The Bunny gets it....

All this high living with Hello Fresh. Delightful meals, but really throwing me off the straight and slim pathway. Yes, I know I could substitute full-fat soured cream for some fat-free gloop, but dear me. I haven't tasted full-fat anything for a l-o-n-g time.  Look, I can blame the food company, I could blame the Naproxen which seem to be making me inordinately tired, I could blame Tiny Tim. No that's not a code for Dearest. Basically, it comes down to me.  I was fed up with being a good little dieter.
Last night I told Dearest that after all these exotic meals, it was time for something plain and simple.
An omelette. He totally agreed that this would be perfect.
We sat down together. I had three different vegetables on my plate. No protein. Unusually, he noticed.
"I had rabbit earlier," I explained.
"Rabbit? Really?" We never eat rabbit.
I shrugged.
And I produced the evidence.
"Could've been hare today..?"

Or gone tomorrow? Most likely.

Fighting Talk?

I am not sure I could cope with an Alexa in the corner, waiting to implement my latest command.  It would give me a severe case of the heebie-jeebies. I am at the stage of life where I value everything that re-enforces my independence. Everything I can do for myself, personal corsetry excepted, is to be celebrated. This includes mastering the remote control. I am the Mistress of  the remote control because His Master's Voice cannot be arsed to get to grips with it. However, I am not looking for some android to take over small simple tasks such as turning on the radio or telling me what the weather is like. Hell, I like to live dangerously, look out of the window and decide what the risk factor is for a dousing. Mrs May is not the only one who can make snap decisions round here.

So I was amused to see that a new App has been developed that can deduce when an argument is brewing between a couple. Algorithms (not too sure what those are, really, but that's never held me back) have been developed to pick up the tell-tale signs in the prelude to an altercation, then issue a warning. What's that all about? A smart phone listening to our conversations? Right. Holding our horses in the middle of a hum-dinger because some mechanised motormouth tells us to calm down, or take five? Whatever next? I'm confident it won't catch on.

Maybe Alexa or an Android algorithm could put him right?

                                       

No Magic Roundabout....

Before Christmas, my Dearest husband had a triumphant smile on his face.
"I've sorted your present," he said, barely able to keep it to himself.
"Jolly good," I said, not drawing him further.  He was busting a boiler to tell me. He was that pleased.
What this meant was that on Christmas day, when I opened the envelope with tickets for Carousel at the London Coliseum in April, I was primed to muster a public, Wow! Inwardly, I went WHY?! Between you and me, I was seriously underwhelmed.
Carousel? What a dreary, dismal musical? I couldn't imagine what had inspired him. But I could hardly ask, without appearing immensely ungrateful. It wasn't until some months later, I saw an advert for it and saw that Katherine Jenkins and Alfie Boe were taking the leads. All became plain. Dearest is a big fan of Katherine Jenkins. It didn't take Miss Marple to work this one out.

The reviews were favourable and said how well Katherine Jenkins had taken to the musical theatre. Alfie Boe came in for some flack, for being wooden. I have to agree with both views. Mind you, it would take some actor to imbue the  utterly charmless character of Billy Biggelow with appeal.
The evening, despite a wonderful orchestra and lovely ensemble singing, did not change my mind about the musical. A skimpy tale clad in a couple of glad-rag belters such as "June is busting out all over" (my unofficial theme tune) and "You'll Never Walk alone" a song that I thought had been neutered by the Liverpool football fans. I really was wrong about that.

For me, there were two numbers that made me nostalgic for a BBC Scotland production that I did in the late seventies, with Peter Reeves and Libby Morris. One was My Boy Bill and the other was "When the Children are asleep.."
It made me close my eyes, and sit and dream...  I checked to make sure Dearest wasn't doing the same.

What first drew you to Katherine Jenkins, darling?

Check your pianos for treasure....

Did you hear the one about the piano-tuner? Found a four figure for-tune under the lid... I should write headlines for The Sun. In case you didn't read it, it was, in fact, a six figure sum in gold sovereigns that was discovered in a piano. It had been donated to a school by a kindly couple who had decided that there was no longer any use for it in their home.

What an exciting find! Life-changing for the piano-tuner, who can now afford an operation to cure his tinnitus, and no doubt making a huge difference to the school, who will spend the money on improving facilities in school and the community.
But what about the original owners? Thankfully there was an answer to my question.  No hand out to them. A gift is a gift and we had no idea that the piano contained such treasure, they said. That is the part that really makes me glow. That is a truly inspirational example of how life should be.

That hasn't stopped me from pondering whether our own ancient piano could yield such riches.. However, when I mentioned looking, not in the piano, but for another piano teacher for myself, I was a little perturbed when Dearest said,
"Silence is golden".
I'll give him silence...

An awful lot of silence....

Counting Easter blessings rather too late...

One pound on. It's enough to make you bite the head off the last remaining chocolate bunny. Didn't go near chocolate over the Easter weekend. Honest. Went really near a lot of other things, however. Had a giant scoffathon, actually. Carrot cake, gooseberry tart, the works. And all that grub had to be washed down with something extremely alcoholic. Wasn't fussed. Ate and drank like a Lord (certainly not a Lady). So despite a handbrake turn yesterday when I weaned myself off the good stuff and pumped myself full of green tea and rocket leaves, (not infused, in case there is any misconception) it was inevitable that my syns of the weekend would weigh heavily on the scales, if not my conscience. So there we are, I'm back to finking fin, as one of my former students might have said.

So I wore a summer dress today (and took off the watch) in readiness for the score on the door, not because of the weather, because it is totally brass monkeys out there. It meant that I walked really briskly to slimming club, and luxuriated in the warmth of the universal menopausal flush of the crowded hall.
It made me recall the days spent on Eastenders, when at this time of year, the costume department would be going mental trying to get us to peel off the winter layers,
"We're half way through May in the script. Coats off!"
It always amused me that they always assumed that May should have a mediterranean feel on screen.

Perma-goosepimples come high on my things I don't miss list.

The last bun standing...

Juan for the Road last Saturday night...

Don't let that sunshine fool you. I've just come in from the garden. Absolutely perishing out there. I've been cleaning the patio. The first five minutes I cannot get over how much fun this is and why didn't I do this last year? Then ten minutes later, I remember how irksome it is and how patient you have to be.  So I started making patterns and before I knew it, I had started to write David Tennant in the muck on my patio. Well, it is his birthday, she announces with alarming brio, realising that nonchalance is now too late.
I realise I am sounding like a crazed fan. Alright, I looked up his age after we 'd been to see him on Saturday night in Patrick Marber's Don Juan in Soho.
Now in all fairness, David Tennant is my all-time favourite Doctor Who and as I have watched since William Hartnell days, I count myself as a bit of an expert. (I did like Matt Smith and I'm fond of Peter Capaldi, but sorry, David came first.) So way back in October, Dearest booked us tickets as we were convinced he would be brilliant on stage. And so he was. Absolutely electric. Supercharged sexual energy that combined loucheness with elegance. A marvellous double act with Adrian Scarborough as his hapless side-kick, Stan.  Simply a lovely piece of theatre.
I knew David Tennant would deliver.
So I was musing this afternoon on my patio. Just musing. Ok?

Happy Birthday, David Tennant from The Great British Bunion

Testing Marital Mettle....

Are bosoms a step too far in a bunion blog? I've debated this internally all week; but if you promise to keep this entry to yourself, I'll reveal all.  Settle down that man at the back. What are you doing here, anyway?
I have made passing reference to the fact that I am one of the Greater-Busted. Makes me sound like a game bird: thank God it's not the grouse season. But I am a game bird in that I am going to share some details that will make the pomegranate-shaped poitrines amongst you, give thanks for their diminutive proportions, and make those like me, sigh with sympathy.

My bad arm and shoulder which took me to the physio last week, has improved only when I am  on painkillers. I now understand how Nurse Jackie became addicted. The physio recommended I changed to a sports bra to take the pressure off the shoulder. Well, I wasn't ready to swing low, sweet chariot, so I went to Bravissimo which specialises in bras for bigger bosoms. I emerged fully corseted  with an additional strap that pulls the two main ones closer together at the back, and further up my shoulders. I have to say that I felt like Barbarella ( you know, Jane Fonda but with shorter legs). I felt I could point and shoot with my newly upholstered lethal weapons.

The drawback is that I need a ladies' maid. I cannot, with my sair arm, get into or out of this corsetry. I have to rely on the kindly intervention of my dearest husband who's morning job is to tether the fiercesome jumblies, and at the end of the day allow them to run wild and free. Somehow this is not quite how I imagined things would pan out.

God forbid any thing happens to my darling husband. If, for example, he ran off with some pert breasted beauty leaving me all alone, it wouldn't be long before people were commenting that I had let myself go...

I'm more Bra-bra ella, actually

Nothing two loos..?

I once sat at the top of the stairs, as a child, and listened to my father describing a Welsh prop forward.
"He was built like the side of a sh*t house door," he said poetically.
There can have been no dispute about the gender of that lavatory, way back in the sixties. It was unashamedly male and proud of it. In our house we never referred coyly to the Powder room: my mother use the term lavatory and we children preferred toilet. Life was blissfully simple. Uncluttered by the booby traps of current correctness.
And now we have public toilets bending over their urinals to meet with the increasing demands of inclusivity. It troubles me. This is because, as women, we are forever short-changed on toilet-space. We always end up by queuing for the loos whilst men breeze through, with the greatest of ease. Theatre toilets are notoriously difficult for women. Unless you put on a hell of a sprint as the curtain falls in the interval, you are likely to spend the whole of the intermission in a queue that snakes around the corner.

So if a sector of our community will be happier in a gender-neutral toilet, that's fine by me. Provided we have more toilets everywhere, then I am totally for it.

The Joy of Six...

Well, obviously everybody would like to know about my Greek Meat balls. What else do you expect to find on a Bunion Blog? Yes, point taken.

Did you know that Orchis is the Greek for testicle? That is what my old English professor, Michael Alexander, would have called a mnemonic irrelevancy. However, I beg to differ in this instance.

What I produced was something different from the recipe. Quelle surprise! The trouble started when the recipe suggested that I cut up the onion into half centimetre pieces. I have to confess, I've never been much of a chopper. Particularly of onions, when with streaming eyes, I sigh and sniff, wipe my schnoz with my sleeve and determine that nominal chopping will suffice.

So this time, I concentrated, determined to make them a good bit smaller than my usual chunky choppings. Which I did. I thought that they looked a great deal smaller than usual. However, by the time I'd added them to the lamb mince, it was apparent that I hadn't gone small enough. My meatballs were punk hedgehogs, with onion protruding in every direction. This also meant that I had to make LARGE balls because small balls were simply out of the question. Instead of ten uniformly small balls, I had six balls of varying sizes.

I put in all the spices and breadcrumbs, as I thought, when just as I was about to put the tray of hedgehogs into the oven, I noticed a tiny container of cinnamon that I'd not put into the meaty mixture. So I sprinkled that on top. Voilà, Hot Crossed Balls, here we come, I thought.
Dearest loved it.  Job done.

These are some of my Dearest's favourite things, closely followed by Keftedes, of course

Getting Fresh?

Something came over me early last week. It must have been a mist of sorts, because it certainly clouded my vision. Perhaps I am getting more susceptible to a bargain in my dotage? Do I spend too long these days, paddling in my Inbox? (Probably.) The truth of the matter is, that I was bored, yes bored, with the routine of producing the same old limited repertoire of meals that I've produced for the past thirty odd  years. There have been no complaints from the resident gastronome but that is probably because his peace-keeping instincts override his pickiness. Wise, darling man.

So one fine day, I saw an offer in my Inbox. Sign up to Fresh, it said, and receive your first box half price! Well, my click finger had done the walking before my brain had done the talking. I could easily have argued myself out of it. However, when I told him what I'd done, Dearest's face lit up with joyful anticipation. It was like I'd thrown a drowning man a rope.

First thing I did was to forget that I'd ordered it. (Recognisable symptom of buying online.) On Tuesday, Granddog  barked the house down to alert me to intruder arriving with large box.
"Oh God, what's that?" I asked any small person who happened to be around. Retail amnesia sadly only remedied by colourful emblem, Hello Fresh.

So what have I got? (Apart from food that I cannot pronounce?)
Three recipes with all the fresh ingredients (natch) that you need for them.
Moroccan Spiced Salmon with lemon and caramelised onion couscous.
Leon Goat's Cheese Chicken with red cabbage and hazelnuts,
and
Keftedes with Tabbouleh and Mint Tzatziki.

Two days later, I am now into countdown as I have been eating my stuff. Bog-standard-stick-to-your-ribs Shepherd's Pie kinda stuff. I feel trapped. I am yearning for a spontaneous Fishfinger. Captain Birdseye will be missing his first mate.

Wait a minute. They've sent me two lots of chicken and no salmon. But I have the ingredients for tarting up the salmon.  Huge sigh of relief. So much happier when I can go off-piste.

I'll let you know if I find my inner chef..

Eating my Words..

I love words. More than cake and more than champagne. I think that it's healthy that I prefer what comes out of my mouth, to what I put in. Though if I'm brutally frank, there are times where the garbage output equals, and occasionally surpasses, the garbage input. Most people are too polite to tell me that I'm talking rubbish; but I know when I am.
For my twenty-first birthday, a flat-mate gave me a Chambers Dictionary. Inside, there is still, a small handwritten slip which says,"Don't swallow it all at once!" So even then, I had a reputation for loving words, polysyllabic Greek ones or short sharp Anglo Saxon ones: they were all enticing, seductive, even.
I have piles of books around the place. I cannot resist a new book. I read very slowly and infrequently, and always lamenting (as I trawl the John Lewis website) that I do not have time read as much as I'd like. This week in an historic pile, I came across a book that Dearest gave me for Christmas some two years ago. "The Etymologican. A circular stroll through the hidden connections of the English language." I can feel you salivating at the prospect. Which is more than I must have done at the time. I can only think that I, in full Yuletide fervour, tore open the bottle of scent he'd bought me, stuffed down a few champagne truffles and looked for the sort of thriller that he would enjoy reading later. The poor Etymologican remained unopened and totally disregarded for over two years.
This week it seemed to have floated to the top of the pile. I opened it, with idle curiosity and was engrossed. For a start, did you know that Milton was responsible for inventing more words than Shakespeare? And that we have him to thank for words such as obtrusive, jubilant, fragrance, exhilarating and beleaguered? I had no idea, of this  as a sixth-former when I waded through Paradise Lost.

I can tell you're fascinated. I read on to discover an interesting discourse on the numerous different words for testicles. (Ah, you're back with me now?) Aztecs used the same name for avocado as they did for testicle. Fancy that. And yes, in English, there are over a hundred words for these danglers (I'm quoting Mark Forsyth here). Riveting stuff. All very entertaining and utterly forgettable. I will probably only remember the coarse examples.
Thank God we don't do dinner parties any more.

Mother's Day card received this year

Catching up with the week..

I feel as though it's Monday. This means I'll be buggered tomorrow, when it's Thursday Bin day. Unless I stick a post-it note in a prominent place, preferably on Dearest's hooter, it will be a jump-out-of-bed with a war-cry tomorrow morning. Long weekends do this to you. Put you out of sync for the rest of the week. I have just waived off the family and the granddog who've been in residence since Sunday. What you can hear is the grinding of sinews, as I reclaim what I call, routine.
Oh Lord, and it's weigh-in day tomorrow.. Fat chance I will have of losing weight this week. Too many temptations have finally unleashed the dormant gannet. My Dearest husband buys all the things I won't let him buy for us, for our grandchildren. Chocolates, biscuits, hot crossed buns. Oh yes, and MacDonalds : special delivery. Everywhere I turn there is a calorific confection waiting to ensnare me.
Dear reader, it has been enough to turn me to drink. Sadly, drink won't make me shrink.
                                                       

Bathroom Blitz...

Listen to the sound of silence. Not a plumber, or a plumber's bum-line in sight. The savouring of a Saturday morning without the unhappy cry of :
"Bugger. They're here!"
The bathroom is finished. Not the speediest of projects. The ceiling lowered last year, the bath painted also last year. But once the plumbers moved in, it picked up a pace and now it is all complete. The cabinet I painted, has been re-hung and the re-decoration brings it altogether.
We are both very pleased with the result.
And the silence.
Stand by for the roar, when the bill is delivered.

                                                       Musical accompaniment  by Sweet