Shopping, Cooking and Dancing

Saturday morning involved yet another trip in to Stratford.

I needed to attend a fitting for a coat that 30% is having made for me, so my first stop involved putting on a calico. The calico is a basic coat stitched up from panels of calico cloth and eventually becomes a customer specific pattern. It is used to ensure that the fit is perfect and for the next few minutes Jonny wandered around marking the positions of pockets, hem and sleeve lengths and various other tweaks that need to be made. He also provided a sample of the most beautiful yet tough leather that will be used to make the coat. A further calico will be made over the next week incorporating the adjustments and I will need to attend another fitting before a start is made on the coat proper.

Whilst being fitted for the coat we also made a sort of impulse purchase … many months ago we had seen and tried a beautiful leather bean bag chair that is another of Jonny's product lines. Today he had one in cream and brown that would be perfect for the study. The one we saw was about to be collected by it's new owner so we ordered another one just like it.

Having finished with our purchases of hide based goods we then legged it over to Jaeger where I had a voucher that was nearing it's expiry date. I had initially thought to use it on a sweater until my eyes fell on a rather fine jacket. They didn't have one in my size but the assistant soon had one on order for me and a combination of my voucher, a promotional reduction and free alterations meant that I will have managed to buy a four hundred pound jacket for less than half of the price.

The shopping then had a deleterious effect on my health and I had a massive hypo necessitating the consumption of a chocolate bar and a short stop at a pub for a coffee and cake. We then headed homeward making a brief stop at the supermarket to pick up a few essential groceries.

One home we lunched and a quick look at the clock made us realise that we needed to divide and conquer. The reason for the time constraints was that we had agreed to assist at a fundraiser this evening and dinner needed to be eaten early. TP and Peanut were encouraged* to take the dogs for a walk whilst I prepared dinner …

… for some reason a packet of lasagne sheets had been left out on the work top and I had decided that I would make one for dinner. The presence of the lasagne was surprising as it is something that we almost never eat, so lord knows why it was in the house in the first place. I imagine that this is because we live in a a busy household and generally just make a bolognese sauce and add it to some cooked pasta rather than going the extra miles of making a cheese sauce, assembling the dish and baking it in the oven for half an hour.

Well today I had the time and the ingredients so we sat down to an early dinner of lasagne, salad and crusty bread and it was declared a huge success. It looks like I may well be down to make another one in the not too distant future.

With dinner out of the way we all put on our chequered shirts, boots and hats and headed down to the village hall where we we helping out with a Barn Dance that had been arranged to raise funds for the Zambian Exchange that TP is involved with. I was directed to the bar and spent most of my evening selling beer and wine to the dancers. It was a well attended do and I actually did get dragged out on to the floor for a couple of dances at the very end of the evening. I also received a very early Christmas Present which Stevie and the Elf insisted I open there and then … `

… Stevie had been working at Motorcycle Live and had purchased an Enfield Workshop Manual from one of the exhibitors. He knew it would be needed before December so did the decent thing and gave it to me today.

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* Nagged until they got off their lazy arses, came downstairs and actually did something constructive instead of trying to suck off each others' faces.