Thursday 23rd November - this'n'that

 I'm reading 'Greengates' by R C Sherriff at the moment. Written in 1936, it concerns what happens when Mr Baldwin retires from the cashier's office of a city firm (insurance? banking?) and how it turns the lives of his wife and their cook/parlour maid upside down. 

All unknowingly, he disrupts the pattern of their lives, sitting late over breakfast reading the picture paper, which his wife was used to read before starting her domestic routine, and making it impossible for Ada to clear the breakfast things and do the bedrooms before the tradesmen appear at the kitchen door and it's time to make lunch.

I have got to a point where everything is going to change...

'Miss Buncle's Book' by D E Stevenson is about to be the 'Book at Bedtime' on BBC Rado 4. I'm looking forward to this iimmensely . I love the book (also published by Persephone Books) so I have high hopes for this admittedly abridged reading. Another radio joy for me is the return of 'The Kitchen  Cabinet'. I've found one episode so far.

In the post

A comb ;this may not seem particularly significant, but I bought myself a new hairbrush recently, an old fashoined Denman nylon and bristle one to replace the ancient Mason Pearson brush I had been using for perhaps thirty or more years. 

I knew Best Beloved's comb was also heading for 'vintage' (is that 50 years? or 60 years old?). This is a near identical replacement, apart from the colour. The comb it replaces is missing several teeth, and, after much thought, we realised he got it back in 1977, before we were married! You can't say we don't get full use from things!

Cross Stitch

I'm hugely enjoying this month's cross stitch. I can't resist a little snapshot; I don't think it gives much away;

I'm using three strands of embroidery cotton, taken from two or three different skeins. When I'm using variegated threads, I reverse one in order to keep an indefinite marked effect. Not much more to go now, which is just as well as I am running out of different colours. 

Supper

This was ready, and we were tucking in within 10 minutes of my finishing a piano lesson. 

The spring onions and other veg were prepared (or fetched out of the freezer!) and an egg all ready beaten up in a cup beforehand. It really was the work of minutes to stirfry the veg, zap the microwave rice and add it to the pan, dose it all with soy sauce and sriracha and stir the egg through. 

Perfect!