Clock-watching

I could've gone earlier to Smiley's and asked a favour, but don't like to put them in an awkward position when they are so nice. So I've been watching the clock tick while awaiting the magical time of 12.30 pm when it is legal to buy booze on a Sunday. I can do anything I like on my weekend! I am earning! Not much, admittedly, but more than enough. I can visit the bookshop to buy the wee wan Ursula Le Guin and the Big Wan a maths revision book without sucking my teeth, book us a summer week away at the organic farm without borrowing and order myself a posh eyeliner without feeling guilt.

D., the eyeliner queen, introduced me to MAC khol pencil and now I need and deserve such. Since the slap only goes on maybe thrice a year, the morticians can probably use the same pencil when they're boxing me up for disposal. Unfortunately, MAC cannot spell and instead of selling me khol (from the Greek for bile) instead I have had to order kohl (cabbage in German). If I end up with a bag of fermented kimchi, it will be my own fault.

Seldom-used make-up is great. Once you've weaned yourself off the habit, both you and others get used to how you really look and it's no longer a shock or a shame to be nude, face-wise. Then when you do wear slap, everyone including you thinks you're gorgeous, just for the night. Believe me, it doesn't look so good in the morning when there's mascara all down your cheeks.

I have two vicarious gardens this spring, which are bringing me much pleasure. One is in Essex, where I helped instigate the digging over and sowing of some cos lettuce, which is now doing very well to judge by photos. The other is that of H-etc locally, whose fruits I frequently eat. At the moment there's a tabbouleh salad in the fridge made with H-etc's flat-leaf parsley. I'm also told that tadpoles collected from the Braidburn have made it into froglets in H-etc's pond, but I have mixed feelings about these. There's a suspicion that through genetic/environmental memory these froglets will be desperate to migrate back to their ancestral pond next year to mate, and will not be able to survive the 2 mile journey on their own nor effectively establish a new colony at H-etc's garden. Let's hope I'm wrong, or else at some point in the future H-etc and I will be trying to trap frogs later this year to transplant back to the Braidburn.

The Big and wee wans have been asking me about berry picking this summer. I hear it's bumper year for strawbs and not enough Polish pickers to supply demand. I have a big stock of jars saved up so am hoping that if the kiddos and I do a big fruit-pick that H-etc can help us put these away for a winter's worth of jam.