You can't have too many tealights

 ... or, perhaps you can!

The recent spell of warm dry weather meant that the lawns looked a little straggly and, having procrastinated for the latter half of the week, I finally dragged the ailing porn mower* from the shed and attended to all but the front lawn. I'm glad I did, as the transformation made the effort worthwhile.

Having attended to the garden, 30% and I lunched and tidied ourselves up for a trip over to The Regal in Evesham to see Susie Dent present her Secret Life of Words lecture.

I hadn't been to The Regal for the best part of forty years and it has benefited from refurbishment and a reimagining and now hosts a variety of entertainments from films through to live performances. The seating is now comfortable and well spaced and food and drink are now delivered to your seat.  It is a really pleasant venue and I was very impressed by the whole experience.

Susie's performance was relaxed, informative and amusing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As someone who has, perhaps, slightly more than a passing interest in words** I was familiar with much of her narrative, but I had a great afternoon relaxing with a large gin and tonic listening to well presented, interesting stuff. 

On the way out of Evesham we popped in to a supermarket to pick up a couple of essentials and one of these was a packet of tealights.  One might wonder why I regarded tealights as essentials and I have to report that this is massive and recent change in my perspective.

Warning! There now follows a rambling and, probably, uninteresting tale ... 

For almost all of the time that 30% and I lived at The Pile*** there was a Tesco carrier bag hung on a hook on the right as one descended the stairs to the cellar.  In that bag were many tealights and I cannot recall a single occasion when one was removed from the bag and lit. The fact that we had so many of the damned things and never bloody used them was a running joke in the family, as was the decision to throw them out when we did the pre-move clear out in the Autumn and Winter of 2020.

Well! Today I finally needed a tealight as my new cold smoking tray was scheduled for delivery. The cold smoking tray is filled with sawdust and a tea light is used to light it. I was keen to get the recently cured bacon smoked hence the elevation of the humble tealight to an essential item. The irony of the disposal of a couple of hundred of them after fifteen years was not lost on the two of us.

A pack of fifty was the smallest quantity available and these were added to our shopping basket. Back at home I eagerly opened up the new cold smoking tray and read through the instructions. I quickly learnt that the tealight is only lit for about two or three minutes to get the sawdust burning and also that a tealight was provided.

We now estimate that I will be able to smoke foodstuffs on a daily basis until I pop my clogs and I will still not run out of tealights.

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* It's really not sounding healthy now

** Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson is a good introduction to the madness that is the English Language.

*** September 2004 to February 2021

Post Script: The new cold smoker worked beautifully on its first trial and the slab of streaky bacon is now hung bathed in smoke in my little tea chest smoker.