The wait

I settle down for the long wait. As I said yesterday, today is MOT day. I’m never quite sure when they will collect the car. Sometimes it’s 8am, others 11am.

Needless to say I’m up early this morning. It’s one of those rare days when I set the alarm just to make sure I’m up & dressed before anyone arrives. Equally needless to say I end up getting up at 7am in anticipation of the alarm going off.

After my wash & brush, & breakfast, I hastily go off & get the potatoes peeled for dinner today. We’re having a pizza of some sort today. I’m using up a pizza base from the freezer. On it will go the last of some mushrooms & some sort of meat. I’ve yet to rummage in the freezer to decide on the precise variety of meat. I’m hoping to use the sliced ham but I don’t think there is enough so it may turn into chicken. We’ll see.

I boot up the laptop. I’m just having a warm-up game of spider solitaire when a white van hurtles around the corner. It is the mechanic come for the car. Not such a long wait at all. It was only just after 9am. Now I wait to find out whether the car will pass the test. Without a car we won’t be going anywhere.

Yesterday also brought the gladsome news we’re booked on a holiday in Croatia, near Split.

I’ve never been to Croatia; long ago before we were married the Fox did visit this part of what was Yugoslavia.

We both think it should be quite a change for us, somewhere new to explore. It looks beautiful, steeped in history.

I have to confess I still find it hard to remember the names of the various Balkan states. To me they all remain Yugoslavia as they were when I was at school. Yet I remember my mother having a similar difficulty with the idea of Jugoslavia, as it was at first spelt. She learnt her countries at school before the First World War. How times change.

It just goes to show how artificial some of these countries & their boundaries are, how new these nations. It’s easier for us in Britain, an island state, where the boundaries are clearly defined by the sea. And yet even we seem to be on the path to be breaking up into Scotland, Wales, Ireland & England. We’ve never entirely lost our individual characteristics even though our countries have been united for so many years.

The car & birds

It’s been a busy week hence the silence. Hopefully this week will be quieter.

The car is off for its service & MOT tomorrow. That will inevitably mean a quiet day at home. We are lucky to have a garage that comes to the house to collect the car & return it when it’s done. But being without a car inevitably means I’m housebound unless it’s dry enough for me to go out on my electric scooter. That seems unlikely the way the weather has been lately.

Last year the car didn’t return for several days. Repairs were needed. Stupidly we forgot to get my wheelchair out of the boot before the car disappeared. That really meant we felt housebound.

Over the weekend I did the RSPB annual Big Garden Birdwatch. I was surprised to discover we’ve had a change of birds. We’ve gained a raven & a pair of rooks. Usually the only members of the crow family we have are the magpies. That pair remain. It’s the small birds that have disappeared - not a dunnock in sight. My next job will be to send in the results.

The same but not the same

Hospital day once again. Once more the Fox is off for his pummelling. Afterwards we’re hoping to go off to our village pub for a jacket potato as a bit of a consolation.

We seem to have hit a bacon & egg phase culinarywise. So it is that on Monday we had Ham & Egg Pancakes (always a useful way of using up a little leftover cooked gammon). Yesterday became another Hampton Pie using up that same leftover gammon joint. This time the Fox decided to add some wholegrain mustard to the mash topping to the pie. It certainly gave the meal some extra heat. Today it will be a Bacon & Egg Risotto for a change, before tomorrow’s meal of Warm Tortilla with Crab Dressing. The latter is the Fox’s experimental meal this week. He’s never tried doing an omelette in the slow cooker before. He’s curious to find out how it goes.

As I say a bacon and egg phase. I always seem to have these times when I get stuck on a particular theme. Last week was fishy with the delight of mackerel & lemon sole. What always surprises me is how the same main item can taste so differently. A poached egg (as will appear on top of today’s risotto) will taste quite different from the hard-boiled eggs in the pancakes or the omelette of the tortilla. Scrambled eggs, baked eggs & fried eggs all taste different from one another, all equally delicious in their particular way. As does leftover gammon & recently fried bacon. 

So, I’m still looking forward to today’s version of bacon & eggs.

To sea?

And still the greyness continues.

Yesterday was our one day this week without any commitments. We headed off to the golf club to drink in the greenness of the course & watch the birds feeding on the feeders just outside the clubhouse window.

Eric & Doreen arrived. They’re just back from a 33 day cruise around the Med & the Canaries. They’d clearly enjoyed themselves despite the rough seas as the Xmas winds blew. They’re already looking forward to their next holiday – a Caribbean cruise in October.

On the way to the golf club we had stopped at the barber’s for the Fox to get his hair tidied up. The barber is off next month for a month long cruise across the Pacific. As he’s telling everyone, he’s off to Australia for two days. It’s just that it’s taking a month to get there.

A certain amount of envy crept into my heart. The idea of getting a month of sunshine & warmth at this point in time really appeals. Our problem is that we’re not really sure a cruise appeal, especially across the Pacific when so much time is spent at sea out of sight of land for days at a time.

We have been on one sea-going cruise – a week from Vancouver to Alaska & back. We weren’t very happy. We had felt very confined, not helped by the fact the price of every drink was high & the tipping astronomical. Apparently that’s a trait of American ships & that one was American.

Yet we did enjoy our Rhine river cruise. So what’s the difference?

Part of it was the fact we were always in sight of land as we sailed along. Undoubtedly part of it was the fact that the weather was warm enough to sit out every day to watch the scenery passing by, whereas it was freezing in Alaska. The only days we did enjoy were the days we left & came back to Vancouver when it was balmy enough to have a stroll out along the deck. On the river cruise we stopped somewhere new every day, whereas some days were just at sea with the other one. The Rhine ship was much smaller & we had the good fortune to meet up with some entertaining dining companions.

Apart from that the sea cruise had all the advantages. On that one there were cinemas, theatres, shops, various courses, an extensive library (most of the books on the Rhine cruise were in Dutch rather than English as it was a Dutch ship), dancing, gambling, various bars, art auctions, fantastic food (very poor on the Rhine cruise). The ship itself was huge so plenty of room to find a quiet corner – the only thing was we, like most of the other passengers, ended up sitting in the one area where there were free self-service soft drinks. The cabins were a decent size whereas on the Rhine cruise it was very cramped with little storage space and if a wheelchair user needed to go to the bathroom in the night, the companion had to get up, put their bed up, before the wheelchair could even be manœuvred next to the bed of the one who wanted to go to the bathroom.

After listening to Eric & Doreen enthusing we couldn’t help wondering if we shouldn’t give cruising another go. Only this time we would go somewhere warm so people would be more dispersed around the ship & we could sit outside some of the time. And we would check out tipping policy before we even booked.

Meanwhile we have decided we need that weekend away. We’ve just got to find a couple of quiet days to go & then decide on a hotel. It won’t be this month that’s for certain, with all our hospital trips & the MOT on the car being due. Now we just need to decide on where to go for the spring….