Auntie Barb and Father

As it's Sunday today I visited Father and Auntie Barb for a roast lunch.  Since Mother's demise, Auntie Barb has taken over the cooking and seems to favour meat bought from The British Meat Market (BMM) - a shop in the quieter (i.e. rougher) end of the High Street.  Although cheap, the joints purchased from the BMM tend to be either fatty, gristly or full of bone - often though, it's a combination of all of them.  To counteract this, Auntie Barb tends to get up at 6am and put the oven on ready for lunch to be served at 1pm, as you can imagine, this tends to dry the meat out somewhat. She also has a penchant for putting bicarbonate of soda in the green vegetables - a practice I truly believe had died out in 1959.

I visited the Co-op and purchased two bottles of wine - one white, one rose.  Coping with Father and Auntie Barb when one is stone cold sober is indeed a frightening thought.  At precisely 1pm dinner was served - a lump of indeterminate flesh surrounded by potatoes roasted for so long that they'd make good ammo at a shooting range.  Aunt Bessie's frozen roast puddings were also a feature, unfortunately Aunie Barb (no relation to Bessie as far as I'm aware, although they are both, by their very nature, Aunts.) has a rather disturbing habit of picking up each individual pudding to eat instead of cutting it on her plate like any other normal person.  Dessert was a Bird's Strawberry Trifle, which is always a treat.

After dinner we spent some time watching Father's slide show of bees which lasted for, approximately, sixty-two minutes.  I managed to leave by 4:30pm.