10? Nov 69 [day is partly missing] [This letter comes after the triple one on the 7th Nov.]
Dear Mum, I’m sitting here writing
this while waiting for my dinner to cook ˗ mid-day dinner that is, though it’s
now about four thirty. I usually have it somewhat earlier than this, at least
an hour (!) but don’t have to get along to work today, so I can afford to be a
little later. It’s my permanent concoction: I started off very brightly at this
flat once I’d got a job, endeavouring to have something new and interesting
each day, and above all to eat meat all the time; I think that’s where the
trouble may have lain last year, cold wise. Anyway, my ambitious scheme has, as
usual, melted down into a day after day recipe that I use, to nobody else’s
concern by mine own, which has a basis of braising steak, and turns itself
gradually into a sort of stew as the cooking process goes on. The steak, while
not the cheapest of meats, is more use, than say chops, which tend to look as
though all the meat has been cooked off them by the time they’re ready to eat,
and anyway as I only buy a half pound at a time, and this lasts me for two
days, or more, depending on whether I actually have time to cook it ˗ some days
I have to eat in town ˗ it works out quite economically. I have the occasional
chop (pork seems to me the most use as the lamb chops are very meagre here
unless you’re willing to buy the whole lamb), and occasionally some mince, but
I should be able to eat this favourite recipe for a while yet!
I fry the steak first, only for a
few seconds each side though, otherwise I wind up with singularly well-done
steak, and then using the same pan, pour some vegetable soup mix, with its
water over it, and then gradually (depending on how long it takes to prepare
them) add chopped up carrots, potatoes (sliced up), onion, tomatoes, sometimes
mushrooms, a bit of curry some days, and anything else that will mix in
reasonably well. I cook some greens as well ˗ again much the same ones each
day: brussel sprouts ˗ they seem to cook easiest and best ˗ and this makes a
lovely big dish; in fact it’s often too much and the leftovers sit in the
fridge until I feel like reheating them. (Or else as has happened twice,
someone has come in looking hungry and finished it.) So I am surviving quite
well thanks.
We’ been waiting for snow for the
last week and last night there was a bit of a flurry but it came to nowt. But
in the meantime London is slowly freezing to death under his great overhanging
cold.
...do you remember I’d said that we’d had an intruder? Well, on
Sunday night while there were three of us in the house going to bed ˗ would be
believe? ˗ some twerp opened our front bathroom window, and presumably because
he couldn’t get it further than six inches open, pinched all, or most, of the
stuff off the windowsill. This being a very wide sill, and because we haven’t got
a cabinet, all the boys’ toilet gear is stored there as well as some of the
girls’ stuff. David had been away for the weekend and so his stuff wasn’t there
this time, but the blasted burglar pinched my toilet bag whole with all my
shaving gear and a variety of other things in it, as well as other odds and ends
that were lying about. No great loss of course, except to my convenience, and
my sentiment: I think the razor was the only one I’ve ever had and the little
blue nail brush and that plastic black comb both went too. Rather upsetting
really, but what can you do?
We rang up the estate agents and
they’ve given us the go ahead to fix proper locks on all the windows, but it’s
a bit late of course. I went down to Woolworths and restocked and this was
quite expensive to do all in one go. I haven’t bought another bag of course ˗
little point unless I’m going away somewhere special. The trouble as well was
that it came in the same pay as the one I’d sent three quid out of for
Francisco ˗ I haven’t had a thing but it must be due ˗ oh, yes, I said to her
to send the receipt to you in your name ˗ it’s more use to you than me. And also
I’d just sent a parcel off to Korea for him ˗ at long last ˗ and this had set
me back a touch more than I expected.
What am I going to get you for
Christmas? The time is getting shorter and I haven’t even started to think
about it yet. The Crowls by the way are definitely going to move, did I say? Mavis
is on the verge of a state of nervous collapse apparently, and the doctor said
they’ve got to separate her and Nina, for the former’s health’s sake. So things
are a bit gloomy up there just now: I haven’t spoken to Reg since the weekend,
but he sounded older than usual by some years, and not happy at all.
I went and filled in for a
rehearsal for Dave on Sunday ˗ a children’s choir doing modern music; good
grief they’re fantastic; I felt very inadequate, but fortunately wasn’t called
upon to do anything especially awkward. The kids (ranging from under ten to
late teens) have marvellous senses of pitch; they were singing stuff that was a
semitone apart with ease. Better go; my meal is about to bubble all over the
.....
Love Mike.
