I forgot to mention that Emma came into season earlier this week. While not as messy as Freya, she is still leaving little spots all over the place. She is also rather morose. It’s like she needs chocolate to cheer her up. At least that’s how it seems to me.
Leaving her to her woes, I went shopping, taking advantage of a very quiet Starbucks (school goes back on Monday so that’ll be that) and nice, easy stroll around Waitrose.
Fiona, Lauren and Jason bought us a hamper for Christmas and included was a Christmas pudding. Mirinda thought it would be nice to have as dessert tonight. Of course one can’t just have Christmas pudding. I was told to make custard.
According to Mirinda I make the best custard in the world. If so it’s because I copy Delia. Except when I make creme brulee, I always use Delia for any custard needs. It’s quick, easy and delicious. I really have no idea why people use powder when the real thing is so simple. And you know what all the ingredients are. People should care about what they ingest.
Not that I care about what other people ingest. In terms of ‘care’, I care more about the fact that Penrith, where I grew up, was the hottest place on earth at one point today. It was 48.9° which is ridiculously hot.
Dawn alerted me to the fact with a link to a Sky News report. I have no idea how she remembered I was from Penrith but I told her how, if the temperature climbed above 42°, as school kids, we’d be sent home. Instead of going home, we’d all head to the local swimming pool where the water was full of kids.
Crowding into an already crowded pool where the water was not particularly refreshing, was, in retrospect, not the best idea. While my secondary school didn’t have air conditioning, it did have big ceiling fans. The fans would have been better than being at the pool.
In fact, the whole idea that school was cancelled because of the heat seems very odd to me now. Being in, generally, big, airy classrooms with large ceiling fans, was going to be a lot better than anything we could get at home. In fact, most of us would probably just go home and play cricket in the road.
Mind you, I only remember it happening once and, looking at the average temperatures in Penrith from 1995 to 2017 (I left school in 1974) they rarely reached 35° let alone 42°.
Like Ivan Denisovich, the 42° temperature was probably set to be the most unlikeliest in order to ensure there was a limit but that it was rarely achieved.
Okay, I’m a cynic.
