Stuck

I'm cooking dinner for HWSNBN and his mother this evening. Unfortunately, due to an excess of crapness on my part, the roast pork will not be ready until 8pm at the earliest. HWSNBN's mum does not like to eat after about 6.30. Once again, I have messed up and I feel bad.

I also managed to be too late for the vegetable shop - I thought it closed at 6, but it turns out it closes at 5 on a Sunday. As a result, I can only offer one carrot and half a swede in the orange vegetables section. I have no apples to make sauce. I have frozen peas, and purple beans from the vegetable patch, and purple potatoes (peeled - you can't really tell they were purple now), so I can fake a roast dinner - it's just that the timing is so very wrong.

I've just opened the oven and the pork looks amazing. It's just had its 30 minutes at 230C, and I had to let the heat out to take it to 160C, where it will stay for 90 minutes. It's quite a large bit of pork. I bought it because it was on offer, and put it straight into the freezer. Alas, I roasted a joint which had been in there for a few months recently, and it was not good. I don't know what happened to it (maybe the freezer turned itself off...), but it led me to the conclusion that I must defrost and roast all of the meat over a certain age in there (that age is anything I put in before yesterday). So now I am working on that. I do hope food poisoning is not the result. None of this meat will be served at all rare!

The reason I waited until so late to start cooking is that I am not having a happy day. Church did not go well - I am too easily irritated at the moment. Just as I was about to start playing this morning, the guitar started.* In a way, this is great - it means that I do less work but still get the same amount of money. I find that hard to argue with! However, I would have appreciated the chance to run through the hymns beforehand. It would also have been good to have been forewarned that the organ sounds like it is dying before the introduction to the first hymn. Poor darling - it is not at all a well little organ, and it needs tuning again.

The next badness came during the second hymn. The person who was singing most loudly was not singing the same rhythm as I was trying to play. I suspect that she was right,** but that didn't really help me. As I was distracted, I played lots of wrong notes. I am such a crap organist.

To make matters worse, she who plays the guitar is really good. I would feel a lot better about this if I wasn't being shown to be the lesser musician. I would not be shown to be the lesser musician if I did enough practice - if I worked at this, I would be good. Therefore it is all my fault in the end. Grr.

Finally, I got lots of notes wrong in the voluntary. I think that I had given up by then.

After church I went shopping and bought, among other things, some wine making kit. We are hoping to make elderberry and blackberry wine from those we find growing around the edge of The Field. I am looking forward to that.

As I was returning to the car, Heather called me. She sort of invited me round to hers for a cup of tea.*** When I arrived, she fed me and gave me wine instead. We both moaned about our respective lack of movement - her with a project she cannot move forward with until next year, me with projects which have not worked out - now I have to come up with new plans. After feeding me, she gave me tea and I felt better. Not completely better, but I think I shall have to make a lot of changes before I feel completely better.

She also helped me a little with a letter I am writing at the moment. Should this letter achieve its desired aim, my life will be thrown into utter turmoil for a bit. Should this happen, I shall record the results in this blog. It will be very exciting, but is rather daunting.

Sorry about skirting round this. There are some things one shouldn't share with the Internet, but the unbloggable crapness which is consuming my being at the moment says that it deserves a passing mention.

Update: Dinner tasted fine - I am reasonably confident nobody has been poisoned...



*OK, so it wasn't that the guitar started; it was that somebody started playing it. Somebody was supposed to be playing it. I feel incredibly petty.

**Well, officially I suspect that she was right. Between you and me, I was not convinced, even though, deep down, I trust her knowledge of the song more than mine. Deep breaths....... And, relax.

***She suggested we should meet in town for a coffee - I invited myself round to hers.