Prep

A man from the water board came round today. He wanted to put a sensor in the sewer. I assume he tried under this manhole cover over the sewer before he tried the one that lives under Henry.

Of course, I had to move Henry.

The man’s van was parked across the drive.

‘I’ll try not to hit it.’

‘Please do – maybe I’ll get the day off!’

I didn’t hit it, so he didn’t get the day off.

It gets awful hot in the car when the weather is boiling. We’re having a heatwave. I brushed the metal logo in the middle of the steering wheel with my bare arm as I was getting out – and it burnt me! It was still a bit sore when the man came back to say the sewer was ‘too shallow’.

I went to put Henry back in his place, but there was a certain furry obstacle on the manhole cover.

Running this evening was cancelled because it was too boiling to run. This meant that Mr Pandammonium got out of the cooking. We had a three-course meal – on a weeknight!

I made onion bhajis as a starter from a packet mix and some real onions that I sliced myself. I served them with a lettuce salad, a lemon wedge-ish and a raita made with yoghurt, finely chopped cucumber, mint jelly and salt and white pepper.

Mint jelly is a great way to add the flavour of mint without the discovery that the fresh mint leaves have gone off.

The starter went down very well.

The main course was a curry that I made from scratch using a recipe from what I call the Pear book. The photo shows the prepared ‘base veg’.

The curry was an immense bother, but it was nice. Not, we agreed, as nice as the bhajis made from a packet mix. That narked me somewhat.

We had strawberries afterwards. Can’t fault strawberries.