Made-up maps

Parkrun was back to normal this morning. Luna’s dad didn’t run this morning, although he came prepared for it. Luna has been unwell, although she’s much perkier now. I held her lead, and he was in charge of treats. I had to tell him the routine, of course.

Shes such a lovely dog, Luna. When she sees me, she comes bounding towards me, ears flapping, wanting lots of attention.

After parkrun, it was time to go to the arty-farty workshop I went to last month.

I saw the owner of Panda Car on the way, and told him about the engine light. He said he knew what it was, and he’d sort it.

He’s also said the person it was intended for was starting driving lessons, so he’d need it back at some point. This isn’t such good news.

The theme of this month’s art workshop was made-up maps. I love a map, so I was excited. But when I saw that blank sheet in front of me, I was stumped.

One person had misread the theme, and used last month’s instead. The other person had started on a beautiful fantasy map.

The latter asked if we’d met before: I looked familiar. She did seem vaguely familiar. She asked if I did any other classes and stuff. I said I did Pilates, Fight Klub and parkrun. It was none of those things. Stumped again, I paused, then came up with creative writing. She asked if I was in a writing group in Ely.

I said the name of the my Ely writing group.

That was it – she was one of two new people that came to our September meeting! She’d been right down the other end of the table, behind other people, side on to me; that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

I started drawing my map in pencil, fearing messing up if I used a pen. I got bogged down in details and scale and how to represent things, and what to draw a map of. In hindsight, I’m wondering if I should’ve developed my map of GNT. As it was, I did a map of the big house, a farm, some little settlements.

I coloured it in with pastels, thinking I could spread a lot of colour easily, and blend them to make new shades.

It was ok, but I rushed it at the end, so there’s a lot of scope for improvement. I’ve found my own pastels, and will attempt to finish it later.

On the way home, a warm sun came out, so I said to Mr Pandammonium that we should go out. I decided on Downham Market for a change.

We got the train after lunch, and wandered along a road we’d not been down before, after I got muddled up as to where we were. We ended up at the home of Downham Town FC, where a match was about to start.

We didn’t attend the match, but we did take in refreshments at the sports bar on the site. We could tell vaguely what was happening from the ‘crowd’ noise. We left just as the first half was about to end.

We’d had a discussion about how to get back to town without going back the way we came. My private road idea, just before we went to the park with the footie, had failed, but there was, as I suspected, another exit from the park; it led to a housing area, where it was silent.

We got back to town, ready to go back home, but the train wasn’t for ages, so we went to the Wetherspoons to pass the time. We timed our drinks badly, so had to have another one. Terrible.

At the station, the screen changed to say the train was cancelled: there was damage to the overhead wires between Ely and Kings Lynn

‘What?!’

And so were the next two. They only come once an hour.

‘Whaaat?!’

Mr Pandammonium suggested walking home; OS Maps said that would take five and a half hours. We weren’t prepared for that.

The screen changed again to say the train was on time, then delayed. It’s better than cancelled, right?

Eventually, it gave an expected time, and there was an announcement of claiming delay repay (a refund for journeys delayed by 15+ minutes). The delay wasn’t quite long enough.

Mr Pandammonium wondered if the wire damage was anything to do with the massive clonk we’d heard on the way up. It’s possible, but we’ll never know.

We like to spot deer from the train; normally, I’m bad at it, but this time, I saw a pair, then three, then four and a single one. The single one was really close to the track. Mr Pandammonium didn’t spot any. I win!

For tea, I had sausage, chips and beans. Alas, we didn’t have any tins of baked beans, so I’d planned to make some from dried haricot beans and stuff.

I found a recipe online – an American recipe for ‘British baked beans’, rather than a British recipe for ‘baked beans’. Weird.

They weren’t bad, apart from the fact I should’ve cooked the beans for longer. I should’ve paid more heed to my Instant Pot’s timings book than to the recipe for how long to cook them for, even though the recipe was aimed at the Instant Pot.

The sausages and chips I did in the air fryer. Ours has two drawers, each of which can be programmed separately. Cooking times can be synchronised so they’re done at the same time. That’s a useful function – a top tip for you there, if you’re thinking of jumping on the air fryer bandwagon.