Monday 18th September 2017

For the past week, I have been struggling with the return of the allergies, and for the most part have got them beat. Or at least stopped a full on attack, which is what I want to. I can they are not so bad this year, but still, on occasion I get congested during the night, like last night, and results in me tossing and turning and not sleeping well. If I don't sleep well, I ten run the risk of getting a migraine the next day, which is a double whammy really., limiting my time online or watching computer screens, either work or my own one. But if a full on migraine comes on, I will be fit for nothing for the rest of the day. Still, mostly good news.

And here comes Monday morning once again, unwanted like that brother your parents used to keep in the attic. Jools is still doing long hours, so is up at five and out of the house before six. I sleep through the alarm, well, doze anyway, getting up just as she is putting her coat on. See you this evening. And then she is gone.

I am alone, so make coffee and put the radio on. Cats have gone back to bed already, so I check the news, and find its still all gone to rat shit.

Before work begins at eight, I have to mix up the second Christmas cake, so get the ingredients all lined up and begin in creaming the sugar and butter together. It all comes together in about half an hour, and once the mixture is in the tin and in the oven, I have the bowl and spoons to lick all the traces of unused mix off. Its the benefit of being the cook I tell you! Not sure if this is done all over the world, but licking the wooden spoon was a real treat on baking day at home.

I make another coffee, have breakfast and settle down to work. At least with the project in an early stage there is only a few mails from over the weekend to deal with and file away. And so it goes.

And all the way the house fills up with the smells of the cake baking, and is delicious. How am I supposed to concentrate with this fabulous miasma about?

Lunch is taken at ten, obviously. I mean why wait until lunchtime for it? Although by one I am hungry again.

It is a quiet day, and that promised thunderstorms, or at least the forecast suggested it, but the ones forming over northern France just melt away before dark, leaving it a cool but fine evening.

Jools does now leave home at five, meaning she is home just after half past, and dinner is just about ready. I have harvested the one courgette, sorry marrow, that have eluded the slugs, cut that up, added onions, tomatoes and a whole bulb of smoked garlic. I drizzle them with olive oil and roast the tin in the oven, blitz then veg when it is cooked, add some cut up fried sausages and then pour the resulting mess over freshly cooked pasta, and is very nice indeed. Just looked a mess, but tasty. Garlicy.

In the evening, we watch Horizon, which had a retrospective of the Cassini mission, which ended last week when the probe dived to a death by friction into Saturn before its batteries ran out of power. Marvelous stuff, and with technology 30 years old.