Library

Firstly, Happy Birthday Michael.

How to cook Gnocchi

Toss in olive oil, garlic and rosemary, season well.

Bake at 200 deg C for 25 minutes.

From the recipe book ‘Cooking for the Mafia’ Gary Smith

I am sad to read of another library closing. Smartphones, tablets and laptops have to take some of the blame. I received the fundamentals of my education at school, but that was not enough. My real education, the details, the true architecture, I got out of my school library. From an early age the smell of books, the quiet environment and the joy of immersing yourself in a book, filled many of my afternoons. Being a boarding school, the library offered something close to home.

For me, the library was the open-door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the will to make the most of it.

Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that society has found one more way to destroy itself.

Being Saturday morning we all met at the beach, well, when I say all it was Gary, Alex, Michael, Susan and I. Lottie is down from London for a visit and as Michael is off to Italy, so she is staying with us. Lottie is the sausage dog with a funny mouth. Molly and Jenson. Quite a variety with Jenson, a golden retriever, Molly of dubious parentage and Lottie, a short-haired sausage dog. That’s the dogs, then you have me, approaching the later years and Susan, still not quite grownup. Gary embraces middle life and Michael is just about there. Anyway, Susan and I had a swim with no one volunteering to accompany us, really do not understand why, the sea is a balmy 6 deg C, no wind and with the sun filtering through the clouds, I would rate it a good day for a swim.

Snowdrops are flowering, yep, it is that time of the year and Kingston Lacy does not disappoint, well there were snowdrops and the weather was kind to us but we were a little underwhelmed on the quantity. I remember the days there were snowdrops as far as the eye can see, alas with all the new gardens and clearing being done, the snowdrops seem to have taken a hammering. We did get there an hour before they closed and had the gardens mainly to ourselves, Jenson was able to roam free for a while until the squirrels started to tease him and at that stage, we thought it prudent to put him on the lead. The beauty of this old house and gardens is the timelessness of the place, an area frozen in time and still so well maintained.

Daniel has just turned 18, happy birthday Dan, I hope your A levels go according to plan and you are accepted into a university of your choice. I do believe he has had a conditional offer from Loughborough, a good university but I do wonder if he should not look further afield, Shetland island has an exceptional university and it is not that far away.

Claudia invited us to an Asian-themed dinner to celebrate Daniel’s passing into his 19th year. Always interesting, Claudia gives Gary instructions on what to cook and then offers helpful tips as he goes along.

Tonight was different, Claudia cooked the rice and the Thai chicken, both excellently cooked, the rice was just stodgy enough to be able to cut your required portion with a sharp knife and the chicken had a lovely crisp note to it, marinated in a coconut and peanut sauce.

Gary had prepared salmon, prawns and crab sticks well in advance and had cooked the spinach to perfection. He then rolled the dried spinach out into thin sheets. There is a genius behind this as this being an Asian-themed meal, you needed to roll up your chosen ingredients into the spinach sheets, something like the Japanese do when creating Sushi.

We all sat down and everyone being hungry started to tuck in when we realised Gary had forgotten to cook the salmon and the prawns.

Not wanting to offend we dutifully ate the chicken and chewed through the rice while some even had raw fish and rice, lavished with brown sauce and mayonnaise. The cake was good.

Doing some research, I did find this example of the type of meal they were trying. Salmon Sushi, I did notice the absence of spinach sheets, weird?

Moving on to more important matters. If one inadvertently misses the deadline to pay your tax, the HMRC take a dim view of this and will impose a fine of £ 100 and also add interest up to 10%. It seems quite harsh, but I find it strange that they will also want you to pay towards your future earnings. In my case, it was quite a large amount but I paid it and when I submitted my tax this year they graciously informed me that I had overpaid and would send me a refund. Now that was welcome news but it got me thinking, why did they not pay me interest on the money they took from me under false pretences? It seems as if that is something to be addressed sometime in the future but as I am not too keen to wait in line for 2 to 3 hours until an operator becomes available, I will defer that for the time being. There are two certainties in life; death and taxes.