Where did all the cherries go?
Followers of my ramblings may have spotted that I didn’t post last week.
I’ve been deeply touched (not to mention totally amazed that anyone reads this nonsense regularly enough to have noticed) that some have enquired after my health.
I’ve not been unwell, just run off my feet. Having had several months of relative quiet in the world of spreadsheets, it just took off again, with deadlines galore. Most of my team were working last weekend, including me, so something had to give.
I often listen to Radio 4’s Today programme in the mornings to keep me abreast of developments in politics and business. The weather forecast at the beginning of this week ended with “High Pressure is definitely in charge today.”
“Your not wrong there” I thought - I haven’t had so much pressure for a while - strange how they knew!
So what have we been up to?
We had the pleasure of looking after Little Ray of Sunshine on Sunday just after my last post. Her mum Hija had plans for the day, so dropped her off at our house. She (LRS) had been a bit under the weather the last few days so we abandoned our original plan to go to the zoo in Battersea Park, in favour of entertaining her at home in the warm.
We have a good collection of toys to play with and Mrs A had bought some new stickers.
Whilst she had her nap around lunchtime, I had a little task to do - apply for my mum's replacement drivers licence - she'll be 85 soon and the licence expires then.
This can all be done on line bit requires a huge amount of information which most people don't know about themselves, let alone their mum.
At the start is a helpful suggestion that you gather all the information you need as you can't save a part completed application and return to it later. Unfortunately there here isn't a list of what you need, making the helpful suggestion a complete waste of time.
Some things were to be expected- licence number DOB etc and perhaps even NI number, but passport number, mother's maiden name and passport number!! Really? My mum's been married 63 years and they want her mother's maiden name ( when she's been dead for over 40 years).
On top of all this they also wanted the date they moved into their house. No-one, including my mum could remember this, so I had to look it up on the land registry website. Actually, I say no one could remember - we didn’t actually ask dad, who can't remember what he said to you five minutes ago, but bizarely this is the kind of thing for which he has instant recall, so I’ll ask him next time I see him - he can still surprise us!
Anyway, we got there in the end, and after checking the eyesight requirements with mum (and the countless other conditions that need to be declared) we were home and dry.
The licence should arrive in the post around now.
During the process we discovered that both my parents passports expired this week too. Given how essential these are to doing any government business online (the only choice for many things) that's my next task! Wish me luck.
The car has gone in for repair for a rear end shunt suffered by Mrs A and Hijo a few weeks ago. It’s all covered by the other drivers’ insurance as it was all on camera and there was no way he could claim he wasn’t at fault.
Once we reported the incident we got swept along in this tide of administration. With a ‘no-fault’ claim they almost forced a hire car on me - a white Tesla model Y, sitting outside the house since yesterday - we’ll be driving to Milton Keynes later to give it a whirl.
Despite it being ‘no fault’ they still stuck an extra £98.11 on my premium when I renewed just after the accident - it’s basically win-lose when it comes to insurance - the insurer wins, we lose.
Despite the busy workload, we did manage to fit in the annual Christmas cake making ritual. We now have two star shaped fruit cakes ready for Christmas. We normally bake four, but this year none of the shops near us were stocking the glace cherries, peel, black treacle and muscovado sugar essential for our recipe. To be fair, our recipe triples the amount of cherries in the original, which does tend to wipe out local stockists. We start building up our stocks in about June, so that come November we have a sufficient glace cherrie mountain, but this year none were to be found. Eventually a trip to the big Sainsbury’s at Clapham solved the problem, so we now have ingredients for another 2 or 3 cakes. These cakes are generally eeked out over the whole year - we’re just finishing off last year’s.
Mrs A told her Welsh language group about the cherry shortage and they declared that a national emergency were it to happen in Wales - how different things are there!
On the language learning front, I’m pressing ahead with Spanish and almost starting to say actual sentences now. I mislaid my hat two weeks ago and thought the most likely place I’d dropped it was at Spanish, so I enquired on Wednesday when I was back there and sure enough, the tutor had found it and handed it in. Unfortunately none of the staff knew where it had been put, so I’m still hatless until next week, when I will try again.
That’s it for this week.
Have a good ‘un,
Jerry