National Trust Committe Day - Still Hot

Picture 1 is Bergen from the mountain top. Reached, I am told by our 'Artic Circle Correspondent' by funicular railway. I'd had a mental picture of ropes and croutons, or is it crampons - I always confuse the two.

Super photo whatever, I just love the clouds. As I can't import into Picasa from folders at the moment, I had to use the Ways & Means Act to publish it in the Blog. But I was confident of getting there by hook or by crook.

Although I have only been blogging since March, I have worked out some useful 'workarounds'. To the extent that, via the Picasa forums, I was able to suggest a solution to a user who had reached the 'hair-tearing' stage with a problem in posting a picture. I'm certainly no expert though.

Picture 2 is the Shepherd's Pie which I foretold yesterday, from the remains of the lamb gigot. When it came out of the oven Y said that it looked good enough for a recipe book. So I thought 'why not?'.

I haven't forgotten the earlier request for the definitive 'meat & potato pie' recipe - which would produce a result 'like mother used to make'. As was suggested, it no doubt centred round shin beef, preferably dark purple in colour, and firm maincrop potatoes which wouldn't disintegrate in the oven. I would also suggest that the 'meat and potato' element would need precooking, otherwise the pastry would be done before the rest of the pie. Also a pie-funnel would be an essential piece of equipment or the pastry would be all soggy...........zzz.......zzzz

This afternoon Y was at a National Trust sub-committee meeting. The sub-committee is charged with the resposibility of arranging speakers for the winter monthly meetings. I think that some are sorted up to 2008! But I agree that you can't arrange things too early because organisations snap-up the best speakers. We were made most welcome and G (who isn't on that sub-committee either) and I happily chatted computers until well after the meeting had ended. I had decided to use Windows Live Local directions finder and for part of the journey it took me down a section of road which has been closed for years!! I shall know better in future.

The second Amazon book arrived this morning, perfectly wrapped etc., and within days of my order. Very efficient. A couple of days ago we were talking about bees and I remembered a Chick Murray story. You younger ones won't know who he was but he really was witty. He was in a posh hotel where the breakfast marmalade and honey came in those little top-of-your-thumb sized containers. He picked one up and said to the waiter "I see you keep a bee"...............