My Wednesday Space

Wednesdays’ don’t fare well in song lyrics. The best they can hope for is Freddie Mercury bicycling in their evening*; the worst must surely be Robert Smith who plans for either a broken heart or a heart attack** (he clearly isn’t a fan of Tuesday either).

Even Paul Simon decided that early on a Wednesday morning was the perfect time to ponder the recklessness of his youth and the fact he had just robbed an off-licence***.

My Wednesdays are far less eventful, and thank goodness. There are too many hills for bicycling, my heart is perfectly fine thank you very much, and I think the nearest off-licence is about twenty miles away, and possibly located in 1996. No, I choose to come here – my “office” at Denmark farm – to work on the two books I am currently writing.

Out the window there are birds squabbling over the peanuts in the bird feeder. I have a camera set up taking a picture every 15 seconds. After a few hours, I will retrieve it and put together a time lapse movie of bird shenanigans. Meanwhile, I am in an old mansion in a Scottish forest in 2083, about to fool my main character into thinking he has found his grail – a tin of baked beans.

And even better, someone has just brought me a cup of coffee.

What’s with Wednesdays? They’re great!

oOo

* I go out to work on Monday morning
Tuesday I go off to honeymoon
I’ll be back again before it’s time for sunny-down,
I’ll be lazing on a Sunday afternoon
Bicycling on every Wednesday evening
Thursday I go waltzing to the zoo (Lazing on  a Sunday Afternoon, Queen)

** Tuesday Wednesday break my heart (Friday I’m in Love, The Cure)

*** My life seems unreal,
My crime an illusion,
A scene badly written
In which I must play.
Yet I know as I gaze
At my young love beside me,
The morning is just a few hours away. (Wednesday Morning 3 a.m.)

Birthday Cake Auguste Style

Eat to the Beat(er)

As promised… Auguste decorated the choccy sponges that the Snail baked yesterday. Amazingly, he even found time to go and find chocolate mint from the garden, making this cake one of my five a day (fruit and veg, not one of my five cakes a day. Although…).

The, um, Icing on the Cake

For Decoration Only

Chef’s Perks

Now I need a nap before dinner tonight at the Harbourmaster! What a nice birthday!

Just the one slice then…

oOo

Birthday Breakfast Auguste Style

Just checking up on the recipe

Sunday breakfast at Chez Snail often comprises waffles, maple syrup, fruity goodness, caramel sauce and cream all washed down with freshly-ground coffee and old Star Trek: Next Generation episodes on CBS Action (or Scrapheap Challenge re-runs if available. Ditto The Crystal Maze). Today, however, Auguste has muscled in on the cooking as part of the “It’s my birthday” shtick.

Some technical stuff going on there…

…and here

Birthday Cake shenanigans to follow!

Thanks Auguste!!

oOo

The Furred Man – Half Baked

On your marks… get set… DRINK! Er, I mean BAKE!

Here in the UK, we have one of those pseudo-reality shows that deals with the deeply philosophical subject of baking. Such is the fervour for the Great British Bake Off (hereafter to be known as GBBO) that one of its judges, Mary Berry (whose daughter I once wrote a database for), is to become Queen of Britain should the current monarch pass away.

Auguste was so inspired by the opening episode last week that he went straight into the kitchen and drank a bottle of cooking sherry before anyone knew what was happening. Once we sobered him up, he ‘helped’ the Snail make some delicious Millionaire’s Shortbread. Here’s the evidence:

Mixing it up

Making the base

Base Jumping (er, Food Hygiene issue, surely?)

Eating the Condensed Milk – Auguste!!

Checking the Recipe

Pouring on the Caramel

Mmm… chocolate

The Final Product – delicious!

You’ve earned your glass of wine tonight, Auguste!

oOo

Home Again… Again

A Pair of Philosophical Pooches – here pondering if the Universe is big enough for the both of them

On Thursday evening, I fed the dogs. This has been an extremely unlikely event to occur over the last ten months, as I have been working at my “other life” during the week, only seeing how the Limery is shaping up on Facebook and at weekends. In those ten months, I have helped map and transfer data from an old computer system onto a new one, and Auguste has become a Facebook Cooking sensation*.

Bear-faced Fryer

Now, the project, or at least my contribution to it, is finished. It has been a slightly strange experience, really quite frustrating in many aspects but I am a) proud of the Mapping Tool I developed and b) glad it is all over. Still, I am caught between the relief of finishing and the sorrow of leaving behind (once again) people and places whose company I enjoy.

Sam and Max (the dogs, not the cartoon crime-fighting duo) gave me pause (paws?) for thought. As usual, once the bowls were on the floor, Max bowed his head and didn’t look up again until his dish was as clean as the day we bought it. Even when he had his hearing, it was the same: eyes down and eat, like your life depended on it, as if one glance away and the food would as magically disappear as it had appeared, mere seconds before.

Sam, on the other hand, started to eat and then noticed a fly, on its way to wherever it is flies go at that time of day (5:30 p.m. Is that kicking out time at a fly’s work?). She snapped at it, presumably thinking that she was better than the carnivorous plants now in residence in the Limery.

The fly, bored with its hard day’s labours at the Fly paper factory (apparently it is easy to get stuck in the job there, but it is for life), circled round for another look. SNAP! “One more time”, thought the fly, “then it’s back home for tea. Thursday night is dog-poo night!” Round it went, like a 747 stacking over Gatwick, or possibly that one piece of luggage doomed to circulate around a baggage carousel forever. SNAP! It may be the fly giggled as it flew off, clearly having had enough dog-based fun for one day.

For all I know, that fly is still out there somewhere. Or perhaps our meat-eating plants snaffled it the next day. Either way, it served to make me think.

Am I a Sam? Do I snap at the potentially interesting things whilst ignoring the good stuff? If Sam had caught that fly, would she have found it tastier than the meat in front of her**?

Am I a Max? Head down, enjoy what is there, assume that it can be no better than this?

Well, no, I think I am a mixture of both. Sometimes I snap at a fly which turns out to be unreachable or, worse still, reachable but quite, quite unpalatable. Sometimes, I snap at a fly and it turns out to be delicious. Sometimes I write about dog food and flies and still end up feeling hungry.

Are you a Sam or a Max or a mixture?

oOo

* Well, to me and the five other people who noticed.

** The answer to that had better be a resounding “NO!”