test please delete

[NickFitz]

I thought I'd used all the chicken, tomato and lentil soup, but I found some more at the back of the freezer and decided to have that for lunch. However, once defrosted in the microwave something seemed a bit odd… turned out it was chicken madras, which I'd somehow mislabelled as soup

So lunch has been chicken madras, watered down a bit to make it soupier, with a crust of wholemeal

[NickFitz]

The new recliner has been deployed. It's very wide; the seating area has six inches or more of empty space each side of me if I sit in the middle! And the arms are nine inches wide, flat topped. All this makes it a bit of a reach to get my coffee off the side table

I assumed that this must be a known problem and searched on Amazon, and it turns out there is a vast selection of different forms of "arm trays" designed for this situation, incorporating everything from swivelling phone stands and dangling pockets to, in a few cases, drawers in which to store remote controls and the like. I've ordered a basic one which can be delivered tomorrow (most of them wouldn't come until Friday), but I shall have to study this matter more closely; having what is essentially a small chest of drawers at one's right hand seems like it may be one of those things you don't know you need until you try it

[NickFitz]

In other local news, the new occupant(s) of upstairs seem to have taken up residence, so I now have upstairs neighbours for the first time since I moved here and will find out what life's been like for my downstairs neighbours

An IKEA van showed up earlier and they went down to receive various items therefrom, including what I suspect to have been boxes containing a couple of 2x2 Kallax units. I hope their hands don't end up with as many fine cardboard cuts as mine did when I was in the same situation a couple of years ago

[ladymuck]

Last minute gifts have been purchased.

It wasn't quite the level of bedlam I expected but I am also very pleased that there is nothing else I need to get.

[xoggoth]

Loony lady 3 walk this morning. Gawd, that woman, blabber, blabber, blabber. It is fairly normal to talk about time spent with relatives or friends but she yacks on about some neighbour over the road she knew about 50 years ago. Wouldn't be so bad if she didn't tell you 200 times!

[NickFitz]

Last minute gifts have been purchased.

It wasn't quite the level of bedlam I expected but I am also very pleased that there is nothing else I need to get.

I just popped round to the chemist's for the monthly prescription, which is as much engagement with retail premises as I'm prepared to do until after Christmas, when I'll need some bread

They wandered off into the back as usual, then came back and asked me to take a seat - well, THE seat - while they "checked something". A few minutes later they returned and said they did have my prescription and were dispensing it now, so it would just be a few more minutes. While I waited, I went and had a look at my patient record in the phone app to check when the prescription had been sent over from the surgery: 26 November. I don't know what they get up to in that shop all day, but dispensing prescriptions ready for collection doesn't seem to be their main concern

[NickFitz]

In preparation for the forthcoming festivities, tea has been roast turkey thigh with chips, peas and gravy

It wasn't that nice though. The turkey was just Sainsbury's standard stuff and didn't have much flavour. I don't think they do TTD thighs, though

I mainly got it to make soup with the leftovers though, but I think I'll have to get and roast another one to make that worthwhile as I've eaten nearly half of this one

[ladymuck]

In checking for changes to the refuse and recycling collections over the forthcoming festive period, I noticed that the council have swapped the bin collections over from next year. I have two recycling collections in a row (tomorrow and next week, Thursday) before it reverts to alternating each week on Tuesdays.

[NickFitz]

In checking for changes to the refuse and recycling collections over the forthcoming festive period, I noticed that the council have swapped the bin collections over from next year. I have two recycling collections in a row (tomorrow and next week, Thursday) before it reverts to alternating each week on Tuesdays.

Our collection (both kinds) moved to today because of Christmas and in response, some poor sod who works for the management company had to come round Sunday evening to collect any bags we'd put outside our flats, which normally would have been collected this morning

I hadn't put any bags out myself. I'm not sure if that made things easier for them, or made their weekend duties a little more futile

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture was the fifth and final part of the Christmas trilogy, A Good Day to Die Hard (2013). By this point they'd given up on the notion of any kind of holiday tie-in, not even the imaginary holiday of Thanksgiving, possibly because it's set in Russia and Ukraine and they didn't know any of the holidays over there. Although I've watched it before I didn't really remember it at all, probably because it's not very good. It's full of spectacular stunts and so on, but none of them are convincing. In the first film, unlikely stuff happens all the time, but you can see that things might actually happen that way in reality; and the others tend to conform to that pattern. In this one, it's all just stuff that makes you go "No, not possible even though it looks impressive"

Anyway, the climax of the film is at Pripyat (which they insist on calling Chernobyl) which reminded me that I'd been thinking about rewatching Chernobyl (TV Mini Series 2019) so I did - well, the first two episodes. Excellent stuff

I keep thinking there's something I need to do, but it's probably just that I'm not used to not having to make a last minute dash to the shops on Christmas Eve

Goodnight all