| Coconut Joan
No compunctions about eating dessert first |
There once was an extrovert, Joan.
She carries a Nokia phone.
With emails to type,
And Aussies to Skype,
Plus Facebook — she’s never alone!
This reminds me of a footwear ditty. Now that I think about it, I think I spelled ‘sandals’ wrong.
You can tell when I’m lonely solitary because I’ll post something about cooking. When I’m not interacting with people, I’m at home, cooking, which is why there are no other stories to entertain you with.
Without planning it, I cooked myself a very English dinner tonight. Di left me pork and apple sausages from our barbecue on the weekend — she’s in Florence this week so I’m making sure the food isn’t wasted.
For dinner, I grilled two sausages and made potato mash (seasoned with salt, a bit of milk, mixed herbs and paprika). I have paid £8 for a meal like this at The Big Bang.
But wait! There’s more! …Dessert!
I had some bread past its use-by date, so I made bread and butter pudding based on this recipe, but scaled it down by a third and used diced apple because I have no raisins or sultanas.
Interestingly, while I was chopping and mixing and mashing, my eyes kept drooping. I was very sleepy, even though it was only 6 PM. Normally, I wake up if I’m doing something but I must have been tired because when I finished eating and washing up, I flopped into bed and slept for an hour.
Bread and butter pudding with apple
Feeds…four?
I was thumbing through some careers materials and found this in a job ad: “We are particularly interested in individuals working towards a Bat Licence.”
My last post gives people the illusion that I’m organised for this dissertation. What you haven’t seen are the previous versions of the Gantt chart, from which you would have realised that over time I have moved the red block representing the first milestone from March 26 to May 28 to June 4.
So, did I hand it in the week starting June 4? Of course not. I just emailed it off then, three days late.
But like the honest consultant that I am, I kept the supervisor up-to-date with my setbacks. Upfrontness is my best policy.
I’m pleased it’s in. I now have a month to write the next three sections. They’re the chunkiest and most important sections but I think I’ve gotten the hang of this now.
“This will be interesting,” Alex said, when he walked into the kitchen.
I swallowed my toast. “What?”
“I ordered the scanner from Amazon last night and they guarantee delivery by one o’clock today. I looked it up with the parcel tracking and it’s in Scotland.”
“You paid for express delivery?”
“Yes. I’m leaving for Norway tomorrow. I need to scan my books today.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s 10 o’clock! Scotland to Cambridge in three hours? No way.” I shook my head incredulously.
“They’ve guaranteed it, Joan. They’ve given their word. If it doesn’t get here by one, I get my delivery fee back.”
“Wow. This will be interesting… If it comes at two, will you still try to get a refund?”
“Of course,” Alex smiled. “A promise is a promise. One o’clock.”
“Well. Good luck to them, I say.”
Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang.
It took me about a year to figure out why I have a blog. I think of this as a mini magazine. It appeals mostly to people who I’ve met yet the writing should be interesting enough such that more people would read it if this was the only blog in the world.
Luckily, there is plenty of good writing on the web elsewhere.
I would like your thoughts on something. I am meeting more and more people with ‘public face’ websites. These websites have their real names, contact details, CVs, portfolios (art and writing), and so on.
This blog is a different beast. I don’t use surnames, company names, contact information, photos of people at private events, or any other identifiers. I’ve done some growing up here so it’s obviously not my public face. In fact, if you put my full name in quotes into Google, this blog is far, far down in the listings. I’m not even sure how Google connects my name to this blog, actually.
What I’d like your opinion on is:
Formal halls are a highlight of the Oxford or Cambridge University experience. Each college has formal halls once, twice, or even three times a week. You get a three course meal for anything between £3 to £16 (A$7.50-40), and it often includes sherry, port, wine, coffee, tea, chocolates and fruit. Cambridge has 31 colleges. By the end of my year here, I will have been to formal hall for at least eleven of them.
Formal halls attended or soon to attend
Formal halls regretfully declined because of other commitments
Lunched at
The UK grocery market is bigger than Australia’s. Australia basically has Coles and Woolworths. You might count IGA, too. However, the competition in the UK is much more intense and strangely, there is a relatively clear hierarchy of ‘poshness’.
From my eight months here, the hierarchy of prestige seems to be:
There are others that I’ve heard of or walked by but I can’t place on them on the poshness ladder because I haven’t experienced them. Aldi is probably near Asda, at the bottom. There’s also Morrisons, apparently one of UK’s ‘big four’ supermarkets. I wouldn’t have known it existed except that Damjan had to go into one once to ask for directions (we got lost while travelling in Yorkshire). I’ve also been to Somerfield. There is a full list of UK supermarkets on Wikiepedia.
I’ve talked about Sainsbury’s on my blog before. Little Sainsbury’s in the centre of town is my main grocery store because I like what it sells, I like its layout and ‘vibe’, and it only takes me 15 minutes to walk there.
There are other mainstream grocery options, though. The Co-op is even closer than Sainsbury’s but I find it expensive and I’ve had bad experiences with clueless staff there.
On special occasions (when I need anything exotic), I go to a really big Sainsbury’s further out of town. It’s 2 km away. I would normally ride there. Riding home with a heavy backpack is made harder by a serious hill and busy traffic.
You might remember that I once ordered from Tesco online. I’ve never been inside the actual Tesco because I always thought it was far away. However, I’ve just looked it up and it’s even closer than big Sainsbury’s! It is in a very busy part of town, though. There’s a big road with lots of traffic. I’m a little nervous of riding there.
I love going to Marks and Spencer. It’s full of beautiful food. Often, I go just to look at the cold sections and the shelves. I might spend twenty minutes before finally selecting a chocolate or a yogurt. I visit M&S to reward myself after a tough day or after handing something in.
I want to visit Waitrose one day. Waitrose is at the very top of the supermarket ecosystem. If I love M&S, imagine what Waitrose will be like! The nearest Waitrose store is 5 km away. Maybe I’ll bike to it as a field trip or for exercise.
Anyway, the reason I started this blog post is because yesterday, I visited Asda for the first time. I found a shortcut there and discovered that it’s actually as close to my house as little Sainsbury’s!
Asda was huge and confusing. I felt a bit frightened, actually. Nothing was where it should have been. The chips weren’t near the biscuits. The fruit section was split across three aisles. The skimmed milk was hidden. I couldn’t find the honey. The meat was all mixed up instead of being organised by animal. After about fifteen minutes, I wanted to flee to my familiar, safe little Sainsbury’s.
I wandered around for an hour and had to get help twice. I eventually gave up looking for low fat mature cheddar cheese because I just wanted to get out of there.
Interestingly, at the checkout, I was the only person with a reusable bag. Everyone else was taking plastic bags. I think it’s because Asda targets people on lower incomes. I don’t know why lower income people tend to use plastic bags. Maybe they don’t care about the environment as much?
At Sainsbury’s, about a third of people seem to have reusable bags. A British friend tells me that everyone at Waitrose uses reusable bags.
This video is a short guide to procrastination. The opening is a bit confusing but persevere! Humour awaits.
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