Happy St Patrick's Day!

Having been born and bred in Ulster, he is my patron saint - not that I take a lot of notice of such things but I feel kindly disposed towards him as a source of a day off from school eons ago.

I've just taken delivery of my first order from Approved Food and so far, am quite pleased with it. I did a group order, having talked to my son, one daughter and my friend down the road. I found that this helps lots with the hefty carriage costs. I think that the carrier had been playing silly wotsits with one of the boxes as there were two items broken in the one box. The other four boxes survived well. Approved Food seem to wrap everything really well with plastic bags and bubble wrap and each cardboard outer box contained two inner boxes. One broken item was a jar of tomato puree which, although wrapped in a coat of bubble wrap, was totally flattened and the puree liberally smeared over everything. The other damaged item was a bottle of all-purpose cleaner. This was sealed in a plastic bag, thankfully, otherwise a litre of cleaner would have totally soggified all the cardboard boxes. However, on trying to get everything out of that box, a shard of the broken glass speared the plastic bag and... well, you can imagine what happened. Fortunately, everything else was absolutely fine. Being my first order, I didn't know what the firm's policy was when it came to breakages but they were very nice and friendly when I phoned up. They have credited my account with a sum a little in excess of what I paid for the damaged items (thus ensuring a second order...) or they will transfer the exact amount to my paypal account.

Last weekend, my friend asked if I wanted to pop out to the farm for a cuppa. YES!!!!!! This meant that there were lambs and so an hour later, there I was cuddling a very young lamb. They are so cute when they are newborn. All wide-eyed and innocent and woolly. It is hard to look at them and remember that males = roast dinner and mint sauce. There are 5 ewes still to lamb so I'm hopeful for another cuppa soon...