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Ear still wrong. Right shoulder not great either; really must be more careful.

Lovely walk with owlfish who is lovely. Then lovely pasta for dinner.



And yes, I forgot to post this last night. Ear still wrong this morning but it feels better than it did yesterday, so far.

Reminiscence

When we lived in Gagetown, NB, we'd go picking strawberries at the pick-your-own place. It was always something of an adventure, finding the delicious jewel-red berries, putting them into the container, getting them weighed, taking them home... and having some for dessert.

My mum would make strawberry jam. I don't remember much of this process - I remember vast quantities of strawberries were involved, and a lot of cooking, and the biggest pan, and I remember the jars would be warm at first, afterward. To my young mind, it always seemed as if this produced an inexhaustible supply of strawberry jam, which we would eat on toast for breakfast and in sandwiches for lunch through the winter, as well as giving a few jars away to friends - in retrospect I know that it lasted because we made it last, applying it in thin layers where we could and scraping out the last of each wonderful jar. It was always deliciously sweet and sticky with many lumpen strawberries. I felt lucky and privileged to have a mother who made her own jam, and was very happy to have real jam instead of the shop-bought stuff; I probably didn't tell her this enough.

Yesterday on a whim I bought a jar of strawberry jam from Waitrose. They were doing a "2 for £2.50" offer on the organic high-fruit ones, so I got one strawberry and one morello cherry. The morello cherry on toast yesterday was nice - rich and dark and lustrous somehow.

The strawberry, on its own merit, is not a bad jam either as jams go. It tastes of strawberries, which is always a good start. There are even some lumpy strawberries in it. Somehow, though, it lacks the authenticity and realness of my mother's jam. It's good jam, but I can tell it is shop-bought. Le sigh.

There's only one thing for it, really. I'll have to make my own this summer.

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From dr_atheist

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It's been a quiet day in today, probably good that it has as well. The walk last night was longer than I had intended and did actually make me quite tired - not a bad thing, particularly as we stopped to rest when my joints started to complain - but between earachey nonsense and so on it's probably best that I rest.

I made banananananana bread. I put some cacao nibs in it - not many, but enough that I know they're there. Yummy. I used wholewheat flour, but I like it better, I think, with half plain flour and half oatmeal. Maybe I'll use a third of each sort next time? Not sure. I used five bananananananas and less sugar than the recipe calls for, as I usually do.

I had a nap. Naps are good. I had distracting dreams, which I won't mention here.

I took the other Palm LifeDrive to Greenwich where I met wuluf and exchanged it for munny. Yay. Cashflow is still not great, but it's not as bad as it could be, and at least I'm not out by the cost of two PDAs now.

Did some washing-up. Put some laundry in.

Tonight? A little more washing-up, cutting up some of the banananana bread and wrapping it to take with me tomorrow,

Tomorrow was going to be teaching from 11 but that student's father will be sitting shiva after the death of his mother, and this isn't really compatible with piano lessons, so I have a late start. I'm going to try to make good use of the time. Then teaching, then Pembury for games night.