Steak Pie and Macaroni Cheese – 15 December 2023

Scamp was off to FitSteps this morning. The last one of this year.

While she was away, it was my job to post the parcels to the boys and girls.

First I had to write the addresses on all the boxes and then humph them over to the post office in Condorrat. It was supposed to be 8ºc this morning, but that didn’t take into account the wind chill and it was chilling. Condorrat post office is a tiny wee place and it was crowded today with folk carrying big parcels, me being one of them. However, the woman who was in charge was efficient at getting through the queues of folk waiting to send parcels out to other folk. After answering a load of questions I got all three parcels posted off. Hopefully everyone will like what’s in them, and there are a couple of surprises.

I took a few photos on the way back home, mainly boring tree photos and a few of the bright red berries that no animal wants to eat and no birds do either. The bright red colour seems to signify ‘Danger’ and they all steer well clear. I imagine they are poisonous to all flesh, so I kept my distance too, but they did brighten up the trees. One of them became PoD.

Cup of coffee when I got home and we were ready to go to Brodens for lunch. Last week we were the only folk in the restaurant for a while. Today it was jumping, but our table was marked as reserved. Steak pie for me and macaroni cheese for Scamp. Good filling food. Then we walked down the road. We had intended to go down to the shops for some things, but then decided it was a bit cold for that, so we went home instead.

Scamp though it would be a good idea to put up her new automatic lights on the tall fence. I grabbed my trusty staple gun and proceeded to staple some cable ties to the fence, then we could use them to hold the wires of the long string of lights. Just as I was nearly finished, I managed to drive a staple through the fleshy part of my thumb, just shy of my nail, thankfully. Lots of blood, but nothing an Elastoplast couldn’t cope with. It was sore at the time, but now it’s settled down. Dafty! I think Scamp got a bigger fright than me. The lights look very pretty all different colours. We checked tonight and they went off after their 6 hours.

I did some post processing afterwards and Scamp sat and read for a while. We watched the final of the Portrait Artist of the Year and the right person won, for once. So unusual for us to pick the winner.

No real plans for tomorrow. Every year, June buys Scamp a Poinsettia at Christmas. Lately she just gives Scamp the money to buy one. Tomorrow I think we might go and buy June’s poinsettia.