Last night I went to sleep thinking I had crafted a masterpiece. Drop the mic, I thought.
“How are you feeling after last night?” Lou asked. “It was a gorgeous evening.” “I haven’t a clue what happened from reading you.”
I had gone to sleep thinking “yeah! I’ve crafted something. Referred back to the start at the end??! Witchcraft!”
Lou: “Yes it had a shape to it. There was a beginning, a muddle and an end.”
…
God I love Lou.
Someone has to call that crap. I re-read it, which I rarely if ever do. “what a load of nonsense,” I told her. “funny nonsense” she responded. Thank God. There’s someone out there who lets me be an idiot. Everyone gets lucky sometimes. She’s the best.
She’s had Delhi-Belly today, but was expecting it. Mostly she’s in Goa eating plants and covered in oil. I don’t think I could manage what she’s doing, genuinely. I think I’d be utterly fed up. I’m very very proud of her. She’s trying to learn extremely involved things. She’s doing it faster than anyone should ever be expected to. She’s gonna get back to the UK totally flooded with knowledge and very good at Ayurvedic massage. I’m hoping to dig out a massage table so she can at least cover her friends with oil and try and remember portions of things on her return. I’m sure I’ll need something when I get back from Japan. But the massage she observed today has over 50 movements. Nobody can take that in in a day even if they aren’t having to fire a backwards watergun through the eye of a needle at a moment’s notice on top of learning.
Lovely day today. Old friends and meetings, emails I should have sent long ago. There’s a lot to be said for having more downtime than I’m used to. The admin mountain, chipped away. I even sent an email today to Drain Detectives cos I was genuinely shocked at the lack of aftercare I got on a small job that got huge. You’ll have likely heard about the saga if you were tuning in here at Christmas. They ate a week’s wages, left it broken, and then eventually charged me for them to fix it badly. I’ve finally expressed my concerns and I’m very interested to see what they reveal themselves to be in the interaction to follow. My hopes are not high but everyone can surprise from time to time.
And so to bed. It was my neighbour’s 69th birthday. I found out at about 7pm but happened to have a huge butcher’s RibEye and she’s French so I invited her up for late birthday dinner. We had rare steak with wine, asparagus and spinach and roast potatoes. I made my pepper sauce and cemented my reputation as a saucier. It got the French seal of approval, and that’s not easy. But it is always a monstrously fine pepper sauce. Recipe? Shallot. Various pepper, whatever stock, um, oh there’s some open wine from the other night, yeah get in the mortar weird spice mush yeah that’ll ohhhh yeah and that sweet whisky, that’ll be enough no it won’t and soy do you think that’ll go? yeah fuck it maybe, oh and cream damn there’s no cream can I butter? Tastes too umami. no no go to the shop.. hi shop, you’ve got THINGS. They go in too. Cream. Time. SAUCE!! Yep that blows my face off. Oh and I’ve still got these red peppercorns. Hmm… Pours them in. Half an hour boiling. Top up with old red wine.
Nom. Seriously. I love pepper sauce as it is about condensing. You don’t need much, but every bit of it needs to make you go “ak”. Which is the noise I made when i realised DD wanted over £300 to fix the loo they’d broken. And that’s before they fixed it worse than it was before it was bust.
AlBarclay 