Today I awake feeling a tad glum. It is a Bank Holiday, and so I don’t want to set foot outside the house; hate celebratory-happy-happy crowds. Decided to fell a small ash tree that a neighbour has been whingeing about. Grab my bow saw and it is down in a couple of minutes. Saw up the trunk which, by now, had grown to about three metres. Stuff the remains into the garden recyling bin and then grump back indoors. I work out my songlist for this evenings SL gig and am conscientious enough to practice’We’re all alone‘ on my Mick McConway electro-acoustic; ‘Careless love‘ on my Washburn tuned to D for slide guitar; and ‘Only you‘ on mandolin (Art, one of my fans from Germany, had requested that I play some mandolin, since I have been neglecting it of late). I will try to run through my ‘1953’ song on piano later this afternoon.
Next, I turn my attention to making egg and shitake mushroom fried rice with tobasco for lunch. I shake out some dried shitake mushrooms and find I have to read the instructions for re-constitution twice. I put them in a bowl of boiling water and leave them to plump up. This takes about 40 minutes, so I dip into another chapter of the Nicci French novel I am reading. I am about 100 pages into the total of 400+ and already there have been two child abductions; not exactly cheerful Bank Holiday stuff. I wander back to the kitchen and rinse out some bismati rice; put it in a big pan to simmer. Next I fry a couple of lightly beaten eggs in the wok, using some groundnut oil, and park it in a dish when it is done. Oh, by the way, I am doing nothing original here – just following another Ching-He Huang recipe. I go on to fry some sliced mushrooms with a few frozen green peas, drain the rice and fry that too. I hoy in the soy sauce and sesame seed oil and integrate the scrambled egg back into the mix. Finally I serve up. It is very tasty, thank you Ching! It is not until I have more or less finished eating that I realise I forgot to put in any tobasco; oh, well, next time maybe.
I’m all squared up in the kitchen now. I think it might be time to lie on the bed and read another chapter of Nicci French. Hopefully, this episode will seemlessly transcend into an afternoon nap. Now, that is definitely the sort of thing to be having on a Bank Holiday Monday. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.