a full day ahead

This is probably all the blog there is going to be today, since tonight I am taking my dad to hear Martin Simpson at the Colchester Arts Centre.  Martin Simpson is a singer and guitarist of supreme talent, and so far as I know the gig is not sold out.

As it is only twenty to seven there isn't much to say about the day, but that's fine as there is no time to say it in.  I am boiling eggs for my packed lunch [gets up to take egg saucepan off the stove].  Indeed, writing that reminded me that the eggs had probably boiled long enough.  I still feel vaguely bloated from eating far too much lunch yesterday, though an hour or two dragging hoses around will sort that out.

The Systems Administrator was taken with the pub at Margaretting Tye, saying that the food was really very good, apart from the portions being at least thirty per cent larger than they needed to be, and that the time to go would be mid-week, when it wasn't absolutely jam packed, and that in fairness to the staff most of them might have just been taken on for the season so they hadn't yet had time to gel and work as a team.  Margaretting Tye is just outside Stock, north of Billericay and south of the A12, and very close to an ancient wood, Swan Wood, now in the care of the Woodland Trust, and its recently planted extension, cutely named Cygnet Wood.  There is a fine ancient wood outside Billericay as well, called Noursey Wood, which is owned by the council and so well loved locally, it has its own Society.  So once the bluebells are out we could go down to mid Essex and walk around some ancient woodland, before having a pub lunch.  Maybe ordering from the bar menu and not the full works.

And with that consoling thought it is now 07.46 and time to put the eggs in cold water to cool them down, then peel them.  I have no sympathy with journalists who simper in their columns that they couldn't have a packed lunch because they'd have eaten all of it by eleven o'clock, like when they were twelve and on school trips.  Come out of your newspaper office and work somewhere that is more than ten miles from a Pret, a Starbucks or a Caffe Nero.  You might eat all of your lunch by mid-morning on the first day, but you won't still be doing it by the end of the week.