Resolutions be damned

Chicken breasts, trimmed.  Slash a pocket in each, and fill with barely sautéd chopped mushrooms, run round a saucepan with a little butter and two cloves of garlic, chopped finely.  Roll some bought good brand puff pastry as thinly as you can, and lay on a couple of slices of serrano (or similar) ham.  Roll up the stuffed chicken breast in the ham and pastry, seal, egg wash and do at 190° until they are golden brown.  Serve with dressed romaine leaves - one's concession to the dieting season.  And lunch was an omelette with all the leftover veggies.

Fine morning today, so I potted up some of the daffodil and tulip bulbs we were given for Christmas by Marion and John.  A bit late to plant them, I guess, but mieux vaut tard que jamais.  We have quite a lot of bulbs left over, so will spend the generous voucher that came with them on a couple of containers and a few bags of multi-purpose.  John had also done some work on my rings, he being a goldsmith.  (My knuckles, alas, have swelled in recent times.)  I had a bit of gold that he could use, so I've made use of something otherwise useless, and have my bling back.  One is the ring Martyn gave me all those years ago, and the other is my mother's wedding ring, which now fits my little finger again.

Any neighbours reading this will be glad to know that we've signed and posted a maintenance contract for the burglar alarm.  In the meantime, unless it develops a further fault, it will not be troubling them.  Bloody thing! 

We're plotting another train ride with Celia and Andy in March, this time to Worcester, where I've never been before.  King John is buried (not before time, some would say) in the cathedral, which boasts a superb Norman crypt.  (Someone I know used to say he wrote letters to the Telegraph editor as Norman Undercroft...).  I fancy a visit to the Worcester Porcelain Museum, which will be open.  Alas, the Severn Valley Railway will not, and neither will Greyfriars House and gardens.

My late, lamented aunt was posted to Worcester during the war as PA to an RAF procurement director.  She used to tell of walking breezily through Worcester with top secret files on the latest mark of Spitfire under her arm.  Her boss was no stranger to delivering severe bollockings to subordinates over the phone, and when she felt and looked vicariously intimidated, he'd give her a fat wink, showing that it was all an act.  She wasn't allowed to tell her parents where she was, or what she was doing, but her account of watching sheep grazing in the water meadows below the cathedral evidently got past the doubtless hard-pressed censor, and will have brought them some comfort.  My cousin tells me, by the way, that said aunt, her mother, was not the grandparents' third but fourth child.  The birth of a son is registered in 1906 to my grandmother, with no father's name given.  My grandparents had been 'walking out' for several years by then, and the name the child was given, Frank, is a strong hint that he was the son of Grandpa Francis, whose teaching career would have been ruined had his fatherhood been acknowledged.  How sad.  Frank will no doubt have been given for adoption, so at least will have escaped knowing us lot.