10th January 2012 (Tuesday)

Hoeing, they say, is good for the upper arms. In that case I should have got a little bit of a work-out in the fields under the house yesterday, clearing out from under the fruit trees.

Skating was meant to be in the offing but at the last minute Lara said No, don’t want to go. In essence, wanted to stay at home, stroke the cats and bumble about the garden with Ted. So we complied. Hence the hoeing. She was busy helping and getting ‘points’ for each tree that was weeded round. Apparently great fun.

Here’s a Zagreb By Night pic. Took it on the way back from checking on the Charcoal Burners (below): Lara had been out in the garden with Ted AGAIN for over an hour while I went down to a local shop to pick up a pair of shoes. Absolutely entranced by the bonfire. Burning, staring, royally entertained. Soon there will be simply no rubbish left on the hillside at this rate.

In the afternoon I went off for an hour to do my own stuff, and came back to find a great Experiment going on in the kitchen. Looks a bit kinky, frankly, but I guess you can see it was a ‘blind tasting’. Items tasted included marmalade, quince jam, salami, cheese, apple, carrot, whipped cream and nutella. They made a chart and noted down what the reaction was from the two expertly blindfolded subjects, as well as whether they could guess what was being tasted. Lara guessed almost everything, and reactions were pretty much as one would expect from her likes and dislikes except for the whipped cream and nutella (‘love it’) and the marmalade (‘don’t like’).

We had a HUGE chunk of leg of lamb for dinner, with all sorts of accompanying spinach and delicious veg. How on earth we managed I don’t know, but between the four adults and one child (albeit a child with a troll’s appetite) we seem to have polished most of it off – as well as a large apple crumble afterwards. Where does it go? In Lara’s case I strongly suspect that I’m going to be buying a whole lot of clothes for her in a month’s time, because this is the sort of eating she does just before a growth spurt. Breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, dessert, and a few bits inbetween… heavens help us. I’ve already had to let out her tacked-up trousers so the process is no doubt under way as we speak. As for where it all goes to in my case, it’s a mystery, pure and simple. I’ve been trying to do my yoga as often as possible, and am being ridiculed mercilessly for engaging in ‘stoutness exercises’: (unlike Pooh Bear) trying to get stout. Sniff.