Tuesday 12th April, 2016                  1700

Not a good start to the day. When I checked my bank balance yet again the salary has not been paid on the expected date. Certainly it will be paid but it would be nice to have at least something constant, as it happens it doesn’t matter this month because now I am in saving mode I have something to back me up but psychologically I don’t want to touch it, instead I want to use current wages and save yet more from them this month. Thanks to Joan I don’t have to, she is happy to wait for what I owe for my online shopping. Speaking of which, two of the nine items I ordered have now arrived and are awaiting collection. I shall wait a little while to see if any more arrive before going to get them. I just hope the cat food and litter don’t arrive the same day - lugging a combined weight of 25kg up the stairs is not something I relish.

So I went to town shopping, having failed to withdraw any monies from the ATM. I had 150y in my wallet and I didn’t need much because tonight I will have a home made cheeseburger, tomorrow Dumpling and I will have bangers, mash and beans (using the old sausages rather than the ones I just ordered) and on Thursday I will polish off the last of the macaroni cheese. If necessary I could of course raid my coin jars tomorrow, there must be at least 300y in them by now even taking into account the fact I use 1y coins for the bus three or four trips a week.

When I got back I went to the office. I was the only one allowed in because they weren’t cooking food and of course all I wanted was my usual two bottles of pijou and to kill a few flies. The reason? A TV crew were filming in there. They tried to tell me it was CCTV (the state television) but as I saw no microphones or logos I have no idea if they were.

Whatever it was, I think it is the Chinese equivalent of Saturday Kitchen (except not live) and there was a celebrity chef strutting his stuff in the galley. God knows what will happen to the food once he has finished because there was acres of it. A whole duck, shoals of fish and a bucket quite literally full of “lobsters” - what the Chinese consider lobsters are more akin in size to Morecambe Bay bugs. Delicious admittedly but you expend more calories accessing the meat than you derive from it. He must have been a famous chef though because he was actually wearing a toque!

I have just put a bread pudding into the oven, which I will divide into thirty pieces and give one to each of the students in tomorrow morning’s class. The idea is to treat all four classes once over the coming month. It has nothing to do with currying favour, they can’t get me fired anyway seeing as I am already on notice but it’s relatively simple to make and will cost me about 40y per class.  I forgot to grease the dish though before I put the mix in so wish me luck getting it out later!

Well, while I have been typing this four of my nine items have been reported as ready to get so I will pop down now and hope I can get everything on the bike in one journey.