Getting there

 Although I'm still getting tired quite easily post Covid, it's a great relief to be able to start to regain some semblance of 'normality' or as I understand it anyway these past few days. It was lovely to have friends over for lunch and a slightly proud moment when we fed them a pie which was filled with our homegrown apples and raspberries [made by Mr GBT's fair hand...I was on main course duty this time round], but we slept for two hours after they left!

Now my brain is starting to fire again I've been on the case of the leftovers. My parents very kindly gave us all their perishables before they went away which we have worked our way through these past few days and I've tried a bit of experimenting to use up a few sprouty potatoes we had lurking. Our first trial was making our own hashbrowns. I adore these, but only ever have them if we're away and they come with a cooked breakfast. Using this recipe https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hashbrowns_12454we were very pleased with the result. They really do need to be seasoned well and we're quite tempted to sprinkle something else in like curry powder when we next do them. Another thing I can make not buy.

Yesterday we upped the ante again using the slow cooker and made very passable roast potatoes [we just followed the info online]. We added in a few sprigs of our rosemary to pep them up. Am delighted that we now have another means of having roasties without needing to put our electric oven on.

Whilst I may not have been anywhere special for a couple of weeks that hasn't stopped this old bird from doing a bit of doorstep exploring. I spotted this painted on a fence lst Friday when I was driving between clients....of course I had to stop and see what it was all about [I knew of it but have never been in the vicinity or had time if I was]. The sign said it was of Catbells in the Lake District. As it's local I thought it would be of interest to people in one of the town's FB groups so I shared my pictures without giving away its location. Upon editing the bottom photo I thought I saw the Loch Ness monster [the classic image you see in the old photos] which I mentioned in passing [obviously wrong location], but I did think it could have been just fanciful thinking on my part [I know never been known😉]. Lo and behold the artist commented and confirmed that I was right and that next time I'm passing I should see if I can spot the wild swimmer as that's his wife. He confirmed where it was so I think he'll be having some more local visitors to come and admire his work.

Next time I shall touch upon what we got up to when we headed over to East Sussex recently.

Arilx