Day 9 - dried fruit and poetry

I'm sure that if you read yesterday's blog you'll have been left wondering whether the English Toffee was any good. I can confirm that it was! Sweet, buttery and unexpectedly crunchy. I'll be making that again. What's more, it contained pecans so the boys won't eat it. All the more for me!

Today was Poetry at Work Day. I was aiming to write something pithy about emails during my lunch break but a colleague sent me a link to a poem by Philip Larkin which was so good it seemed pointless to try to come up with something myself. The poems is called Toads and is well worth a Google if you can spare a few minutes. I'm fact, I'd suggest doing it now instead if reading the rest of this, it'll be time better spent.

I haven't done anything about Balloon Ascension Day. It commemorates the first man to go up in a hydrogen filled balloon. Booking a trip in a balloon would be going way beyond the boundaries of this project but if you like the idea, there are videos on YouTube about people who have strapped themselves to chairs with enough balloons to lift them up, a bit like the house in the movie "Up" but without the house.

Apricot Day was simple. I like apricots, especially as jam, but don't have them often in cooking.  To remedy this, we slow cooked a chicken and apricot tagine.  I'm not sure that it can be called a tagine if it isn't actually cooked in a tagine but that's what the recipe called it. What are your thoughts?  Feel free to add them in the comments. Tasty though.

Static Electricity Day seemed to be a good opportunity to play with son number two's new plasma ball. I found a fun looking experiment on the internet but it needs a strip lightbulb which I don't have. I might see if there is an alternative and play around with it on the weekend. Apparently you can hold the bulb in one hand and light it up by touching the plasma ball. Oooh, science.

An easy celebration to squeeze in today was for Play God Day. I asked the boys what they could change if they were God for a day, one thing.  World peace?  End of disease? Turns out my kids are A-typical,  sweets and chocolates can be eaten every day and school is limited to two hours a day, specifically between 10.30 and 11.30am and 3pm till 4. They knew what they wanted, no hesitation. For me, it's a difficult question. We seem to be living through a period of hate and anger, at least that's the impression you get from watching the news. There's no point saying an end to war and all that as we'd just end up at it again after a while. Maybe a little more empathy would be nice instead so that people think about their actions, maybe they'd think twice about some of the silliness that goes on. Either that or I'd let Everton win a little more often. Not all the time. Just more often.

Finally today, it has been International Choreographers Day. I didn't do anything as I didn't find out in time, but it's an opportunity to plug my morris dancing side who will shortly be choreographing new dances for 2018. We have a Twitter account if you are interested in finding out more. Look up @shrewsmorris and give us a follow, the more the merrier.