À la recherche du temps perdu - and a small electric pump and a bottle of gunk

So. I was considering what to write about in today's blog. And while I was musing on the events of the day thus far, I felt something in my shirt pocket that I had forgotten was there. A small packet of chud (chewing gum to those of you not from these parts).

I had stopped to pick it up as I'd had kipper fillets on toast for my breakfast, and was well aware that I probably - even after brushing my teeth - might whiff a little. And that got my mind wandering - perhaps an "involuntary memory" that Proust was writing about.

It made me remember kippers for meals as a child. Not so much the kippers themselves, but the fabulous kippery butter that swam around in the grill pan after the kippers had been cooked. A couple of slices of bread to dunk in the "kipper dip" (were we the only family to call it this?) which were almost as good as the grilled kippers themselves.

This then led me on to remember that my mother has a most wonderful curry recipe that (I think) she picked up when we lived in Kenya. This was used to produce a fantastic chicken curry, but with enough sauce leftover for a lunch later in the week. One that would feature hard boiled eggs instead of chicken, on toast.

Two very strong taste memories. Although I think the strongest taste memory I think I have is the odd taste of the water at Nain and Taid's house in North Wales. Not sure if it was the water itself, or the pipes delivering it. Not quite enough to base a seven volume novel on, but more than enough to pad out a daily blog.

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When I knew that I was going to be off work for a while, I started to create a list of things I wanted to do. Some of them were trivial and pleasurable, some were practical things I'd been putting off. It's important to maintain a structure around your life when the major source of such structure, i.e. work, is removed. It was on my way to sort out one of the list items, that I stopped to get the chud.

The car I currently drive - Skoda Superb 1.9 - used to be my company car. I bought it off the bank at the end of its contract because at the time I came to renew my car they had dropped Skoda from the car list (?!?!?).

There are two things that always irked me about it, the first being that the radio is FM only. I can't listen to the footie while driving. The other thing that riled me a little was the lack of a spare wheel. All I had was a bottle of sealant and a small electric pump that runs off the cigarette lighter (or whatever it's called these days).  I was going to state that this solution was completely useless, but to be fair in 5 and half years of driving it I only had two tyre failures and in one of them (a slow puncture caused by a nail) I was able to use the gunk/pump solution to get me to a Kwik Fit. I'm not sure what the other failure was caused by, but do remember hearing a loud bang followed by an obvious loss of a tyre that no amount of stinky sealant was going to fix. A theory the RAC man concurred with. He said they'd had a noticeable increase in pick ups for tyre failure since pump/gunk was introduced as a money/ weight saving exercise.

However, since that first (and last) use of the pump/gunk, I hadn't replaced the gunk and so was risking being stranded. So this morning I headed off to a scrappies to find a spare wheel, jack and tyre iron.

Job done.

As a reward, Gel and I had a very pleasant spot of lunch at Pizza Express.