The Sun Has Got His Hat On!

 Friday. 9.10 a.m. Having made all those scones yesterday (by the way, how do you pronounce 'scone'? Is it with an extended 'one' to rhyme with gone, or 'scone' to rhyme with cone? You decide.) Anyway, having made them I then realized it would be a Bank Holiday Monday on Monday, and so, no Monday Club. Pity. It means I will have to eat them or share them with other people. They have been a success, apart from being somewhat difficult to split in half. They just crumble. Maybe I should make the dough a bit stickier with some milk before I roll it and then cut the scones out. 

Saturday. 10.10 a.m. I had a further text message from Mears. It was to tell me that someone was coming on the 7th of June to measure the kitchen window, which will have the extractor fan installed in it. At last! After all the phone calls, it looks as if the fan will be installed. But I won't hold my breath and will only be entirely satisfied until the thing is in and working, which means, hopefully, I will be able to use my George Foreman grill!

12.20 p.m. I had a doctor's appointment at 11.30 this morning. I was all ready to go out at around 10.50, but Alfie decided to do a whoopsie on the floor, so I spent some time clearing it up. He didn't appear as if he needed to go out, but nevertheless, it was a bit of a bother. Never mind, it's mopped up now.

I drove over to the Central Milton Keynes Medical Centre and parked and then walked into the surgery. I signed in and sat down. Almost immediately, I was called into the doctor's room.  Well before the time I was booked for, so I'm really glad I got there early. Blood pressure, heart rate, and all the usual observations were done. My weight was taken, and he made a sort of oblique reference to it. I'm not sure if I'm within the normal weight for my age and height, but I mentioned cakes, and he 'sort of' said I shouldn't eat too many. Everything healthy. No swollen ankles or something. I left and then drove home.

Sunday. 5.20 a.m. It's no good, I simply can't lounge about in bed when it's light outside. Alfie in a good barking voice as I got dressed and a circuit of Oldbrook Green. Not much else to report, except an exceptional amount of rubbish falling out of the bins.

1.25 p.m. I managed to do the washing up from last night's meal, take Alfie out twice before I went to church and write a bit more of my project and then transfer it onto word processing, managing to edit as I went along and insert several paragraphs from an earlier draught. I am feeling very positive about this writing and, as I walked around Oldbrook Green with Alfie, I managed to come up with another character, so my perambulations with Alfie are never wasted.

The title of this blog post is very appropriate. It is really warm and sunny and as a result, I wore my shorts to church. I have to admit I sometimes struggle to come up with appropriate titles for my posts and often just pluck anything out of the air.

Not Even For Ready Money

Thursday. 9.30 a.m. I've been busy this morning. I have been making a batch of scones. I have made them before, following Delia Smith's recipe. I got most of the ingredients in Sainsbury's yesterday morning. I actually made a double batch, because the amount of scones you get from the measurements the recipe gives only makes a few, so it wasn't much of an effort to double up the quantities. They have come out of the oven looking good. One was not a full scone, so I ate it! Tasted good and far better than what you can buy in a supermarket.     They are intended for the Monday Club.

4.30 p.m. I managed to get an appointment booked with someone from Mears to come and look at my bathroom, because, when I rang the other day, enquiring about the extractor fan, which is supposed to be installed by an outside contractor and who should ring me regarding this installation, I then mentioned the floor in the bathroom, which is a total disaster, caused by the former tenant of this flat who put the floor in, but didn't make a very good job, as the tiles are lifting and have lifted in certain places and this makes cleaning the floor extremely difficult. I got two text messages from Mears, the first saying they were coming to do the work on 16th June and a second one saying someone would visit to survey the bathroom today at 10 a.m. I waited in expectation for a visit at 10, but nobody arrived, so I rang Mears to be told that the lady who was to come and visit was held up, which is what I thought must have happened. The lady turned up at 11, and having looked at the bathroom, she told me that it was in definite need of being upgraded. There is absolutely no way I can have a full-sized bath, unfortunately, and it is unlikely I would have a shower cubicle installed. I am not bothered by this if I only had a shower which was installed at the correct height so that I don't have to bend to get it to work on me, as I'm a little over 6 feet tall. It now depends on the Council deciding what I can have, so I wait with bated breath to see what I eventually have.

Friday. 5.05 a.m. Today would have been Carol and My 16th wedding anniversary. I'm not going to mention it again, as you can imagine it's pretty difficult since she died.

Well, I've been out as usual with my lovely Alfie, and we did our usual circuit of Oldbrook Green. 

I'm intrigued by the way the grass has been cut. The furthest side from The Cricketers has been cut, and the grass is laying in strips, similar to when the grass is cut for bailing. It seems such a waste to just leave it laying on the ground and not use it. It would make feed for horses or cows. 

I stopped on the path to see a crow which was sitting on the fence. It must have been at least a minute before I move away, and it makes a loud noise which I think would have been an alarm to other crows because Alfie was with me.

As we walked along the path towards Oldbrook Green, I could hear birds singing and some sounding remarkably like the sound you get from a range of electronic devices, such as mobile phones. I watched a video on Facebook about a starling which can mimic the human voice, and its voice was remarkably human-sounding. Also, a very clever raven called Loki can make a range of sounds which he must have heard and then mimic. 

9.05 a.m. It's really sunny and pleasant this morning. My washing is in the drier at the moment. It should be done at 9.30, hence I have time to sit and write this blog post.

Too Darn Hot

Yet another 'hot' blog post title! Very appropriate, with the weather being so warm. Are we in a heatwave, and, will this title be redundant by the time I have finished writing it in a few days? Who knows, but with British weather so unpredictable, anything is possible. 'Too Darn Hot' is the title of a song in the musical 'Kiss Me, Kate.' I watched a recording of the 2019 production on the streaming service Broadway HD. It's one of those shows I have wanted to see for a long time. I know most of the songs and vaguely know the story, based loosely on Shakespeare's 'Taming of The Shrew', but up unit last weekend when I watched it, I had never seen a stage version. I know there is a film version, but I'm not a fan. It's one of those films where the colour looks over-saturated and it was made in 3D (Not sure about that, but I have a sneaking feeling.), so there's a lot of scenes where it's been set up to have things coming close to the camera, some things thrown to help with the 3D effect. I think it was a gimmick because TV had become available in everyone's home, Stateside, and in Britain, and it was done in an attempt to lure audiences away from the 'square box' in the corner of the room. The film 'South Pacific' is filmed in awful garish Technicolorr® which is plain awful, like one of those photographs you sometimes see which are monochrome but have had colour added. It just looks over-cooked, a bit like how colour television could be when it was introduced in the early 1970s. My father was forever fiddling with the first set we had, usually making the picture look dreadful. It would have been great to watch a programme with him forever altering the colour.

Sunday. 7 a.m. It's hot, and the sun has hardly risen over the horizon. We went out around 6.15. I didn't wake up as early as I usually do, but what does it matter?

The kitchen is hotter than ever. I won't be doing any baking for a while, that is, not until this heat is less intense. It's not made any better when the outside temperature is so high. Apart from anything else, it would make cooking considerably more difficult, particularly with ingredients such as butter, and with the oven on, even more, an impossible environment to work in. I will wait until later in the week and then have a go with scones, but this time I will make twice the amount of ingredients and use a larger cutter and see what a difference it makes. Those scones I made yesterday were a success and tasted excellent. I think even Mary Berry would have been impressed. Good texture, even bakes, good distribution of fruit, and delicious, even though I say so myself. And, dare I say it, no soggy bottoms!

The cough seems to be easing. I reckon the confounded medication which was causing the problem is working its way out of my system. I shall remain at home and won't go to church, but watch the service online as I did last year. 

Later. I have to clear out of the way as we walk down towards Oldbrook Green this morning. A Runner wasn't going to get out of my way and then, further round the path on the Green, a cyclist came up behind me and tinkled her bell, making me almost jump out of my skin. Far enough, I was warned, but I wasn't expecting it. Quite hot so we didn't walk the entire circuit of the Green and came back. I have my electric fan on to cool the lounge down. Even with the windows open, the place is still warm. The kitchen is excessively warm, as I've mentioned before, and with the window open, only slightly, because you can't open any of the windows fully, no doubt because the Council thinks the tenants who live in Dexter House have a habit of falling out, or, for that matter, let people climb in. It was the same in Milton Keynes Hospital when Carol was a patient. Even in the hottest weather, it's virtually impossible to get a draught to cool the place sufficiently. They did bring in portable air conditioning units, which is what's needed here, but I doubt they'd even consider installing them.

Later. As usual, absolutely nothing worth watching on broadcast television. Any more football and I think I shall ask for a refund of my television licence. The BBC seems obsessed with the wretched game. I could go on in this mode, but I won't. Otherwise, it will turn into a rant.

After some consideration as what to watch, I turned to streaming service Broadway HD and watched the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre production of 'Into The Woods.' Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics and James Lapine wrote the book. I'm a bit of a Sondheim fan, His shows are anything if not inventive and imaginative, and this is very imaginative. Not sure it's his most successful on its original outing, but it seems to have become quite popular and might even be regarded as having something of a cult following. This production has an interesting staging design, multi-storied if that's the correct term. In fact, thinking about it, the plot is 'multi-storied in the sense that it intercuts several well know fairy-stories by The Brothers Grimm.

Some Like It Hot

This blog post's title refers to one of my all-time favourite films, the 1959 comedy starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and the fabulous Marilyn Monroe, 'Some Like It Hot.' (Actually referring to jazz and not the weather.) The Curtis and Lemmon are out of work instrumentalists, Joe and Jerry,  in 1920's Chicago who accidentally witness the Valentine's Day massacre and have to dress up as women in an attempt to outwit the mob. Joe becomes Josephine and Jerry becomes Daphne,. They join an all-girl band and go on tour with them and on the train, they have to travel on to one of their gigs in Florida,  where they meet Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, played by Monroe in one of her most iconic roles. If you want a film that will make you laugh, then this beats a lot of modern comedy. It is in monochrome, so don't be disappointed in that, but it really doesn't matter, as it's fast-paced, funny, and downright crazy.

I was out with Alfie at 5.45 a.m. as we were ready, not bothered in the slightest that it was that early. As I write this (9.00a.m.) It's sunny and warm and likely to get warmer as the week progresses, according to the weather forecast on BBC Breakfast earlier.

I've been making fruit scones! They are currently baking in the oven and have about 3 minutes before they come out of the oven (should be saltanaley rather than currently. Sorry about the pun, but I just couldn't resist.) I have been using the equipment I have purchased on Amazon and in Dunelm, the digital scales, mixing bowl, rolling pin, and so on. It all seemed to go well, and as ever, using Delia Smith's recipe.

2 Minutes later. I have removed the scones from the oven. I'm a bit disappointed that they have come out no bigger than when they went in. Just a bit tiddly. I did follow Delia's recipe quite carefully and she said to use a 5 cm cutter, which I did. I was expecting them to rise a bit more than they did and come out somewhat larger. Oh well, as only the first time I've made them in quite a while, not really bad. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I have a saving account with Metro bank. The only way I can access it is either by visiting a branch or through their app or website. I had been attempting to reset the password but with no success. You are allowed a few attempts and then, if you attempt too many times, I think it's probably six, you are prevented from attempting further, probably to prevent scammers or hackers to pinch your cash. As a last resort, I decided to visit their branch down Chaffron Way, next to Waitrose. I also had a pile of 5p pieces which had been collected in a glass jar which had been steadily increasing to such a point I decided it needed cashing in at the bank. It was around £10 so I could deposit it in the Metro account, but then I wasn't certain if they would accept 5ps. I suppose it would take some time to count, but I had already done that.

It turned out that the bank has a machine which will count your change. All you do is tip your coinage into the hopper and after a while, once all the coins have worked through the machine, it gives you the total and then you put in your bank account number and date of birth and it gets deposited in your account. Ingenious, and certainly did the trick. 

I then had help from a member of the bank staff to reset my online account, and required me to come up with a new password and security number, and hey presto! It worked! Problem solved and it means I can keep an eye on the balance and it makes life simpler if you use the online facility rather than having to go into a bank branch.