The Eve of the New School Year

Bless - I think the elephant armour in the Royal Armouries is one of the last sets left. It must have been terrifying seeing them bearing down on you, but I believe that they were unreliable and would panic and retreat, trampling their own troops. I think I would rather see an elephant in colourful cloth.

Bear starts school again tomorrow, in his second year of High School, Year Eight. Tomorrow he has all the usual admin, followed by DT Resistant Materials (no idea) and RE. I am quite religious, but bear is not, and I am resigned to low marks from there. I'm saving my energy for the core subjects and sciences. I am not sure whether or not I am taking bear's pal, and I am dreading getting up in time. I had a really bad night last night, and I'm confident that bear will not settle early but want conversation about how he is dreading school until late and I need to be out of my bed at 6am. As a night owl, I think 6am ought to be illegal. Regardless, his bag is already packed and his uniform is laid out ready.

I forgot to mention that on Sunday I used a curried shepherd's pie recipe from the Tesco site, which used apricot jam as one of the ingredients (recipe here). It is a recipe designed to feed twelve with individual ramekins for £1.81 per portion. I swapped out the 1kg of lamb mince (£8 per kilo) for 250 of turkey thigh mince (£6.32 per kilo), made the mash topping very plain, and I think we must have nearly halved the cost, even though we had three very generous portions rather than small ramekins. The apricot jam was an interesting touch. I know you see a lot of strange things in Victorian recipes trying to get the sweetness of curries from places like India and Sri Lanka, without being able to get hold of the authentic ingredients, and the apricot jam added a certain something, although I only put a little in. Next time I may put in mango chutney instead. There will be a next time, the men are quite clear about that, as it was very nice.

Writing stuff - I managed to get a response to the writing prompt this week, which is here. I used a photo I took a while back, which makes a change. I must try and keep my eyes open for good pics. If you want to have a go at the writing challenge, please feel free. It's here, but the most important thing to remember is to have fun.