Foof!

That's me, blowing off the cobwebs.

So, what's happened? Resigned. Retracted. Resigned. Got new job (NHS blood and transplant thanks for asking), applied to do a further degree in nursing, got accepted, got called to the loony test twice (and finally passed, go figure). Went to Prague, came home. Ooh, life is strange. Change is afoot...

Cutbacks.

I have been pondering lately whether to cancel my Sunday paper delivery. I actually did for a while during my 3rd year oh-god-i-haven't-started-my-dissertation-yet-and-I-have-7-billion-due-essays crisis, but restarted it once that was all over. Lately though, in an effort to pull back on unecessary spends, I have been analysing the use I get for my money. The Observer remains the SP of choice, but I seem to throw away so much of it. Sport? Get lost. Media & Business? Life is grim enough thanks. These go automatically onto the log basket in their pristine, flat, unread state. Review, the main paper and Escape make it onto the tray that goes upstairs with the giant cup of tea. Then Escape, with its pale blue crystalline sea smug cover, is the first to be flung. I used to have a travelling life, I do find other countries fascinating and long to visit, but, and this is the thing you see, I can't right now. Anything other than my frequent (and hugely fun) Prague bound weekends which cost approximately £50, is out of my league, and I can't bear to see anyone else spouting on about it. Escape, is only mildly less annoying than those TV programmes where some middle aged couple (you know, the annoying ones who didn't split up and sell their house at a loss) prance around buying holiday flatlets and villas with their spare change in up and coming bulgarian seaside areas. Those programmes turn me into a rabid psychopath.

Anyway, to return to the point. Is it worth it? I seem to pay the paper shop the cost of a small mortgage for the priviledge of chucking this lot out every week. Every Sunday it invariably wakes me up when the grumpy git who delivers it crams it all in once lump through the letterbox. Kerrraphhhhchunkperlunk. Boom. Thats me then, 7am. Then more than half of it is burnt. And the magazines - Observer Music Monthly is often worth a read, but when it is Food or Sport monthly, more wasted money. I do like cooking, but I'm not about to throw a dinner party for 12 where I will cook individual black puddings in apple sauce and mustard, so that's a waste of time too.

Then we have Euan Ferguson, and this is my dilemma.

Euan Ferguson, is the most fabulous man in the world. I look at his cocky sneer, his ginger tufted spiky hair, his sharp suited hand in pocket stance, and I think 'cor'. Today he is writing about his rubbish life with no central heating, and his ex who has loaned him a Noddy duvet, and I think, yes, Euan, I love you deeply and you are entirely worth a small mortgage every month.

So the paper stays. Now, how else can I cut back?

Book Stuff Pinched from Azahar...

Four childhood books -

1. Susan's Secret Garden. I used to demand this again and again and 'read' it aloud at the same pace as my parents were telling it to me. What a fucking annoying child I must've been. Found it for sale at a car boot sale a couple of years ago and almost weed myself with excitement. Read it aloud to my parents during Sunday dinner and almost got a pasting.

2. Polly of Primrose Hill. Originally in a fusty smelling slightly furry pale green hardcover, I bought this from abebooks for my own children recently. I read it to them, and the descriptive passage about the orphan Polly shopping for her first party dress (pale lemon and fluffy like a chick) still had the power to make me sniffle a little. My children loved it too, which just goes to show that little girls will always be thrilled by stories of invalids, grandpas, secret tunnels, orphans and evil housekeepers. Sigh.

3. Helen Keller's Teacher. A badly written, indulgent, shmaltzy tale about the life of Annie Sullivan, the woman who 'rescued' Helen Keller from her 'life of darkness'. Passages from that book stayed with me for years, until (finding it on amazon) I read it to my own daughters (are you spotting a trend here dear readers?). Annie and her brother Jimmy, cast out by a cruel distant relatives after the death of Just About Anyone Who Ever Loved them, are sent to a poorhouse where they shared beds with foul smelling old women with no limbs or eyes or ears (or something like that). Bonny loves it so much she sleeps with it under her pillow. It gave me the bleddy nightmares. Kids are weird.

4. What Katy Did. More invalids. I fear I'm a bit sick myself when I analyse this lot.

Four authors I will read again and again -

1. Milan Kundera. Especially Laughable Loves. Made for the loo.
2. Slavenka Drakulic. Especially... well no. All of her stuff.
3. Ted Hughes. Poetry counts, right?
4. Pat Barker - but only Union Street.

Four authors I will never read again -

1. Jodi bloody Picoult for starters.

2. Jackie Collins.

3. Emily Bronte. Yes yes, I know. Shut up.

4. Joseph Conrad. Bleurgh. Even if he was Polish, he's rubbish.

The first four books on my to-be-read list -

I have a wicker picnic basket by my bed, stacked high with two wobbly piles of books I have yet to read. The four top ones...

1. Patricia Highsmith x 2. The names escape me, but I am recommended them, and lent them by a dear friend, so I shall. Soon. The writing is just so bloody small and my eyes arent what they used to be. (Pass my pension book and ear trumpet)

3. Magda Szabo, The Door. I'm a whore for east/central european books/writers. I want to read this, but still it sits there. I might move it to the top.

4. Iain Banks, Dead Air.

The four books I would take to a desert island

Hmm. Difficult.

1. Slavenka Drakulic - Taste of a Man.

2. Nicholson Baker - Vox.

3. Ted Hughes, Collected Works. I love him.

4. Shakespeare- Collected Works. And I'd learn to love him.

The last lines of one of my favourite books -

"She's never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she's as he is now!"
(the exclamation mark rather ruins it, but Arabella always was a hysterical type)*

*(that last was me incidentally, not Hardy)

take it and run dear readers...

Old Prune

Today will mark my fourth day in a row, pruning the runners off the strawberries that grow on the tabletops by the farm shop that I work at during the summer months. I cannot tell you how cold it is there - coast road, November. The next person I overhear in Tescos remarking on the unseasonal warmth with feel the wrath of my secateurs I can tell you.
The day before yesterday, severely berating Wibs for leaving her art book at her dads, I managed to leave the house without my coat or my wellies (flip flops are not ideal in wet mud). Luckily my dad came up trumps with a pair of workboots and a rather fetching lime green anorak (with oil stains) so I didn't freeze to death. (It was hard to see where I should be pruning mind, with the paper bag I wore in case anyone drove past and recognised me). Yesterday I managed to trump even that, grabbing the wrong kagoul as I legged it out of the house, I ended up pruning in a kagoul aged 10-11, with a 32" chest. At 2.30 I had to leave, what with the pins and needles taking over my whole torso.
No lav either in the field... imagine me, arms straight out either side because of massive jumper (and baps) stuffed into said kagoul, bent double, running along the plants making very fast very tiny baby steps to get to the car (and find a lav) before I peed myself.

On Friday, I have an interview. At a school no less, teaching English. Please, please God I will be successful, and I can finally get out of the part time farm/part time medical work that I've been doing for the last few months. Fingers crossed. And legs again today no doubt.

I Like.

As much for me, as for anyone else. I shall keep this as a work in progress. To start, Billy Collins.
And this too. I love this.

Boom Boom.

(Afternoon break at the hospital, Pesk and Debs are drinking coffee.)

Pesk - I had a patient in this morning, lifted up her blouse, and all around her middle she had this band of crusty yellowish scabs.

Debs - Ewwww!

Pesk - Yes, ewww! I said, have you seen the doctor with that? I reckon you've got pringles!

Debs - Pringles? (pause) Is that like shingles?

Pesk (waiting)

Debs (blank)

Pesk - (waiting)

Debs - (blank)

Debs - Is that a joke then?

Pesk - Yes.

Debs - Oh! Ha. Ha. Pringles! Shingles! You got me there.

Pause.

Pesk - Did you know that the word gullible isn't in the dictionary?

Debs - Is it not? Wow!

Pesk - Actually it is...

Debs - Oh. Oh... Is that another joke?

Pesk - Yes.

Debs - I don't get it.

Pesk - Is that the time already?

How to be a lightning tree.

It's been an age. Sometimes I don't feel like coming here and writing things down. Other times it feels like the only thing that makes sense. Then you can get stuck, how do you do it? Things used to be easy.

So it goes.

On a road -
1. An old woman leaning heavily on one stick to bend and scratch her fat labrador under the chin. The dog looked like he appreciated it. I wondered how she might straighten up again from such an angle.

2. An old man on a bicycle pedalled very slowly along. On the front of the bike was a basket, and in the basket was a very big, very elaborate bouquet of flowers. The man was smiling, a lot. I hope someone loves me that much at 80.

3. A child in a red hat and coat was staring at a puddle by the kerb. The puddle had an oil sheen across it, and the child looked like it was the most exciting thing he had ever seen. His mother stood by, looking the other way and smoking a cigarette. I thought - this wont last forever. Save it for yourself too. I tried to push the thought at her, but she carried on smoking looking off into the distance. She missed the rainbow.

4. I saw the lightning tree that I've seen a thousand times before. This time it looked as though it was beseeching. Those long bare arms raised heavenward.

Sometimes we miss rainbows. We miss the tiny things like scratching a dog, riding a bike, giving flowers to someone. We carry on looking for something better, someone better, and we gaze right over the top of that which we have. As though we are stuck with someone boring at the most perfect party, we search and dismiss, search and dismiss.

So it goes.

Physiology, Vermin and Warriors.

So, after the major maths triumph, I now discover that I also need a GCSE in a science. Apparently the A level psychology won't do. Hmm. It's a conspiracy. I signed up for the first class and duly went last Thursday night, after a days work at the hospital. Can anyone tell me the seven things that prove a thing is/has been alive as opposed to not, i.e a table? I could feel myself slumping lower and lower through the two hour lesson. Oh easy, said Elle, the babysitting daughter when I got home. MRS. NERG -

Movement
Respiration
Sensitivity
(MRS)

Nutrition
Excretion
Reproduction
Growth
(NERG! Clever isn't it! Ha!)

Theres two hours well spent then. Could've got it for free from the smartarse.

Whilst she is telling me all this mnemonic nonsense, I'm putting the kettle on, she's lecturing me on cell structures, and then I notice the dog and the cat being suspiciously and uncharacteristically matey, sniffing around the table. A sense of dread began to creep slowly over me. The cat shoots to the end of the (non mrs nerg) table. I'm torn between watching, finishing making the mug of tea I've been dreaming of since lunchtime, and getting the hell out of the kitchen, when Elle realises that Something Is Up. Her conversation peters haltingly to a stop and she follows my gaze down to the feet of the table. I'm edging out of the door at this point, and then she screams.

Very loudly.

And shouts. "RAAAAAAT!" (and it's definitely a MRS NERG rat, as opposed to the footless, headless, plastic one that the dog carries around with it).

I slam the door closed and leap onto the little footstool. Elle is still in the kitchen (I'll be writing my speech for Mother of the Year later thanks). She wrestles the handle down and skedaddles into the living room, almost knocking me off my perch. The phone rings. Faintly, as it is in the kitchen. Elle and I look at each other in a woebegone fashion. It's my mum, who is ringing to check all is ok before they leave for London in a few hours. Realising that no one is picking up, mum then wanders off around her (rat free) house chatting to my dad with the phone still in her hand. We are treated to a conversation about signposts, a rather loud burp and some scuffly shuffly noises. Terrific. I cant even ring her back from my mobile because she's forgotten to hang up her phone.

Elle bravely goes back into the kitchen and I ring dad's mobile. "There's a rat in my kitchen!" (sing it to the UB40 tune if you wish) I gabble. "Again?" says dad. (Oh yes, this happened twice last year too.)

We're on our way, he says. Dad my hero. The dog then barges her way into the room, rat in mouth. Elle screams, startled dog drops it, Elle screams again. I peek through a crack in the door to see Elle grab the TAIL OF THE RAT, run across the room with it SWINGING FROM HER HAND, open the window and fling it out!
My admiration knows no bounds. I rush off to find my sterile handstuff from work and spray her madly. I call dad back and he says they'll come over anyway. They too, are admiring.

I finally get my tea and there's a knock at the door. Mum and dad are there, dad like an assigai warrior, a large thick length of garden bamboo in his hand, the end of which has a large chisel inserted within it. He seems disappointed that he won't be making a kill, and looks fleetingly yet longingly out of the window. "Are you sure it's gone? Have you checked for any others?" (as though I live on the council tip). He peers under the table, says mournfully - "I made this spear especially when you had the last rat". And sighs.

Can someone, anyone, swap lives with me? Please?

The Scent of Success

On Sunday, we cleaned out the office. Wibs starts at grammar school today, and as Chez Pesk is miniscule, we needed to create a warm, quiet place for her to study in. I converted the coal hole (don't laugh) when I was at uni a few years ago, and it was perfect. It has a radiator and plug sockets, a desk, a filing cabinet and two bookshelves. Perhaps 'coal hole' is a bit of an exaggeration, it's more of an internal shed, but anyway. In the gap between me being at uni and Wibs starting Big School it had semi reverted to shed status, but we got cracking and soon it was once more fit for purpose. We left a pile of things that came out of the office in the kitchen for More Sorting Later (yes I know). Then Monday we were exhausted and it was sunny. Tuesday was my dad's birthday so we were out, and yesterday - bad smell. Really bad smell. Every time we came into the living room, there it was. Passing through into the kitchen - there it was too. Strange. And not nice - like a exceptionally strong and severely vintage frankfurter.
So, rubber gloves on, bleach out. We moved the cooker away from the wall, swept out crumbs and mopped the tiles - nothing there. All the surfaces washed down, floor swept and mopped. We needed to clear the pile of papers from the office. Chatting away with Wibs and Bonnyholding out the recycling bag, I sorted and riffled. Then I saw it. With a comedy whooooOOOoooooarghh and a jete that Darcy Bussell would be proud of, I leapt two kilometers away from the table.
There are times that owning a cat is not a good idea. This happened last year too when I discovered a writhing brain of maggots underneath the bookshelf in the living room, all feasting on a vole.
I got the trowel from the garden, put seven carrier bags one inside the other, and troweled it up off the table. It left its skin behind.

Perhaps those motivated moms should enter mouse hunt onto their daily chores list. I might join up.

A Full Heart...

This ad really moves me - I find it just astonishing. When I saw it last night, I watched as the gorilla breathed, eyes closing and opening, nostrils flaring, that barely perceptible lunge at the camera, and was almost moved to tears at the grace of it. The perfect background of swirly Phil Collins (yes, I am inordinately fond of Phil Collins and often play his albums when no one else is around. Tell anyone and I will hunt you down and hurt you), I suspected a save the gorillas charity appeal any second. When the drums kicked in, the camera panned out, and well. Have a look if you haven't seen it yet. I laughed out loud in surprise and delight, and the memory of it has had me grinning all day.



Fantastic. And very clever.

I'm gonna master all kinds of kung fu.

I spent last week with some oddbods. A woman who spoke about herself in the third person, an enormous woman who talked about her horse endlessly (I hope it has reinforced steel legs) two young men who whistled, tapped and played with their phones every minute of the day. A fragile blonde psychology teacher, two teaching assistants and a slight, fragile buddhist girl. All of us there because we need a maths qualification. A more unlikely gathering of people you can't imagine, but commonly, thickos when it comes to maths.
Maths. I can't trust anyone that can do maths. Like celery eaters, they are - well, weird.
The man taking the class was brilliant. Faced with the prospect of getting seven duffers through GCSE Maths in one week, you might think he would've been verging on the edge of panic. He was however, the most patient person I've ever encountered, going over and over the same points endlessly, trying different tactics to get things to 'click' for us in some way.
I have spent my entire life freezing up at anything remotely mathematical, teacher after teacher have tried to din the most simple formulas into my head. Even my oldest most favourite, gentlest teacher used to bang his head on the desk when faced with my brain freeze. My second year junior report said "Pesk still insists on trying to take the top line away from the bottom". It's a metaphor for my life I think.

Anyway, I needed this qualification to teach - I have a BA (hons) degree (2:1), I dont need to know about maths, but no - I must have it. I have A levels and GCSE's coming out of my ears - not enough. So I bit the bullet and booked a week off work to take this 35 hour course. Start to finish, from simple addition to algebraic calculations in 150 easy steps. And I actually did it. And passed. I can't tell you how amazed I am. How proud I am. Having been told I was stupid (harsh) to discalculaic (sympathetic), I have done the impossible. I'm more chuffed than when I got the degree, I really am. It makes me feel that now, anything is possible. I could really, do anything couldn't I?

Registering now with the GTP agencies. Whoo... watch out kids, here I come.

You know who you are...

Spines are on special offer at Morrison's this week. Call me when you treat yourself to one.


Grrr.

Something like a Pagan Wedding ...

I have been outside with my (on loan from my dad) Garden Groom. A hedge trimmer advertised as 'ideal for the elderly and ladies' (I know) it is a marvellous looking thing. Fish says it looks like an enormous flip flop. Lightweight plastic, it is the hovercraft of the privet shearing world, zooming and zipping over the hedge seemingly of it's own accord. The intimation is that all the operator has to do is hold it down. A kite, one might say, with teeth. Here it is -


The tail attached to the clipper - sorry, groom, inflates and the whizzy lightweight ( lie - more later) blades shoosh and suck the clippings (which are chopped into mini pieces) down the tube and into that black bag that you see at the bottom. What could be finer, easier, more fun than this? At seven am I am awake, eagerly peering out of the window in search of hedge grooming weather. Eventually it stops raining and I go outside the the short yet overgrown 6ft hedge out front. It's windy and the tube lashes back and forwards like a giant angry cobra, I am spattered with bits of chopped privet and the dog is having an epileptic fit at the noise. I retire with faintly shaking arms for a cuppa and then go out the back to the 300ft long hedge. I call Wibs to come help, and Bonny to hold the bag at the bottom of the tube. Smash slash heave, we are a team. Wibs goes on ahead with the shears lopping off the big bits, Bonny solemnly and slowly walks with the bag and hose, she is a bridesmaid. Slash whip grind, bits of the hedge are decimated. We get halfway down. More tea. Bonny has to make it, I am Parkinsonian with effort, my hands are vibrating like a navvy's pneumatic drill and I am liberally covered with a confetti of garden mulch. I look like the Green Man.

Suitable for the elderly and laydeez eh? There is a slowly dawning sense that my father has played an elaborate practical joke on me. I shall get my revenge.

Domestic Daze


Innocently reading one of my favourite blogs the other day, I was assaulted. I know that some of our Sisters over the Pond can do and say things that show us Euros what madness goes on in that wild ol' frontier land, however this little gem was linked to in all seriousness as a wonderful thing.
I hardly have words to describe this ... take a minute to feast upon the free sample page.

Now, is it just me? Is this completely fucken bonkers? There is even an option to purchase a version which not only plans out the time you spend cutting coupons (wtf?), but slips in a rota for scriptural reading, so that you can read the ENTIRE BIBLE IN A YEAR! Whoo! Go sisters. Change the hand towels, cut the coupons, plan the menus, weep for Jesu? I really can't get my head around it. Are housewives minds being so eroded that they need a calendar to prod them to clean the oven, check the toilet rolls and play with the children?
I might do one myself. It might look something like this.

Sunday - Make tea and toast, go back to bed.
Ring the pub and find out what time the carvery starts.
Read blogs.
Read the paper.
Go to the pub.
Come home, wash uniforms, read blogs.

Monday - Wake up, congratulate self that only work part time.
Make tea, go back to bed.
Make pastry for pie, congratulate self at housewifely skills.
Read blogs.
Go to toilet. Ten mins later realise there are no toilet rolls, shout kids to bring tissues.
Play Disney Triv.
Check watch, pour wine. Watch film. Flick through magazine.

Tuesday - Wake up, lean back & look out of window. If sunny, get up. Find bikini.
Walk to hammock. Lay down.
Go back inside six hours later. Find aftersun, make evening meal.
Go to bed.

Etc.

Really, do people need to be told what to do? My house is tidy. My kids are happy. I am happy(ish). We are all well fed and clean. Why does this thing exist?

Enough Already.


Unless you are between the ages of three and twelve, I promise that you look like a twat.

Today, I shall be mostly saying....

£1 a 1lb if you pick them yourself... no, bring them back here and I'll weigh them when you're finished... yes, plenty over there just before the raspberries...



It's not my day for the farm shop, but I agreed to do it after looking at the weather forecast (cloudy). Of course, the day dawns and it's not bloody cloudy at all, it's brilliant blue sky. I hate the BBC. I could do a better job of predicting the weather with a handful of raisins, a wet copy of the Guardian and a sodding pine cone. Still, it's all money.

Click on the picture and look at the lovely signs... notice that there isn't an aberrant apostrophe in sight. Am I letting the side down? I might add some for the hell of it today. Strawberry's... Cherry's. I might even put some quotation marks around things too, 'Carrot's'.

My grocer has a sign which says 'Plumb's'. You have to go a long way to beat that one.

The Ex Files

Went to the beach again... yesterday was fabulously hot. This time we stocked up on longer teeshirts, buckets and spades and factor 25. It was busier than the previous day, but somehow quieter, which was good. Ex husband came down midway through the afternoon which felt a bit odd, but nice as he went off exploring with the girls while I was left with my mp3 player, a bottle of beer and my book for some real peace. Managed to catch a picture of Wibs early on. Wibs hates being photographed and often looks sullen and scowly on pictures. This grieves me as she is a smiley beautiful child. I managed to get this as the camera was on my knee. She didn't realise.



Bonny has no such qualms and regularly stands gurning and demanding a picture. In my Czech Republic teeshirt - it looks so much better on her.



That sky was so blue. We played a game of I spy later - SS? Soggy sandwiches.
Today is cloudy, I can do some housework without a grudge.
Working tomorrow. It better be cloudy then too.

Flap, Rattle n' Burn

After consulting Lord Hog who advised that the weather was bad, we journeyed into town and bought a 7ft x 13ft windbreak. Nothing stands between us and the beach on an August weekend.
It whipped around like a bastid as I hammered it in with the rusty headed claw hammer I found in the garden. Never mind. Settled down with my bottle of budvar and The Interpreter, and sent Wibs and Bonny off to collect shells. The weather picked up. The book was good, the soundtrack of the Enormous Stripy Windbreak gusting back and forward in an east coast typhoon was slightly annoying, but ah well. Beach eh? Living by one, you know, you just know, that it's crap really. You spend an hour in the kitchen boiling eggs and lovingly packing your baps (into a coolbox, not a swimsuit) and off you go, you and the children all thrilled with the notion of a Whole Day at the Beach, because a whole big long cold winter followed by the wettest early summer ever has made you forget about annoying things that will definitely be there. Like wasps. And warm eggy baps with boulder sized bits of sand inside them. And the fact that your beer goes warm in a nanosecond. And that jellyfish have invaded. Again. And that other people will park their arses right next to you and then yell JASMINE I'LL SMACK YER ARSE IF YER DON'T BRING THAT BOTTLE OF FIZZY POP BACK NOW over and over again for three hours. Still, I'm steely. The raffia windbreak flapped and flopped at fifty decibels, but oh, we stuck it out. I'm sat here now, very carefully typing, because to move is to die in a writhing sunburnt agony. Yes, I did it again.

And tomorrow, we have 30oC. Guess where we're going?

I like eggy baps.

Reading Matter(s)

When I finished uni, I swore that I would never read a worthy book ever again. That anything I read from that point on would either have a pink jacket, or a title spelled out in glittering prismic letters. And I did try for a while, the summer after finals saw me stretched out in the hammock reading Tesco specials, you know, books bought on a whim with groceries. But like eating burgers and plastic cheese instead of asparagus pie and Camembert, the kitten heeled heroines began to leave me not only unsatisfied, but feeling mildly nauseous. I still tried, only paying even less, I bought them in Oxfam and Cancer Research. 50p copies of Lets Meet on Platform 8 cooed to me, "we're not so bad... we're built for the hammock and a glass of red, come on..." Daisy Falls in Love, It's my Party, FourPlay, I've brought them all home with their fluffy promises of an easy read, a pally gossip in the garden. They just don't cut the mustard. Now I once again work hard at my books. Uni ruined me for fluff. Thanks uni.

Beach day today. The local BBC weather forecast promises us a decent enough 25oC, the fat faced full little sun last night loomed off the webpage grinning and pointing at the picnic hamper. So at 9pm I merrily drove to the Co op and bought mini sausage rolls, hummus and egg custard ready to pack up. 4am this morning saw me awakened by the sound of a wind usually only captured on 1930 black and white films about the Russian Steppes. It has time to cheer up though, no? I shall make the eggy sandwiches and then choose my book to take.

Now, Painter of Signs, or Faye King Goes to Town?

Spotted on the Trampoline Yesterday...



And today, I shall be mostly sunbathing and cooking. Probably in equal quantities, as I'm cooking Czech. As every good Czech woman knows, when they cook Czech food, it keeps them in the kitchen for most of the day. As every Czech man knows, this is the whole point of their national cuisine. Today I am cooking the horribly time consuming but incredibly tasty Bramborak. After that I will make kuře with houba, smetana and cibule in the remoska. For afters, almond thins soaked in Grand Marnier and covered with more cream, served with a strawberry granita. It's not Czech, I know I know, but man, is it gorgeous.

It's sunny, I can't believe it.

Summer seems to be looking up somewhat.