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It's all go
Monday, July 9th, 2012 11:52 amWho would have thought that it would be possible to get excited about saucepans? Certainly not the me of the quite recent past, but there we have it. The me of then wouldn’t recognise the me of now at all: does a bit of gardening, does a bit of litter picking out front, gets excited about furniture1.
Anyway. On Saturday we sloped off to that Cathedral of Consumerism that is Westfield at Stratford, to acquire replacements for our aging pots and pans.
Such choice! Such expense
Again with the ‘who knew?’ I had always thought that saucepans were, well, saucepans. NOT SO. We spent some time mulling, but once we realised that the Masterchef set was on special offer, that kind of made our mind up. It’s almost a shame to use them; good stainless steel jobs with additional handles and (genius) capacity measures inside! We supplemented the set with a large skillet by Le Creuset, which looked enough like the others to make you think it is all part of the same set. In fact I spent a few minutes checking the base of the Masterchef pans to see if there was anything about them being sold under licence, or something, but no. I guess professional design is just professional design.
And we bought a bed. The one we have is the one I bought in 2005 after moving to Whetstone and now, seven years and two moves later, it isn’t happy, and neither are our creaky joints. We were going to hang on a while, but the discovery of a loose spring that had drilled a hole in the divan sort of brought our plans forward a little. Not cheap, but at least we’ll have a decent bed to faint on to after the bill comes in.
I had plans for yesterday, involving liberating several of the shrubs in the garden from their weedy prison – I know for a fact that the jungle back there includes a Hebe, but it is currently lost in a sea of other, uninvited greenery, which has been encouraged by the fair impression of tropical monsoon that we’ve had over the past six weeks.
The same weather has encouraged the buddleia, which I think must be a rain god of some sort. Now, those of you who know about these things will understand that a buddleia requires no encouragement. When Shakespeare coined the word ‘fecund’ it was probably after battling through a forest of buddleia that had popped up overnight between Ann Hathaway’s cottage and the Stratford upon Avon Sainsbury’s.
I was pretty savage with ours back in the spring, but frankly you’d never know to look at it now. I can’t visualise just how big it would have grown if we hadn’t gone in for a fair amount of hack and slash2.
The upshot was simply that every time the thought even crossed my mind that I should go out and lop a number of branches off, the heavens opened. It didn’t rain in the English sense of the word; this was full on rainy-season rain.
So, much against my better instincts, after getting fed up with Warcraft I watched the final set of the Wimbledon Men’s Final. I discovered that it is possible to get sucked in without being overly interested, a bit like watching a soap opera. The shenanigans on the court were okay, but the score board flipping back and forward between advantage and deuce was quite hypnotic. And at the end, when it was all over, we all shed a little tear with Mr Murray, didn’t we? For the first time ever, he seemed like a human being, overwhelmed with emotion and all that.
Just about a fortnight until the next sporting horror. I wonder if I shall be able to prune the buddleia by then? At least I shall be able to cook nice meals and sleep comfortably.
1Actually, it depends upon the furniture and even then, ‘excited’ probably overstates the case, somewhat…
2Note to self: invest in Kukri.
Anyway. On Saturday we sloped off to that Cathedral of Consumerism that is Westfield at Stratford, to acquire replacements for our aging pots and pans.
Such choice! Such expense
Again with the ‘who knew?’ I had always thought that saucepans were, well, saucepans. NOT SO. We spent some time mulling, but once we realised that the Masterchef set was on special offer, that kind of made our mind up. It’s almost a shame to use them; good stainless steel jobs with additional handles and (genius) capacity measures inside! We supplemented the set with a large skillet by Le Creuset, which looked enough like the others to make you think it is all part of the same set. In fact I spent a few minutes checking the base of the Masterchef pans to see if there was anything about them being sold under licence, or something, but no. I guess professional design is just professional design.
And we bought a bed. The one we have is the one I bought in 2005 after moving to Whetstone and now, seven years and two moves later, it isn’t happy, and neither are our creaky joints. We were going to hang on a while, but the discovery of a loose spring that had drilled a hole in the divan sort of brought our plans forward a little. Not cheap, but at least we’ll have a decent bed to faint on to after the bill comes in.
I had plans for yesterday, involving liberating several of the shrubs in the garden from their weedy prison – I know for a fact that the jungle back there includes a Hebe, but it is currently lost in a sea of other, uninvited greenery, which has been encouraged by the fair impression of tropical monsoon that we’ve had over the past six weeks.
The same weather has encouraged the buddleia, which I think must be a rain god of some sort. Now, those of you who know about these things will understand that a buddleia requires no encouragement. When Shakespeare coined the word ‘fecund’ it was probably after battling through a forest of buddleia that had popped up overnight between Ann Hathaway’s cottage and the Stratford upon Avon Sainsbury’s.
I was pretty savage with ours back in the spring, but frankly you’d never know to look at it now. I can’t visualise just how big it would have grown if we hadn’t gone in for a fair amount of hack and slash2.
The upshot was simply that every time the thought even crossed my mind that I should go out and lop a number of branches off, the heavens opened. It didn’t rain in the English sense of the word; this was full on rainy-season rain.
So, much against my better instincts, after getting fed up with Warcraft I watched the final set of the Wimbledon Men’s Final. I discovered that it is possible to get sucked in without being overly interested, a bit like watching a soap opera. The shenanigans on the court were okay, but the score board flipping back and forward between advantage and deuce was quite hypnotic. And at the end, when it was all over, we all shed a little tear with Mr Murray, didn’t we? For the first time ever, he seemed like a human being, overwhelmed with emotion and all that.
Just about a fortnight until the next sporting horror. I wonder if I shall be able to prune the buddleia by then? At least I shall be able to cook nice meals and sleep comfortably.
1Actually, it depends upon the furniture and even then, ‘excited’ probably overstates the case, somewhat…
2Note to self: invest in Kukri.