The silence of the lemon merangues

Currently watching the grand final of Great British Bake Off.

It's one of those wonderfully British series, an elimination contest which starts with 12 contestants with one going home every week. They make three batches of cake (and other bakeries but ... cake is life) over the weekend and the tastiest, best baked, best presented cakes earn the bakers a place in the next week.

Grand Final tonight - my money's on Nadiya. Partly for what she bakes, mostly because she's a huge character.

All those cakes look so amazingly tasty too, even though half of them are way too healthy for me. Oh - it's inspired the latest avatar. Wonder if they'd accept a Dwagon Helper ?

Have gloves, will travel. I'd kinda like to learn how to bake again. Because baking leads to cookies. Cookies lead to happiness. And the Happy Cookie Place is back in a month :

Yum. Really looking forward to raiding that place again. It visits Bristol as part of the German Christmas Market. Who says it's a bad thing when the Christmas fever starts up in ... January ? Ok, this market appears in November, which is fairly ok. That's not as hugely early as some places. The Xmas stuff is up in John Lewis already ...

I could have gone off to see The Martian again with the work-ish friends but ... it would have involved heading home from work (to see if fresh cinema vouchers have arrived) and then off to the cinema place. This would have meant fighting through the worst of the traffic on both of those.

Traffic is really bad at the moment here. I have several alternate routes I can use between home and work, trouble is, most of them are off the list now because the roadworks are causing mayhem. I'm amazed we haven't had gridlock due to crashes yet. There are signs for the way people are supposed to negotiate the lane closures but ... this is Bristol. People don't read signs. Or indicate.

Aside - oh wow. We've just had the winner of the Bake Off and there are tears all round. Happy tears. Because the winner has come out of a bit of a shell to expose a huge talent at baking. Well done :-) (I'm being vague cos ... spoilers !!!)

Phew ! That distracted me away from horrid drivers. I've gone like :

(Tiny Bit Tired - another gap in the collection!)

I'm wondering what the cause of the gathering malaise I'm feeling is. I'm going to take the week after next off work to try and recover some energy. It's partly from burning too much mental energy, both in work and since I've been on the games again. A lot of it is from still not sleeping particularly well. I'm at a loss there, I can be yawning my head off at 11.30 but when I go to bed at 12.00, I'll still be yawning but my body won't sleep.

I have another theory there. I've been on the Acrivastine based hayfever tabled for ... more time than I can remember ! 2 of those a day, one before bed, one before doing stuff in the morning. They're 8 hour coverage pills, so that's decent coverage. Trouble is, I tend to build up a resistance to certain things. Previous hayfever tablets have seen me react badly to them. How ?

I'd have one before a game of cricket, to open up my lungs and help me breathe more easily. I used to have a quick recovery (untested now!) time with the running around but it depended on me being able to breathe efficiently. Hayfever type allergies tended to interfere with that ... plus there's the factor of your eyes tearing up when you're trying to bat. It's tough to dab eyes when wearing cricket gloves ! But I was also seeing side effects where instead of being power legs, my legs were weighing me down. It's like there was nothing in the tank. Lots of deadweight from supposedly power muscles. Apparently I was getting that side effect from the hayfever tablets (Citirizine based).

So I'm going to cut out the hayfever tablets and see what happens. I was taking them primarily to help out my outsides but I'm not sure they need the help any more. I'm also feeling like my legs are deadweight again, although that's partly down to the damage in my hips.

Stress too. Work's gone a bit silly at the moment for various reasons that I won't go into here. It does help having a "We're all in this together !" spirit, so those who share that help each other out. (There are some who are quite happy in their islands of misery but can't resist sharing)

So I'll step away for a week for a change of scene and a chance to recharge the batteries. I'll be heading out a few times over that week too. No Shauns to hunt but people to help out. I think a very good friend will be appreciating any help she can get with a house move and another lovely lady will be eager to escape the restrictions of recovering from that broken ankle.

That's the thing - I'm feeling extremely tired and stressed in general at the moment. But when those messages come in from friends, it really brightens my day and helps dispel the bad thoughts.

I'll be here in the evenings creaking away louder than the chair I'm sitting in but when those messages come in, I'll be jumping up with a big smile.

Friends are awesome. Family too. And that family includes the four legged friends too. Someone reminded me of that earlier today by peeking at one of last year's posts (Furry Friends at the link). I think the big sis would like me to write more about Murph and Ice too, her poochlings. I've met Murph when he was a pup, not met Ice yet. They're a bit too boisterous for Ben to handle. Because Ben would try and keep up with them and he's a bit old for that.

Talking of Ben, I think he'd hope that a special friend has her paw heal as well as his good paw did :

The good paw is the one on the right, he was born with genes that made his front paws curl in. That left paw is causing him real problems now but the right paw was broken in an argument with a vehicle. We adopted Ben when he was recovering from that and the right paw healed better than new. I've not visited Ben for a while, it'd be great to see the lovable old geezer and rub him behind his ears again.

I hope one special friend has as happy a result as that !
(The healing of the paw, not so sure she'd be too impressed with someone rubbing her behind her ears)