Happy Endings for Hosiery

Scrambled eggs and spicy tomatoey deliciousness.

Peanutbutter, honey and banana on toast.

It is a rare load of laundry for me in which only pairs of socks emerge at the other end.  And yet, today I have achieved just that: a rummage of contentedly coupled hose (rummage seems to me to be the aptest collective noun for socks that I can think of). So, my contribution to the pantheon of writings about lost socks is an usual, happy tale of halves and their wholes. That's nice. For the socks.

Darning, and Other Acts of (Self) Love

Peanutbutter and banana on toast.

A few weekends ago, I spent a goodly portion of a morning darning the many holes in the cashmere socks that I wear to bed when it's cold. Darning, I realise, is the greatest act of self love there is.

It is also -- I realised when I woke up this morning with my big toe protruding through a new unravelling -- the most Sisyphean act there is. Well, that and tidying my bedroom.

The Fried Eggs Have It

Toast with jam and peanutbutter. And grapes.

Most of the tales of my Great Grandparents, who opened the family home as a hotel in the late 1950s, suggest they were not natural customer servers... I recently heard one about eggs (which the scrambling of tonight's supper ones put me in mind of).

One morning my Great Grandfather (presumably the breakfast chef that day) walked in to the dining room and asked "who's for poached eggs?" -- a smattering of hands were raised -- "fried eggs?" -- some more -- "scrambled eggs" and so on. Once everyone had put in their request, he announced: "the fried eggs have it" and disappeared off to the kitchen.

I wish I was even a little bit this audacious.

The Girl in the Tower

Bacon roll; toast with cream cheese and jam;
leftover egg sandwiches; honey nut cornflakes & a banana.

I went home this weekend to my tower. It was full of leaves. I leave the windows open because a room with four outside walls and no heat and a leaky roof gets a little damp...

It all sounds rather romantic, but I seem to be living in an inside-out fairytale where princes turn into frogs, and your hot water bottle is always leaky.

Still, at least there a plenty of good fairies about.

And I suppose the view's not bad either:

Excellent Creatures

Peanutbutter on toast

Tonight I have mostly been snuggling with this guy, and drinking wine. He is an excellent listener. As are the excellent humans I spent the evening with.

Something Afoot

Banana; a raspberry bun; boiled egg on toast;
doppelgänger shreddies (the astute amongst you
 will notice a breakfast is missing;
it was a fishcake with a poached egg & hollandaise

Either shoes are getting bigger, or my feet are getting smaller. Time was, I was a dependable size 6. These days, a 6 is like wearing a pair of clown shoes, and a 5 is just that little bit too small -- length-wise at least. (Britons, by and large seem to be a spade-footed, short-legged species, and I've yet to find a pair of shoes that didn't slop off my heels, and a pair of trousers that didn't need letting down.)

It's an odd position to find myself in: almost-dainty-footed-ness. I've always thought of my feet as somewhat flipper like. Perhaps because growing up my father always told me I had hands like feet and feet like fenders, oh and tombstones rather than teeth. I've long considered my extremities rather outsized for my height -- all legs and arms and fingers and toes and not a great deal of torso -- or head, as it happens (I once borrowed a five-year-old cousin's bicycle helmet; I was not five at the time. More like 25.).

I feel like I've wandered into an odd kind of a fairy tale, and I can't yet tell if I'm the heroine, or just a vanishing-footed curiosity along the way...

Damn You, Susan Hill

Saturday: the works! Sunday: a croissant;
Monday: toast & blackberry jam; Tuesday: an almond croissant

I glimpsed about a second of The Woman in Black this evening, a rattling door handle, and Daniel Radcliffe's quivering eyebrow, and I just know I am going to have nightmares. I know it.

I've never understood why people enjoy scary films (or plays!). I can work myself into a fear frenzy quite all of my own accord. I just have to see a wisp of a shadow out of the corner of my eye in the wrong sort of light, in a place where it oughtn't to be and my heart starts pounding.

I once actually shrieked out loud when a shirt came at me out of nowhere in the dim: the same shirt I had seen hanging on the cupboard door when I opened it, that came lurching back at me when I closed it. Hopeless!

879 Days

Guacamole on toast, and tea (of course)

It has been 879 days since my last breakfast…

… in the blogosphere. In the real world, I imagine there have been 879 of them too, give or take the odd one I slept through (I don't do well on none).

I won't lie, away from watching eyes, I've had some outrageous breakfasts -- custard creams, reese's pieces, leftover pizza, leftover thai food, cake, all sorts. Today, I was accidentally "on trend". The internets tell me it's all about avocado on toast for bendy, balanced yoga types. I'm neither bendy, nor balanced (in any sense of the word), but I did have a dangerously soft avocado languishing in the fruit bowl, and awoke to tomato and lemon remnants in the kitchen that screamed "guacamole me", so I did.

879 days seem like the number of days in which seismic things could have happened. I could have won an election (I didn't); spawned three infants, albeit in alarmingly Catholic succession (I haven't); finished my novel (I haven't); had my heart broken (I have, twice); moved house (I have); finally figured out how to leave the flat without having to go back at least three times because I've forgotten my phone, sunglasses, wallet etc (I haven't).

879 days focus the mind: I need to figure out all sorts of everything before the next 879 fly by.

Top of the list: did "tagging" get rebranded "labelling" while I was absent from the blogosphere? And is it just as bamboozling an exercise as ever it seemed?

Yawns and Ghosts

Toast with gooseberry jam.

Writing about other people yawning makes me yawn. That's how suggestible I am. In other news, a woman talking on her mobile phone outside the front of the house scared the crap out of me this evening. I could only just barely make out that the peculiar sound I was hearing was a voice. But it sounded so strange I rather persuaded myself it was supernatural. Having talked myself down, I went to the kitchen and came back to the morning room to discover that the previously closed curtains were now half-open (I think this was the dog's doing). Can't a scaredy cat catch a break?

What Dr. Seuss Books were Really About..

Toast with bramble jam.

This is doing the rounds on Facebook. I like it.

See BuzzFeed.

Chilblains, Chilblains, Chilblains

Toast with strawberry jam; toast with bramble jam and two clementines.

One of the great disadvantages of living in the cold north is the chilblains. Of course I do all the wrong things: plunging my icy feet into hot baths, warming them on my hotwater bottle at night, practically putting them in the fire in the evenings. Still, even when I try my very hardest to avoid such temptations I seem to suffer from them. I feel like I've fallen out of the wrong century. It doesn't seem to be a very modern affliction. Though I suppose most people nowadays aren't obliged to wear five layers indoors.

French Children Don't Throw Food

Toast and raspberry jam.

French children may not throw food, but they are hard-wired to protest. During my days as a "jeune fille au pair" I remember sitting in the garden on a sunny day and watching as a group of preposterously Gallic children marched around in single file brandishing sticks and chanting "on dit non, on dit non." The youngest striker was about 18-months-old, and barely talking. The cause of their protest was not evident.

First Snowdrops

Toast with raspberry jam, and an apple.

I spotted my first snowdrops whilst taking the dog on his nightly rounds. Only a few were in flower, the rest were just little green shoots pushing up from the soggy, soggy ground and hinting: "spring is coming"...

Damn you Zooey Deschanel...

Found the card reader! Toast and raspberry jam.

... And your ridiculously ruly hair. Every time her perfect locks fill the screen I'm reminded of the inadequacy of my own capricious mane. Miss Deschanel wouldn't be nearly so manic pixie dream girlish if she was contending with extremely fine, cowpat-coloured hair that acts as a reliable barometer.

Barnet envy aside, I did enjoy rewatching (500) Days of Summer this evening.

Breakfast the Three-Hundred-and-Twenty-Ninth

Poached egg on toast.

I'm becoming quite the little fire starter up here near the Arctic Circle (well, we're 6 degrees of latitude off, but still).  Naturally I find it difficult to start any kind of fire without singing the Prodigy song. I say singing, but I really only know the first few lines. And I'm not sure that I'm at all twisted at all. Cold, yes. But not twisted. I don't suppose that lighting a fire in the grate where it ought to be constitutes "twisted fire starting"; but none-the-less, the song has lodged itself in my head like all the best earworms, and I can only shift it with a rendition of Build Me Up Buttercup -- the ultimate earworm-busting song.

Breakfast the Three-Hundred-and-Eleventh

Toast with apricot jam and green tea.

No milk this morning, so I opted for green tea -- which is caffinated. I know this because my friend was once telephoned by her friend who had drunk eight cups in a row, not knowing that it was, to warn her not to do the same as he had severe shakes.

Breakfast the Two-Hundred-and-Eighty-Sixth

Toast and tea.

I did not eat the soft toy. It belongs to my delicious goddaughter (whom I also did not eat).

I'm half-watching Troy instead of going to bed as I ought. I'd forgotten how entirely preposterous it is. Though, on the plus side, I've seen quite a lot of Brad Pitt's bottom.

Breakfast the Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-Second

Toast with raspberry jam.

Would the last festival-goer please turn out the lights...


Now that the Fringe is over, Edinburgh has taken on a eerie calm. Dog-eared fliers waft along near empty streets; once bustling venues appear deserted; and somewhere a loan juggler valiantly juggles on, no-one quite having the heart to tell him its over.

I'm always amazed by the mass exodus that follows the end of the fringe. The circus really has left town.

Except for the difficulty of walking anywhere at any speed, I shall rather miss it.

Breakfast the Two-Hundred-and-Thirty-First

Toast with raspberry jam, and a nectarine.

I must say, I do make a good shortcrust pastry -- even if I do have to roll it out with a wine bottle. (I really must invest in a rolling pin one of these days.)

I made an entirely sinful quiche/tart this evening; filled with bacon, spinach, Stilton, garlic, pine nuts and lashings of cream. Yum, yum, yum.

Here it is, minus the slice I gobbled for supper:

Breakfasts Two-Hundred-and-Six to Two-Hundred-and-Twelve

No. 206: Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.
No. 207: Forgot to photograph this one; I had muesli, followed by martmite on toast. I love the milk jug.
No 208: First breakfast on board - so yummy I almost forgot too photograph this one too.
No 209: Another fry-up, cooked by me, whilst sailing.

No. 210: Another fry-up effort by me, rather easier this time as we were not yet underway.
No 211: Doppelganger Shreddies.
No. 212: Doppelganger Shreddies.
And lastly, me cooking breakfast (not my best photo!)

Golly, it's been a whole week since my last missive.  I've been off sailing with friends. And *hangs head in shame* it's taken me this long to actually connect camera with card reader with computer.

I had a completely fantastic time and am now more sure than ever that I need to become some sort of pirate. Note the appropriateness of the head gear in the last photo (a necessity given this was day 4 sans shower - yum!). Also, my nose is requisitely red -- though in this instance due to over-exposure to the sun/wind, rather than rum.

I'm sure I'll get to be a great rum-drinker though. Or failing that, whisky. Now that I've gotten over my reservations about it's oesophagus-warming properties (it is an odd sensation), I'm rather developing a taste for it...