Friday 9th October, 2015                   1745

So yesterday it was back to work and the only holidays between now and spring festival are three days for the sports meetings and a day off at western new year.

After I finished my class I spent two hours preparing dinner ahead of time. I had changed my mind on pasties and decided to try my hand at a steak and vegetable pie. With a rump steak I bought ages ago, a sirloin Kevin donated in exchange for some dinner I had cooked for him plus two fillet steaks I think Ollivier forgot were in my freezer, I had plenty of meat.

I improvised with the filling, with no Worcestershire sauce I used HP in the stock and to be honest it wasn’t a bad thing to do. I overdid it (for my taste at least) with the rosemary and thyme but my biggest problem was the pastry. I have only ever made it once before and by hand - regular readers will recall the pastry turned out splendidly but the filling was awful.

Well this time I decided to be lazy. All that crumbling and kneading by hand didn’t appeal to me so I used my cheap food processor. What I succeeded in doing was making not quite enough dough to line the casserole dish although ultimately the base turned out well. That left me with a problem - having failed to find any butter on the last shopping trip, I now had to make more dough. Sunflower spread for some reason doesn’t seem to work that well - I ended up with too thin a top which, when I transferred it from the chopping board to the pie, sort of laddered like a pair of tights. I had to then go overboard with a surfeit of ingredients when making yet another batch to cover the abortion I had already put on the dish.

Aside from being too herby it wasn’t bad and next time I think I may get the pastry right - it sounds idiotic when housewives and mothers the world over can do it with their eyes closed but I suppose they had to learn sometime. If only they sold frozen readymade pastry here it would be so much easier!

Anyway, Joan left me when she was full to the gunwales but not before she dropped a most unwelcome information nugget in my lap. We have to make up Wednesday’s classes tomorrow, Saturday. Had she said nothing for sure I would have been in town enjoying myself (or taking an afternoon nap) whilst Nancy’s class waited patiently for me to appear. Not one of the faculty thought to inform the foreign teachers and I have become inured to that but considering I check the school website every single day and nothing at all is on it to indicate catch-up classes, it’s a disgrace. I had to tell Juliette about it and also the fact that we have now moved to the winter timetable so afternoon classes now start at 1330 rather than 1400. It really is something when, as a teacher, you get more accurate information from your students and absolutely nothing from your employers. Nothing has changed since I arrived in that respect.

I went downtown for a swift shop just before noon, not that I needed to but I thought I would get a baguette and have a sandwich for dinner tonight following too much pie last night.

Joan sent me three texts she had received regarding the arrival of two packages in the basement area on campus and one in the bookshop in the Business Street. Yesterday she had already collected my nutmeg, the two arrivals together in the basement were probably cinnamon and maybe vanilla extract, the one in the Business Street definitely 15kg of cat litter.  I wasted thirty minutes of my life fruitlessly trying to collect the items because both places swore they had no parcels. If they hadn’t received them why did they send texts telling Joan to collect them?? She will make enquiries later tonight, since noon she has been in town celebrating a classmate’s birthday so no doubt they will end up in a karaoke bar.

When I got back home a female Chinese teacher was going next door into Ollivier’s old flat. I asked her if she was moving in and she said no, the new foreign teacher will live there, maybe in five days or so. Would I be sure to help with any problems he might have? Certainly, I thought, as long as I don’t dislike him! What I did actually say was that I would if he spoke English, being a Yarpie but naturally that was completely lost on her.

So back to the grind again tomorrow afternoon it is.