Zorac's LiveJournal

...for tomorrow we diet. And by "tomorrow", I mean in two or three weeks when the assorted left-overs, snacks and sweetmeats have finally met their demise. The past few days have, not unexpectedly, contained considerable amounts of both food and alcohol (although the former rather closer to excess than the latter). On the plus side, we have been out for a walk every day, and have spent little time in front of the goggle-box (although such sedentary pursuits as reading, playing board games, and wrestling with puzzles, quizzes, and crosswords are little better for the health).

First year with the new kitchen, and we actually managed to get the turkey spot on (after missing the mark in opposite directions the previous two years), so Christmas dinner itself was an almost¹ complete success. Alas, the traditional Christmas Eve ox-tounge was possibly even more over-salted than the previous year despite additional soaking, so it looks like that's off the menu next time. Today was the equally traditional turkey and left-over-vegetable curry - something that has very little danger of going wrong.

To add some educational merit to this post, here's a recipe for you. A rather fine pudding henceforth to be known as ( Collapse )

1) The "almost" part being due to the Mini Bagpuss Crackers (eight for a pound). These promised a hat, a motto and a sticker sheet in each one. After one cracker each, we had two hats, four mottos (one blank) and no sticker sheets. After the remaining four crackers, we just managed an additional two paper hats, a total of six mottoes³, and one solitary sticker sheet. Unimpressed.

2) I'm not aware of anyone suffering a coronary as a direct result of eating this cake, but proceed at your own risk.

3) On further examination, we discovered that all six were printed with the same joke, which I reproduce verbatim below for your amusement:

What's the difference between a railway shed and tree ?
One leaves.its shed and the other sheds its leaves.

Not quite right, methinks...

So, I spent last week chez mes parents in the south of France.

Short version: Heat. Books. Pool. Wine. Food.

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Well, once again my horses from the office sweepstake didn't do terribly well. One was the first horse to fall - and at the first fence. The other did manage to finish - but in last place. Ah, well...

Three years ago, it was a different story - I had my aunt to visit for the weekend, and she'd been staying with friends on Friday night. One of her friends had a brother who was a jockey in the National, riding on a horse called Red Maurader. Naturally, my aunt had to have a punt on the 33-1 outsider, and after a particularly gruelling race in which only 5 horses finshed, who should come first but the one on our ticket! Naturally, in true Rigby-Jones fashion, we took the proceeds and went for a slap-up meal - and at those odds we had a very good time!

So, finally here's my opportunity to bore you all with details of what I've been doing for the last month or so. Well, selected highlights thereof. This being part the first, so hopefully windows can do less damage than when it crashed and lost the whole lot...

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I'm off to the south of France for Xmas with the parents. Hopefully it will be at least a degree or two warmer there. I'll be back online in the office on Monday. Thanks to all of you who I've had cards from: addedentry, frayer, expetesso, heidi8, hermorrine, akahannah, imc, jiggery_pokery, kay_taylor, maggie_malfoy, nmalfoy, sophie10, wednesdayschild & huskyteer.

And for those of you who haven't seen it, here's my fandom card design - in Glorious Technicolor!

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So along with the irksome work crises, there have been some upsides in the last couple of days. Somehow I managed to get the spare room cleared out and the flat into some semblance of order before Mum arrived on Friday night. We cooked up a nice steak dinner and watched a DVD. Yesterday, we trundled into town to scour the charity shops, and our luck was in - there was a book sale outside Oxfam HQ in Summertown. Between that and the shops there, we picked up a fair few books, and I garnered an original edition of Trivial Pursuit. Lunch was at Pierre Victoire - their usual excellent deal, £8.90 for a three course meal. After this, we went to the pictures to see Down With Love, then home. After tea, we pursued trivialities until the crises returned once more.

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