Mark dug up some potatoes out of the garden yesterday. We don’t eat many potatoes in their recognisable form, because they are boring unless you have got a chip fryer, so we have made crisps instead.
That is to say, Mark made crisps. I made blackberry gin.
He sliced them very thinly and stirred them in oil with lots of paprika and garlic and salt, and chucked them in the air fryer. They are not very crisp, in fact they could sensibly be called Soggys, but they are jolly nice and we have got them in our picnic tonight. We had to put loads of salt on them to make them taste all right, and they are nowhere near as salty as crisps, the real thing must be practically half salt and half potato. Also it takes a lot more potato to make crisps than you might think. Mark used up loads of potatoes today and made hardly any crisps at all. There must be loads of potatoes in every packet.
I never would have thought it, you learn all sorts of interesting things in these pages.
We are, as I might have mentioned recently, heading out to Manchester tomorrow, so in between all of our other activities I have been flapping about trying to decide what to pack. I do not know why this is so difficult. Years ago in fact it was very easy. We had a Set Of Nice Clothes, carefully laundered and pressed, and we wore those.
We ran into trouble if we were going anywhere for more than a day, but at least the day was easy.
I have flapped and flapped and packed and puzzled and unpacked, it is for one night and so none of this is remotely necessary but I am flapping anyway. I have remembered our tickets and toothbrushes, everything else is just a detail really.
I am looking forward to it very much. We are dumping all of the dogs on Elspeth’s daughter, and going to see We Will Rock You all together, with our friends Kate and Kevin. It is the first time we have had a Grown Up Night for ages, usually all of our excursions include children, who of course are grown up as well but they are not elderly and are not at all interested in conversations about decaying kneecaps and pension investments. It will be lovely to have such a civilised adventure.
It has all threatened to come a bit unstuck because we have just discovered that the building at the back of the Midland has very tiresomely chosen tomorrow to host some ghastly sounding event celebrating Youth and Fairness For All and Kindness To Our Beloved Planet. People are private-jetting in from all over the world for this tedious project. They will be smiling starry-eyed California smiles at one another and thinking contentedly of their own personal loveliness.
You do not usually need to give a hoot what garbage is going on next door to a place, although we were quite concerned when our next door neighbour went off in an ambulance yesterday. You need not worry because he is back now, and quite recovered.
We have got to give a hoot about this, however, because it is going to make parking and travelling around Manchester into a huge nuisance. Not only is ultra glowing-smile boy Justin Trudeau in attendance, the whole shebang is going to be opened by the even more tiresome Prince Harry and black-on-the-inside Meghan.
They jolly well should be going up to Balmoral to see the Queen. She is so frail that she has had to miss Gordonstoun playing the pipes at the Braemar Games this year, and she likes that very much. Harry is so busy smiling and glowing that he hasn’t got time to pop up there and tell her how splendid she is.
If I were the Queen I would have not invited him anyway. I can’t think of anything worse than being stuck in Scotland with those two. Well, obviously I can, there are dental procedures in the world that would be pretty grim without anaesthetic, and I trod on a rusty nail once, but it is still a close-run thing.
Anyway, Prince Ginger and his wife are going to be in Manchester, and they have gone on and on about the danger that they are in until the organisers have promised to do so much security that people are not even allowed to walk past on the pavement. The car park will be full and quite possibly the bar at the lovely Midland will be full as well, although not with Prince Ginger, who is buzzing off to somewhere where he will not be persecuted by journalists who get in the way of the Netflix cameras. Kevin thinks that the glowing entourage will probably go to the Lowry anyway, which would be better, the Lowry is a hideous Clockwork Orange affair with orange furniture and glass walls, they will fit in nicely there.
It is very tiresome, although I confess to some fascinated curiosity about the massed ranks of World Movers And Shakers who are expected to be in attendance, and am hoping very much that some of them will turn up in the bar at the Midland so I can watch them from a safe distance, and see if they are all as confident and self-assured as we are supposed to believe. Also, as Elspeth pointed out, if anybody important has been staying at the Midland the hotel will have scrubbed everywhere and all the staff will be at their most ingratiatingly polite, which will be nice, although Mark groaned and said he supposed he had better make sure he has got lots of tip money with him.
I might not write in here tomorrow. I will be too busy becoming intoxicated and cross about world leaders nicking all the parking spaces. Also I will not have any Famous People stories to tell anyway because I never recognise anybody because of not having a television, so even if the Sultan of Iraq were to get drunk on the next table with John Major, the Kardashians and Joe Biden I would not know, I could not pick any of them out of a crowd. I am not exactly sure what a Kardashian does, although I know they are very successful at it.
I am looking forward to We Will Rock You.
I will tell you all about it when I get chance.
