Spoilt for choice

By popular request (OK, BookyGoatherd) here are the books I bought yesterday — a great haul, with two of them half price and another tenner from my Waterstones card. The one on the bottom is a present for S. Happily, his belated present to me arrived today, so there is Hilary Mantel’s A Memoir of my Former Self to add to this pile.

My Christmas present to me was to go and get my ears microsuctioned :) S took his mother to get this done a couple of months ago, and she was so impressed that I decided I’d go for it in preference to the horrible and endlessly put off experience of getting the doctor to syringe my ears in France.

This business is a small office in the local shopping centre that only does this procedure — amazing. Apparently the NHS won’t do it any more. A simple process — only takes five minutes, said S. I emerged 20 minutes later feeling somewhat stunned, but Gemma had succeeded in restoring perfect hearing in both ears, using a great deal of patience and every tool in her armoury. TMI I know, but I was delighted. “Well done!” she said. “Come back every Christmas!” I’m quite tempted.

Back home S and I cooked dinner using the leftover roast beef — beef Stroganoff with rice, followed by pear and ginger upside down cake.