Coir pots

A desperate EB at the end of a busy day. These are waiting until the dahlia seedlings in the cold frame are big enough to be potted on. That's if the slugs don't get them first.

Z came down to sort out her room and to be here for the family meal out in honour of Son 1's grown-upness. Although Son 1 was in bed when she arrived, struggling with the after-effects of yesterday's first evening of adulthood spent in the pub.  

I assigned myself some gardening time in the afternoon and tackled many repotting tasks which had been long overdue. Completing this sort of jobs always makes me feel much better and the garden look much better.

Later we all went out to The Giggling Squid (why that name? no idea, but just typing it makes me feel oddly queasy) which had opened a branch here recently. It's USP is providing 'Thai tapas' along with more generous portions of Thai inspired food and as Son 1 has a bit of a thing for Thai that is where he chose for the celebration meal. The restaurant's designer clearly didn't see a need to depart from the current ubiquitous preference for grey paint and reclaimed bare wood to furnish the interior and it felt weirdly as though we were entering some sort of interior design cliché.

When it arrived the food looked pretty but it was hard to distinguish many nuances of flavour beyond the seriously challenging levels of salt and Scoville ratings of most of the dishes. I felt as though the meal had become something of a chilli eating competition as sweat poured off our brows and one by one we finally had to admit defeat before the plates were finished. Wasn't helped  by me finding something suspiciously blue in the rice. Despite all this we had a jolly time and it was good being all together again. I don't think we'll be going back to that particular restaurant in a hurry though.