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