Thursday 21st March 2013, 10.35am (day 574)
It’s not exactly home, but I’m here often enough at the moment. And I was working. Honestly. All the trappings are there – Mac, cup of tea, the essentials.

It’s not exactly home, but I’m here often enough at the moment. And I was working. Honestly. All the trappings are there – Mac, cup of tea, the essentials.
After yesterday’s night out we stayed over in Leeds at our friend, Caroline’s. As was revealed, her kitchen catches some great morning light. This is about as natural a shot of Joe as it is possible to get at the moment – note the rock ‘n’ roll hairstyle…
Here I am at the in-laws’ for a bit. It’s the school summer vacation so Joe can stay up until late. Tearing him away from the TV or the DS is a good plan, teaching him the rudiments of cooking, with his gran Carol, an even better one. He can, at least, wield a Worcester sauce bottle with aplomb, as this proves.
Nutclough Pickle. Ingredients: 1 cauliflower, 1 cucumber, a few small onions, 2 pints of vinegar, mustard powder, turmeric, 2 cloves garlic, some salt, 300g sugar, nutmeg, allspice and a few tablespoons of flour. Cook up together and bung in a jar for a few weeks, then give to relatives and keep some for yourself.
I am on there, you just might have to look for me for a couple of seconds.
The contents of the saucepan eventually became a very nice plum & blackcurrant sorbet, by the way.
A week off work, but I’m at home. When this happens I tend to cook. I like doing it and I like the results, which also tend to go down well with others. I don’t have to do Christmas dinner this year, so let’s get the time in now.
Not easy to encapsulate a day which was the third in a row spent at home trying to entertain Joe (I’ve been single-parenting this weekend) and where the only real distinctiveness was having to do some minor DIY to fix an electrical problem in the house. It’s hard to take photos of the Boy these days without him sticking his tongue out (see October 8th, for example)… so here’s an abstract for you. It might not be exciting, but then again, neither was 20/11/11.
I like cooking. I like beer. It was an inevitability that the two would come together at some point. This is my third ever batch of home-made beer. I’ll tell you around Christmastime whether it was any good or not.