A Goodwife's Saturday

Wake after sleeping soundly around seven and then make breakfast, after first letting Norman into the garden, it is just after dawn and a deer, who must have been feeding on the other side of my hedge, bounds away in graceful leaps, it's white tail prominent in the early light. Arriving swiftly at the other side of the field, it effortlessly clears the eight foot hedge and disappears from view. A good way to start the day. After we have eaten our usual full English, I make an early start and peg out my pants and vests on the line. It is a cold day, but at least it is clear and bright, and with luck, they will dry. After showering and dressing, I dice an onion and fry it gently in a little butter, before adding a pound of beef mince and browning it thoroughly. With the addition of a couple of oxo's and a little water and some maggi seasoning, it starts to look and smell like savoury mince and is transferred to the slow cooker, where it can simmer for a few hours, until lunchtime. Felicity phones to see if I will be meeting the gang at the Poppy Seed this morning for coffee and I say we will be there. We leave the house, Norman and I, around ten and park, as usual, down Norwood, before walking the short distance into town. It is only two hour parking, but at least on the Tickton side of Beverley, which gets pretty jammed up on market day. We walk into town via Tesco's car park, a large crowd are stood outside for a fire drill and when we round the corner a fire engine is parked outside the store. It didn't have far to come as the fire station is the next building but one to Tesco's down New Walkergate. We cross the road into town and onto the market, which is already busy with Saturday shoppers, pausing only to buy a navy blue hand towel for two pounds. It is for the dog and means I can clean his paws and put it on my lap for him to sit on, which is one of the conditions for his admittance to the cafe. Despite being old, Normy is a bit of a babe magnet, all the women and children make a great fuss of him. Of course you have to be pretty secure in your masculinity to walk through town with a miniature sausage dog on the lead. Occasionally a gay guy will also stop to pat him, but their gaydar usually tips them off that I am straight. We arrive at the cafe to find Felicity tucking into scrambled eggs and toast, whilst reading the Yorkshire Post. I hang my jacket on the back of the chair, wipe Normy's paws and sit down and join her. Felicity admires my fisherman's sweater, which is a well known Danish make and I tell her to ask Hannah, who is due imminently and also Danish, if she recognises it when she arrives. In the event she doesn't get the chance, as Hannah bowls in like a force ten from Jutland and declares, "I like your Blue Willy", which of course is the name of the sweater brand. The problem is only her and I know this, and she blushes like a beacon when this fact dawns on her, Felicity catches on straight away and collapses in fits of laughter, as Hannah splutters through explanations about well known Danish knitwear brands. We are still laughing when the rest of the party arrives, including Jill, who tells us about an item involving Mary Whitehouse on radio 4, who on hearing the phrase, "Tits like coconuts", had phoned the BBC to complain, only to be told that had she listened further, she would have heard the phrase, "and sparrows like breadcrumbs", which immediately followed it. This set the tone for the morning and an hour later and greatly cheered by the company, Norman and I walked Felicity back to her house on Albert Terrace, before making our way back to the car, pausing to buy black pepper, kitchen towels and a baguette on our way. Norman had managed to charm a piece of bacon from a girl sat at the next table and a little scrambled egg from Fliss, but despite this he still wanted lunch, but as I am still watching his weight, he had to make do with a few biscuits flavoured by a little mince. I have some pastry in the fridge, left over from the baking earlier in the week, and as I need to put the oven on to make some of my oatmeal biscuits, I might as well make some mince and onion pies. I strain some mince of its gravy and leave it to cool while I roll out the pastry, there is enough to make three individual pies, using some stoneware ramekins, that I keep in the cupboard. They are soon assembled and placed in the oven, with the timer set for thirty five minutes. This gives me time to mix and cut out a tray of biscuits, which I make using sweetener rather than sugar. I started making them a year ago when enduring a very low sugar diet in order to clear an overgrowth of Candida from my gut and which had been producing asthma like symptoms, sufficient to see me put on an inhaler, steroids and referred to a thoracic consultant. Fortunately the symptoms cleared as soon as the Candida died back. The oven timer pings, the pies come out, nicely browned and the biscuits go in. The aroma of the freshly baked meat pies rouses Norman from his afternoon nap and he saunters into the kitchen on the off chance that one might have his name on it. Unfortunately they are far too hot to eat and I set them to one side to cool and make myself a tea while listening to last nights question time on
Radio four, it was the usual political waffling and playing to the audience, except for a Plaid Cymru MP, called something Wood. She came across as sincere, incisive and to the point, in stark contrast to the male members of the panel. She made a point, with regard to the expansion of Heathrow, that there was a rest of the country outside London. I have nothing against London, but centralisation is the curse of our age, and the more everything is centred in the Capitol, the more bureaucratic and the less flexible our governance has become. The challenge in a globalised economy, is how to achieve economies of scale in order to be competitive and at the same time stay close to your customers. This applies in politics as well as business and devolving power in some kind of federal structure seems inevitable in the long run, if not before. The biscuits are done and set to cool and I meditate for an hour. The football starts at three, and I catch up on my ironing whilst listening to Hull V Barnsley on Radio Humberside, David Burns and Peter Swan, who present and commentate on the match, are comedy gold. Before wading in to this week's shirts, I sample a pie, which has now cooled. It is quite good, warm, tasty, but very filling. It is just like being at the match! Hull City win by the only goal and that takes them up to fifth in the league, the fans are happy. My timing is slightly off, as I still have one shirt to finish after the match has finished, but that only takes a couple of minutes. Once the ironing, and the board are cleared away, it is time for Norman's dinner, he has a small tin with no biscuits and while he eats, I fetch the washing in from the garden. It is still damp, despite being out all day, the temperature has only been about five degrees, with no wind and just a little sun, they will have to air on the radiators. I add some tinned tomatoes and garlic to the remaining mince in the slow cooker and leave it on a low setting, by tomorrow it will have morphed into a pasta sauce. It is dark outside, but clear, with a three quarter moon shining to our south, as I take Normy for his evening walk. The crack of fireworks echoes across the fields from Beverley and rockets are bursting above Hull in the distance. Old Norman takes it all in his stride, like me he is very laid back these days. When we return home, I toy with the idea of going to the cinema at Kingswood, where I need to pick up the tickets for myself and Felicity for the Met's telecast of the Tempest, (Hannah and Gill are going as well) and see Skyfall, which is getting good reviews. I like Sam Mendes as a director and love, Javier Bardem, who plays the baddie, but when I look online, it is booked up until ten PM. Instead, I gently fry the remaining white asparagus in a little butter and shave some more Gran Padano over it, as well as black pepper and then eat it with crusty bread and the other half bottle of Piesporter, while listening to Saturday Live, repeated from this morning. My cousin Irene's husband, David, texts to invite me to visit them in Scarborough, where they have a holiday flat and it is arranged that I will meet them on lunchtime Tuesday, after I have taken the dogs for their morning walk. After dinner I complete a few tough killer sudoku puzzles, until my head clears after the wine and then read some more of Ismail Kadare, who is to be recommended, he won the Booker International prize not long ago. To bed around eleven.