Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring!

You know that saying about remaining calm when all around you are panicking well now’s the time to panic.  I potentially have nothing to do for the seven plus hours on the way home.  I finished my cardigan and now this is all I have left of the yarn for the crochet blanket…

the issue being I need just as much pink as cream.  (Okay when I was taking the picture of my artily arranged remaining yarn I thought it may look like a flower or spaghetti with a tiny bit of Bolognese and now, before anyone else says it, I realise it looks like a booby – but not of the bird variety. )

Anyhoo how on earth am I going to manage on the way home.  B has suggested I read but that cuts out my other essential occupation of travelling for many hours in the car – admiring the passing scenery.

Deep breaths – I have one last hope – I bought a very nice ball of 4 ply yarn from a very nice shop in Nairn – I have spent some time scouring the internet for free sock patterns (ie, available immediately) and I can only keep everything crossed that the one nearby charity shop has some double ended needles available.  So obviously we’ll be checking that out as a matter of priority as soon as they open.

Meanwhile in less panicky (indeed soothing) matters I tried some lavender shortbread yesterday afternoon…

It was heart shaped, a bit pricey for one biscuit, but made on the Isle of Skye and I’ve wanted to try a foodstuff with lavender in for some time now (it’s on the antiangiogenic food list) AND I love shortbread – so what a treat, right?  Well yes it was, Bud loved it!  I however will need to buy plain shortbread ASAP to realign my taste buds.  Fortunately there’s a Walkers shortbread shop just further up from the charity shop – I may need the shortbread for the lonnnnnggggg trip home.

Yummy feta salad

I still haven’t completely got my appetite back but as it is returning I’ve been fighting the urge to eat junk other than the odd digestive biscuit.  So last night for tea I really craved and we had the following…

Feta cheese with green and yellow peppers, red onion, cherry tomatoes (need I say – not homegrown), balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, mint, mild olive oil and basil along with multi seeded bread with olive oil margarine (I would have used butter but I did forget the bread and B buttered, or rather margarined it) oh, and iceberg lettuce.  I feel the need to apologise for this, not that I don’t think there is a place in the world for iceberg lettuce but I generally prefer something a tad more interesting in this department, B however does the shopping and I didn’t specifically write ‘entertaining lettuce’ on the list.

We both really enjoyed it – I would have liked to eat more but couldn’t fit another bite in so in fact, we all really enjoyed it as I offered the last bit to Bud thinking he would eat the cheese and leave the rest and after a few tentative licks to ensure it was indeed edible he polished it all off.  It was so good B suggested we have it for tea today too – mmmm, can’t wait.

I came to take my last lot of tablets yesterday before bed and realised that I hadn’t given the ‘Information for the user’ leaflet the once over in this instance for the Rifadin (rifampicin).  Let’s face it although it’s good to know the side effects that can be bestowed on you when it’s a vital medication you pop those pills like a kid stuffs down sweeties at Halloween.

The dispensing label does say about taking the tablets half an hour before food so I had been doing that and the microbiologist had said that they can make people violently sick but I hadn’t experienced this.

So there I was about to pop my last lot of tablets and I have to admit the only thing that prompted me to read the ‘Information for the user’ was that I couldn’t get the tablet bubble strip back into the box without taking the leaflet out, and I read the following…

Taking Rifadin 150 Capsules with food and drink

If Rifadin 150 Capsules are taken with the food and drink listed below you may experience headache, sweating, flushing, fast, uneven or forceful heartbeat (palpitations), dizziness, feel lightheaded or faint (due to low blood pressure).

While taking Rifadin 150 Capsules do not have:

• Cheese
• Skipjack tuna or other tropical fish
• Red wine

Which raises a few points

Red wine – not a problem other than plonking (get it ‘plonk*’-ing) some in a stew a few weeks ago I don’t touch any alcohol at all really – other than the bottle when pouring a couple of friends a drink

Skipjack tuna or other tropical fish – now I’m borne back to the time my Dad had a tropical fish tank and have a vision of a salad sprinkled with tiny brightly coloured fishy goodies like these…

Cheese – Arghhhh! Now what are we going to have for tea?  Mind you I got away with it last night and the salad was really good and to quote a friend it doesn’t actually say – ‘Eat cheese with this medicine and you will die!’

* Plonk – slang word for alcohol sometimes prefixed by cheap

We are engaging in a modified lifestyle plan

It includes the following…

Daily

Intake

Excluding

Treats

this is to be combined with

Expending

Xtra

Energy

Regularly

Cutting

Inches from

Sagging

Extremeties

I may have suspected this was necessary when I had to buy a pair of size 14 trousers to take on holiday.  I think the equivalent size in the States is about 357!  And then I found this…

That was July 2007!  Let’s take a shufty at August 2010 – don’t panic or reach for the sick bag I have more clothes on…

I am now off to eat a someting to cheer me up – ohhhhhhhhhhhhh no I can’t do that now, I know I’ll go and kick Bernard instead  – that should do the trick!