I have started painting the picture of the lobster on the camper van.
I was irritated to discover, during my online investigations, that most of the references that I have found online to these rather spectacular animals are simply related to the best ways to cook them.
I shall fill in the gaps here. Lobsters live about fifty years…fifty years! and live by hunting smaller marine creatures and eating various sea vegetables. They have to shed their outer shells regularly, which is so exhausting that the biggest lobsters die of it in the end.
Unlike us they don’t get weaker and frailer as they get old, though, because they have got a special enzyme that repairs them as they start to get creaky. Also they have blue blood, like most of Oliver’s class at school, and are mostly coloured blue anyway, they only go pink when they have been cooked.
There have been fossils found of prehistoric lobsters that are as big, and would have been as heavy, as people. I am not sorry that they do not grow like that any more, it would not be very nice to come across something of that nature feeling a bit peckish in a rock pool.
All in all they are interesting and peculiar creatures. Just so you know, if you come across one on your plate which has its tail curled underneath it, then it has been boiled alive, and you are responsible for an appalling horror. A lobster which was dead when it was cooked has its tail straight.
Some nice things happened to us this evening.
The first was whilst we were getting ready for work.
We were late for work, obviously, because of having spent the day at the farm, and as I was getting the washing in one of the other taxis pulled up at the back of the house, an Indian driver whom we like very much. He offered the obligatory collection of opening insults, as taxi drivers do, in this case referring to our tardiness and incapability of organising our lives, and then produced a tub full of curry that he had made for us, because of our English culinary incompetence.
It smelled gorgeous, and when we tried a bit it was spicy enough to make us gasp, we shall cook it with some rice or Naan bread on our day off. We were jolly touched, what a jolly kindly thought.
He added a couple more insults and buzzed off, we took some coffee chocolates to work as a thank-you present for him afterwards, but we were immensely pleased, what a lovely thing to have done.
The other nice thing was that our lodger brought us a box of chocolates, presumably to say thank you for nagging her into exhaustion for a week. In actual fact we haven’t minded having her therefore at all, if we are honest we haven’t really noticed her much. She tiptoes off to work before we get up and is usually fast asleep in bed when we get back.
On the few occasions when our paths have crossed I have occupied the conversation by helpfully explaining to her the various ways in which she should be managing her life differently. I am very good at this, is is really useful to know everything so much better than everybody else. To my surprise she has been polite and friendly and has not once told me where to put my handy advice.
She went out with Oliver after she had finished work last night. They went to the Library Gardens to lie on the grass and watch the meteor shower with a set of binoculars. It sounded a though they had an ace time, they came home happily star-struck with the wonders of the Universe and drank hot chocolate before they went to bed.
I saw the meteor showers as well, how amazing to be on a rock hurtling though dust clouds in the universe.
The picture is Mark’s invention to add extra warmth to the water heater. The engine water pumps round the coil and heats the tank whilst we are driving.This will not give us constant hot water but will mean that we use far less gas, because we will never be heating the water from cold.
He is jolly clever.
