Yesterday I lay on the mattress on the floor (at my behest, the bed itself is gone, waiting downstairs in the car space in the vain hope that it will be stolen, one less thing to worry about), looking at the ugliest lamp shade in existence, wallowing in self pity. I could go the whole day, I thought, without talking to anyone.

I had a terrible dream that I awoke to find things in the apartment had been moved, but I was unable to tell if I had moved them in some kind of superhuman sleepwalking episode, or if someone else had moved things in the night, whilst I slept. You know, just the kind of dream you’d like to have when you are alone and the boxes of poorly packed belongings cast strange and unfamiliar shadows in the dark.



When the day first started I planned to go to the supermarket and buy such necessities as coffee beans and face wash. I would walk up the road to Chemist Warehouse to get some steps in (and to leave the house and perhaps talk to another human, or even better, a puppy outside a store), and then come home and cook something using the eggs and large packet of rapidly ageing smoked salmon in the fridge.

As I have issues with foods of texture, unadulterated smoked salmon is rarely something I will eat by choice, so a quiche was where I was heading. I’ll cook one from a book, I said to myself. I’ll cook up all that salmon, and I’ll have lunches for the week. But then... the cookbooks are all in one of those boxes. Which box? We shall never know.

The Commonsense Cookery Book (currently in the kitchen cupboard) recipe for quiche included something called “pastry mix” which was to be added to the egg mixture. I’ve never heard of “pastry mix” and I don’t know where it fits in with baked eggs.

And so I gave up on that idea and decided to make a cake instead using a box of vanilla cake mix I found in the cupboard. To make it more interesting, I added a grated carrot, a packet of walnuts, and one cubic tonne of nutmeg and cinnamon.


Folks, just some advice here… you can’t turn a vanilla cake into a carrot cake just by adding carrots and nuts. Also, the Betty Crocker vanilla frosting is Not Nice. It tastes vaguely of plastic and disappointment.

I mean, I of course ate quite lot of the cake for my dinner since I never made it to the supermarket, and took the rest to work where it was quickly demolished, but it wasn't my best work.