Wednesday 29th January 2020

It has been a slow week.

Next week would have been better with a four day trip to Barrow and back, back in time for the beer festival. But that now is postponed.

So, each day is now spent sitting by the keyboard, waiting for things to action and/or do.

And being a "rest day", no phys to allow my short hairy legs to recover, I could laze around until it was time to start work, listening to the radio and whatever else I do to pass the time. I have no idea what I do, but it takes all my time to do it. So there.

It is another glorious winter morning, the sun rises to the south east, not filling the kitchen with warm light until it had been risen for half an hour.

I have breakfast, the usual, and another coffee before switching on the work computer and being snowed under by the single e mail that had arrived.

My toothache had at least gone, or so I thought.

Anyway, after a tough morning at the coalface, I open a tin of soup of lunch, warm it up on the hob and tuck in, the hot liquid finding exactly where the sore part of my gum was, and letting my brain know in no uncertain terms how bloody painful it was. And after a call to the dentist I agree to take the medication after all.

With the sun past noon, I decide to go out for a walk, just a short one round the usual places to put my back through its paces, and to have a gander at any wildflowers that might be showing.

Just along the road, several dwarf crocus are flowering in a grass verge, their bright yellow colouring dazzling in the sunlight.

I go up to Collingwood, then along that past the midden to the new houses being built in the quarry where there is some Winter Heliotrope growing in one of the gardens and verge. They should smell of honey, so I pick a flower and smell it, and indeed there is the scent of honey sandwiches from my childhood.

I don't go to the Pig's Copse or Fleet House, let alone the Dip, as my back is not too happy, and I have shuffled enough, so turn back along the footpath by the butterfly glade and across the fields to home. Meaning I was walking into the keen wind.

I was glad to get home, put the kettle on and relax on the sofa to rest my back.

I check back in with work, action what has come in, put some music on, and the day passes by.

As the courgette fritters had been hailed as a success last week, Jools wanted me to try again, which I do, though this time with added cayanne pepper to pep (ahem) them up. Which worked.

The recipe involves shredding four courgettes, adding self raising flour, two eggs, some nuts, ground chilli and the pepper, all mixed up into a thick batter, and then shallow fried.

It was another triumph, especially as I made more garlic bread to go with the fritters, and accompanied by a glass or three of red wine.

Yummy.

And so into the evening with the Manc Derby in the League Cup to look forward to. And it was, er, OK. Citeh could not finish, and when they did was offside. Utd stated slow but improved, and it was Utd that won it with a first half goal, but go out over the two legs.

And that is it for another day....