Sarah

“Hello, thought you’d like a card from the Getty. It was a lovely building and the lunch was fabulous! The best bit was that it was raining and they had umbrellas for everybody which blended in with the building and were part of the art. Lots of Love Mum and Dad xxxx”

I love postcards they are like a very slow text message. I expect my mum and dad are in the photo above but you can’t see them behind their umbrellas.

My mum and dad are in California on holiday, however they can’t hide from me. I just found this photo of them taken two days ago. They are the ones with the flags. I thing my mum is pointing at the camera. hehe

Last weekend the buildings at the back of my house went out for the night. I woke up and they had gone, I suppose they lost track of time and didn’t realise it had got light. It was 5.30am so maybe they thought no one would notice.

I have been thinking about marmite lately, in fact I can’t stop thinking about it. On the train yesterday I realised I had been thinking about it for a good 5 minutes.

Last time I was in Brighton I thought I would give it a go for breakfast and it didn’t repulse me but I didn’t really get it. Ever since then though it has sort of caught me and I find myself going into shops and looking at it. I went into a shop with 4 different sizes of jars and I liked the smallest one but I haven’t found it since. I can only see the second jar up which is too much. So I just go and stare at the jars but don’t buy it.

There have been times in my life when I have lived without a television and a washing machine, at no great hardship and I can think of many people I know who currently live without both, but now I see if I won a major prize for my poetry (hypothetical - I don’t get poetry) it would be the main thing to interest the BBC. It’s a bit of a funny angle on the story.

Because I didn’t go to Wells yesterday it meant I could go to my butcher and spend extra money on a really nice free range chicken. Taking inspiration from a book I want (but haven’t read) New English Kitchen (about how you can get loads of meals out of one thing) so actually it wasn’t that much help because I haven’t read it (my brackets are all over the place). Um…so I wanted to see how many meals I could get out of my chicken.

Yesterday I roasted the chicken and had it with cous cous and feta, olives and stuff. Then today I made chicken stock, which I am yet to see the benefits of as it took 2 hours to make 2 pints of stock. Then I decided I wanted to make a pieminster pie so I copied their Chicken of Arragon ingredients and made some filling. Then I decided not to make pie today so I froze the filling but it tastes lovely. Then I engineered a boxing day feast tonight and had cold chicken with bubble and squeak and pickled onions. Oh and I cooked my roast potatoes (this may start to get a bit graphic for vegetarians) in the chicken fat saved from yesterday and I put the chicken juices in the Chicken of Arragon pie filling.

I just browsed Delia for more leftover chicken ideas but started to feel a bit sick.

Chicken sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.

My plan today was to go to Wells but I rebelled from my planning and stayed at home to go shopping on my street and make bags.

This is the bag I made today. It is rather more advanced than my previous efforts. Notice the brown canvas lining and the zip. It is made from a rug.

I had a revelation today.

As you know I have been getting the ferry to and from work but there as been a bit of confusion so far on my destination home. I say “one to the marina please” and the ferry person says to me “ok yes, one to the hand”. Then the person next to me will say “one to the hand please” and then they get off at the same place as me which is the marina. This has happened five times but I haven’t plucked up the courage to say “one to the hand please” because I am going to the marina and I might say that and I worry that without understanding what I am saying they might turn round and say “what on earth is the hand?” and everyone on the ferry will laugh. I have searched the marina to find a notable boat called the hand or a nearby building called the hand but I have never found anything.

Until today and it was such a revelation I said “aaaah!” out loud. Directly in front of the ferry stop sits this:

I don’t know how I missed it. Tomorrow I will say “one to the hand” with confidence.