The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

One of the bi-products of last weeks illness was I spent a long time contemplating all the niggling unfinished jobs in my bathroom. For instance, my bath was fitted in such a way that the supplied panelling for its sides would not touch the floor, so the bottom is surrounded by three inches of pine skirting board. This needed to be stained to match the dark wood of the panelling, and I had never got around to it. Also, whilst I had glossed skirting boards and emulsioned the doorframes upstairs when I had my carpet fitted, I left the actual doors still in their natural unadorned wood. By Saturday afternoon, I was more or less feeling better, but could not risk going anywhere, just to be on the safe side. So I decided to do the niggling DIY jobs in the bathroom that need to be done before my party on New Year’s Eve. The rational being as I was working in the bathroom, I would not have far to go if I the need arose.

First job was finding the brown mahogany wood stain, which eventually turned up in my mother’s house. Then down in the narrow gap between toilet and the side of the bath applying the wood stain to the skirting board.

The next job was giving the door to the bathroom and the door to the shower room a coat of primer/undercoat. Not a difficult job, but the fact that the upper panels are made of frosted glass meant that I needed a steady hand, well as steady as my hand can ever be, to make sure that the paint went on the wood and not on the glass.

Once the paint had dried on the doors, they needed to be lightly sand the grain as the moisture in the paint had swollen the grain of the pine the door was made from. Also, the white emulsion had highlighted all the little imperfections in carpentry of the door that needed to be filled in. The door was now ready for a second coat of emulsion, and the skirting board ready for another coat of wood stain. However, Strictly Come Dancing was about to start, which would be followed in its turn by Robin Hood and my evening meal, so I decided to call a halt for the day.

The clock face on the alarm clock-radio was telling me it was 7.30am, but the newsreader was saying it was 6.30am. Arse, I had completely forgotten the change back to Greenwich Mean Time. So, I switched the radio off and sank back for an extra hour’s sleep. I wanted to get up as if it were a normal work day, just to get myself back into the habit. Fat chance, I rolled over and woke up at 10.50am. First job of the day was damp-dusting the woodwork I had sanded the evening before. My brother-in-law Gary says that the secret of good decorating is in the preparation, that there is more to painting a door than schlepping on some gloss paint. However, all people will see is the quality of the top coat of gloss paint, and nobody but the decorator will know the effort that went into it. He is perfectly correct.

It was down on my hands and knees staining the skirting board. The one coat had considerably darkened the wood, but it would need at least two more.  It said on the tin that it took 30 minutes for the stain to be touch dry and two hours for it to be ready for another coat. So in between the wood stain, I gave the door and frame another coat of emulsion. Everything is now ready for me to give the woodwork a dose of gloss paint. Although as soon as I see the brand spanking new paintwork, the existing glossed skirting boards will look shabby, so I will probably give them an extra coat of gloss as well.

Yesterday the clocks went back to Greenwich Mean Time. That means that 2006 is now effectively over. Apart from Christmas, the rest of the year is now officially BLAH!!! Cold, damp and dark. I hate the winter, people wrap themselves up to keep warm and then shut themselves away from their fellow humans.

I have caught some sort of stomach bug, and I am currently feeling very sorry for myself. It started in work yesterday with a killer headache. Then my stomach filled up with gass and acid, and I spent the evening running to the lavatory at regular intervals. It took myself off to bed as early as possible with a pair of ibuprofen tablets and hoped to sleep it off. That didn’t work, I woke up this morning in time for work, and still felt like death warmed over. I am only down here now infront of this computer because my cat needs feeding and it is time for some ore ibuprofen tablets.

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What the happened tonight? Why is Georgina Brouzha still in Strictly Come Dancing? She has not improved one little bit from last week’s miraclous survival.

Whilst I would much rather not have to undergo dental surgery at all.  However, I have a far from perfect set of teeth, and they need to be maintained.  That means that I have to visit the Dentists on a regular basis.  One of my fillings had broken before I went on holiday, not painfully, so I put up with the irration until today, when I had it repaired. 

All I can say is thank God for dental anaesthetic.  Whilst drilling and filling is at the best of times agony, I cannot begin to imagine the screaming hell it would be without the injection of anaesthetic.  The main problem I suspect that an anaesthetic strong enough to neutralise all the nerves deep with tooth being drilled would probably be strong enough to send me to sleep for a week, so a dose large enough to dull most the pain is the most I will get

I am used to the low energy light bulbs I have in my house taking up to half a hour to reach their full luminance when. So, I was really shocked when the new low energy bulb in my Study came on straight away at its full brightness. There is a slightly bluish white tint to the light, which is most noticeable when the bulb is first switched on, however once it has run in, it is almost like being outside in natural sunlight.

After my bedroom, my Study is possibly the room that I spend most of my time in, as it is where my computer and all my books are located. Being right in the middle of the house, with no window it is important that it has a good source of light.

I cannot be the only person who thought that Meatloaf sounded absolutely dire this morning when he sung live on the Kent Bruce Show. Completely flat and missing the highspots by a country mile. Which is a great shame, as Meatloaf is usually such a great live performer.

Yesterday, my mother cooked Sunday Lunch for the family, and as usual retained the water used for cooking the sprouts, suede and potatoes for making the gravy. She didn’t make as much gravy as usual, so there was still a large pan of vegetable stock remaining for me to make my Pepper Soup tonight.

I felt like doing something different today. So, instead of ladeling everything into the blender at the end of the cooking process to make a creamy soup, I decided to leave the peppers whole, and add some chopped celerey and chopped celery leaves to the mix. Also, I grilled the peppers for a few minutes and then left them to sweat in a plastic sandwich bage before chopping them roughly I fried the onions and celery in a little butter, olive oil and garlic first. Then added the chopped pepper and the pureed content of one tin of tomatoes, a teaspoon of thyme, a teaspoon of parsley and a teaspoon of oragano; and left that to bubble for a few minutes. Then I added a pint of the vegitable stock and left it all simmer on a low heat with the lid on the pan for ten minutes. Finally, I added another pint an a quarter of stock and about 150 grams of Sconcigli pasta (no, I had never heard of it before either). I I had had some fresh cabbage that would have gone in the soup also, to give it an even more minestrone like feel. Once again serve with crusty bread rolls.

20six Comment
Wyvern / Website (17.10.06 12:08)
That sounds every bit as delicious as the original recipe! Think I will have to try that, it sounds perfect now that the evenings are getting a bit more dark, dank and chilly…

My father loved a good action adventure. Whether in books, on the radio, in films or on television. He relished the simplicity where the good guy was always honest and true and the villain deceitful and false. Where the righteous always vanquished the perfidious, and there was always a happy ending. It didn’t matter to him that the action adventure was cheesy hokum, in fact, the cheesier it was, the more he enjoyed it. There is little doubt in mind that he would have adored both of The Pirates of the Caribbean films that harked back to the Saturday morning cinema serials of his childhood. I am also certain that he would have loved every minute of the new Robin Hood series on BBC ONE. It would not have mattered to him that costumes were not completely historically accurate, or that the dialogue was anachronistic. The fact that there were never pirates like Jack Sparrow or outlaws like Robin and his Merry Men was of little importance. The fact was that in the World we live in there are so many things that can make you miserable, so anything that entertained you and helped make you feel good after about yourself was to be cherished.