I have run about all day, and I am so tired that it is a relief to be sitting quietly on the taxi rank.
It is especially nice because one of the things that has kept me busy was the manufacture of a tandoori butter chicken curry, some of which I have just eaten, and which turned out to be splendid.
It wasn’t actually tandoori, because that means something to do with a charcoal oven. I don’t have a charcoal oven. I did consider opening the doors to the stove and trying to prop it up in there, but since I had just burned a soap powder box and some firewood that had remnants of tar paper stuck along the edges, I decided that probably I had better not.
I suppose actually it ought to be described as a British Gas butter chicken curry, in the interests of accuracy, because you never know if beings from the distant future will read these pages one day long after we are all dead. I do not want them to build up an entirely inaccurate picture of our primitive twenty first century civilisation based on rubbish told to them by me, and so I will stick to the plain truth.
There was no tandoori involved at all, I cooked it in a pan on top of the gas stove. The BBC Good Food recipe said to add tandoori, and it appears that you can actually buy tandoori flavour in a jar. This is obviously nonsense, because you really can’t put charcoal flavour in a jar, any more than you can put the smell of clean washing in a candle, and in any case I thought it most unlikely that it would be available in Windermere Co-op. I left that bit out.
Actually it was more or less exactly like a korma, only with added tomatoes, and maybe more ginger. I often forget the ginger when I make korma, but you can’t tell the difference.
In any case it was jolly nice, and filled my taxi with a gorgeously heartening warm and spicy aroma. This was ace, because outside it is cold. They have just gritted the road, and the wind is making the trees flap about menacingly. I am in my warm taxi. I have just eaten my British Gas Butter Chicken, and I have got a cup of hot chai to help me along whilst I am writing to you.
Apart from the curry, which really only took up a little bit of the day, I have been busy.
Once Mark had gone to work I took the dogs for our scramble up the fell side, in order to get the exercise and fresh air that will keep Alzheimer’s at bay, after which I tidied up the loft.
I did not tidy it up really. It was a worse mess when I had finished than before I started. I have been putting off going into it for ages.
I am embarrassed to tell you that all the beds still had the sheets on them from Number One Daughter’s family visiting at Christmas.
I have known this for all this time, and not done anything about it.
Every now and again I have gone up there for something and been instantly plunged into guilt, although not enough to do anything about it. Today more than a whole month had passed since their departure. It is February, and I knew that really I must Act.
I tidied up and stripped the sheets. It was untidy again as soon as I had stripped the sheets off, because there were quilts and pillows and blankets everywhere. I folded them up and put them in a pile on the bed, but there is something unlovely about a sheetless bed, especially one piled high with uncovered quilts and pillows.
I chucked the sheets down the stairs and closed the door. It is so far up the house that I do not need to think about it. It is not often that I feel the impulse to climb all three flights of stairs. I will not notice the mess in the loft for ages.
Next I cleaned up Lucy’s room which has also been fairly untouched since Christmas. I was pleased to discover that I had already cleaned the bathroom and stripped the sheets, presumably in a virtuous housewifely moment, although I had no recollection of doing it. I wiped everywhere and put clean sheets on the bed and closed that door as well.
After that I cleaned out the cupboard under the kitchen sink. I threw away lots of junk, and found lots of things that I had forgotten that I had, like furniture polish and stuff that you use to clean your oven.
I put it all back tidily and closed the door.
I am enjoying being on the taxi rank where I do not have to clean anything.
Have a picture of the new kitchen. We still haven’t got the work surfaces on.
