After the past 3 weeks of working at least an hour extra every day, and picking up an additional shift of 4 hours, this past week was almost normal in that I only did 1 hour of overtime. It was fine as I was, quite frankly, shattered. I’ve not been sleeping very well anyway, and despite being very wet here with thunder and copious amounts of rain, it’s starting to feel quite warm again and is making for an uncomfortable night.

I had to do some training this week and was given the option of standing in the warehouse and using a tablet to access the internet or doing it at home on my own PC and in the comfort of my own home. No contest really. It took me a while to get into the training site, but I eventually managed it with a little assist from my son and I completed and passed the training. Phew! We periodically have to do these and frankly they’re a bit of a drag as they seem so obvious, but it is what it is.

Speaking of work, I found out today we’re all due a review with our manager. Yikes! I thought I’d left this kind of ‘stuff’ behind when I left the civil service! We’re told how we’re getting on and given suggestions of ways to improve how we work, apparently. I shall mention how some of the crates are ridiculously full, and that some of the trolleys are getting very heavy. I also want to mention how some items, such as a 6-pack of beer are not only placed on the top shelf, but also stacked 2 items high. I have a huge bruise on my wrist from where I had to get down 2 packs of said beer, and one slipped and caught me on the wrist. The people stacking these have access to a kick stool, but we don’t!

Other than that, work has been good. No unruly or rude customers, not too much screaming – they took me aside and said it’s not acceptable LMAO. Just joking…

Food-wise we’ve been experimenting and tried a chana masala – chickpea curry to you. The photo looked great, and there were many rave reviews, however I found it to be very bland and I don’t even like spicy food! I let my son loose with the spices and he pepped it up which at least made it edible. I served it with some sticky jasmine rice, and a plain nan and it wasn’t too bad though we won’t bother again. I do often wonder about online reviews as we’ve tried a few recipes that had rave reviews and we’ve both been suitably unimpressed. I can only speculate that if they aren’t fake reviews, then a lot of people don’t know how to cook, or else like very bland food.

Our second experiment was a vegan lentil roast. Very like a nut roast, though using lentils as the main ingredient, with mushrooms, chestnuts, red pepper, sweet potato, onions… It was quite an effort, and very heavy on the pan usage, though it was very nice. I served it with roasties, cauliflower, and mushroom and onion gravy. I made enough for a second meal for the freezer, so that’s an easy meal one day and a success.

Monday. I’m making a beef pie. Yum! We still eat meat, though not as often as we used to. I do sometimes hanker for the food we used to eat as kids – Vesta chow mein, pork and apple casserole – though I do a pan haggerty (bacon) that comes a close second, rice pudding… I could go on lol, but never, ever corn beef hash! Too fatty. I did ‘treat’ myself to a bag of jelly babies this week lol. Over the decades, I’ve often had cravings for jelly of some kind, and jelly babies are a good ‘fix’ lol. I don’t have them often. I did try vegan ‘jelly’ sweets once, once was more than enough. Blech!

Take care if out and about. Try not to get too wet or windswept.