I have been on the taxi rank since half past six. It is now nine o’clock, and I have not had a customer yet.
I do not mind this in the least. I have been experimenting with cooking today, because I felt I should add some pulses into my diet.
Pulses are good for you. I know this because it said so in the August Daily Telegraph. You should eat pulses. I have forgotten why, probably they stop you getting dementia or something, that is usually the reason. They seem to worry about dementia in the Daily Telegraph.
I was mildly concerned about eating pulses because my experience of them, left over from a brief foray into vegetarianism in my twenties, is that they give you terrible wind.
It does not matter very much if I get terrible wind at the moment, because there is nobody at home apart from the dogs, and they will not care. They are in no position to grumble anyway, because Roger rolled in some badger poo this morning, and he smells vile. It would have to be pretty malodorous wind to compete with his nasty fragrance at the moment.
Hence I thought I would have a go. We have got pulses, they have been sitting in a jar on top of the cupboard for the last seven or eight years, because nobody eats them due to the worrying about the wind, so yesterday I got them down and put them to soak.
They soaked overnight and turned the water black. I do not know if this is normal or if they have just somehow become dusty in the jar, but today I gave them a good rinse off and dry, and set about turning them into something appetising, which was a jolly challenge, I can tell you. Pulses do not easily lend themselves to appetising menus.
I put some olive oil in a baking tray and added salt and madras curry powder. Then I chucked some monosodium glutamate in. I use this in cooking a lot. I used to pretend that I didn’t, but since it has now been announced that it isn’t any worse for you than salt and that the campaign to abolish it from our kitchens was funded by the Salt Marketing Board, I can use it with a clear conscience. It makes everything taste jolly good, I can tell you, and I had to do something to encourage the pulses.
I mixed it all up and chucked the pulses in, stirring them until they were throughly oily, and chucked the lot in the oven for half an hour.
The result, you may not be astonished to learn, was spiced pulses.
I tipped them into a jar and took some to work with me, and actually, they aren’t at all bad. They are very like the sort of peculiar snack you buy in Booths or Waitrose, in very expensive pastel-coloured paper bags with middle class pictures on the side. Every now and again you get one that threatens to break your teeth, but mostly they are pretty much all right, and I am pleased to have created a Health Giving Wholesome Dementia Free Snack for practically nothing at all. I know I paid for the pulses, but that was so many years ago it was practically before decimalisation and so doesn’t count.
Apart from that it was Clean Sheets Day, which is always a bit of a rush, and also I had my very first Shopping Delivery this morning.
I have never had a supermarket deliver to my house ever, and saw no reason to start, until this week, when to my horror, Booths had finally run out of russet apples.
I don’t like apples at all, except for russet apples, which I like so much that I have to ration myself otherwise I would eat half a dozen every day. I allow myself to take two to work and that is it.
Russet apples are very seasonal. That is, unlike the other horrid sorts of apple, they only turn up in the shops between autumn and spring. Once the season is over, lovers of russet apples are condemned to the long wait until next year.
Once Booths had run out I started casting my net around on the mighty Internet to see if anybody else still had any. There was a farm in Kent, but they declined to deliver to the Lake District, and then I realised that Asda was claiming to stock them.
They were not in stock at any of their shops, just online.
Of course, that was that, I had got to purchase some online.
I would just have bought apples, but then I discovered that they charged a minimum of a tenner to deliver apples, and only a fiver if you actually bought things like soap powder and loo roll, so I bought all of those things as well and admired their crafty marketing techniques. Imagine luring innocent bystanders in with the promise of russet apples and the next thing they know they have spent £54.63 and have got to get up early to let the delivery man in.
He turned up at a quarter past nine.
The shopping comes in plastic boxes which basically you have got to tip out in your hallway and give back to the driver, and then you spend the next half hour wandering dopily up and down the stairs holding things like tomato puree and wondering what to do with it.
It is a peculiar experience, and I am not sure I want to get used to it, but I am pleased to recollect that I have now got thirty five russet apples and do not need to worry about all this seasonal produce malarkey for a whole fortnight.
This is a happy moment.
Also I am pleased to announce that I do not have wind either.
What a splendid day.
