Another week of winter…

 We are having a beautiful winter here so far this year and there seems to be quite a bit of activity around.

 New Books-  Amor Towles new book has arrived and I’m looking forward to reading Table For Two. It is a series of six short stories which is a different format to his previous books I read; The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow. I have Rules of Civility but not read it yet. He is such a good writer.

 I just finished Flann O’Brien’s book At-Swim-Two-Birds. You must put the hyphens in the title but no idea why.

This book is very comical and I really enjoyed reading it but I have no idea what it is about and will have to read some reviews now from Good Reads readers to see what they got out of it. We’ll be discussing it in book group next week. 

 The new book group read is The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I have only recently begun it. The blurb states:

 Winner of the Man Booker Prize 1978

Charles Arrowby has determined to spend the rest of his days in hermit-like contemplation. He buys a mysteriously damp house on the coast, far from the heady world of the theatre where he made his name, and there he swims in the sea, eats revolting meals and writes his memoirs. But then he meets his childhood sweetheart Hartley, and memories of her lovely, younger self crowd in – along with more recent lovers and friends – to disrupt his self-imposed exile. So instead of ‘learning to be good’, Charles proceeds to demonstrate how very bad he can be.

 I’m listening to an audible copy of it and it is narrated by Swazi-English actor Richard E. Grant. The narration is pretty good but he does seem to act it more in parts than just read it. I understand a few actors tend to do this with audible books from what I have heard from others. The character of Charles begins quite mildly as he wants to remove himself from the world and has bought a house in a remote seaside home in the UK. As I read along his true colours are beginning to merge and he is quite a misogynistic pompous ass.  His character is hard to like but others may disagree. I’m not that far into it yet so we’ll see how I go with him.

 On the weekend I went with a friend down to the Franklin Forest which is older growth forest and very beautiful. We were on a fungi hunt. As the group weren’t photographers but more of a land care group not much time was given to setting up tripods and getting good crisp photos of fungi.  I have now spent four days shooting fungi this winter and I am all fungi-ed out. 

 On the home front of paying more attention to some cooking (as Mr. P does most of the cooking and I want to get back into it more again) I made a very simple comfort meal of a Shepherds Pie. However it does not have a pastry bottom.

 I used one of those packets of seasonings you get in the supermarket. Like Maggi or something like that.

You have 500 grams of mince that you cook up on the stove with one chopped onion and one chopped carrot and the seasoning packet plus a bit of water. Directions are on the packet. While that is cooking you boil up four potatoes and then mash them with butter and salt/pepper if you like. Though the seasoning probably has a lot of salt in it.

 Put the mince mixture into an oven proof dish, spread the potato onto the top of it and cook at 180C for 20 minutes or so. Top it with shredded cheese if you like for another three or four minutes until the cheese melts and it is all done.

 Very easy and very good. We had enough for two evening meals with salad. 

 Those packets now come in so many flavours and if you don’t have all the seasonings on hand they are useful but we can’t use them all the time as I imagine they are higher in sodium and that isn’t good for heart health. But once  a week or so should not be a problem, if that.

 Today I went into town and after the gym did quite a bit of street photography.  I was using a wider angle lens (35mm) instead of 50 and my goal was to get more of the environment around the subject as to tell more of a story. I think I got some good ones but have not downloaded them yet.

Well that sums up the week so far. I hope all of you are well.

 By the way, I wanted to mention…as I follow several blogs and several of them are written by very prolific writers I am now only picking one post from each writer to read and comment on. I feel bad when so many people comment on my posts and I can’t get time to comment on theirs but a couple of you do quite a few posts a week and I don’t. So weekends will be the time I take to stay in touch with you and at least one, maybe two posts. I don’t get to as many books as many of you do.

 I enjoy Jinger’s format on the Intrepid Angeleno’s page ( https://intrepidangeleno.wordpress.com/).She writes about more than just books and I really enjoy that format as it is like getting a letter from a friend “back home”. Since we all have emails, text messages, etc I think I’m going to make my posts more like “old fashioned letters”. Thank you Jinger for the great idea. 

 All the best to all of you.