Courgette and tomato with mini Yorkshire puddings; bakewell sponge pudding and cream

Days of overexertion and stress finally got the best of me this morning, and I didn’t wake up until gone 11. I have vague memories of mum trying to talk to me and huffing off when I didn’t respond: I don’t know if those memories are of something that really happened or if I dreamed it. What’s certain is that mum hasn’t forgotten that I slept later than usual, and she’s not going to let me forget it either.

With that being the case, I haven’t done much today, beyond realising that I have double-booked myself and am meant to be getting my hair cut at the same time I’m meant to be 20 miles away at an appointment with the Job Centre. Oops.

I did get out our new recycling bag, to hold big cardboard boxes that won’t fit in the green bin, and it confused mum completely. “But it won’t fit in the bin¹,” she said. I eventually convinced her (I think) that it’s meant to sit beside the bin, and the bin operators will empty and return it to us along with the bin, but I foresee more confusion tomorrow when it comes to putting it away.

This afternoon I did a trial run of one of the sponge pudding variations I intend to include in my cookbook. Mum was somewhat concerned by the prospect of testing a recipe but, when it came to it, she happily dished out a generous portion.

Before that was a simple meal of sliced courgette and baby plum tomatoes, cooked in bacon fat left over from our lunchtime sandwiches, served with mini Yorkshire puds. If you think it looks like a day-before-grocery-shopping meal, you would be entirely correct.

Tomorrow I have to be up earlier than today as the gardener is coming to cut the hedge. Earlier today our neighbour, who I think is a similar age to mum, knocked on our door to ask if we would like him to try trimming the side of the hedge, as he had seen me struggling to get past it with my crutches. He had already heaved his heavy petrol-powered lawn mower around to cut our grass, without being asked.

As mum says every time she remembers, we really are lucky with our neighbours. I must add to my near endless task list an item to buy them something nice to let them know how much we appreciate them. Or maybe I’ll bake them something nice, if I can slip into the conversation a request for details of any food allergies.

And then put the resulting recipe in the cookbook, of course.

1. Well, she calls it “the green one”, but she means the bin. ↩︎