Reviewing the days activities and a staple of the British diet!

Well, it has been an odd sort of day, I must say. Up at the crack of dawn - just before 7.00 am still counts as the crack of dawn for me - to catch the bus to my daughter's house to do a bit of D.I.Y. for her, I shared my transport with a host of schoolchildren, something I have not done for a while. And something I don't relish doing again in any great hurry. When did 12 year old boys become so foul-mouthed? Probably not long after they got rid of bus conductors. You see, I knew the answer all along! 

 D.I.Y. completed, I contacted my brother-in-law, who was supposed to be picking me up, to tell him that I was no longer where he expected me to be. We arranged a new pick-up point near the local market, but he must drive faster than I thought as I saw him arrive there while I was still juggling fruit to be weighed at the market stall. Such was my confusion and haste that I bought sugar-free biscuits for him instead of gluten free and only noticed after we had arrived back at our house for a cup of tea. 

The rest of the day was split between a walk to the Diggle Chippy - a tiny fish and chip shop in what surely used to be a wooden garage - some more D.I.Y - at our house this time - quite a few cups of tea and some unsuccessful D.I.Y - this time back at my daughter's house where her newly purchased kitchen blind proved impossible to fit without proper tools. 

The weather was as mixed as the activities. The sun shone beautifully in the frost in the garden first thing and remained shining until some time just before lunchtime. As we arrived at the diminutive fish-and-chippery we were caught in a hailstorm, which helpfully disappeared so that we could eat our lunch in the returned sunshine by the Diggle duck pond. 

The sun managed to stay out until we returned from our walk. Here are some photos of the nice bits of the day. 

This evening we have had snow. I am very confused about the weather! 

Thinking about a light meal in the evening - we had had fish and chips at lunchtime, after all - I spotted a review of baked beans in one of the online newspapers. What else would you expect in a newspaper on a Wednesday? Some of them waxed quite lyrical. Here are a couple of examples: 

" Tesco baked beans: There is a real 1980s school dinners feel to Tesco’s beans. The sweet, bland sauce is fractionally thinner than you would normally expect and, frankly, barely distinguishable as tomato-based. It does not adhere meaningfully to the beans, either. They look pale and exposed, like bald English bathers in a Costa Brava hotel pool. The dominant flavour is of marginally overcooked, mushy haricot, which, while not actively unpleasant, definitely makes this taste like the cheap option it is. Heinz is a purring Jag next to this third-hand Honda Jazz. 4/10" ("pale and exposed, like bald English bathers"!?!?)   

"You know when you’re in a meeting and everyone starts talking at once? And you don’t know what’s going on? That is Co-op’s baked beans. The sauce is a bewildering muddle of peculiar flavours: something almost sweetly corny; a certain mustiness; gentle spiciness; tomatoes thrown off-kilter by interloping astringent notes. The beans themselves taste tired. They fulfil their iron-rich obligation, but with little of the vibrancy displayed in the Duchy Organic or Morrisons samples. A minority of those beans are a bit hard and chewy, too. Not great. 3/10" ("interloping astringent note"?!?! Beans that "tasted tired"!?!?) 

Heinz beans won the greatest praise, of course. I know people who swear by them and declare that Heinz baked beans on good wholemeal bread toast is the basis of a well-balanced diet! Personally I would grow bored but that's how it is. Each to his own!