Flat broke

I have been in discussions with a very nice lady at the Midland Hotel in Manchester.

We have had a series of emails during which I have been attempting to negotiate a discount for our Christmas visit.

I am sure that regular readers will remember that we visit The Midland every Christmas, where we hold our seasonal family gathering followed by a visit to the pantomime. Tales of drunken debauchery ought to follow on these pages after that, although more usually no tales whatsoever follow, because this is a diary, not a novel, and the entries subside to a line or two of badly-spelled, exhausted and fairly incomprehensible drivel. This indicates a time of superlative happiness and far too much to drink.

I love the Midland. It is my favourite place in the whole world. When I die I would like my ashes scattered there, preferably in a corner which is fairly infrequently hoovered, or maybe a plant pot.

Given that I am not dead yet we can only go to the Midland if we book, which is what I am doing now.

The Midland, just like us, has been taking advantage of the Bat Flu crisis to do a bit of redecorating, and their website is full of pictures of its newly modernised interior. I am not very pleased about this, because I am not a great fan of change, even if the result is enhanced wonderfulness, and was grumpy enough the last time, when all they did was changed the lampshades and paint everywhere blue. This time appears to be a transformation with new pillars and mirrors and innovations everywhere you look.

I am feeling very suspicious about it all.

We will reserve judgement.

Anyway, I have been discussing our festive arrangements by email with a kind lady in the customer service department. I explained to them that due to Bat Flu we had no money at all, and this afternoon they came back with a reply.

They were sorry to hear, they said, that my flat had been broken into, and they would be prepared to offer the rooms at the following rate.

This mystified me completely until I thought about it, after which it made me laugh very much.

Apart from that I have occupied my day in trying out the newly tiled kitchen.

It works much better with tiles on the walls.

Indeed, it is hardly the same place at all.

I made mayonnaise and two sorts of biscuits, and cornflake cakes for Oliver. I went to the Co-op as well, for apple juice and sausages, because after tomorrow there will be no shopping without a mask, and I wanted to put the evil moment off for as long as possible.

After that I got dinner ready.

You can see this in the picture.

Dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, ready to be fried later, it is slices of enormous mushroom.

The field at the farm has a crop of giant puffball mushrooms, and Mark brought one back the other day.

It was huge, bigger than a loaf of bread.

We have not yet eaten it. I will let you know what it was like. It is unlikely to kill us, because according to the mighty Internet, nothing else anywhere on the planet looks like a giant puffball mushroom, and so you need not worry that we are inadvertently consuming some poisonous hallucinatory fungus by mistake.

Probably.

You will be pleased to hear that the new washing machine has arrived. Mark is installing it now, or at any rate he is doing something noisy downstairs. It was brought in by two of the tallest delivery men I have ever seen, who could quite easily have picked it up in one hand. To my great happiness it turned out to have a small scratch and a dent in the side, which earned me a ten percent discount. I will never notice the dent because of the washing machine being in a cupboard, but I will certainly notice the cash coming back into our bank account.

It will help us not be flat broke any more.

LATER NOTE: Puffball mushrooms are boring to eat. They do not have very much flavour or texture. Apart from that they were fine, and also we are not dead.