Gardening, cake, sunshine. A+ bank holiday weekend.

[usuallyhats]

I had been comforting myself about the messiness of my garden by peeking over the wall at how much worse next door's garden is, but apparently someone has been round there with a strimmer and now I'm the messiest one again. Curses. I did some more chopping back and digging up of weeds at the weekend, quite a bit on Saturday and a little on Monday (would've been more, but my arms told me quite firmly that they weren't having any more of that nonsense, and also, OW), but there's still loads to do - if anyone fancies doing some garden clearing in return for cake, I'm sure we could come to some arrangement. Speaking of cake, here's one I made earlier:



Two chocolate and cherry sponges stuck together with cherry jam, with butter icing and cherries on top. Sort of a poor man's (or lazy Jenni's, since it was really easy) Black Forest Gateau, yum.

The weather here was glorious on Sunday. Rhiannon and Simon had a joint birthday picnic in Victoria Park, we ate lovely food and played cricket and it was awesome. I did get a little sunburned though, on the bit of my back that I couldn't reach with the sun cream. Curse my lack of flexibility.

Read the latest but one Falco novel, Saturnalia, over the weekend: very good, as ever, laugh out loud funny in a few places, and the Author's note at the end was genius. Radio 4 is airing a dramatisation of Poseidon's Gold at the moment, which is also great, but it seems I've been pronouncing Helena Justina's name wrong for about a decade - apparently it's HeLAYna, not HELLena. Oops!

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That cake looks delicious! Have you got vanilla bits in the icing?

I always thought it odd that Helena had a Greek name, but I always said it to myself that way. I've been listening too! I have the previous radio plays too, from The Box.

[usuallyhats]

Thanks! No, they're bits of cake - I used the same palette knife to get the cakes out of the tins as to spread the icing. Too lazy to do that extra bit of washing up!

I'd just been in A Midsummer Night's Dream when I read the first Falco book, so I automatically used the second pronunciation! (What is The Box? I've heard bits of the previous ones, but never a whole one from start to finish!)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's a site where you can upload British TV and, it seems, radio. It's invitation only and they can kick you off if you're inactive / don't upload enough yourself or pay. We pay; it's cheap compared to other options. We haven't any invites though, I don't think. Huh! It says I have Z invites (what?) but it seems I can send you one. Do you want me to use the livejournal or hotmail one on your profile?

BTW I'm out most of today, so don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while.

[usuallyhats]

Ooo, that would be great, thank you! Either of those addresses would be fine, but my main one's strangeadventurer @ googlemail.com

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'm back! One of my jobs today got cancelled.

I've sent it! The Z was actually an underlined 7 so I have 6 invites left. Huh! Anyway, if you do a search on Falco, you'll see them all. They have the full plays of The Silver Pigs, Shadows in Bronze, The Iron Hand of Mars, Venus in Copper, and the individual eps so far of Poseidon's Gold. :-)

[usuallyhats]

Thank you! I'm at work at the moment, so I'll investigate when I get home. :D

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a nice BH. Cake looks lovely - alas I'm too far away to assist with gardening!

[usuallyhats]

Thanks! And alas...