Shot along to the Havens Hospice charity shop in Rochford to pick up four tea cups and four saucers I should have grabbed yesterday!
I phoned ahead asking the lady to put them aside for me and that I'd be there in a jiffy.
The jiffy took fifteen minutes...

On asking the elderly chap on the till for my wares he promptly handed to me bit by never ending bit SIXTEEN well wrapped pieces of Royal Doulton's Rose Elegans......Um.......

We exchanged few words only doing the very English thing of smiling weakly and nodding and saying thank yous and bad weather etc etc. And so after handing over £16 I hot footed it out of the sparkling door making my way back to the car where Mr Horsehound and mother waited.

Yesterday, on one of my endless trips to the secondhand shops in Rochford town, I spotted the 8 delicate pieces of fine bone china but behaving in a way so unlike me, I left them there on the shelf next to a company of horrible chunky mugs. Why I did I don't know.....maybe the price was inhibiting me from enlarging my pottery collection but at any rate I left the shop cupless.

Then last night as Mr Hairy, mum and myself watched Jagged Edge I felt as if my head would explode...I had to get them.

So this morning I made breakfastless haste (mother and Mr Horsehound in tow) to the Harrods of Charity Shops.

I was expecting eight pieces but on arrival I clocked sixteen.. Er...eyes wide, brain wondering whether I should enquire about all them cups and saucers or should I just pay and leg it.
I legged it.

Back home I drank my first cup of sweet white tea and by jolly jingo did it feel good:)
I'll not risk fracturing, breaking or chipping any of the duck egg blue crocks by hanging them from wonky cup hooks or piling them up by the ghastly white kettle (got to do something about that) instead I've given them a pine shelf of their own.
Beautiful absolutely beautiful.


But now back to the hard wonderful work of cooking.
As I type I'm soaking fruits in malt extract and black tea in readiness for the Sticky Malt Loaf I'll be baking tomorrow for Mr Hairy's pa. He, that's pa, hurt his hand and when people hurt they need sweet stuff. And I do sweet so well.

Being cooked tonight for Mr Horsehound, mum and myself are oven baked Cumberland snorkers, these will be laid in warm very crusty 5 inch Lurpakked  baguettes and then covered with lots on fried onion, ketchup and mustard... Whether I'll top mother's sausage roll with melted cheese is something I need to dwell on, what I don't need to ponder however is whether I'll slather melted cheddar on mine and Mr H's.
It could be gross.
Nothing beats Coleslaw as an accompaniment to french fries and snorkers so a good low fat mini-mountain will be lovely.

I've thought a lot about cooking lately and how little I've been doing. And it worries me. Because. If one suddenly stops doing something one loves there's a screw loose somewhere. I know, very well whats loosened my screws. But she can't help it. It's a terrible thing to be dying. Likewise it's upsetting knowing, watching and waiting.
There isn't anything any of us can do about life and its fickleness, its tendency to stop us in our normal tracks by throwing us a a grizzly problem is summat we need to deal with so deal with it we do. The victims, the true victims of our fears and problems are our little hobbies.~

Mine is baking, but recently my tins have gone cold.

But there'll be gas burned a-plenty tomorrow and Monday as a whole load of sweet fancies get baked.

:)