Low Key

Evening all. Hope you are well. I think everyone in the UK has got to the stage now where we are all saying things like..."It's only 5pm and I've had to put the lamp on." Or..."It was pitch black...PITCH BLACK when I got up this morning." Well, it is October. I don't know what you are looking forward to in October. A big highlight for me will be a trip to the dental hygienist (hopefully). I've been waiting for this since April and I intend to make it if I have to climb over several old ladies to get there. Ah, what happy days these are in the sunlit uplands of what is left of the NHS Dental Service. Other than that, I have very little planned for October - just work and worrying about Manchester United. It's a bit colder don't you think? We know this for certain because the people in the apartment next door have started putting the heat on quite a lot. This is good for us because we can feel it a bit in our place. However, it does seem a bit shrinking violets to me - they don't seem to be old or ill. In our house, we will be moving to the "blankets over the knees" position for a bit. Also, I must find my slippers.

We went to see Dawn French last week. It was sort of a stand-up - lots of stories about her life in show business. I like Dawn French, she seems very personable. She also seems to have a lot of famous friends and I am always up for gratuitous celebrity stories so it was a nice night. HOH didn't enjoy it that much because someone behind him kept undoing caramel swirls from their crinkly wrappers and passing them down the row. How did he know what type of sweets they were? Because someone kept hissing "Would you like a caramel swirl?" every time they gave one out. HOH thinks all food and drink should be illegal in cinemas and theatres. He refused to see anything with Kenneth Branagh in it for a good two years after he said that he thought the cinema (unlike the theatre) was for eating popcorn and chatting about the film as you were watching it. Unacceptable. 

The only thing that put me off Dawn French was that the show is called "Dawn French is a T**T". I have put stars in for those of a delicate nature but you probably get the gist. The idea was, I think that she would tell self-deprecating stories about herself and then she would say "I am such a T**T". I know I am old-fashioned but it was T**T this and T**T that. It got to the stage where I had heard enough T**Ting for a lifetime. Also, when you have that word in the name of your show, you risk someone, who has had one too many sherries, thinking it is the height of satire to bellow the word TW*********T! as you come onstage. Which is precisely what happened. No wonder I was tense. 

The thing is, I felt that the word twit would have worked just as well - no honestly. I suppose it's all about making it edgy for the young people. Well, we had a young person with us -  FOW2 had deigned to make an appearance for the evening and I thought I might ask her. Unfortunately, she was too taken up watching a team of what seemed like about 50 St John's Ambulance people running up and down the loudest steps in Christendom to deal with some kind of emergency at the back for most of the evening. She said it was like being in an episode of Ambulance. 

As part of my (admittedly half-hearted) attempt to have a 3-month reset sabbatical thing in the run in to Christmas, I have been poking around Instagram looking at new thinking on diets etc. Apparently, my usual sugar-free muesli with semi-skimmed milk is a disgrace and I need to think more along the lines of full-fat yoghut with kefir and nuts and seeds. This is to be taken with two cups of expresso because there is more fibre in coffee and orange juice. I have never had kefir. Can anyone disabuse me of the notion that it will smell (and probably taste) like old socks?  There is also a strong movement towards leaving skins etc. on everything - butternut squash, pumpkins etc when you roast them which I can get on board with. I have to be honest, I'm struggling with the idea of eating kiwi fruit skin. Never eat anything hairy has been a maxim I have lived by and, I have to say, it has been very successful in the main. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who does this. I have two observations about these diets

1. The people who espouse them are always quite hollow-cheeked and never that joyful.

2. There are very few scones in these diet plans. 

These things may be connected.

I'm not saying I won't have a go though. Nothing ventured etc etc

We skived church this morning. In the interests of being fair to ourselves, we have so much stuff to sort in Aged Parent's flat, we decided to put that first. Also, HOH had his COVID injection this week and it hit him like a train, so he hasn't been feeling at all well for a couple of days. Er. No anti-vaxers need to comment. He had Covid and the reaction to this jab was not in that league. AP seems to be settling ok into her new home. She informed us that "everyone is weird in here" which might have been upsetting in a home for people with dementia if she hadn't been saying that about every place she has lived for the last 25 years. Other than that she is smiling and winking at chaps a lot. I expect her to be engaged to be married before Christmas.