Well, my worries in general; but now I'm a parent, I can sound more middle England.
When I used to walk to the station alone on my way to work, even though I was pregnant I used to cross anywhere, playing Frogger through gaps in the traffic. Once my precious cargo was truly in this world (and probably - I don't remember - once I was very big and pretty sure the baby was sticking around), I started walking the longer way to use the zebra crossing. Now, the crossing is not well-placed: a few metres from a mini roundabout on a corner (a tri-crossing), meaning cars zoom round the corner and can't slow down in time, and a few metres from a corner, meaning cars don't see, don't anticipate, and don't slow down in time. (I'll post a photo later). Anyway, quite often, I have to wait for one or other lane of traffic to stop, and more often than not, a car zooms over the crossing. To give them their dues, the drivers do often wave their apology, but really, too little too effing late. If I weren't scared for my own and the baby's welfare, and trying to set a good example of quiet tolerance to my baby, I'd give them a round bollocking, but mostly I just scowl, or shake my head, or otherwise attempt to exhibit my shock or despondency to the other drivers, so they can feel pleased with themselves and their safe and courteous driving, which I hope will reinforce good driving behaviour. (I know, I am delusional. And a little self-important).
Anyway, the kind of crazy driving beloved of our youth, the Poles over the road and local mini-cab drivers was limited, I thought, to the generally scary folk of North-East London. But no. It happens in leafy Muswell Hill, too. Leafy, bourgeois, yummy mummy Muswell Hill. We were invited last weekend to a Christmas knees-up in the rather specific interval of 3-5pm. We arrived late, in a flap, having dropped and smashed the wine as we walked the wrong way up the street looking for the flat. Poor Babs was in the throes of an eye infection which had suddenly developed such that her little eye was gummed shut when we woke her from her little travelling slumber. And walking up the road, a car zoomed so fast it made us look up, and so close to a parked car that it knocked the rear-view mirror clean off. It was quite alarming. The driver seemed to slow down, and I naturally assumed he would stop, but no, just drove off. Anyway, I took the number, and I was determined to let the other car's driver know, having just spent £100 getting my car fixed after someone bumped it outside the house and left it for us to find. But someone had borrowed my pen the day before, so we couldn't find it. So we wrote both numbers in Terry's iPhone, so we could let someone know.
That was a week ago. I'd look into it now, but the baby's awake, I need a shower, and I've just opened an email giving me a month's notice (so unfair at this time of year) on a room in my dad's flat. Bugger.
Crazy driving though. I worry.
Saturday, 13 December 2008
What I did on my holidays
For our first family holiday*, Terry, Babs and I went to Venice.
Magical, it was. Crazy, it is. We arrived about 8pm, a bit too late for the baby and therefore a little too stressful for me, but when we (Terry) stopped procrastinating and (I) asked someone for help, we found the boat-bus to the hotel, and took a little journey down the Grand Canal in the evening, with crazy Venice prettily lit and looking just - just- like Venice in Vegas.
Yes, Venice - the real Venice, steeped in history and culture, evocative of masquerade and Renaissance and corsets and Casanova - reminded me of Vegas. And of the 2005 Sienna Miller movie. I'm trash.
Anyhoo, it was beautiful:
There were many and varied yummy delights:
And after a couple of days, the sun shone:
Five days was just about enough with an 8-month old, which is just a little too old to happily be constrained all the time. Babs held up very well, sleeping in the buggy in the mornings and kick-kick-kicking in the BabyBjorn in the afternoons. (I think this was the end of the window for holidays of this kind 'til she's walking properly). The Italians were very sweet and friendly and enchanted by the baby (alright, all babies), with lots of waving and 'Ciao, ciao!' to the baby and 'Complimenti' to us. The food was pretty yummy - Terry went back for seconds on some rigatone with smokey salmon, porcini and courgette; I chowed through several good pizzas, some yummy calamari and a rubbish spaghetti alla vongole. And we only got ripped off once, for some hot chocolate and a coffee overlooking the Grand Canal at the Rialto bridge, when we needed to sit in the sun to get some food into the baby.
The hotel - just the 'most popular' on lastminute.com where we booked - was super-central, super-easy to find off the boat, and the breakfast girls were super-helpful given the grim hours of their job and the grumpiness of some of our fellow guests. We were upgraded to a junior suite, so Babs had her own room, which made things a little easier. The only downer was the lack of hotel restaurant (off season), so we subsisted on king-size bed picnics in the evenings and had to cope with the super-repetitive CNN (I thought the BBC world news channel was bad...) or Italian X-Factor.
Anyway, Venice gets my thumbs up. Next time we go away I will be taking a portable DVD player (we deliberated about taking the laptop, then decided we had enough stuff) and more baby food if we have a baby this small (trying to ensure Babs could eat out was a bit too hard). And get a baby who'll breastfeed on the plane.
*not my first holiday with the baby, which was to my mum's. The first day of which we found out my dad had died. This holiday passed without mishap.
Magical, it was. Crazy, it is. We arrived about 8pm, a bit too late for the baby and therefore a little too stressful for me, but when we (Terry) stopped procrastinating and (I) asked someone for help, we found the boat-bus to the hotel, and took a little journey down the Grand Canal in the evening, with crazy Venice prettily lit and looking just - just- like Venice in Vegas.
Yes, Venice - the real Venice, steeped in history and culture, evocative of masquerade and Renaissance and corsets and Casanova - reminded me of Vegas. And of the 2005 Sienna Miller movie. I'm trash.
Anyhoo, it was beautiful:
There were many and varied yummy delights:
And after a couple of days, the sun shone:
Five days was just about enough with an 8-month old, which is just a little too old to happily be constrained all the time. Babs held up very well, sleeping in the buggy in the mornings and kick-kick-kicking in the BabyBjorn in the afternoons. (I think this was the end of the window for holidays of this kind 'til she's walking properly). The Italians were very sweet and friendly and enchanted by the baby (alright, all babies), with lots of waving and 'Ciao, ciao!' to the baby and 'Complimenti' to us. The food was pretty yummy - Terry went back for seconds on some rigatone with smokey salmon, porcini and courgette; I chowed through several good pizzas, some yummy calamari and a rubbish spaghetti alla vongole. And we only got ripped off once, for some hot chocolate and a coffee overlooking the Grand Canal at the Rialto bridge, when we needed to sit in the sun to get some food into the baby.The hotel - just the 'most popular' on lastminute.com where we booked - was super-central, super-easy to find off the boat, and the breakfast girls were super-helpful given the grim hours of their job and the grumpiness of some of our fellow guests. We were upgraded to a junior suite, so Babs had her own room, which made things a little easier. The only downer was the lack of hotel restaurant (off season), so we subsisted on king-size bed picnics in the evenings and had to cope with the super-repetitive CNN (I thought the BBC world news channel was bad...) or Italian X-Factor.
Anyway, Venice gets my thumbs up. Next time we go away I will be taking a portable DVD player (we deliberated about taking the laptop, then decided we had enough stuff) and more baby food if we have a baby this small (trying to ensure Babs could eat out was a bit too hard). And get a baby who'll breastfeed on the plane.
*not my first holiday with the baby, which was to my mum's. The first day of which we found out my dad had died. This holiday passed without mishap.
'Coals to Newcastle' or 'Crocker to Conneticut'
So the great BC backlog continues. Though not for much longer. The cupboard is almost bare:
<Sniff>
As documented earlier, my brother came over from the US in November. In his honour, and partly in recognition of the fact I swiped all the Crocker with no mention to mother or brother, I whipped up the Yellow Cake.
(Yes, Crocker-naive British readers, it really is called Yellow Cake. It's not Victoria Sponge. Its a sweet sponge-type cake which is yellow. There is also White Cake.... Which is also not Victoria Sponge. And Angel Cake, which is probably similar to White Cake, and similar - but different - to the Angel Cake we used to get just occasionally from M&S back when it was still called Marks and Spencer).
The best way with Yellow Cake is always Brown Frosting. (Oh go on then, 'Chocolate' Frosting. But a pitiful 8.5% cocoa powder. I just checked). Oh, gosh, it really is yummy. Anyway, my tins are too small (established previously with the carrot cake) so I made some cupcakes too, and when Flesh and Papanomicron turned up for supper I foisted one upon Pap and presented the whole cake as dessert. Which was lush.
<Sniff>
As documented earlier, my brother came over from the US in November. In his honour, and partly in recognition of the fact I swiped all the Crocker with no mention to mother or brother, I whipped up the Yellow Cake.
(Yes, Crocker-naive British readers, it really is called Yellow Cake. It's not Victoria Sponge. Its a sweet sponge-type cake which is yellow. There is also White Cake.... Which is also not Victoria Sponge. And Angel Cake, which is probably similar to White Cake, and similar - but different - to the Angel Cake we used to get just occasionally from M&S back when it was still called Marks and Spencer).
The best way with Yellow Cake is always Brown Frosting. (Oh go on then, 'Chocolate' Frosting. But a pitiful 8.5% cocoa powder. I just checked). Oh, gosh, it really is yummy. Anyway, my tins are too small (established previously with the carrot cake) so I made some cupcakes too, and when Flesh and Papanomicron turned up for supper I foisted one upon Pap and presented the whole cake as dessert. Which was
Friday, 12 December 2008
Two weeks offline is a long time... but two weeks back on is even longer
Virgin - who wrote with such sensitivity from one department when we informed another of my father's passing - upgraded our broadband service in November. They didn't ask us. They didn't request details of our router and its age/sophistication/capacity for greater speeds. They did write with two days' notice and tell us it was happening. And then, one Monday, they did it. And then, suddenly, we had no internet no more. We waited, and it didn't come back. We switched the box back off, and back on again and it didn't come back. And we waited. And it didn't come back.
My boss had emailed a week earlier to tell me (and a bunch of others) that she'd/we'd been commissioned to write a paper on the project that ended when the baby came, and that she'd appreciate our input. Virgin put paid to my contribution by allowing me no access whatsoever to the internet, though we had a perfectly functioning wireless LAN. Which was nice.
I phoned Virgin a lot, and they kept me on hold a lot, then they made me follow instructions to set up the box with new passwords, and nothing happened. Terry phone them, and stayed on hold a lot, and followed the same instructions, and nothing happened. And they never really told us what the problem was, or how or when it would be fixed. As one week turned into two, I quietly cheered the fact that this majorly got me off the hook with work (because I really, really feared I couldn't make a sensible contribution and would show myself up as a bit useless), but I pined for t'internet. In the middle of week two, I realised this was probably my longest time offline since I started my PhD in 1996. And then I pined some more. They phoned us back a couple of times, but I was out. The messages they left gave the central switchboard number, so we went through the options and went interminably on hold, and whoever took our call treated us like we were starting a fresh enquiry - no continuity.
But then, after two weeks, and following 25 minutes on hold in a call I returned because when they called 4 minutes earlier the baby was almost asleep on my boob, they fixed the fault. Allelujah.
So I checked my email, and skipped over the many, many emails about the paper, to the one that said that hooray, today, after two weeks' hard grind (of which I had no part), it had finally gone. And I felt a bit guilty. But I got over it.
And then I got a text. 'Call for proposals has just come out. Closing date two weeks today. Would really appreciate your help on this.' Damn.
Gosh, damn, it filled me with fear and dread. Paper-writing is bad enough, but bid-writing? Actually coming up with ideas? Yikes. And then having to come up with a reasonable literature review after a year out of the game? Ouch.
Worse, this was the day Terry finished work for three whole weeks, his first holiday since the baby was 3 weeks old; this was the day before my brother arrived from the States to sleep on our floor and commute far to work but then hang out with us in the evenings for a week; the week I'd scheduled to spend 2 days doing homework for my course; and the week before we were due to go on holiday. Rubbish, rubbish timing. 'Oh well,' said the boss, clearly thinking she had it worse, having just had three weeks on the paper. 'Oh well.'
Anyhoo, my brother came, we saw picked him up and saw T5 (I like!), Terry worked Monday to Wednesday despite having 'finished', my brother hung out, the anticipation of work made me very, very grumpy, and then I did my two days promised on the bid. And you know? It was ok. And my boss, whose stinginess with praise and professional brilliance conspire often to make me feel very small and rather dim, was pleased, impressed, complimentary and grateful.
My homework didn't get done, but after 4 days of procrastination we booked the holiday, and then after a few days we went on holiday, and it was lovely.
And then we came back and we turned on the router. And we had a wireless LAN. Which was nice. But no internet....
My boss had emailed a week earlier to tell me (and a bunch of others) that she'd/we'd been commissioned to write a paper on the project that ended when the baby came, and that she'd appreciate our input. Virgin put paid to my contribution by allowing me no access whatsoever to the internet, though we had a perfectly functioning wireless LAN. Which was nice.
I phoned Virgin a lot, and they kept me on hold a lot, then they made me follow instructions to set up the box with new passwords, and nothing happened. Terry phone them, and stayed on hold a lot, and followed the same instructions, and nothing happened. And they never really told us what the problem was, or how or when it would be fixed. As one week turned into two, I quietly cheered the fact that this majorly got me off the hook with work (because I really, really feared I couldn't make a sensible contribution and would show myself up as a bit useless), but I pined for t'internet. In the middle of week two, I realised this was probably my longest time offline since I started my PhD in 1996. And then I pined some more. They phoned us back a couple of times, but I was out. The messages they left gave the central switchboard number, so we went through the options and went interminably on hold, and whoever took our call treated us like we were starting a fresh enquiry - no continuity.
But then, after two weeks, and following 25 minutes on hold in a call I returned because when they called 4 minutes earlier the baby was almost asleep on my boob, they fixed the fault. Allelujah.
So I checked my email, and skipped over the many, many emails about the paper, to the one that said that hooray, today, after two weeks' hard grind (of which I had no part), it had finally gone. And I felt a bit guilty. But I got over it.
And then I got a text. 'Call for proposals has just come out. Closing date two weeks today. Would really appreciate your help on this.' Damn.
Gosh, damn, it filled me with fear and dread. Paper-writing is bad enough, but bid-writing? Actually coming up with ideas? Yikes. And then having to come up with a reasonable literature review after a year out of the game? Ouch.
Worse, this was the day Terry finished work for three whole weeks, his first holiday since the baby was 3 weeks old; this was the day before my brother arrived from the States to sleep on our floor and commute far to work but then hang out with us in the evenings for a week; the week I'd scheduled to spend 2 days doing homework for my course; and the week before we were due to go on holiday. Rubbish, rubbish timing. 'Oh well,' said the boss, clearly thinking she had it worse, having just had three weeks on the paper. 'Oh well.'
Anyhoo, my brother came, we saw picked him up and saw T5 (I like!), Terry worked Monday to Wednesday despite having 'finished', my brother hung out, the anticipation of work made me very, very grumpy, and then I did my two days promised on the bid. And you know? It was ok. And my boss, whose stinginess with praise and professional brilliance conspire often to make me feel very small and rather dim, was pleased, impressed, complimentary and grateful.
My homework didn't get done, but after 4 days of procrastination we booked the holiday, and then after a few days we went on holiday, and it was lovely.
And then we came back and we turned on the router. And we had a wireless LAN. Which was nice. But no internet....
Saturday, 11 October 2008
Dirty pasta
Terry made delicious pasta, but Gianni, 'a little man holding on tight', didn't want to let all the fusilli go.
'Do you think he's pleased to see you?'
'Do you think he's pleased to see you?'
A new addition
It lives in the under-stairs cupboard. The cupboard under the stairs.
A Dyson. A Dyson dust-buster.*
When we moved into a house, it was high on my list of things to buy. Don't get me wrong, I love Horace (the Hoover; also a Dyson, purchased for my flat as the only vacuum in Peckham that would nestle into a small cupboard, due to its revolutionary telescopic hose), but we've never worked well together. Terry has a much better way with Horace, and we agreed early on that he'd be in charge of hoovering and I'd be in charge of... oh, gosh, everything else, by the looks of things. Somehow, we've been here 11 months and I've really never felt the need for a hand-held. T was doing pretty well at hoovering fortnightly in principle and 3-weekly to monthly in practice, and the blips when it got done less frequently were easy to excuse since we had a new baby. Only the baby's not that new any more, and the hoovering hadn't been done for 6 weeks by the time Terry got to it last weekend. To his credit, he's very thorough, but getting on for 3 hours to hoover a two bedroom terrace is verging on the preposterous. Since a pair of lesbians, a gay and a bickering couple then pitched up for the evening and brought leaves and what not with them, it got me thinking about the dust buster idea again. I ran it by T and he agreed (he's got the money now: I'm on a hundred nicker a week; I have no say), so I sought help from the magic web and found the cheapest, and then did as I always do with big purchases and got scared about being £x poorer, and didn't order.
In the night, trying to get back to sleep after feeding the baby, I remembered that we'd mulled over having a cleaner, which we never did because I'm uncomfortable with yet another recurring cost but primarily with asking someone else to clean up our mess. Once I worked out that the Dyson would cost the equivalent of around 4 weeks' cleaning, it felt like less of an extravagance so I ordered it the next day and it arrived mid-week, and Terry got it out of its box today. (Re: tardiness: I, post-natally, have no truck with instructions and T - well, he works late then comes home and does nowt).
Like Horace, the DC-16 (it took us 12 days to name the baby, this could take a while) is fantastically engineered, with really clever touches that just can't be recreated in prose (poetry to follow). Terry was impressed with the battery charger/dock and found a little nook for it underneath the stairs; he then finished reading the instructions and found that the device has to be attached to the battery while it charges, so drilled two more holes further down the stairs and moved the little dock, and 'Dennis' (temporary name) now has a full-time home:
*Apologies to ?Black and Decker for use of their proprietary name for the hand-held vacuum cleaning device.
A Dyson. A Dyson dust-buster.*
When we moved into a house, it was high on my list of things to buy. Don't get me wrong, I love Horace (the Hoover; also a Dyson, purchased for my flat as the only vacuum in Peckham that would nestle into a small cupboard, due to its revolutionary telescopic hose), but we've never worked well together. Terry has a much better way with Horace, and we agreed early on that he'd be in charge of hoovering and I'd be in charge of... oh, gosh, everything else, by the looks of things. Somehow, we've been here 11 months and I've really never felt the need for a hand-held. T was doing pretty well at hoovering fortnightly in principle and 3-weekly to monthly in practice, and the blips when it got done less frequently were easy to excuse since we had a new baby. Only the baby's not that new any more, and the hoovering hadn't been done for 6 weeks by the time Terry got to it last weekend. To his credit, he's very thorough, but getting on for 3 hours to hoover a two bedroom terrace is verging on the preposterous. Since a pair of lesbians, a gay and a bickering couple then pitched up for the evening and brought leaves and what not with them, it got me thinking about the dust buster idea again. I ran it by T and he agreed (he's got the money now: I'm on a hundred nicker a week; I have no say), so I sought help from the magic web and found the cheapest, and then did as I always do with big purchases and got scared about being £x poorer, and didn't order.
In the night, trying to get back to sleep after feeding the baby, I remembered that we'd mulled over having a cleaner, which we never did because I'm uncomfortable with yet another recurring cost but primarily with asking someone else to clean up our mess. Once I worked out that the Dyson would cost the equivalent of around 4 weeks' cleaning, it felt like less of an extravagance so I ordered it the next day and it arrived mid-week, and Terry got it out of its box today. (Re: tardiness: I, post-natally, have no truck with instructions and T - well, he works late then comes home and does nowt).
Like Horace, the DC-16 (it took us 12 days to name the baby, this could take a while) is fantastically engineered, with really clever touches that just can't be recreated in prose (poetry to follow). Terry was impressed with the battery charger/dock and found a little nook for it underneath the stairs; he then finished reading the instructions and found that the device has to be attached to the battery while it charges, so drilled two more holes further down the stairs and moved the little dock, and 'Dennis' (temporary name) now has a full-time home:
*Apologies to ?Black and Decker for use of their proprietary name for the hand-held vacuum cleaning device.
It's hard to make coffee sponge cake with espresso
Really, I'm going to have to invest in some instant coffee. Instant!
On Wednesday, I went the wrong way (thanks, TomTom) to see F and 9-week cutie, with a bunch of spare baby clothes (thanks, in.spite) and a flat sponge. I partially failed in my mission, which was to take some of the clothes Babs has grown out of and her two/too small sleeping bags, though I made up for it with some extras that she didn't want and some that she did, and we pledged as I left to add to the glamour in our lives by going together to Brent Cross some time soon.
As previously documented ("I don't really like chocolate"), F lives in a house is under renovation, with only a semi-functioning kitchen. Since she also has a tiny baby, and I'd invited myself over for mid-afternoon, I thought I'd better take a cake. And of course I like baking, and it makes me feel a little bit heroic that I can fit it in - though really that's more due to Babs being a good baby than to me being a good housewife/mother.
My mum's rule of thumb for sponge cakes scales up from 4oz of everything and 2 eggs, and because we were short on eggs I went for that size, even though the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book ('The cook's classic companion') showed a victoria sponge at 6oz, and I didn't bother to measure the cake tins. The cakes were consequently a little on the thin side, and no amount of raspberry jam and dredged icing sugar could disguise it*. The cake was pretty yummy, and our oven gives good top-crunch (for a day), but it tasted kind of dense, and straight-talking F didn't feel the need to refute it when I apologetically said so.
Terry was all, 'Oh! Cake?' when he found out it wasn't for keeping, so I promised to make him a chocolate cake the following night. He negotiated hard, and his coffee cake has duly made today, Saturday - 'When there's time to eat it.'Unfortunately on Saturday there is less time to make it, even with two pairs of hands. On Thursday evening I could have whipped one up while supper was cooking, today it went in the oven at 2pm, when I dashed up for a shower, having: put away the washing up, breastfed the baby, put away yesterday's washing, made breakfast for T and me, done two further loads of washing up, ditto two of laundry, watched Saturday Kitchen in bed with T while Babs slept for 60 minutes, poached fish for the baby's lunch, defrosted carrot for the baby's lunch, breastfed the baby following her 3 teaspoons of lunch, made tea for T, made lunch for T and me, made espresso for the cake and spilt nascent cake mixture on the floor while rescuing espresso from hob.
To be fair, Terry helped with the espresso, but even though we put even less water than he first put, it still wasn't strong enough. Sure, it was strong enough to be absolutely foul when I tasted it, but the baked cake has just a whiff of coffee to it, and the frosting - rendered so loose as to dribble down the sides of the cake** - likewise. So I ripped off a tip from my mum, from the coffee drizzle cake she made back in the days when I was too young to have a palate that could take coffee, and drizzled the remaining few tablespoons of coffee over the lower cake, into its open, porous bottom (now top). Then on with the frosting, and on with the top. I refrained from dredging icing sugar on the basis that the damn frosting (yup, Betty Crocker) was sweet enough, so it's not as pretty as it could be.
Fortunately, once I was done with flavouring and drizzling and frosting, it was time for afternoon tea. T's comment? 'All this needs is some icing sugar on top...'.
In my mind? If he'd only followed through with his promise - central to his negotiations - that he'd bring me a handful of instant coffee portions from the cutting room, left over from the shoot....
*Dammit. Not the professional outcome to whichI aspire.
** Ditto! Dammit!
On Wednesday, I went the wrong way (thanks, TomTom) to see F and 9-week cutie, with a bunch of spare baby clothes (thanks, in.spite) and a flat sponge. I partially failed in my mission, which was to take some of the clothes Babs has grown out of and her two/too small sleeping bags, though I made up for it with some extras that she didn't want and some that she did, and we pledged as I left to add to the glamour in our lives by going together to Brent Cross some time soon.
As previously documented ("I don't really like chocolate"), F lives in a house is under renovation, with only a semi-functioning kitchen. Since she also has a tiny baby, and I'd invited myself over for mid-afternoon, I thought I'd better take a cake. And of course I like baking, and it
My mum's rule of thumb for sponge cakes scales up from 4oz of everything and 2 eggs, and because we were short on eggs I went for that size, even though the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book ('The cook's classic companion') showed a victoria sponge at 6oz, and I didn't bother to measure the cake tins. The cakes were consequently a little on the thin side, and no amount of raspberry jam and dredged icing sugar could disguise it*. The cake was pretty yummy, and our oven gives good top-crunch (for a day), but it tasted kind of dense, and straight-talking F didn't feel the need to refute it when I apologetically said so.
Terry was all, 'Oh! Cake?' when he found out it wasn't for keeping, so I promised to make him a chocolate cake the following night. He negotiated hard, and his coffee cake has duly made today, Saturday - 'When there's time to eat it.'Unfortunately on Saturday there is less time to make it, even with two pairs of hands. On Thursday evening I could have whipped one up while supper was cooking, today it went in the oven at 2pm, when I dashed up for a shower, having: put away the washing up, breastfed the baby, put away yesterday's washing, made breakfast for T and me, done two further loads of washing up, ditto two of laundry, watched Saturday Kitchen in bed with T while Babs slept for 60 minutes, poached fish for the baby's lunch, defrosted carrot for the baby's lunch, breastfed the baby following her 3 teaspoons of lunch, made tea for T, made lunch for T and me, made espresso for the cake and spilt nascent cake mixture on the floor while rescuing espresso from hob.
To be fair, Terry helped with the espresso, but even though we put even less water than he first put, it still wasn't strong enough. Sure, it was strong enough to be absolutely foul when I tasted it, but the baked cake has just a whiff of coffee to it, and the frosting - rendered so loose as to dribble down the sides of the cake** - likewise. So I ripped off a tip from my mum, from the coffee drizzle cake she made back in the days when I was too young to have a palate that could take coffee, and drizzled the remaining few tablespoons of coffee over the lower cake, into its open, porous bottom (now top). Then on with the frosting, and on with the top. I refrained from dredging icing sugar on the basis that the damn frosting (yup, Betty Crocker) was sweet enough, so it's not as pretty as it could be.
Fortunately, once I was done with flavouring and drizzling and frosting, it was time for afternoon tea. T's comment? 'All this needs is some icing sugar on top...'.
In my mind? If he'd only followed through with his promise - central to his negotiations - that he'd bring me a handful of instant coffee portions from the cutting room, left over from the shoot....
*Dammit. Not the professional outcome to whichI aspire.
** Ditto! Dammit!
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