I've been pickling today

It looks as if I shall be eating beetroot for the next 100 years, with the amount that Rosemarie and I bottled today. And that tarragon-flavoured white vinegar didn't half smell nice. By the time that we had added all of the spices to the vinegar and boiled it up, Rosemarie's kitchen smelt like a Babylonian boozer's bedroom.

Still, it's all done now.

We also shelled all of the peas and beans and I ended up with two jars of those. A few of them have chitted and so I'm going to try them out as winter plants under one of my patented plastic-bottle cloches. It might be worth a try.

Another thing that we did was to sort out the garlic and onions. I have enough garlic to last me all my life, I reckon, but not as many onions as I wanted. I've no idea what happened to the shallots though - I had plenty of those a few weeks ago but I couldn't find any the other day.

So first thing in the morning I went off to St Eloy. Firstly, to buy a recharge for the mobile phone, but the Post Office is closed for renovations for a few weeks. Secondly I went to the dechetterie to dump all of the rubbish, but they are on winter hours so the blasted place was closed this morning.

After doing the weekly shopping though (seeing as I'm out, I'll stay out and it'll save me a trip tomorrow) I nipped off to Rosemarie's for the pickling session.

On the way back this evening, I "picked up a hitcher, a prisoner on the white lines of the freeway" to quote Joni Mitchell. Only from Menat to St Eloy, but in my youth I spent lots of time hitch-hiking around the UK and France and I was always grateful for the ride, and so it's nice to repay the debts that I owe.

I made it to the dechetterie and emptied a van-load of rubbish, mostly papers and glass bottles, and enquiries revealed that it is indeed true - if you go to the dechetterie during opening hours but during office hours, you can indeed help yourself to compost, which is freely available.

So Saturday I'll be having a working day -doing the radio programmes. I'm not going out at all, especially as there is not footy anywhere at all around here tomorrow.