Thursday 3 October 2013

Wednesday

First of all, if you were a follower of fostermummy, she has been forced to move her blog and you can now find it here at www.frugalmummy.blogspot.co.uk
Please do go along and let her know you've found her again.  Bloggers, please do pass this information on.

I should have kept my big mouth shut yesterday morning, shouldn't I?  Warmth and sunshine indeed!  The next time I looked out it was pouring down with rain.  No wonder it was warmer - there was a lot of cloud cover.  It remained damp and dismal nearly all day but they got their playtimes which is the important thing.

Yesterday I was whinging about my poor typing skills.  It gets the job done but on a laptop there's a major problem which is that my hand/sleeve keeps brushing over the touch pad and the cursor keeps jumping all over the place.  As I don't touch type, I can go for several sentences before realising that I'm writing utter gibberish (no rude comments, thank you) because the cursor has moved several times.  Anyway, it was getting me down and, as I use a mouse anyway, I was wondering about whether I could turn off the touch pad.  No-one seemed to know how though.  But there's a simpler solution.  I have just blu-tacked a sturdy piece of card over the touch pad, I've written all of this and the cursor hasn't jumped out of place once.  Excellent!
Now I wish there was such an easy solution to the fact that my fingers don't always land on the right keys!

Now that it's so much gloomier and the days are shorter, I have been neglecting my tomatoes,  ungrateful wretch that I am.  I went out yesterday and found that most of the potted tomatoes were wilting from lack if water.  Of course, I gave them a good drink there and then but bad me!!  There are still a whole load of tomatoes waiting to ripen so I can't get rid of them yet.

Yesterday evening I had something of a disaster!  I had very carefully boiled up the last lot of blackberries from K, deciding to make a proper jelly this time.  I consider them a bit of a waste really, as you throw so much away, but . . . well, anyway, the boiled up mush had been sitting in the jelly bag, I added lemon juice to the blackberry juice, then the sugar and heated to boiling.  I swear I only left it for a minute or so but when I came back the whole thing was a seething mass of stickiness.  Only a slight exaggeration, I assure you!  I think that when I make the labels I shall call it 'blackberry toffee'  Oh, dear!!!
In case that happens again, could I have added water and reboiled?

It's surprising how long it takes for 29 children to do three apple prints each.  Of course there's the wiping of the apple in between each print which greatly adds to the time plus the general 'look at my lovely print' thing.  However, we should get them all finished today - we have to really!  Tomorrow has been allocated to something else. Once they're mounted, they're looking pretty good too!  Very Warhol-ish.
Not ours, wish they were.  Borrowed from Google Images.


And I've typed all of this without the cursor jumping once.  Success!!!!!

3 comments:

  1. The Warholish apple prints look great, I am sure.
    You can sort of swich the pad thingy off on the laptop, Milli knows how to do it and I'll ask her and email you. It drives me crackers when the cursor jumps around and I don't like using the pad thingy anyway, it slows me down, so Milli suggested a wireless mini-mouse which works a treat. If you are using the laptop a lot, it might be worth considering?
    Good Luck with the blackberry jelly! :o) I'm sure it will be delicious whatever the consistency.
    Have a lovely day - it's a public holiday in Germany today (reunification). S.xxx

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  2. Well done you I hate touchpads and much prefer to use a mouse. My problem is that I am almost ambidextrous and it doesn't seem to matter which fingers I use to type with. Gibberish is a speciality of mine.

    As to adding water to your toffee mix I see no reason why it would not work provided the sugar had not burned. There is only one way to find out and that is to try it.....

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  3. Sonja: I have a mouse as I have never liked or used the touch pad. I agree that it is slower although that might be because I don't use it so have never developed the skill.
    Diane: The jam is in jam jars now but if I ever do that again I will try adding water. I had some on hot toast (it spread fine because of the warmth) and I have to say it was absolutely delicious! There was a real intensity and depth of flavour there. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

    J x

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