yonmei

08:41 am: Bank holidays, Scottish highlands, disappointment
No courier service in the UK works on a Bank Holiday or a Sunday. (Saturdays sometimes, for a fee.)

Monday is a Bank Holiday.

The hotel where my friends are staying is in a region of the Scottish Highlands 70 miles from the nearest large town (Inverness) and is, officially, an address sufficiently remote that courier services mark it as a two-day trip. They (we) are arriving there on the Tuesday after a Bank Holiday.

This meant that, in order to guarantee delivery, I would need to order a gift yesterday in order to ensure its delivery Tuesday. And that means that ordering fruit or flowers - which I'd specifically thought of because they are perishable gifts which my friends would enjoy/consume over the days they were staying in the Highlands, and wouldn't need to think about taking home with them - is out of the question.

I did contact a big fruit-and-veg company in the Highlands - 70 miles away - but the closest they would get to the hotel in the ordinary rounds of their delivery services is a town nearly 13 miles away. I e-mailed them to ask about delivering a fruit basket to the hotel, and the managing director got back to me to let me know he'd "racked his brains" but - they could deliver a basket to a shop 13 miles from the hotel, but I would then have to organise getting it from the shop to the hotel - and while I suppose it's worth mentioning to the hotel, on the basis that it's possible someone from the hotel may be visiting that town anyway on Tuesday, the point at which this kind of organisation becomes Not Worth It is when it depends on two unrelated sets of people managing to coordinate themselves. It's a leap of faith. I don't think I have the faith.





Tags: fruity smells

11:26 pm: Yay fruity civil partnership!
I am going to the civil partnership of one of my oldest friends, to his partner of 15 years, next week - and they've organised it up in the Highlands, in Ross-shire, not that far from Skye. In fact, we're going there on a day-trip the day after the partnership ceremony, which is happening on a boat.

All of which is very exciting and happy-making and totally wonderful, of course - except for the problem about: What do I do about a gift? Obviously, the pair of them having been living together for years and years and years, housewarming-style presents would be inappropriate. As would any presents which they'd have the problem of shifting back to Edinburgh. So...

...I bought them a fruit basket. A big fruit basket. I actually spent quite a while putting together The Perfect Fruit Basket (easy-eating fruit, oatcakes, cheese, fudge, nuts) only to discover that the company wouldn't deliver that day. Nor would the next company. Which it finally occurred to me was because of the Spring Bank Holiday in England and Wales on the Monday. So I found a company in Scotland, British Bouquets, and they do a spectacular-looking fruit hamper with cheese and oatcakes, to which I added a box of seashell chocolates. Whee. Sorted.

(Also, I am still not sufficiently over the change in the law - not just the Civil Partnership Act but the legislation that makes discrimination illegal: it was an extra fillip of satisfaction to e-mail the hotel that I wanted to send a civil partnership gift and could they put it in the couple's room, and to get a nice message back from the hotel manager saying they'd be delighted. (There have been a couple of extremely nasty incidents in the Highlands of gay men being literally turned away from guest houses: and a bunch more reported of hotel and guest house staff just being plain mean and rude, though not actually denying a same-sex couple a room/a double bed.) Obviously my friends wouldn't have picked a hotel to stay in where that would happen - they've stayed in that area before - but I'm still getting oh this is cool grins over it.)





Tags: *bounce*, being queer, friendship, fruity smells

08:06 pm: Tired tired tired
I got something less than two hours sleep this morning, between when I fell into bed just after six am (having been at the office since 2pm the previous day, having been awake since 7am Wednesday. Today is Thursday. Tomorrow I'm going to see Waiting for Godot. With Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Yes, this does mean I am willing to go see them even if it means just sitting watching them do nothing for a couple of hours.

But. I have got the report that has been hanging over me since February done. And done well, moreover - I'm really very pleased with my three case studies, for example. And afterwards TS#1 and I went out and had afternoon tea with champagne.

So. I am going to have a hot bath with a thing from whatsisname, Lush. I am going to soak in the bath for a long time. I am going to go to bed afterwards. I am going to sleep. I am not going to wake up till Friday.

Unlike TS#1, I do not have to get up at godawfuloclock to fly to Dublin, though his reasons for doing so are very cool.

Oh, and I got some rather spiffy news about my work: an email I sent a month ago bore fruit, and how!

Good night.

Tags: bloody job, fruity smells, sometimes i love my job, wanting to fire people for being stupid

03:46 pm: Yonmei Shimmerhands
The skin on my hands is really dry and quite unpleasant, so I have been rubbing Body Shop cranberry-flavoured lotion into my hands for the past couple of days. I even took the bottle to work with me.

The full name is Cranberry Shimmer Lotion, and indeed my hands - especially my right hand, where the skin is more dry and cracky - are now quite silvery/shimmery.

It's sort of like becoming a robot. My hands are becoming metallic. Soon I will start speaking in a level, emotionless voice, and shortly after that I will start taking over the world.

However, one is supposed to begin with either Cardiff or London, and I'm not planning on going to either place any time in the foreseeable future, so I guess the episode will have to go on without me. Besides, if the Doctor landed here, everyone would want to buy coffee.

Tags: cranberry, fruity smells, peculiar products, taking over the world

12:51 pm: Mango mango mango MANGO
This is the time of year when yellow, ripe mangos can be bought in boxes of four or more from grocers - never supermarkets. Supermarkets sell hard, red-green mangos - much prettier, but likely to go bad before they go ripe. They cost at least 20% than the yellow mangos, too.

I just bought a box of 4 from the grocers next to Tattie Shaws (also, a pack of six giant wholemeal pitta breads, since Real Foods was sold out again). I ate one last night, and one with my lunch this morning, and I still have two left. Their one social disadvantage is that they are so juicy and soft that it is all but impossible to eat them without spilling the juice over your fingers (and front, unless you bend over and eat cautiously). Last night my t-shirt went in the wash and I didn't care: today I bent my head in undignified fashion over my lunch box, and wiped up afterwards. One can of course peel them, slice/dice them, and eat them with a spoon: but they are so delicious eaten directly from the peel, sucking the flesh from the great seed in the centre, that I find it hard to resist the messy pleasure of it.

Mangos are (so I read) the oldest cultivated fruit in the world, though I would have guessed the banana was older. They are certainly one of the most delicious fruits I can think of - though any fruit is improved by being eaten ripe to the point of perfection. (With bananas, there is some disagreement about what that point is. My sister only likes bananas when they are still a little green: I like them best when they are showing brown spots (not too many) on their yellow skins.)

Never, ever eat a green-red mango from the supermarket. They are a travesty at best, and will at worst put you off mangos forever.

Tags: fruity smells, mango