Monday, December 24, 2007

Meal fine - The Yorkshires rose - Magic in the Air

An unexpected blog post because I can't settle down to going to sleep. Too excited perhaps. The meal worked fine and everybody had a great time. No tears, no stresses and nobody huffy. For perfection the roast potatoes could have been crisper and, in taste terms, the shin was 9/10 compared to Redgates. I must give the Hardwick Hall Farm Shop a whirl - I understand that all the meat is reared on the estate and the beef is reared for culinary quality rather than ex dairy cattle. The picture in the linked site looks inviting. If of course you are a carnivore. If not, please don't open the link.

Millicent was very taken with her flashing ducks (they flash when the underside is in contact with moisture) and she was a great help to people opening presents. We have a tradition that people can open a few presents on Xmas Eve, because, with Santa being so busy, he sometimes delivers early to grandparents houses.
Picture 2 is/are grandad's socks. I had told Santa that I needed some really colourful socks to wear on rest-days. And wowee ! his elves must have worked hard to produce these, which are absolutely what I wanted. I love them.

Comments.....Thanks everyone for your lovely comments. They are much appreciated. and help keep the jolly old blog rolling along. Flitting back a day Bungus, perhaps the poetic form you need for your 'ospital odes is the ballad. A proud history and a flexible format !

And we have Jill to thank for today's quotation:-

"The reason Santa Claus looks so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live!"

And thanks Pete for the news from the Isle of Man. Click here to read all about his weird Xmas Card and other sheenanigins. Compared with Reg's Morrisons experience, ours in the morning, now seems mild. Although the car-park was pretty full there was no problem leaving it.
I'll have another go at 'bed'. Kept off the coffee and had an "echinacea and raspberry tea bag" instead. I think the technical term is a tisanne. They are mentioned in my birthday present book about tea - they are not of course 'tea' at all. When interviewed about the book the author said the original Mr. Twining would have had no objection to them. Apparently, if he had spotted a potential profit, he would have been in the forefront. I also had a left over ham sandwich. Sleep tight and I'll maybe catch you tomorrow.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tales abound of people having to go round supermarket car parks several times to find a space. Apparently the police had to take charge at Forest Town Asda to get people in and out.
One bit of good news; granddaughter Alex, doing some bits & bobs of last minute shopping for Sandra, phoned early afternoon to say that Tesco had bags of sound tomatoes reduced to 10p. Sandra ordered 2 not realising they were at least 1kg each. Good job she likes real tomato soup (with basil).

I seem to remember Tissane playing for France in the World Cup some years ago.
The haunch of venison Danny got for Xmas Day looks great. As it is a new taste experience I will report and I’ll try to save you a left over sandwich.

I watched a pretty pathetic farce on ITV 1 tonight. The best thing about it was a retired policeman played, inimitably by Warren Clarke, as a less amiable version of our blogmeister – except that his friends and relatives didn’t want his company and (until the happy end) he was disrespectful and inconsiderate to his wife.
I also watched a Xmnas Blankety Blank repeat hosted by Les Dawson (with Ken Dodd, Russell Harty and Lorraine Chase among the panel). What struck me most about it was that the top prize was a video recorder.
Also watched a programme about Pavarotti. Apparently he was a great fan of the little black licorice pellets called MELLOIDS (remember?) to which he was introduced by the great Australian soprano Joan Sutherland who also helped him with his breathing. It seems that Melloid production was banned because they contained too much menthol.
And I watched the repeat of the Jamie Oliver Xmas Special. Very entertaining. His carving method certainly seems to simplify things and make serving easier.

Anonymous said...

I hope everybody had a good day yesterday and that Santa brought you all exactly what you wanted. He did a fine job for me. One of my presents was a book of photographs of the Jesus Army by John Angerson. It's called "Love Power Sacrifice" and I highly recommend it. Elaine also bought me a calendar, made by VistaPrint, featuring a number of my Venice at Night photographs. RG has seen them (the photographs not the calendar) and posted nice comments on this blog about them. I must e-mail a couple to him for possible use in future editions.

I love the socks, RG, and feel sure you can use them to calibrate your printer!

My "illness" travails continued last Saturday. I was starting to think how much better I was feeling when I walked to the fridge for something. On opening the door a bottle of champagne lept off the top shelf and headed rapidly for the tiled floor. Luckily, my big toe broke its fall and the bottle and tiles remained intact. My toe was badly bruised but not broken either. I've been hobbling around for the past few days.

On Christmas Eve we went for a meal at Petit Paris in Nottingham, a reasonably authentic French restaurant which we love. It has a staircase up to it and a few steps inside. As I was departing somewhat gingerly down these steps I got the distinct impression the maitre d' thought I was drunk!

We went to Morrisons at Bulwell on Saturday and got parked pretty easily. However, it took us half an hour to get through the checkouts.

Rob