Food glorious food

• Yesterday was Luke’s birthday and we went to a hotel in Ludlow for a very nice tasting menu and overnight stay. My mum looked after Peg overnight for the first time and it was so nice to get away just the two of us. My highlights of the meal were a square of jersey royal potato (presumably cooked entirely in butter) with a topping of jammy egg yolk with wild garlic and asparagus, and a rose mouse with poached rhubarb and a lychee sorbet. (My real highlight of the meal was the bread roll, a milk roll, which was warm, incredibly soft, and tasted somewhere between the best bread you’ve ever tasted and a croissant). I’m sure it all did wonders for my cholesterol.
• I made a Japanese curry from scratch tonight which was lovely, and we had some of my aunt’s amazing homemade sourdough with a tomato salad for lunch, so it’s been a really delicious weekend.
• I’ve been starting to worry a bit about the Japanese (JLPT) exam which I’m sitting in July. The thought of turning up to a physical exam room with my pencil and eraser makes me feel a bit sick and I can fully imagine totally going to pieces and forgetting everything. I had figured it’d be fine as the pass mark is quite low and it’s the lowest level, but then the other day I read that your actual scores get mapped to the score that you’re given so just because the pass mark is low doesn’t mean that you can get a lot of answers wrong, also the pass rate is only around 50%! Anyway, it’s all good motivation to study more.
• We’ve been re-watching the US Office when we’re in between things and it’s been very fun and somehow knowing what’s about to happen ahead of time just makes it better.
• We watched Dragon’s Back Race, a documentary about the toughest race in the world - 380km in 5 days from North to South Wales including loads of hills/mountains including Snowdon. In another life I’d be doing that stuff and it hurts not to be, but somehow watching other people doing it kind of helps.
• I’m still reading In Cold Blood which is excellent. I’ve been listening to a book The Writer’s Library, by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager, in which they interview a load of the most prominent US authors about the books that they love. I very much enjoy hearing people talk about books so decided to give this a go, and the book is interesting, but let me tell you: the audiobook is SO BAD. These people have literally gone and met everyone they interviewed and had in depth discussions with them, but rather than make an audiobook from those (presumably recorded) discussions they have then got actors to read from the transcript and the actors are clearly not even in the room with the interviewers and it’s so painful to listen to. That said I’m sticking with it because I want to know who likes reading what.