It's happening... the posts are becoming more infrequent as the summer draws to a close :(- but I refuse to start moping around quite yet, I've still got a few more days before I have to go back to school. I have to go in for the afternoon on Tuesday 1st September, go in at 8:00am (TORTURE!!!) on Wednesday as I'm a prefect and have to help out with the new Year Sevens and then my proper lessons start on Thursday. Apart from having to be at school practically in the middle of the night on Wednesday, it's a fairly gentle easing back in. I have a feeling lessons will begin full pelt though! My bus pass arrived today, Mum had to order it as I no longer am entitled to a free one, instead I, or rather my Mum has to shell out over £600 a year for my bus pass- thankfully we can pay it in installments... I was just about prepared to go and get my photo taken in a booth in WHSmith the other day for my bus pass, but when I got to the bus shop, they said they no longer need one from us, they just take it there instead. I almost had a heart attack! It was bad enough having to do it in WHSmith on my own. Turns out the one they took I preferred, but still, we ended up wasting a fiver on those tiny pictures of me I never want to see again. Hmph. Anyway, enough of my ranting.
On the 27th August, Liv spent the majority of the day in town with a friend so Mum and I had a day of doing not that much. Mum did however make a delicious lunch, almost entirely out of things from our garden. Unfortunately we don't have a bread tree, so that did come from Waitrose. She made bruschetta using tomatoes, red onion, garlic and basil from the garden. We also had fresh sweetcorn from the garden. It tasted amazing, but I think what really made it was the fact it almost completely came from our own garden- that's so cool!
After lunch Mum and I took Maggie down to the ford, she loves water and we wanted to try her new floating disc. She sucked. For about a minute she retrieved it, but then she just gave up, to be fair she had a bit of trouble picking it up as it was a bit slippery, but in the end I just had to get it before it was taken down the river. We decided it's going to be a home toy.
Mum and I decided to walk down the road to the next ford. Maggie decided she wanted to swim down to it. Pretty quickly she realised that wasn't a good idea and we had to yank her out by her harness as she was whining. She had a great time though, swimming round and round in the deeper ford at the top of the road. Among doing other things I made some Peppermint Creams in the evening. We, or rather Liv, had tried to make some the day before, but she messed them up. I figured I need to show her how it was really done.
I used the BBC recipe. I also borrowed Liv's 'Snotter', which is almost as gross as it sounds. It separates the egg as I only needed the white. It works because the yolk can't fit through the nostrils, but the white can and it looks like 'snot', hence the name 'Snotter'. It's really good, especially because I'm rubbish at separating eggs. Liv got it as a present from our neighbour so I don't know where it came from, but I have no doubt they'll be easy enough to find on the web.
Liv helped me cut the Peppermint Creams into moons and stars. After letting them sit in the fridge for 15 minutes while we cleaned up, we melted the chocolate and dipped them in. You're supposed to leave them for an hour or two first, but they were hard enough to handle and we figured letting them set with the chocolate would speed up the process, then we could eat them sooner ;).
They tasted so good! I'm thinking about going cheap at Christmas and just making a shed loads of these for people... don't tell anyone.
Yesterday we went Stand-Up Paddle Boarding.
I admit, I was skeptical, I thought it would be absolutely freezing, even with a wet-suit, but it wasn't cold at all. We went down to Poole Harbor where the average depth is only 48cm, so at most the wettest you got was up to mid-calf, unless you're Liv of course, her bum got a bit wet as she did fall in a couple of times... It was £15 each for an hour, including wet-suit hire if you needed it. You can do other watersports and have lessons if you want them, but we just went straight for it. I'd already had a lesson in Majorca anyway. I was surprised, Mum and Liv were actually really good, they were both standing up after about 10 minutes.
Afterwards we went to a cafe for a small lunch. We had to sit outside because we had Maggie with us. It was a tad windy, but the food was good so it made up for it. We also had an ice cream on the way home.
I was so shattered from the exercise (that's how little I've done this past five and a half weeks..) I fell asleep in the car, that never happens, I'm not a car sleeper unlike Liv who could fall asleep just driving the ten minutes into town!
In the evening our neighbour Paul cooked us steak and chips- it was DELICIOUS!! It was truly heavenly. Then for pudding he'd bought Terry's Chocolate Orange and Dairy Milk pots. Yum yum yum!
All in all it was a pretty darn good day.
Tonight I think we're going to have Chinese followed by toasted marhsmallows, yep, we're going to have a fire. Then we're going to watch Gavin and Stacey, I can't believe I'm watching them all again, I know I've said before that I hate rewatching TV shows or movies, but it's just so good I can't help it. It's mainly because my Mum hasn't watched it in ages and therefore we're watching it together. I've also noticed Debbie has been posting on Facebook saying she's rewatching it- I think I inspired her during my morning Gav and Stace viewings. Nessa will forever be the ultimate character, Ruth Jones, what a legend!
I think that's about all I have to say for today, except of course for The Big Wide World has taught me: That if you're thinking of doing something because you think it'll be fun and you'll have a laugh, but you're a bit nervous and not quite sure, GO FOR IT! More often than not it turns out a lot better than you're expecting. With the paddle boarding for example, I was focusing on thinking I was going to be freezing, but in actual fact I was really warm, the water was super shallow and the wet-suit shielded me from the wind. If I'd chickened out then we wouldn't have had such a great day. As I hear quite often thrown around, 'regretting the things you didn't do is far worse than regretting those you did do'. But in this case there is no need for any regretting. Get out there and try new things, be open to new experiences. Life will be pretty boring without the occasional 'oh what the hell, let's try that'.
And finally, enjoy the bank holiday weekend if you have one.
L
xxx
No comments:
Post a Comment