Stirfried veg and prawns with Indochinese sauce and mini veg samosas

Many thanks to everyone who contacted me to advise that I inform my bank of the scam I fell for. I took your advice and spent a fair chunk of this morning on the phone to my bank.

At one point I was asked to explain “in detail, step by step, leaving nothing out” how I had been so careless as to risk the safety of the account with which the bank had entrusted me (that wasn’t how they put it, but it was clearly the general gist). If the aim of the exercise was to replace any lingering shame at having fallen for a scam with annoyance at the bank for being so patronising about it, then they can count it as a great success.

The end result was that it was a known scam and my card had been blocked before any money could be lost. A new card is now on its way to me, hopefully in time for me to pay for my journey into town to meet with the Job Centre. If not, I will have to ask mum to pay for me, which I know she’ll be happy to do but that I try to avoid as it feels too much like abusing my position as mum’s carer. (I know I’m not, but it feels like that all the same. Don’t ask me to explain my mental logic on that one, please.)

Later I finally got around to reading the material sent to me by Motability, and short-listed a few cars from their list that I think I would like to own. Top of my list was a VW, naturally (I’ve driven a lot of car marques over the years and VWs are by far my favourite), and the others were, I confess, mostly chosen on the basis of which were the least painful to look at. (And why are so many electric cars so ugly?)

When mum eventually emerged from her bedroom (she’s had another “I’m so ill, I don’t know why, I wish someone would just shoot me” day), I mentioned my research to her. Her response was a sad “just don’t leave me, will you?” I don’t know where she thinks I’m going to go with my condition. Not that I would leave her anyway, of course.

In the afternoon I went out to do a bit of gardening, then sat in a shady corner and experimented with my new phone’s camera. The local wildlife has no fear of me – or anyone – and quickly resumed their usual activity round me. It was really very pleasant.

This evening’s dinner was a bit of a mishmash of “what have I got?” I started with the mini vegetable samosas that have been in the freezer entirely too long, then remembered the leftover battered prawns sitting in the fridge so added those to some frozen veg in a stirfry. To make them slightly more compatible with the samosas I created an Indochinese sauce, which is a fancy way of saying I mixed some leftover spice mix from a Simply Cook box with some soy sauce and poured it over the veg and prawns.

The end result was salty, slightly spicy, and nicely crunchy thanks to the veg. The samosas were pretty much what I would expect from mass-produced finger food, being entirely fine without being remotely exciting or memorable. Not bad for a thrown-together meal and, depressingly, was significantly better than the pasta dish I spent so much time and effort on earlier in the week.

Lacking a proper conclusion to this post, I will instead leave you with another photo, of the hummingbird hawkmoth that graced me with its presence while I was sitting outside. Mum has said before that she thinks these rare visitors are a visit from my dad’s spirit: I’m not sure I agree, but they’re special enough that I felt truly blessed watching it fluttering around my mini buddleia.