Jammy

Hmm. This jam-making? Clearly there is more to be learned. The first time I made the melon-and-ginger, it didn't set and I had to reboil. This time I went all belt-and-braces: boiled it past the official setting-point and used high-pectin sugar.

Result? Glue. V tasty glue, but it is way stiffer than I like in a jam.

I'm just going to have to do it again. Sigh.

The whole three yards

I was musing just now, wondering if I could name three comestibles that were sold by the yard. As it turned out, I couldn't. Not offhand. There is the famous yard of ale, of course, and also the Cumberland sausage (about which the wikipedia entry is tediously inaccurate, with its 50cm folly; my favourite supplier used to have two thumbtacks in his counter as a measure for selling the uncut sausage, and they were one full yard apart).

And that's where I dry up. I have not googled, but there must be more. One could buy a yard of many foodstuffs, of course - many fish are big enough to sell by the yard - but no one does. Chinese yard long beans don't count, because (a) they're not a yard long and (b) they're not sold by length anyway. Nor of course is spaghetti.

C'mon. Point up my idiocy: what am I forgetting? It's Sunday, you've got nothing better to do. Me, I'm editing my novel while the Cumberland sausage cooks...

Bereft of purpose

Yikes! I have just run out of scribbled-on manuscript to edit. This is entirely due - I have mentioned this already - to the Lit & Phil's being closed, which has stymied me completely.

I'm going to go downstairs now, put Janis Ian on real loud, and clear the dining-room table. Other people can read editorially on their dining-room table; I don't see why I can't. It's ridiculous, to be dependent on something as undependable as an institution with opening hours. Or in this case closing hours. Closing days, closing weeks.

What I need, I need my own private library. I don't mind letting the public in, but it needs to run to Chaz-time. And cats, it needs cats...