Monday 22nd August

The rest of the cauliflower, a big one, after Tom's pickling activities, made into curry, using this recipe.  It really is as good as it's cooked up to be.  Instead of boiling the eggs. though, I followed one commenter's advice and simply poached the eggs in the sauce at the last minute.  It reminds me a bit of the way R used to do it, only she sort of scrambled them into it.

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The cough/cold virus I have more or less shaken off now, but one of its symptoms (I assume) was blocked ears, tinnitus and earache, which the introduction of a warmed-up mix of olive and tea tree oil followed by self-syringing with a poire effilée , normally quite a satisfying experience (yes, I know, I must be weird), only made worse.  It has more or less subsided now, except for a strange echo effect in the upper frequencies of my hearing, so that Molly barking, announcements over the supermarket tannoy and excited female newsreaders and reporters bringing us the latest on the situation in Libya produce an effect that is distorted, broken and generally irritating inside my ear canal.  

Not much good to be said of this really, though it is clearly not life threatening and will no doubt pass in due course.  However, when the opening to the 2nd movement of Dvorak's New World symphony was played on a music starter question on University Challenge this evening, those plangent, cliché cor anglais notes echoed complete and whole and perfect, so it was in fact not unpleasant, beguiling almost ...

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Photo: collage

Chestnut woods late in May.  Not so fresh and light now, but still cool and pleasant, a green thought in a green shade.