Level 2 Chi Kung. Microcosmic orbit.
I haven’t had a chance to buy an alarm clock yet, but I lent Katie my battered old one (bought for £2.79 in 1991 and still going strong!) and it did seem to have a beneficial effect. Though she is such a heavy sleeper that it does need to be placed right on the pillow beside her head before it has much impact. I had also managed to get her to sleep a bit earlier the night before, so that no doubt helped too, and things went quite smoothly this morning. We did have a slight glitch at the school gate though. Dogs aren’t allowed on the school premises, so Sherlock and I usually watch from the footpath until Katie is safely on the way to her classroom, but today Katie elected to stay cuddling with Sherlock and I until the bell rang. In the middle of this cosy scene, she grinned at me and I saw that her teeth were really quite startlingly yellow.
J: ‘Katie, did you …”
K: ‘I know, I know, I didn’t brush my teeth.’
J: [puzzled] ‘but I saw you go into the bathroom and pick up the electric toothbrush.’
K: ‘Yes but as soon as you went into your room to do Chi Kung, I put the toothbrush down and went back to my room.’
Clearly I am not a patch on my own mother when it comes to installing the compulsion to brush teeth in the morning!
Having failed to get to the market to re-stock the ‘usual suspects’ of the vege bin (brocolli, asparagus, courgettes, salad leaves) I had to get creative with what was left in the fridge. I had already made Ottolenghi’s cauliflower soup (yummy), so I thought I might as well stay with his recipes and made his roasted red onions with salsa, and his cabbage braised in chicken stock and miso paste. Then, in defiance of Shirley (Life’s too short to stuff a mushroom) Conran, I baked some mushrooms topped with chopped onion and either feta, or some of the racclette we bought back from France. It turned out to be a good thing that I had gone overboard on the vege side of things, as, just as I was dishing up this wondrous feast, I managed to flip one of the sea bass fillets we were meant to eat with it straight out of the pan and on to the floor, where Sherlock made short work of it.