Sour Apples

The Bramleys have started to fall from the tree at the farm - it's too early - from the outside they look perfect, acid green and waxy skinned but they aren't fully ripe.  Inside the flesh is white and hard with a tartness that makes you screw up your face as it brings tears to your eyes.

I'm cooking them with plenty of sugar and cinnamon and adding handfuls of blackberries from the freezer left over from last years glut.

There are always ways to make the seemingly unpalatable slightly sweeter.

I'm not just talking about apples of course.

I'm not going to wax all poetic here (although you know I could ;) - you've got the analogy, I don't need to keep pushing it.

Yesterday could have been like munching through a bowl full of unripened Bramleys. If I were a superstitious person I might have suspected I'd got my dates mixed up and it must surely have been Friday 13th.


I posted an update on the Fudge Facebook page entitled 'Cheer You Up Tuesday' (because Tuesdays need a little help) - it's something I may or may not continue every Monday depending on whether I remember ( a little like my other initiatives really :) - for those who read this but haven't liked Fudges Facebook page this is the sketch I posted from Not The Nine O'clock News just because it makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI45Q_Rp11A

I'm not going to go into huge detail about yesterday - suffice to say it contained several impressive bangs (not all of the good variety) - a forklift truck - a tonne of gravel - an exploding gearbox - a severed wheel - a ruptured tyre - a shit load of stinging nettles and a lot of shovelling.

A series of unrelated events and incidents that left me scratching my head and thinking - WTF???

BUT!

Whilst I was running around stringing garlic around the necks of black cats and adorning myself with them and propping ladders against walls so that I could carefully walk around them SD made me a strong cup of tea, brought me a sugar covered donut, sat me on a bench in the sun and calmly started to sort out the mayhem.

Things ain't great - The trailer's pretty knackered (but it can be fixed) - the van's pretty knackered too but again, it can be fixed ...  for a price ...  probably a pretty high price ... and not in time for us to go on holiday as planned on Thursday ...

But SD's working on that too - there are ways and means and yes, we may have to amend our plans - we may not be able to do things quite how we wanted to - we may not venture as far as Sennen and Lands End and we may not be able to take Maudie the Monza with us - but we can still have fun - we can head for North Devon rather than Cornwall and we can sleep in a bloody tent or book into a B&B - We shovelled that tonne of gravel by hand between us and soothed our aching, nettle stung legs in the bath last night as we shared a bottle of wine because we're a team and we're still smiling.

Life is never all sour apples.