Yay it’s the weekend

Yay it’s the weekend. Yay. THG has made the tea and I caught some ‘Farming Today’ on the wireless. What’s not to like. I like listening to farming today. We were all farmers, if you go back far enough so it is in our blood.

I like the idea of having a cow. Someone else would have to look after it but the fresh milk, butter and cheese it would produce would be v nice. Not sure it works like that. Even @chris Conder who has loads of cows gets her cheese and butter from a shop. Fresh milk though.

What are people up to today? After breaking the fast I plan on making a steak pie for tomorrow’s lunch. Slow cook the day before makes for a tasty pie. I make a good pie. Shop bought pastry though. THG is off to the park run.

When I were a farmer, a few hundred years ago, I’d be out mending a fence this morning. Then I’d have to fix the wheel on the cart. Nuisance that it broke. These things happen. At some stage I’d check up on the pigs. Already did the milking. Well, THG probably did that. Or the girl. Never ends. Always a job to do innit.

Handy having pigs. A plentiful supply of bacon which I like. At the moment I get it from Fosters butchers on Monks Road. My grandmother kept a pig in the sty at the bottom of the garden and the deeds of our house in Greetwell Gate said we were allowed to keep a pig. There was a sty in the back yard. It’s not there anymore. I knocked it down. Used the space more effectively. It wasn’t a big back garden.

This afternoon I have a few lads coming around to the shed. We will drink beer and talk bollocks, pardon the French. It’s what blokes do in a shed on a Saturday afternoon. One of the raisons d’etre of a shed. 

I realise that sometimes sheds are also used to store gardening equipment and I do have a pair of secateurs there that I occasionally use to trim the ivy off the fence panels around the side. A token bit of kit but this particular shed is more than just a garden store. We have another shed for that.

My shed is whatever your imagination wants it to be. At times, not that often,  it is an exercise studio. It is a global communications hub, a meeting room, an office, a recording studio and a place where I can entertain important guests and clients in a convivial environment. It might even one day be a workshop although the potting shed is a more suitable place to keep the as yet unbought lathe. I suspect I will never own a lathe. It is too far down the list of things to do with my time.

In the meantime I have breakfast to fix and a pie to make. I’m thinking maybe even rosti potato this morning. See how it goze. Ciao amigos.

A time to sit and reflect. Breakfast has been taken, as they might say in the posh country houses of yore, or even of today. I’d say I’ve had breakfast and am now sitting down with a cuppa easing into the day. All is well.

Our reasonably spacious drive is devoid of cars, THG having gone off to do her Saturday morning thing. I have time to plan.

How do you plan time? It’s quite an interesting thought. People have already put much effort into it. It’s why we have clocks. Then folk realised that our earthly time bears no relation to time anywhere else. Imagine a load of interplanetary pilots getting together on the planet Zog. Spaceships are parked up, they’ve had a few drinks and are now all coordinating the next meeting, this time on the outermost ring of the planet Xerxa in the UrsulaAndress galaxy.

What time shall we meet? It is now ten past three. No it isn’t it’s five past twenty seven! See what I mean. Every planet has different times. Someone will have suggested a solution but I don’t know what it is. I’m blowed if I’m going to adopt the Plutonian time standard. Our own earthly one is good enough, apart from the odd inconsistency such as year lengths and leap years. Hey…

In my case my time horizon reaches no further than the Paris Olympics. I have a few jaunts to plan before then – the Isle of Man and my annual trip to Antwerp. I like Antwerp although finding the right train from Brussels Midi can be a bit of a faff. Get on the wrong one and it takes a lot longer.

Thinking of driving this year. Overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam and then a mere hour and ten minutes in the car. I’ll probs book that over the next week or so. The ferry costs roughly the same as the train, ish.

Now banging out some tunes in the shed. Pie filling is in the oven on gas mark 2 or thereabouts. Il still very much pleuts. I don’t mind. It’s what Tilley hats are for. You might not notice but I’ve tidied up the shed a bit. Took a load of recycling to the brown bin out front. More to go but Rome wasn’t built in a day. On this basis I have another couple of centuries to get it done, assuming I am not thrown to the lions or a similarly fierce gladiator out to prove himself.

One thing I am on  notice of regarding time is getting THG’s candlesticks sorted. We bought some wood for the bases and they need affixing. Might need some more gorilla glue as I finished the last lot. Twill be done. I’ll pop out tomorrow morning. Manāna. The wood for the bases also needs cutting and the edges rounded. All in hand. Leave it with me.

Made a start on the candlesticks. Drilled holes for the candles but the bases still need cutting. Then went and chopped some kindling at the bottom of the garden but it started to rain so took shelter in the shed, natch. In between I did get the chichen curry on the go (it’s a scouse chicken).

THG has found some snooker on the box. She can sniff it out from afar. Even if the telly is not tuned in to the right channel she can hear the click of the balls on a different station. Uncanny. Radar O’Reilly has nothing on her.

This is a seniors tourney from Dublin on channel five. Not sure I’ve ever seen channel 5 on the tv before. I tell a lie. All Creatures Great and Small. Not sure about watching the telly in the middle of the afternoon. I guess it isn’t weekday daytime TV. When I were a lad, me dad and I always watched Grandstand on Saturday afternoon.

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