Cup Cakes

On Friday Nerea and I made cup cakes. Nerea was spending the weekend with a friend so it seemed like an ideal opportunity to make a selection to give as a gift. As I only had 3 eggs, we made up a batch of all-in-one Victoria sandwich cake mixture and then divided it into three before flavouring with coffee, chocolate and lemon. We'd just enough time to wash up the bowls ready to make the icing before the buns were cooked. A short time later, we'd piped swirls of butter cream on the top and added a few decorations. Yummy!

Pine Nut Mouth

At the weekend, I prepared my usual home made pesto with pine nuts which we ate with gusto on Sunday.  But then on Tuesday morning, I noticed a truly horrible bitter taste in the back of my mouth which won’t go away.  I ate a delicious ripe plum and it tasted awful.  The chicken for dinner last night was inedible and as for tea and coffee – totally undrinkable.  A spot of googling today and I’ve self diagnosed that pine nuts may be the problem.  I’ve had never heard of this phenomenon but I truly hope it dissipates quickly.  I’m desperate.

Norwegian fomula

I’m up for a little unashamed product placement in this musing.  During the summer months, I tend to be “sockless in sandals” resulting in hard, cracked and sore heels.  But no longer!  I’ve discovered Norwegian Formula cracked heel cream from Neutrogena. A few liberal applications and my heels are unrecognisable.  Gone are the rough, deep cracks and crevasses; instead there’s lovely smooth, soft skin which I’ll quite happily display in my kitten heel mules when I’m next out for the evening.  Although, as that may be some time off, I’ll need to maintain my moisturising regime for a while longer

Sale Fever

Today, during a tedious conference call, I found my mind wandering to the concept of sale “bargains”.  Markles and Sparkles had emailed several colleagues announcing a “flash” sale, so demonstrating the resolve normally exhibited by Olympic athletes in training, determinedly, they made their way to the store.  Returning triumphantly to the office later, clutching their gold medal carrier bags, they displayed their victory spoils of coats, bags and tops.  It’s questionable what constitutes an actual bargain.  But more importantly, how many items were needless purchases?  I know I’m probably not typical but I just can’t buy into this overt consumerism

Weather again

I was sitting in my office today looking out at a wall of grey mist and rain. It was so dense, it practically obscured my view of Carlisle Castle a mere half mile away, which caused me to ponder on the entirely reasonable British fixation with WEATHER.  I concluded that it’s actually predictability that is the trouble.  We no longer seem to have definite seasons, bringing variety with markedly different temperatures and weather pattern.  Instead, we have GREY. Our days merge into one long, highly predictable, grey season with the only variety being the depth and intensity of the greyness.

Silver Wedding Anniversary

It’s mid-August already and I can’t quite believe it.  But it isn’t only weeks that seem to fly past, it’s whole years.  Andy and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary earlier this month (Is doing absolutely nothing a celebration? Discuss) and inevitably, my thoughts turned back to those heady days of youth.  It seems like we’ve been together for a lifetime  yet the years have simply evaporated.
But have we been happy?  Well from the outset, we’ve been in it together for the long haul and unsurprisingly, we’ve shared triumphs and tragedies.  But the answer is a resounding, definite, YES

"Excellent!" I cried. "Elementary," said he

The new BBC production, Sherlock has fully lived up to expectations.  The modern setting, quirky filming and on screen visual techniques have brought a fresh and innovative dimension to the series and enhanced the high quality performances of Martin Freeman and the talented, aesthetically beautiful, Benedict Cumberbatch.  The first few moments of the scene in the swimming pool between Holmes and Watson was one of my best TV moments in a long time. Infact, the only flaw was the somewhat unconvincing portrayal of Moriarty, although this didn’t detract overly from the excellence of the production.   Bring on the next series

Swords, Skirts and Stunning Scenery

I spent the weekend dressed as a Romanised British woman cooking pork, apple and juniper berries in red wine over a fire while Andy paraded about in a red skirt topped with armour.  Why relatively sane adults would want to do something this bizarre is what  I’ve been asking myself over the past few weeks since we agreed to help some Roman re-enacting friends who were involved in a living history display on Hadrian’s Wall.  In actual fact, the event was interesting with both days well attended by enthusiastic visitors keen to see life as it was in Roman Britain.

Call that a bite

Nerea returned from Borneo bearing a rucksack load of dirty washing, the zip off legs of some one else’s trousers and an exotic biting insect.  The reason for thinking this?  Shortly after sorting out her washing, I suffered an insect bite on my lower leg.  Now, I never react well to bites since having an anaphalylactic reaction to a bee sting some years ago but this was something else.  Red, hot, tree trunk leg, unpleasant, oozing wound and ….. I’ll stop there.  Suffice to say, it’s been diagnosed as cellulitis and I’m now on double strength antibiotics for 2 weeks.