The joys of non-related grandparents

We had our day with Ted and Beryl yesterday and I think I’m still digesting the food now. Beryl was very Beryl, as Beryl as she has ever been, and served up enough grub to feed a legion of battle-weary Vikings. There wasn’t, as I had expected, an onslaught of pre-Christmas samples and selections, it was more of an indoor barbecue featuring weird and wonderful ways of marinating meat that she has discovered since becoming internet-savvy at a late age. I did eat rather a lot of dessert, especially. So much so that I had a weird dizzy spell at about 4pm that I am firmly blaming on the sugar intake. It was like a one-off, warning shot diabetes episode. Crumble, as far as I am aware (having never made it myself) is mostly made of butter and sugar. Beryl had made a rather large one, filled with her home-made strawberry jam. So we had a crumble that is mostly sugar, filled with a filling that is mostly sugar, and then topped with some very sugary home-made custard. No wonder my vision went fuzzy and my head was spinning.
I’m trying to give myself a few days respite now by eating nothing but toast and salad until my blood sugar levels get somewhere close to where they should be.
Mathew had a bit of a kip late in the afternoon. He had worn himself out completely charging around the garden and then doing gymnastics in the living room. For some reason, since catching me watching the Olympics, he is convinced he can do everything the British gymnastics team can do, and takes great delight in tumbling and throwing himself around whichever room he is in, in front of whatever audience he may have. Beryl loved every second of it and awarded him a gold medal, by which she meant a very large bar of chocolate that happened to have a yellow wrapper.
While he slept off his exhaustion, we had a few games of cards, and a game of Scrabble in which Ted got increasingly frustrated by Beryl’s habit of putting her tiles in the exact spot Ted had been playing to play his on his next turn.
It was all lovely, but I did have a strange, depressing moment of realisation at about 6.45pm. I went to use the loo. I looked out of the window and saw the trees being blown about below dark grey skies and I thought “I’m glad I’m indoors with a jumper on”. The whole thing had the feel of a pleasant January Sunday, and then the realisation hit me that we’re STILL IN AUGUST! That hit me between the eyes like a painful reminder of the horrors of Summer 2021. And it was very depressing to watch it get dark by the time we had driven home.
Sorry to go on about the same old topic again, but it’s not just me. I had a little walk today and I met three different people while I was out and they all mentioned the same thing and commented on how it’s affecting them. “I guess we can say goodbye to Summer”, “We haven’t even had a barbecue this year” and “It’s all a bit depressing really, isn’t it?” are just a selection of quotes from our encounters.
Anyway – onward and upward. Time for me to grill some pork chops and lay them atop some spicey couscous, before adorning them with a large side-salad, drizzled with lemon olive oil.

RC 30-8-21