My Hot Chefs

I have been poorly this weekend with a bad cold.
But luckily I have my two hot chefs to take care of me.
My husband cooked a wonderful prawn and asparagus risotto on Saturday and Ben made this lovely Pavlova for Sunday lunch.


It was also the final game of football for the season.
My daughter's team lost 5-1 to the league leaders but it has been fantastic to see 11teenage girls (12-14) stick with it through thick and thin.
They have trained on a Tuesday night in rain, hail, sleet and snow.
They have forsaken Saturday sleepovers to travel up to 60 miles on a Sunday morning for a game.
And the team has been managed by a dad who is in the Royal Navy and based at Portsmouth (a 4 hour drive away) Monday to Friday - he commutes every weekend and spends the best part of Sunday with the team.
He even sent coaching texts from Iraq when he was posted there for a short training session during the season.
I organised a collection and bought some gifts but it was like a military manoeuvre trying to get the girls to sign the card without him seeing.
Sadly he will only be able to manage the team for half the season next year as he is due to be posted to The Congo!
This weekend I wore:
Boots - Clarks
Jeans - Top Shop
Top - Marks and Spencer
Scarf - Betty Jackson
Cardigan - Tesco

In The Navy

When I was 16 and a little bored of school my friend Tracey and I played truant.
It was the one and only day we ever skipped school but it was a day I will never forget.
Primarily because it was the coldest and hungriest day of my life.
We chose a day in January to stay on the bus and continue on to Manchester instead of go to school.
The ffatal law in our plan was that the only money we had was our bus fare home.
Our dinner tickets didn't work in Lewis's nor any other department store where we wandered trying to keep warm.
It was a long day.
We tried to eke out the day wandering around department stores until we ran out of shops.
With an hour to go before we could catch the bus home we ended up in the Navy recruitment office.
By this time I was delirious with cold and hunger.
The recruiting officer gave us a load of booklets and if he'd offered me a cheese sandwich I would have signed up.
Happily I didn't but for 60 minutes I began to imagine my life at sea.
Luckily the 38 bus drew up outside and we made our excuses.
Yesterday I realised what a lucky escape I had after a VIP tour of HMS Sutherland which was visiting Liverpool.
The manager of my daughter's football team is a member of the Royal Navy (he commutes between Liverpool and Portsmouth)and he arranged our trip.
Don't get me wrong the Navy staff were wonderful but when I saw the living quarters- triple bunks with hardly a breath between- I realised what a lucky escape I'd had.
But yesterday I learned a few new things:
1. A Stag ship means a predominantly male crew.
2. Split the mainbrace means an order to crack open the run.
3. The Dutch navy is the only one in the world that has unisex living quarters.
I was also told lots of technical stuff which went straight out of my head.
And I was so relieved I'd decided never to play truant again.