Sunday Roast

What a great tradition.

It's Sunday...you've worked on Saturday, unpacked boxes of stuff, Hoovered the house, dusted, laundry, shopped at Tesco (we are the riff raff), I've gathered my things together in one place...what's left of them...in order to pack, leaving only a few things out to finish out my last few days. You have a nice lie in on Sunday morning... no HB to take to school on Saturday, at her Big Ass School, where I'm finally able to go without dropping my jaw in amazement. She attends on a academic scholarship, huge numbers of boarding students, horses, beagles ("These are not dogs, they are hounds!" they are told.)


The last of the Gaggle of Girls, leave semi quietly, the rest have a huge breakfast cooked by MB, who makes up a nice bacon sandwich for me.


This is food of the gods.

I take my tea, and read the paper in bed, with Frank on the rug, where he sleeps every night now. I've a lunch date with a friend and his daughters, whom I've not seen in a few years.

Loo suggests we do a Sunday roast with chickens and veg and roast potatoes, rather than all of us go out... a suggestion I leap upon, as this is one of the best things you can have on a Sunday... A Chicken Roast.

We work together, me playing sous chef, her dealing with 47 pans all at once, potatoes being par boiled, parsnips, brussel sprouts, cauliflower with cheese sauce, the chickens stuffed with lemons, put into the oven to be roasted perfectly. Then, it's time for the potatoes..... you take them out, put them in oil, and into the oven with the parsnips. Roast them in a hot oven... crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. Once you've had them, you are sold on their perfection.

Company arrives, again, girls surround us, we sit around the dining room table, fill our plates and conversation and food abound.

Beautiful chocolate deserts, one with blueberries on it, one with orange flavour... both with a lovely single cream poured over them, coffee and the girls are gone. Dishes done promptly, and the three of us, Harle, Loo and I sit around the kitchen table, discussing single parenthood, and other blah blah things.

I lost track, as Loo decided it was time for me to stop knitting scarves, and move up to a sweater.

This item takes 120 stitches cast on for the back, and 180 rows to be knit and purled. That's just the back. I've a front and two sleeves to do, too.

I've knitted the same row five times. The yarn is rather ragged right now. I've finally learned how to tell when I'm knitting or purling (the tag of yarn is at the bottom or top of the row..hurrah!) and have finally reached eight rows. At this point, I should be done by 2015.

Therefore, they were chatting away about something, and I was knitting, and I've no idea what they were saying. You'll have to ask them, to be honest.

Finally, the company had to leave... it's a long drive back to London. The girls were also beautiful young women, much grown since last I'd seen them. He's done a nice job as a Dad.

We are watching Catherine Tate now... she makes me laugh.







The day's done, Sunday Roast, that wonderful, amazing tradition is done, and I'll not have another for a good year.

Sad, that.





Our Neville Fact:


Recently Margaret joined the local W.I., in the hopes no one will find out her past history in this noble group. In Devon, she belonged for a great many years, rising to be Chair, until the disastrous Christmas Luncheon of 1999. It was then she was voted out ignominiously in a special session. This occurred when she hired a policeman from Tanya ('Tanya by Name, Tanya by Nature' a card she'd seen in her local tobacconists shop) Pandoro, who claimed the officer would give lessons to the ladies of the W.I. in personal defense. When he showed up, he promptly started to remove his uniform to an old song by WHAM! Poor Mrs. Bittlebury-Brown fainted when he showed her his 'extendable baton' , thus sealing Margaret's fate as Chair. This caused Neville great distress, as he was in a high position in the Rotary Club, where all of his fellow members expressed their dismay at the event. It came to roost in each member's home, as all of their wives were at the Luncheon, finding themselves so shocked by the event, they were prostrate with shock, lying in dark bedrooms with a cool cloth on their foreheads--unwilling and unable to partake in their weekly, marital shag.