I am not writing in my diary.
It is hot.
Hot, here in the Lake District, who would ever have expected that?
Not me, certainly, and we are very warm here on the taxi rank.
There are many worse places to be spending a hot day. I have been leaning back in my seat, watching the boats puffing slowly up the lake, and drinking tea. I have got sandwiches as well, which are especially interesting sandwiches because I have changed the mayonnaise recipe.
I knew that would grab your attention. It is all happening here in Windermere, I can tell you.
Last week I mixed sliced garlic and chillis with the oil from a jar of sun dried tomatoes, and dumped prawns in it to lend them an exotic flavour for salads. When we had eaten the prawns I put the oil in the mayonnaise mix, complete with the chillis and garlic. It has given it a rather exciting pinkish colour and a satisfactory bite.
You will be pleased to hear that the tomatoes came in real sunflower oil, because I have had the jar since before we had an international sunflower emergency. These days the jar makes you the earnest promise that its contents are stored in sunflower oil but when you open it it is very clear that they are not, and it is some other rubbish substitute. Our beloved leaders have dealt with the shortage by changing the definition of sunflower oil, basically to be any old oil you want it to be. You could now steep your tomatoes in Castrol GTX and still write Sunflower Oil on the label, and this would be all right. By government standards, apparently, you are not telling a fib.
I think this tells us a very great deal about governance.
However, I digress, and I am pleased to say that the new mayonnaise is very much a success. It is not very much like mayonnaise from the shops, but then again, it never is. It always has tomatoes and garlic, and is made with fresh eggs from the butcher. It is excellent on sandwiches with Cheshire or Wensleydale cheese, and lettuce. It helps if the bread is fresh and warm as well.
I think I might be going on about picnics too much. Perhaps I am turning into the sort of person who takes a photograph of their dinner before they eat it. I don’t especially wish to do this because a sandwich wrapped in cling film never looks especially gourmet, even if you include the slab of buttery chocolate and raspberry cake, so you will have to make do with a description.
I am busily in the middle of food things, though, because we are going off in the camper van next week, and so I have a week of catering to be managed in advance.
I went to the butcher this morning for bacon. He has a mate with a smoker, and his smoked bacon is really jolly good and tastes of proper smoke, which is the way I like it, it is worth the indigestion that inevitably follows such joys. I am going to make cheese and bacon pies made with mustard and tomato pastry, and the butcher talked me into some spiced kebabs as well. I am sorry to say that they do contain tragic baby lambs but they smelled divine. He said he got the recipe from the chap in the Indian restaurant across the road, and that they are spicy but excellent.
I have made the pastry this morning whilst Mark dug the front garden over. This had become so overgrown it was embarrassing, indeed, somebody chatty in the street asked Mark if the place had been empty for a while before we moved in. It was a shocking mess, because we never, ever go there, and it is very easy not to notice that you can no longer get to the front door.
The postman will have to get to the front door now, because we have ordered some new school shoes for Oliver. His feet have become enormous and costly.
I have had enough of not writing a diary. I am going to go away and read my library book.
I might not write anything tomorrow either.
