April 4, 2016 – Back on the road again

2013 May Silverdale for Janets birthday (24) — Shared vegetarian breakfasts are a real treat

When we are camping in the ‘van it is breakfast that is my favourite meal of the day. I particularly love breakfasts when the weather is fine enough to sit outside and I have been known to sit wrapped up in jackets and a hat just so that I can eat my breakfast outdoors and watch the campsite wake up around me.

I think I love eating breakfast on our camping trips because it heralds the start of another day with all sorts of possibilities and adventures spread out before me. We often don’t know where the day will take us and what our view will be the next morning but for the first hour of the day my priority is sustenance while I excitedly anticipate another day on holiday.

When it is just the two of us we might toast crumpets and eat these with lashings of butter and marmalade, or warm up rolls to dribble honey over or fry soft potato cakes. When we are on holiday in mainland Europe we will buy fresh local bread and savour this with blackcurrant jam and mugs of tea maybe accompanied by a bowl of creamy yoghurt.

When we are camping with friends our breakfasts become more elaborate and we will share the cooking, producing vegetarian sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms, potato cakes, fresh bread and beans to create a feast that is the vegetarian English breakfast. These breakfasts set me up for the day and are always co-operative and jolly times, our small camping table heaving under the weight of so many dishes.

I am sure you all have your favourite breakfast when you are camping; is muesli or a bacon butty your breakfast of preference?

20160315_172620 — The new shredder didn’t sit on my shopping list for 30 days!

Okay, so I set rules and then I break them.

In an effort to free up space in our small flat I have been steadily working my way through the receipts and bills we have for almost everything we have ever bought. Some of these receipts tell stories and have bought on a spell of reminiscing. The hand-written receipt for the wool rug [which we still have] from 1984 when shopping was a slower and more civilised experience will always remind me of the two of us, in our early 20s, sitting and drinking tea in china cups with the elderly shop owner before deciding on the rug to buy. The receipt for my backpacking rucksack from 1981, when Karrimor gave a lifetime guarantee, and which [of course] I still have, reminds me of all the pre-campervan trips when I carried that rucksack across Europe and Scotland. When I needed new walking boots recently it was great to be able to look back and see that my old boots had lasted 13 years. The receipts also remind me of previous DIY projects; it seems in 2007 Anthony was busy building us a new PC and past extravagance like my lovely Pearl Izumi cycling jacket which cost £85!

All these receipts have been scanned, organised in folders, triple saved and the paper shredded. In Greater Manchester we can recycle shredded paper reasonably safe in the knowledge that no one will take the time to piece the shredded paper back together to steal our identity. A few years ago it was reported that in Germany former DDR Stasi files are being re-assembled after they were shredded when the Berlin wall fell, let us hope our receipts are pulped in to toilet paper before anyone can do this.

This industrial-scale shredding has [not surprisingly] put a strain on our home shredder [strangely there is no sign of the receipt for this to know how long we have had the shredder or what we paid for it] and last week it moaned and complained and then stopped. I spent an hour clearing out its blades to coax it back to life but it only had one further spurt of life before it gave up the ghost.

The rule I have set is that new purchases have to be considered for one month to be sure we really need them but in a month I would be drowning under the pile of shredding. And so I broke the rule and a new shredder was purchased.