All baked out

Today I can definitely tick off as a happy day.

I have baked: 2 large and 4 individual lemon cakes, 12 butternut squash muffins, 6 large and 12 teeny mince pies and approximately 50 shortbread shapes, including some choc chip shortbread as an experiment. There was also some soup, but that doesn't count as it wasn't done in the wonderful oven. Now, you might say that baking loads of stuff just 2 days before we drive to a different country is, well, a bit daft. And you'd be entirely right. Anything perishable will have to go in the freezer for our return, but the rest will come with us as car snacks. But the sense of well-being that followed me all day is worth it even if I didn't get to eat any of it. I may be odd, but I think baking just makes me really happy.

(Well, it was either that or the after effects of painting the lovely new Mr B built furniture in our dressing room: two hours in a confined space very close up with wood paint....)

I'd been putting off the phone call to the water company to cancel our contract at the rented place. I needn't have worried. You call a local office (about 5 minutes drive from our old house) and the lady there remembered me from my last call, commented that we hadn't been there for long and said that yes of course she knew where we'd moved to to send the bill along. That kind of personal service is not something you get very often either here or there - not from utilities anyway.

Slightly less pleasing is the blue glow on the top of this shot. My Mac is refusing to do its energy saving screen shut off thingy. Don't know why. I've checked all the settings and nothing seems to have changed. I'm trying very hard not to blame it on the fact that I went to bed early leaving Mr B watching stuff on my computer....

One more day here, then we're off on the two day drive back to Scotland to catch up with family and friends, finish the Christmas shopping and collapse in my parents' wonderfully overheated house.

But for tonight, the rest of the Banyuls Mr B poured me to go with the lemon cake is calling. (I know, fancy wine on a school night - whatever next!)