Chilli judges at work

Every year our local pub holds an 'outer fringe festival' over the August bank holiday weekend. There isn't always a festival in town, but this year three of the 'events/community pubs' are staging a festival of their own,all featuring guest beers, cider and music.

We can hear the music from our garden, and it sounded good, so we went up to see the Americana-themed bands. Sons of Delta were playing when we arrived. We chatted to a friend of Steve's, then the judging of the chilli con carne was announced. Five teams had been competing to cook chili con carne on portable gas stoves in the marquee during the afternoon. Rodda, the publican, took a generous bowlful of each for the judges to blind-taste, then the remainder of each pot was sold off by the cupful to raise money for cancer research. Great idea!

After the judges had sniffed, and made tasting notes, and conferred for some time, a winner was announced. It was, I believe, the same team that had won before, maybe more than once. They were presented with a silver trophy, the Crown and Sceptre charity chilli cup, and paraded it around the tent. I'll stick a pic of the winners in extras.

Then, because it was crowded and we'd had a pint each, we went home and I got on with chopping up some leftover chicken breast, marinading it in a packet sauce, and microwaving it, along with some packet microwave rice! Hardly a gourmet meal or a champion chilli, but apparently it only costs 8p a day to run a microwave!

Good news: my friend GS, who has an incurable lymphoma, has been moved to a lovely looking care home in Cheltenham. She has as much morphine as she wants, and yesterday was in great spirits, texting back and forth on the WhatsApp group in her name. I posted some of my holiday pics, because one of the group members comes from Norfolk.