Bye bye Baby, Baby bye bye...

It is with a heavy heart that I have to tell you of the untimely demise of John's beer baby.  We knew we had an unwelcome visitor in the pump house but little did we know that he/she/they had gone on a pub crawl across to the wood store.

John had checked his maiden brew and it was a tad on the murky side so without using finings we had consulted the oracle that is the tintyweb and it had advised reduced temperatures and patience so that was the method we were adopting.

John went to check today and bugger me if he didn't lift the baby and find that it was....EMPTY and there were the tell tale signs of rodent activity on the top and on the bottom.

Some field mouse or meeses are happy as larry and pissed as farts somewhere and our bloody cats are just not doing their job.  They are sacked and John is gutted - all that hard work and all he has ended up with is a chewed bit of plastic.

We shall never know how successful the Droushia Drop might have been but it was looking promising.  I shall just have to see if I can find him another kit and bring it back with me when I go to the UK to visit Hazel in the New Year.

It is the last Sunday before Christmas.  Mum is coming up with us as normal and she has donated some lamb tenderloin for our lunch.  This is a delicious cut of meat but quite expensive so I want to do it justice - I have been trolling through the internet looking for inspiration and we have stumbled across a recipe for Lamb Fillet with Redcurrant Sauce which looks and sounds lovely so I will be adapting the cooking times for it being a tenderloin rather than a fillet which is not such a chunky cut of meat.

On Friday Mum gave me some roses from her garden.  They were in bud and I decided to house them in the conservatory where it is cooler.  They are just beginning to open up and look fabulous.  Bless Mum she removed each and every thorn from the blooms and believe me for some reason they seem to have loads but I am very grateful as they can be particularly vicious.

Lunch was successful.  We had the lamb which took only about 15 minutes to pan fry and finish in the oven served with hasselback potatoes and a hot coleslaw of carrot, leek and black eyed beans with a slab of Paps carrot cake afterwards for pud.

We slobbed out afterwards on the sofa which gave me the opportunity to finish the shawl that I have been crotcheting.  This is a bit of a departure for me as I have only ever managed to do squares and rectangles in the past - anyway Mum is test driving it to make sure that the wool doesn't irritate her skin and then if it passes the test she can have it to keep her neck warm.  I have some other wool which I shall use to make a second one as I don't really like sitting watching the TV without doing some knitting or crochet.

We had a visit from Bassam and Lola this evening bearing a gift for Christmas which from the shape and size looks to me like a box of Quality Street.  Bassam reminded me that I had helped him book tickets for the UK from EasyJet and I needed to print out the boarding cards.  This made me break out into a cold sweat because the booking was not in my name and it was done so long ago I just knew that no-one would remember any of the details and I was right.  I shot off in the car up to Bassams where he wanted to show me the latest addition to the Droushia Castle - the second veranda or balcony which comes off the lounge.  It is a great space which will be glassed in but was a bit messy so he wasn't overly pleased that I took a photograph!!!  As I suspected he could remember nothing of the booking so that is going to be a challenge to get EasyJet to cough up the goodies and worse Bassam is going away just before me and then I will be away and then it only leaves a couple of weeks to try and get it sorted.