I’ve just bought some saucepans. Well, everyone needs a bit of excitement in their lives from time to time. I chose click and collect, so I’ll get them tomorrow morning. Woohoo. The purchase is necessary as one of my pans is falling apart, and I’m increasingly aware of how scruffy my ceramic hob is after twenty years of hard wear. Now that Octavia has an induction hob, I cook a meal to take round to share with her it can be a problem. I always used to take whatever it was in the saucepan it was cooked in, but my pans are not compatible with her hob. So I’ve made sure my new pans will be, and if and when I decide on a new hob I may go the induction route too. May. Not Shall. Cousin has an induction hob which I use when I am at her house and it has frequently frustrated me. I do like the way the heat is instant. But boy, these hobs can be very pernickety. Don’t hold your breath.
The weather is cold, and although we are inching (I can’t really say centremetrering with any conviction so in this instance imperial measurements look set to rule for some time. Memo to self: look up the origin of the verb to inch) towards more daylight, it is slow. When not working, I’m reading and watching television. I’ve just read The Raptures by Jan Carson. I loved it and highly recommend it. She’s a writer I come across a lot when I am in NI. She’s evidently a regular at book signings at No Alibis. Maybe she even saw and admired MasterB’s calendar which hung there last year. She sat behind Cecilia and me at the Homeplace in the summer, and admired Cecilia’s top. Mine came in for no admiration. However, here, across the water, it’s rare to find her books. NI is a small place. I have been at so many events attended also by Malachi O’Doherty and his wife Maureen Boyle that he gives me a little confused smile of recognition, but evidently has no idea who I am. I even ran into them when I was Girl From the North Country at the Grand Opera House last year. I don’t think Maureen has registered my presence. Maybe she’s been too busy thinking poetic thoughts. It would be fun to claim I ran into Seamus Heaney in JC Stewarts’s in Magherafelt, but that would be a fib. Did Seamus do the grocery shopping? I have no idea.
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