We collected Guffy’s new medicine from the vet this morning.
She did not like it at all.
Fortunately we did not give it to her until the end of the day, when my trousers were about to go into the washing machine and I was about to have a shower anyway.
She has just about forgiven us for it, after considerable quantities of smoked trout to reassure her of our heartfelt contrition.
She has got to have it every day for six days. It is not going to be a good week.
After all our worrying about Elspeth’s van, when Mark rang Autoparts for the bit this morning, they said that they couldn’t get one until tomorrow, so that was the end of that. There was nothing more that could be done there, so to our great happiness, we had an unexpected day with which to faff about with our own van instead.
The only problem was that I had not been expecting it, and had left myself several jobs to be done at home.
We had originally intended to have a night off last night, but I objected to that, in the trying-not-to-be-grumpy sort of way that you do when things are not going the way that you think that they jolly well should. Nights off should be spent recovering from a day filled with excitingly happy things, and it seemed a shocking waste to use one up by merely recovering from hoovering the living room and fixing Elspeth’s van, so I had gone off to work instead.
We were determined that tonight would be a proper night off, the sort where you can sit about drinking gin and feeling smugly pleased with your achievements. It called for some determined self-indulgence, and so we needed both pudding and also chocolates.
We usually have several large tubs of chocolates in the living room for these moments, but we have misfortunately eaten them all, and so I had to make some.
I made coffee chocolates with cream and brandy, and a raspberry cream mousse, whilst Mark swept and tidied up.
He was sweeping the conservatory when he made rather a splendid discovery.
One of the fruits on the Swiss Cheese plant had ripened.
You know that they have ripened because their scaly shell suddenly bursts open.
There were Swiss Cheese plant scales all over the floor, and a half-undressed scaly fruit.
Of course we had to try it straight away, and to our astonishment, everything that we had read about it turned out to be true.
It was truly, wonderfully divine.
I have never had a Swiss Cheese plant fruit before, and they are very peculiar. They are intensely juicy, and have almost exactly the texture of a pineapple, with a flavour a bit like a banana. They are oddly spicy, leaving your mouth tingling. This is because of some kind of crystals that form in the plant.
There are another dozen or so fruits left to ripen.
This was a happy thought.
We liked it very much. Swiss cheese plant fruits are so rare as to be almost unknown in this country, and it was difficult not to be very self-congratulatory about it, although of course it is nothing to do with us at all, only that the plants happen to be perfectly suited by the climate in our conservatory. Actually they are getting very cramped and a bit sorry for themselves, really we ought to consider trying to train them to go across the roof a bit.
Even with both of us rushing about doing things, we did not get finished until lunchtime, and it was two o’clock before we got to the van, but once there we bashed on determinedly, almost until it was too dark to see any more.
We have built the structure for the back windows.
I have run out of time for telling you all about it so perhaps a picture might be best.
With any luck we will manage to get a bit more time with it before Mark has got to go away again.
I do hope so.
The coffee chocolates were ace as well. We have thoroughly recovered from our day.
