A bit of an 'oops' day today! Let me tell you about the curry first.
A good morning was had out in the front 'garden', bit of chatting with Sara of the camels, bit of digging (have forgone the spade and fork because they are hurting my knees, but now have become super efficient at another implement which I can throw over my shoulders similar to the action of a pick axe. Very good for the waistline and better for the back), a bit of grass clipping, a bit of stick-throw play with Boolie. All in all a good morning.
Lunch: curry today, it being the end of my shopping week. Started off OK. In went onions, end of bag carrots and potatoes, half a soft green pepper just on the turn, some old garlic bulbs which were sprouting, a few green lentils for bulk (makes it have a meaty texture), some grated ginger for a change, coconut milk, a little tin of tomato paste, chick peas,looking good. Now in 'lets throw all in' mode, in gungho fashion I grab a pot of 'curry' powder from my spices shelf.
And you know when you have a strong instinct that perhaps it is best to stop and have a pause before something dire happens? Well I had a moment like that just after unscrewing the lid off the jar and with great gusto emptying the whole lot into the curry now simmering away. I KNEW that something disastrous had occured. Yep. Mixed spice was what I had thrown in. Oh yuk! Merdre!
What to do! Didn't have the ingredients to start over. Nothing left in the cupboard really: best to try and repair the damage. So in went the curry powder, this time from the correct pot. A little sip. Yuk! Lemon Juice, a good squirt of (hopefully the couple of pips that fell into the curry will cook down and not end up breaking one of our teeth!). More water - 'lets water down the whole effect being my thinking'by now. Ah good idea - a stock cube perhaps. And inside my head a thought is saying 'no, no, don't do it'. But still I keep on going. Some salt. Some brown sugar. Another potato (don't know why I thought that would help!).
And as I was valiantly trying to save the curry, the curious thing is that I grew into an awareness that I was either making my best curry ever, or my worst!I thought about my writing, which is a bit like making that curry. Equipped with only an intent to write a book about a certain topic, like my original intent was to make a curry, how the book turns out once the ingredients have been mixed and mingled is the same as that pot of curry bubbling away on the stove.
If it is my worst curry, then fair enough, the others I make can only be better. But if it is my best - well, then it can never be repeated and all the rest will be less than this one. And I think this is the same as my writing. All the while I remain disastified and try to write better, then I can only become better. But if I regard my writing as the best I am ever likely to do, then I have peaked.
On reflection, I therefore hope the curry is edable. If not, then it will have to be cheese on toast. I also hope I never write my 'best ever book', because it would then become my last, because the subsequent ones would be second best. I hope I am able to maintain a 'let's try and do better' attitude for each book I write in the future, which means I have yards and yards of years ahead writing piles and piles of books!
And now to Gate Post: Ooops!
So I was on my way to the compost heap and "hello" I thinks to myself, "what's happened here?". For where there should have been a gate entrance there was now a pile of stone blocks obstructing my way. Being intent on the curry-project, it took a while to notice that where once there had been an old, tall, and quite imposing, gate post, now there was none. At all.
It was now undone. Dead. Mort. And lying in pieces down on the ground.
What had happened to have done this dastardly deed! What forces of nature had thrust the stones of this post apart!
But my head was full of the fumes of the curry, so I sort of 'saw' but 'didn't see' the rearrangement of the gatepost, and carried on with the day.
It transpired that one of the roofers had stood on it and knocked it over. And what a yarn-spin that was! It would have taken an elephant to have sat on that post to have got it to tip sideways. So I guess that we shall never really know how it got knocked down. Just another bit of Labartere's history dwindled away, like the sink which got cracked and my tea tray which got smashed. (my tea tray was a bit on the elderly side, the same as the sink and the post).
So, all in all, an 'Oops' day!
But we ate the curry, and the only comment which The Man made was 'interesting flavours in this one!'
A good morning was had out in the front 'garden', bit of chatting with Sara of the camels, bit of digging (have forgone the spade and fork because they are hurting my knees, but now have become super efficient at another implement which I can throw over my shoulders similar to the action of a pick axe. Very good for the waistline and better for the back), a bit of grass clipping, a bit of stick-throw play with Boolie. All in all a good morning.
Lunch: curry today, it being the end of my shopping week. Started off OK. In went onions, end of bag carrots and potatoes, half a soft green pepper just on the turn, some old garlic bulbs which were sprouting, a few green lentils for bulk (makes it have a meaty texture), some grated ginger for a change, coconut milk, a little tin of tomato paste, chick peas,looking good. Now in 'lets throw all in' mode, in gungho fashion I grab a pot of 'curry' powder from my spices shelf.
And you know when you have a strong instinct that perhaps it is best to stop and have a pause before something dire happens? Well I had a moment like that just after unscrewing the lid off the jar and with great gusto emptying the whole lot into the curry now simmering away. I KNEW that something disastrous had occured. Yep. Mixed spice was what I had thrown in. Oh yuk! Merdre!
What to do! Didn't have the ingredients to start over. Nothing left in the cupboard really: best to try and repair the damage. So in went the curry powder, this time from the correct pot. A little sip. Yuk! Lemon Juice, a good squirt of (hopefully the couple of pips that fell into the curry will cook down and not end up breaking one of our teeth!). More water - 'lets water down the whole effect being my thinking'by now. Ah good idea - a stock cube perhaps. And inside my head a thought is saying 'no, no, don't do it'. But still I keep on going. Some salt. Some brown sugar. Another potato (don't know why I thought that would help!).
And as I was valiantly trying to save the curry, the curious thing is that I grew into an awareness that I was either making my best curry ever, or my worst!I thought about my writing, which is a bit like making that curry. Equipped with only an intent to write a book about a certain topic, like my original intent was to make a curry, how the book turns out once the ingredients have been mixed and mingled is the same as that pot of curry bubbling away on the stove.
If it is my worst curry, then fair enough, the others I make can only be better. But if it is my best - well, then it can never be repeated and all the rest will be less than this one. And I think this is the same as my writing. All the while I remain disastified and try to write better, then I can only become better. But if I regard my writing as the best I am ever likely to do, then I have peaked.
On reflection, I therefore hope the curry is edable. If not, then it will have to be cheese on toast. I also hope I never write my 'best ever book', because it would then become my last, because the subsequent ones would be second best. I hope I am able to maintain a 'let's try and do better' attitude for each book I write in the future, which means I have yards and yards of years ahead writing piles and piles of books!
And now to Gate Post: Ooops!
So I was on my way to the compost heap and "hello" I thinks to myself, "what's happened here?". For where there should have been a gate entrance there was now a pile of stone blocks obstructing my way. Being intent on the curry-project, it took a while to notice that where once there had been an old, tall, and quite imposing, gate post, now there was none. At all.
It was now undone. Dead. Mort. And lying in pieces down on the ground.
What had happened to have done this dastardly deed! What forces of nature had thrust the stones of this post apart!
But my head was full of the fumes of the curry, so I sort of 'saw' but 'didn't see' the rearrangement of the gatepost, and carried on with the day.
It transpired that one of the roofers had stood on it and knocked it over. And what a yarn-spin that was! It would have taken an elephant to have sat on that post to have got it to tip sideways. So I guess that we shall never really know how it got knocked down. Just another bit of Labartere's history dwindled away, like the sink which got cracked and my tea tray which got smashed. (my tea tray was a bit on the elderly side, the same as the sink and the post).
So, all in all, an 'Oops' day!
But we ate the curry, and the only comment which The Man made was 'interesting flavours in this one!'
The gatepost up!
The gatepost down!
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