I have had requests for her to read it at our Forget Me Not Cafe and another for her to read it for the Talking Newspaper based at Wymondham.
Poppy is only eight and she's already eclipsing me as a writer and you don't know how truly proud and happy that makes me. Well actually you do because I've just told you.
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Well here it is Merry Christmas as Slade once said and then repeated it thousands of times every year.
Christmas Eve and all that implies. Men of the world unite, it's time to go Christmas shopping. The plan will be to think about shopping in the morning and then to go out and do it after lunch. I guess being a Sunday, the shops might close early but that mustn't put you off.
Actually I'm pleased this year that I haven't been too stressed out at all. I have just let things happen and gone with the flow and today I will be publishing my pre Christmas Hethersett Herald which is so bright and so full of photographs that I will have to cut the size of the file down otherwise it will be too large to upload to the website.
Agatha Christie (one of my favourite authors) wrote a Christmas mystery entitled The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding which involved her Belgium detective Hercule Poirot. It's a long time since I read this but maybe that's something I should do today.
On Friday I tried to make a Christmas pudding in the air fryer. It wasn't a great success. I followed the instructions from the recent television programme. I mixed the ingredients which included self raising flour, eggs, mixed fruit, spices, breadcrumbs etc. I poured boiling water into the air fryer tray, covered the basin with tinfoil and set the timer for 30 minutes which is the longest our air fryer goes to. I made a mental note that I would have to put another 30 minutes on the clock once The Chase on television was midway through (that's a British quiz show for those not from these parts).
So off I went to check on it only to find I hadn't switched the plug on. Now in my defence the other four fifths had taken the plug out earlier. The pudding was still a gloopy mess in the bowl. So I switched it on and made a mental note to check it again 10 minutes into the national news. Only problem was that night we watched Manchester City beating some crack Brazilian side in some contrived World Club Cup competition rather than the news. The Brazilian side turned out to be cracked rather than crack and Manchester City walked it 4-0.
I expect over the next few days we will be hearing the Manchester City manager complaining about how much football his players have to play. These latest matches were in Saudi so I expect shed loads of money were thrown at the players which probably made up for their exhaustion.
But back to the pudding. I lost track of time but eventually remembered. The pudding was now a semi gloopy mess with a hard crust and uncooked innards. So another half hour was called for and then another making a mockery of the programme which said it could be cooked in an hour.
Eventually we felt that enough was enough and decided to eat the jolly thing. The taste wasn't too bad but it was a bit crunchy on top and didn't really look like a pudding - more like a cake that had gone wrong. But we persevered and are here today to tell the story, although I do appreciate that food poisoning can take a few days to show itself. I will look for more signs on Christmas Day when dinner will be cooked by people who know what they are doing.
I am to cooking what Mohammad Ali the boxer was to silence. I follow instructions but things never work out as planned. I'm thinking of making a TV cooking programme. I'm sick of these programmes that take people who can't cook and turn them into Master Chefs in a couple of weeks. My programme will start with people who make gloopy mess and then do years of instruction only to end up making gloopy messes. I will be the first person to be featured. And I will win the top award and be forever known as Your Royal Gloopyness.
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I was very interested in the piece on television about the sale of faulty electrical goods or electrical goods that turn out be dangerous.
I had experience of this when I used a cheap and faulty charging lead to charge my previous mobile phone. It burnt the phone out. Luckily I was there at the time, otherwise there could have been a fire.
This lead was probably one I had been given to review in the days I reviewed stuff for Amazon. I probably have loads of these hanging around and mixed in with the genuine leads. It's all a bit worrying. As a result I never charge anything up overnight or when I'm out of the house and I always sit within range of the items being charged.
One has to spare a thought for Santa tonight, delivering all those electrical items. I just hope he doesn't have an explosion on his sleigh, we don't want reindeer bits dropping from the sky. It wouldn't be right eating reindeers in blankets.