The Daily Photograph 4

Katy and family left to return to Norfolk this morning and I would be bereft if it were not for knowing that they had a wonderful wee holiday and that I will see them all again soon. Katy called this afternoon to inform us that they had arrived home safely and that James was racing around in his baby walker with a new appreciation of the saying, East, West, Home's Best. I think so too.

Leitrim Sister and I went to Antrim to visit our friend and found her in poor spirits, laid low with another infection. Afterwards we walked in Antrim's pretty Castle Grounds where we climbed the motte.

 I took this photograph from its side. Apparently it is parts of the stonework from one of the original castles. I'm not entirely sure if it is the one built in the 17th century or not. There are bits of ruined castles dotted along the banks of Lough Neagh all over the place;  it seems that the Lords O'Neill were very unfortunate in their housing situation what with an accidental fire in the late 19th century and the IRA attack in the early 1920s.

Not much remains of the castle in Antrim but one solitary tower, but way back in the 1960s the ruins were more extensive. I saw my first flasher there. He must have heard myself and my school friend Sylvia stumbling, chattering in his general direction and as we turned a ruined wall there he was -  all phallus erectus, and an uninspiring sight if ever I saw one.

An Interesting Day

Today I met up  with Grannymar for a coffee and a stroll around the Castle Grounds in Antrim. It's been six years since we had a real life meeting and there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then but my fellow blogger hadn't changed a bit. One of the very many great things about blogfriends is that many years can go by but you still pick up just where you left off.

On the way home I called with two of Matty's oldest friends, sisters-in-law who live next door to each other. Both are doing great and that was good to see. I also got to meet one of the sweetest and most lovable toddlers I've come across in a long time.

I got home later than I expected to find Bert in a fainting condition, weak from hunger and wondering had I brought home anything to eat. He always asks this whenever I've been out for more than an hour. There are two things he has yet to absorb and they are firstly, when I go out to meet people socially food shopping never enters my head and secondly, there is always lots of food in the house. He never asked me a single question about my day just lamented that all he'd had to eat since breakfast was an egg and a slice of wheaten bread. There was no other food in the house.

Of course he was wrong about this. There were the usual staples, bread, beans, tinned fish, home made rhubarb tart, cauliflower cheese etc. I took him by the hand and pointed at the big door under the fridge.

See this Bert. It's not just a big box to hold the fridge up. If you open the door and pull these drawers out there are all sorts of things in there.

He said,

I would never think of looking in there.

He got quite excited about some fish fingers and a bag of frozen peas so I left him to it. Then he was off out to his music night and left me to dine on my own which was fine as I'd eaten at Anna's just before I got home. Another reason why food shopping wasn't on my mind.

But before I thought of food I started a rhubarb wine and bottled a damson and blackcurrant. It was when I was pulling frozen rhubarb out of the big chest freezer that I noticed a few boxes of dinnerish stuff and pulled one out at random with no notion of what it might be. Whatever it was I reckoned it might go well with pasta. So that was my dinner, A bit of pasta languishing in the store cupboard, lying in an almost empty packet, the dubious thing from the depths of the freezer and the dregs at the bottom of the damson and blackcurrant wine flagon. It turned out to be chicken and mushrooms in tomato sauce and it wasn't bad at all. And I got to feel virtuous by 'using things up'. Bert would rather have died of hunger than eat it. I wonder if that is why he is thin and I am not.