Jeff and I have had a pretty awesome weekend. I arrived around his house on Saturday at around midday (before that, I was in Swindon at a very well known tattoo parlous called ‘Skin Graffiti’ asking Mike, one of the lead tattoo guys about getting another tattoo) and was in a great mood due to booking my next tattoo – just over a month to go, I can’t wait! I *had* sent Jeff a Graze box as a present in the post, however the postman doesn’t seem to deliver Jeff’s mail until after midday, so I actually arrived at Jeff’s house before it got delivered which was a bit annoying! We had a little bit of a chat and straight away headed out to Windsor, where we had decided we would get a spot of lunch and do some ‘mooching’.
Getting to Windsor wasn’t a problem at all, however actually driving around Windsor, especially to the car park was a massive issue – the traffic light system seems really awful and due to the number of tourists that were there, every time someone pressed the button to cross the road, the lights instantly changed, even if they had just changed to green, seconds before – cue literally, a massive ‘queue of traffic!’ We had thought that our bad luck had gone when we found a parking space, however we had a little bit more bad luck when all the ‘pay and display’ machines had been changed recently to accept card payments. All well and good, however it would be nice if they actually WORK…. Jeff tried one, waited for ages and then got ‘Card reader not available, TPS call needed’ – er….. okaaaay, so we walked to another machine and after 5 minutes of waiting for the machine to connect to Jeff’s bank etc, it finally gave us a ticket. I know technology should make our lives better, but when it takes you more than DOUBLE the amount of time to pay for a parking ticket…. Does it seem worth it? Especially the amount of money it probably cost to upgrade all the machines.
After finally managing to pay, we headed straight to Waggamamas for some lunch and managed to get a table easily. As per usual, the Waggamama’s staff were great and we thoroughly enjoyed our chilli squid, duck goyoza, amai udon and ginger chicken udon – Yum! After feeling totally stuffed, we had a bit of a wander around town which was very successful as I managed to buy a couple of cropped cardigans which I’ve been looking for, for a while as I have a number of dresses that I’d like to wear this summer, but am not too keen on how the tops of my arms look (even though Jeff says they look fine) so now I have the cardigans, I won’t feel self conscious! I also bought a lovely cardigan from New Look and some ‘good’ vanilla extract from Lakeland plastics which, usually, would hardly have filled me with joy – however, it’s the exact type of vanilla extract that Ina Garten uses and as she is still my cooking guru, if she uses it – we need to use it in the kitchen!
We wandered round a few more shops and then decided to head to Waitrose to get the necessary ingredients so we could cook dinner later on. I had suggested to Jeff I show him how to make schnitzel – something that he was more than happy to learn as he loves the stuff! I’ve never been overly keen on Waitrose, however the Waitrose in Windsor seems exceptionally well stocked and we managed to find most of the ingredients we needed, the only thing we couldn’t find was red cabbage that was able to be microwaved which meant we just bought a red cabbage and decided we’d give it a go ourselves!
We drove home and on the way back, I started to get really tired so Jeff and I chilled on the sofa for an hour or so, as soon as we got in. What did we watch? Well, we certainly didn’t deviate from our ‘normal’ shows, so we watched a couple of Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basic programs, and another episode of ‘Monsters inside me’, which was quite interesting considering that a bloke had 5 maggots living inside his head – lovely, I know!
We started to cook after that, however that was brought to a complete standstill for a few minutes when Jeff’s dishwasher decided to start leaking – I discovered this when I walked round the kitchen and suddenly found my sock was very wet! Hopefully Jeff can call someone out to fix it this week, however until then – he’s got a couple of cups under the dishwasher, so it doesn’t leak all over his floor again.
Yesterday, the Eurovision song contest was on television so we decided we would watch that. It’s not really that good, however it is amusing, and entertaining. Just before it started, I suggested to Jeff we make a cake, ‘just because’ and we found a recipe for a blueberry cake online where the only ingredient we didn’t have in the cupboard was the fresh blueberries. We quickly drove to the nearest supermarket and bought a couple of punnets before heading back and baking the cake – I didn’t read the recipe completely correctly and we added some of the ingredients in the wrong order, but considering we didn’t do the thing exactly right, it actually turned out really well! It smelt divine and it tasted really, really nice – we had some warm, with ice cream, not exactly healthy, but, well.. sod it… it’s sometimes nice to treat yourself.
Sunday morning, I woke Jeff up and after some cuddles in bed, we drove down to Southsea, which is where the Hampshire Farmers market were holding their Sunday market. We hadn’t been to the one in Southsea before and took this opportunity to see if it was better than Winchester. It didn’t take that long to drive to Portsmouth and I was surprised at how pretty and clean the place was. Jeff had been to Portsmouth a lot more recently than me (his ex came from the Isle of Wight) so knew his way around a lot better than me. We parked relatively easily and wandered to the market, which was only a few hundred meters away. We were both pleasantly impressed at how big the market was – not as big as Winchester, but not far off, and one of the good points was, the bloke who sold THE most gorgeous tomato bread was there, so obviously we bought some more lovely bread and also managed to buy some more cheese, meat and apple juice (which was gorgeous). I also bought a sausage roll, which Jeff and I shared – it was the nicest one we had ever tasted, loads of sausage meat and just enough moist pastry – bliss!
Jeff’s garden is looking absolutely superb – everything is growing loads and our sunflowers, herb pot and lettuce are doing especially well. The strawberries we purchased a few weeks ago are all flowering and even the radishes, which we thought we had killed when we re-potted them, have sprung back into life. I suggested to Jeff that I pull a few radishes up and prepare them (just for him as I’m not fond of radishes) and Jeff thought this was a good idea. Out of the 4 that I pulled up, 2 were rotten and had maggots living inside them, however 2 seemed absolutely fine, so I washed and prepared them and they must have been OK, as Jeff didn’t have a problem eating them – so there we go, we have successful grown AND eaten some radishes. I think we are both hoping that the tomatoes, lettuce and peppers hurry up – I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of strawberries, cherries or blackberries this year, but as it’s the first year that we’re growing them, I think we’re prepared for this.
We had a gorgeous lunch inside, at Jeff’s dining table and a quick cuddle before I headed home. It had been another brilliant weekend and I’m hoping that the time we spent together in the bank holiday weekend (in 2 weeks time) will be just as good. I did tell Jeff what we’re doing as I’m pretty awful at keeping secrets and he now knows that we’re going wine tasting on the Saturday, followed by a rather nice steak restaurant – cool! We’re next seeing each other on Wednesday night and as we have the food already sorted, we’re going to have to think of other things to do, to keep ourselves entertained :-)
- Molly
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