Things I did and didn’t do.

Apart from my hip being rather tender and not entirely up to strenuous activity, I am all back to normal after last week’s migraine. It has taken a few days. After a bad one, the next day can often be like having a hangover but without the joy of the drink beforehand.

For me this is generally exacerbated by my sleeping patterns being turned around as I will have tried to sleep for as much of the actual migraine as possible. Last week I was feeling much better by ten o’clock on the Wednesday night, and awake. Wide awake. There wasn’t much point in trying to go back to sleep, so I read my book till three in the morning.

Thursday was hungover and tired to death day. I tipped my body clock a little further back the right way and only read until two o’clock. And so it goes. I am a night bird by habit, but that only works if you don’t have anything to do in the day. Otherwise it’s a bit of a bloody nuisance to be raring to go at midnight just as everyone else is winding down or asleep.

Today was the first day I have felt on top of things rather than things being on top of me. I have changed bedclothes, hoovered, scrubbed bathrooms and cooked things from scratch instead of eating chips and lounging about on the sofa in my dressing gown. Not that there is anything wrong with eating chips and lounging about, and dressing gowns are vastly under-rated as a piece of must have apparel. However, being able to be interested in food enough to cook it is always a good sign, and nothing adds to a feeling of getting better than a hot shower and clean bed sheets, both of which have been achieved today.

In other news:

The council are thinking of shutting down my local library. Frankly, I’m amazed it’s taken them this long to consider it. Needless to say, I shall be protesting vociferously about this. I am unspeakably angry about it.

The tortoise has taken to climbing under Oscar’s school bag to sleep. She tucks herself in so perfectly we lose her for ages and it’s always a shock if someone moves the bag by mistake. I am impressed at her skills.

I am teaching my friend Jenn to bake chocolate cake tomorrow afternoon. Really I shall be plonking her down in front of Jo Wheatley’s Malteser cake recipe and forcing her to follow it at skewer point. There is no point re-inventing the wheel. It is the most perfect, foolproof chocolate cake EVER. Still, I am looking forward to it, as we get to mess around in the kitchen all afternoon and it is something I know I can do so I actually feel confident instead of the usual blagging it.

Talking of chocolate. My brother gave my dad a 4.5kg bar of Toblerone for Christmas. Having realised it will take him until the dawn of the next Millennia to finish it alone, my dad gave us some of it today. It’s monstrous. Even in parts. A lump hammer (I kid you not) had to be employed to break it into chunks. We may all die of surfeit. I can’t even complain about the post Brexit gaps because I currently have about two kilos of Swiss chocolate you could build a functional shed with sitting on the draining board.

I did manage to get my food bank supplies down to the drop off point on Friday afternoon, despite being a bit crocked. It’s the first time I’ve managed a donation since Christmas and I’ve been feeling really bad about having fallen off the wagon so to speak, so I’m glad I got round to it. I’ve already got a few things for next week’s drop off, so I feel happy it’s back on my radar again.

As you can imagine, my reading is going well thanks to my topsy turvey sleeping patterns at the moment. I’ve just started the third Bernie Gunther novel by Philip Kerr, and I finished the second volume of Stephen Fry’s autobiography.

I also read Electrigirl by Jo Cotterill, a children’s book which Oscar came back from school with on Friday night. He never stopped talking about it all the way home from school. It’s one of his class’s top five reads and they’re hoping it will get nominated as one of the top reads in the whole school. Everyone in the class wants to read it and it was Oscar’s turn to bring it home. He finished it on Friday night, and thrust it at me with a ‘READ THIS. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT HOW GOOD IT IS.’ So I did read it, and it is good. I was particularly impressed that it is a book about a girl superhero, but that he loved it and his other mates loved it and none of them cared about the fact that is a girl hero, which is fantastic. You would not believe how much gender bias and cries of ‘I’m not reading that, it’s a GIRL’S book,’ I’ve heard over the years.

On the cooking front I’m loving Chetna’s The Cardamon Trail and Tessa Kiros’ Provence to Pondicherry. Two highlights are the chana pie from Chetna and the potato and onion curry from Tessa.

Tallulah and I watched films yesterday. We watched Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Sing Street. We recommend them both but Hunt for the Wilderpeople wins hands down. In fact we all watched that and absolutely loved it. If you want a film that reminds you of how good people can be to each other and also makes you laugh a lot, you need to watch it.