I am catching up on myself.
I had all sorts of plans for the day, but in the event, once Mark had buzzed off to work I amassed the dogs and we went off over the fell for the morning.
They have turned into hooligans whilst we have been otherwise occupied, and so I had a pocket crammed with bits of Good Dog Cheese, which meant that at least Rosie, who is passionate about eating, tagged adoringly along at my heels for the whole journey. This always looks impressive if you pass anybody, and at a single commanding word from you all the dogs instantly stop what they are doing and wheel around to trot behind you in a picture of faithful obedience. I always wait until they have gone before handing out the dog cheese and letting them charge off like barking lunatics again.
It was a splendid sort of day, thick with mist and very still. Not a breath of wind stirred, and everywhere was dark, and wet, and silent, and the trees loomed up like odd dark giants as we approached. Even our footsteps, splashing quietly through the mud, were muffled, like a film about murderers lurking outside country cottages, except without the murderer.
It was splendid to be outside again. Cambridge does not really have any outside, even the gardens seem to have an indoor sort of air to them. It was ace to plod up the hill and look to see which toadstools are still there and be surprised at which trees still have a couple of leaves left. The beck was high and the bullocks still out, and we saw a squirrel or two, it was good to be back in the real world again.
Plodding up the hill was surprisingly hard work. I have become idle during the last few weeks, and had to stop embarrassingly frequently to inhale rather hard.
It will be easier tomorrow.
When I got home I had to grit my teeth and get on with life again. There is a very lot of cooking that I have not done, and I had to start with some of the blackberry and apple mix.
I puréed this and shoved it through a sieve, ready to turn it into nice things. I like the idea of a blackberry fondant in the Christmas chocolates, we will have to see.
I made a huge curry and a tin of fudge. I cooked a chunk of ham for Mark’s sandwiches and made coffee chocolates, the nice sort with pecan nuts and brandy and cream. Then I went to Booths and bought ethical sausage meat. I cooked apples with onions and chillis, and mixed the whole lot together, because tomorrow I am going to make sausage rolls.
It was a contented sort of day in the end, unremarkable and tranquil. Mark went to work, and then stopped by the farm to dig up some potatoes, so we will be able to eat again this week. He has also got some peculiar new lamp that somebody else had put in their dustbin. He has been waiting for a suitable moment to own up to this because I am not always enthusiastic about Mark’s discoveries. I am of the opinion that most people are pretty good judges of what is rubbish.
It is a tall glass tube, almost as tall as me, which you fill with water and bubbles blow through it. Little lights in the bottom make it change colour. It is the sort of thing that might have appeared sophisticated in nineteen seventy, but I have agreed that we can put it in the flower bed in the conservatory where it might at least illuminate any spiders still lurking about in there.
It might even look a bit like Christmas.
