There’s a slender silver sliver of moon in the skies tonight. It’s beautiful. I saw it a moment ago when I went out to retrieve the Boys’ dishes. The Boys are of course Hartley and Romeo. Tomorrow is Sunday, so it’s the day I am on breakfast and dinner duty. Romeo missed his breakfast with Joe this morning. Sleeping in was Joe’s verdict, and when he, Romeo, saw me mid morning he was hopeful I was bearing food. I wasn’t. I was bearing a stack of clean dishes to return to Joe, so I told him (Joe) about Romeo and the next thing Romeo got his breakfast. Or maybe that should be brunch. Hartley’s brother Smudge approached me while I was talking to J by her front door. I have a mission to get Smudge to trust me so I can start work on the dreadful knots he has in his fur. The trusting and the removing may take many months.
April was dry. There’s a rhyme about spring weather: March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers. I used to take comfort from it when I was a child as most of the cousins on my father’s side of the family, that is the cousins who I saw on a weekly basis as opposed to the Irish cousins who I saw every other summer, had March birthdays. Mine is in May. I felt a bit left out. But this year April was windy and May is showery with temperatures see-sawing. I was working today and got caught in a couple of showers. They were short but effective. The damp has brought the slugs and snails out in the garden. I avoided them when fetching the dishes, and was relieved no slug was actually in either dish. I know Celia will pick up slugs, but I am more prissy.
Work was good for several reasons, one being it involved walking. I mean to pack a decent walk in every day until Wednesday, and shall probably walk to the hospital before my movements are curtailed for the next few weeks. Mother used to say she wanted to keep her mobility. I know what she meant. Being able to get out and around on your own two feet is a freedom beyond price.
Tonight I made a slap up salad. The spiraliser has come back into use and I love it. I have started to add a bit of lemon juice to the courgette and it perks it up beautifully. I don’t dint on my salads. I have a big bowl. Tonight’s was raw spinach and (lots of) spiralled courgette, black olives, black beans, spring onions, vine tomatoes, cucumber, penne and vegan pesto, black pepper. I realise I forgot the red pepper. Tomorrow. God it was good.
I finished reading Summerwater by Sarah Moss, a slow build to a sudden dreadful climax, all the details dropped into the earlier chapters suddenly and shockingly coming together. Now I have started on The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell. I think this one is going to be fairly disturbing too.
B&J and I had decided we didn’t want to risk getting caught in a shower meeting in the garden, so it’s been an evening in. I caught up on Gogglebox from last night when I was working, then switched to BBC I-player and series one, episode one of Line of Duty. It’s good, as most of the population already knows. I am very late to this party. I can see me watching an episode most nights in the coming week. I have only watched series six, and I am struck by how young they all look in series one. The Steve Arnott and Kate Fleming characters played by Martin Compston and Vicky McClure look as though they can have only just left school. Even Ted Hastings played by Adrian Dunbar looks relatively fresh faced. It’s so easy to dismiss TV drama as moving wallpaper, and I am as guilty as the next person of a degree of tv watching snobbery (though how I dare given my love of The Dog House, Paul O’Grady and the Love of Dogs, Twelve Puppies and Us, the Supervet and anything else of that ilk, I don’t know), but Line of Duty is one of those programmes which reminds you how well scripted, thoughtfully conceived and well acted television dramas are on a par with the best of stage and big screen.
So. now I need to slow down, do the washing up, think about teeth cleaning and fresh pyjamas.
Stay safe. Keep well.
Isobel (and Cat)'s Blog 
Do you plan these mouth watering salads in advance or are you just pulling out whatever is in the fridge?
A bit of both. Most of the ingredients are things I have anyway. Vegan pesto not so often, and the beans depend on what I have cooked and ready to go. Recently I’ve been able to get those thinner misshapen cucumbers that have taste, as opposed to ones that are fat, uniform and straight and favoured by supermarkets. I spiralised a courgette intending to use it in a stir fry. The last bits may go that way, but salad won! A couple of springs of chopped mint in a salad (though not with this pesto) is a great addition. Little explosions of flavour. Delicious.