So here we are back home again needing to lose a few pounds following too many Menu Del Dia lunches and too many beers down the bodega whilst in Barcelona. “No problem” says Christine as she gets out her pink “black book” and starts listing meals and menus.
Now as much as I am impressed by her planning and the use of the “black book” I can’t see the point as everything we ever eat at home is healthy. She has some sort of radar system that locates every sausage roll or pork pie I smuggle into the house and immediately disposes of them in the dustbin. No more butifarra in the fridge to pick at, no more serrano ham to taste each time I open the fridge door and no more paella and locally baked warm bread. No more ‘put me ons’ at 5.00pm to last until our evening meal. Instead it’s back to the wallpaper paste for breakfast, cardboard crackers for lunch and lots of vegetables on an evening.
Christine naturally points out that the four pounds I have lost in just over a week since we came home is down to her and the meals she has planned in the black book.
She seems to have discounted the fact that I moved thirty square metres of York Stone by wheel barrow from a friend’s house to the bottom of our garden for the new patio. That’s something like fifty barrow loads, now all I have to do is to lay them. I guess I may be losing a further few pounds this week but it will of course be due to Christine’s healthy food and not the hard work.
When I retired I thought I was going to have a lot of ‘I’ days. We both agreed that we didn’t need to do everything together and that we needed some time to ourselves. The problem is that since Christine has got the hang of planning her time and the work load using the black book method she is having all the ‘I’ days and I am busy doing jobs from the Book.
Last night, there we are having a glass of wine in the garden room, the school bus had passed so it is OK when I noticed Christine writing measurements in her pink black book. She is wandering around with a tape measure and then writing more things in the book. So today she is out doing one of her favourite things, shopping, with her friend Mo. Full day out including lunch and what am I doing, laying York Stone paving stones that’s what.
Last Friday was lunch with Gwen that lasted all day but only for Christine, I was busy barrowing the York Stone to our garden. Tonight she is off to yoga and the only reason she is not meeting Vivien tomorrow is that Vivien is on holiday. I in the meantime will be busy building a York stone wall and laying some more of the patio. So in a way I am having ‘I’ days they are just not quite what I anticipated.
But it’s not all hard work it was the ex companies golf day last week and it was good to catch up with people I hadn’t seen since retirement. It was also a good excuse for bacon sandwiches, Mars bars while playing and roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes not to mention apple pie and custard and a couple or so wines, bottles that is. Of course that was interpreted to Christine as crackers for lunch and roast beef and vegetables for dinner. All in all a good day, even the golf went quite well.
When I wrote about last years golf day I mentioned that I was in the middle of laying York stone paving and here we are again a year later laying more stone. There must come a time when Christine cannot think of anything else to put in the black book. I am beginning to wish I had never introduced her to it at all. In fact there is a lot to be said for staying at work. The school bus has passed - I’ll just open another bottle!
