Swimming in an ocean rock pool. I am a bit slow, clearly, but I have finally discovered a place that has all the nice seawater of the beach, but no horrible sand and no scary waves. It is bloody freezing, but once you go numb it’s refreshing and makes me feel brave. There are also lots of interesting old people to talk to while you swim.
Eating five-hour Greek leg of lamb, bought from our local butcher down here. I’ll tell you more about him another day, but he is known in our family as the perpetually surprised butcher, because everything we ever say seems to astonish him. Today he told us that yesterday his daughter’s longtime boyfriend had come all the way out to the shop to ask him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It is top secret, as the boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet. I am certain we were not the first to be told this secret today.
Anyway, the lamb – you rub crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper and a mix of fresh and dried oregano onto a leg of lamb, put it in a roasting tin, add cold water about two centimetres deep and put it in the oven for five hours. The oven is slow – 160 degrees C – and you cover it with foil after three hours. Just before it’s done, eat the shank when no one is looking and then deny the leg came with one.
Watching Game of Thrones. I am not a fantasy reader, but this show has sucked me in. I get me Lannisters mixed up with me Targaryens, and I can’t tell one of Sean Bean’s sons from the next but it’s very engaging. Already the Dothraki (barbarian hordes) have entered our vernacular. ‘Pause it, will you please, H? The Dothraki have been buggering about with the blankets again. I need to tuck them in properly.’
Listening to ‘Leather and Lace’ by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley. I have no reason for this. It’s phenomenally daggy. That may be the reason right there. I like to sing along to it – despite the fact that the only lyrics Stevie sings that I can decipher are ‘words impossible to follow’. How ironic or meta or sumpfink.
Recovering from the lurgy. I still have a bit of a cough but I have kicked that flu to the kerb. Now I can participate in the thrice daily trips to the park and all the other things that seem to make up a holiday with a toddler — including in the 5 am starts. Early morning aren’t so bad, though, when they look like this:
H took this picture, while he was chopping wood for the fire. Oh yeah.
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