Friday 4th December 2015

Thursday

As we slept, the Mother of all Parliaments voted to drop more bombs on the people of Syria. And by the time I opened my eyes, the RAF had conducted their first sorties. As the day progressed, it turns out that the MOD had warned Tory Dave, our glorious red-faced leader, not to use the 70,000 moderate fighters on the ground. What, a Prime Minister lying to Parliament and the People to allow a war to start? Oh now, first time for that, eh Tony? As I surveyed the media and social media, it all became too much and I deced to retreat from most of it. Worst of all is that my once-fellow armourers have fallen for the lie hook, line and sinker that anyone, including Jeremy Corbyn who did not think dropping huge amounts of high explosives on Syria, when there have been quite enough of that, was a lilly livered terrorist sympathiser. I stayed off both Faceache and Twitter for a while, and am now dr-friending, unfollowing and removing myself from many groups as a result.

Whatever.

Makes me want all the more to sell up and retreat to an isolated Scottish island and ignore the wider world and its craziness. Mankind is stupid and yet we put up with it.

Anyway, on with the blog and Thursday. And after Jools pointed out that we had enough left over ingredients for a 3rd Christmas cake, I spent the hour and a half leading up to eight yesterday morning, mixing up butter and sugar, adding beaten eggs, flour, dried fruit that had been soaking in brandy for 12 hours, popping the boozy mixture into a lined tin and then cooking at gas mark 1.5 for nearly 5 hours. THe house filled with the smell of all spice, which is the smell of Christmas.

I got to work, whilst stopping the check the cake every half an hour. At midday it was done, but then had to cool until evening, when against all reason, we would try a slice. Or two.

I was going to pump some lard in the evening, but it seems I could not be bothered, which was a little disappointing if I am honest, but by half three with the heating off all day, the house was like a fridge and I decided I would have a cup of coffee instead. That warmed me up too.

I cooked up some salmon fillets with some chili flavoured rice for dinner, which came together very nice indeed. How clever I am, and for the first time in the week we had beer/cider to go with the meal.

Thursday is TOTP night on BBC4, and it was December 1980: Madness, The Police and the death of John Lennon to deal with. Brought back memories for sure, I follow it on twitter to be honest, the only time I had it on all day, just for the fun of it. Someone tweets facts about each act, its fun, and the modern way, I guess. Next we watched a documentary about the Welsh colonies in Patagonia, which was wonderfully interesting and heart-warming, all with the backdrop of the foothills of the Andes.

And then there was the cake to eat: certainly not mature enough, but with enough booze in each slice to put you over the limit, and is glorious. Probably will be better than the other two we made earlier. Maybe they need feeding with more brandy? I think so.

That was your Thursday.

News came to me yesterday that my good friend in NZ, Tony, had a bad bike accident, and seemed to have crashed into a crash barrier and broke hi collar bone and fractured two vertebrae in his neck. Not one to do things by half it seems. But, he is on the mind, in a neck brace, but people are looking after him, we would if we were there. Get well my friend.