tin foil. I have no idea how it will taste, because it is a modified recipe for parkin that I have long ago readjusted to become Christmas cake, and which the taxi drivers who worked for us just used to call brandy cake, because of its most easily identifiable ingredient.
Mark was at the farm, so I scraped the bowl myself, and actually I thought it was jolly good, and definitely identifiably nutty. I could tell this even through the brandy, so it was probably worth the £6 that I blew on a special seasonal bag of chestnut flour from the healthy shop in the village. Also I have got loads left for mince pies later, so it could be considered an investment.
I left the cake in the oven for almost an hour longer than it said in the recipe, but even so, when I got it out it still wasn’t quite done in the middle.
Of course I didn’t discover this until I had taken it out of the tin and the die was cast. Mark had got back from the farm by then and said that probably I hadn’t followed the recipe to the letter, which was obviously true, since the recipe has only been a loose guideline for years, it would be a very boring cake if I only put the stuff in that the recipe suggested.
He suggested helpfully that perhaps we should eat it and I should try again tomorrow. You will not be surprised to learn that I declined, and sloshed a further quantity of cognac over it and put it in the cupboard. The cognac-adding process is a regular event between now and Christmas, we will probably have to eat it with a spoon anyway.
I am at work now. The picture a the top of the page is of my last home-activity of the day. We have got a wicker linen basket, the lid of which became completely disintegrated and eventually turned into a thousand bits of dog-chewed stick all over the carpets. Mark made us a new one the other day, so that we have got somewhere to put the coffee tray in the mornings. Today I painted it yellow and painted a picture of a flower on the top. It is even nicer than it was when it was plain wicker now, and it makes me feel happy every time I come upstairs.
We have got cake and risotto and clean sheets and a pretty laundry basket.
Life is good.
