The Mousetrap

 When I was at high school, we studied one of the Agatha Christie books. Well I was hooked and I think I have read all of her novels several times over.

The Mousetrap was the longest running play in West end London, not sure if it is still playing. When I went to London, it had been going for 39 years and that was over 30 years ago.

Anyway, the play was coming to Brisbane and I bought tickets for a Wednesday matinee, cheapest tickets but, I know that in that theatre, you can see and hear wherever you are seated.

Set in rural England in a boarding house, it's of course a who dun it and at the end the audience is sworn to secrecy about the outcome.

We went by train, had lunch and then made our way to the Playhouse, very good day out.

No photos allowed while play is on, I took this at half time.

Eats in the mountains

 I wanted to go and have lunch at the beach while the weather was nice. Checking out our options as well as the tides. Lunch time shown that the tides would be out and so we would only be able to see mud flats.

Change of plan, we will go inland up in the hills.

Now, are we having morning tea or lunch,? It's Sunday so could be busy, maybe we will go early to avoid the crowds at lunch. 

The cafe is just off the side of the road up to one of the Glasshouse mountains, no real car park but there is a pull off area. We had to park down the lot a bit as there were a dozen or so motor bikes parked out the front. Queue to order and then told there was a forty minute wait. 

Nice scenery.

Good coffee.

If it was a 40 min wait, it went quickly

Warren surprised me with the order, eggs Benny and strawberry cheesecake, we shared.

A vintage car even made it up the hill.

Rained on the way home so pleased we went early.

It's November

 That means national novel writing month, nano for short.

I had tossed around a few ideas and didn't sign on until Monday 31 Oct, still not sure if my idea had enough legs to make it to 50,000 words.

First day and we were out in the morning, dropped into a cafe on the way home for lunch. Finally sat down at the computer to start my thirteenth novel. It took me three hours to get 1100 words down, needed 1665 a day. I had emptied my emails, read some stuff and bought gifts online.

In previous years I had started slow and then built up to about 2k words a day so no need for concern. Wednesday was much the same with only 900 or so written.

Thursday is my crochet day so after lunch I sat down, read over what Ihad written and realised that is wasn't very good, all conversation. Then I had a light bulb moment, I didn't have to do it so shut the computer down and walked out of the study, feeling a weight off my shoulders. Definitely done for this year, maybe nano is finished for me for all time time will tell.

Rick Stein

 Flipping around the TV channels, we settled on a cooking show of Rick Stein, he was in France.

I forget what he called this dish but it was very simple, although he has his kitchen elf, Valerie do the prep, he just put it together at the end.

It consisted of tomatoes, eggplant and pastry. We had just picked a mountain of cherry tomatoes from our couple of bushes. I love eggplant so a short trip to the shops for pastry and a couple of egg plants and I was all set. Unfortunately I didn't have a Valerie and had to do it all myself although I did ask for help when it came to flipping it over

Tomatoes and eggplant sliced and cooked slowly in the air fryer.

Layered into casserole dish with a sheet of pastry on top.

Then it needed to be upended and served with the pastry on the bottom, quite a strong taste and filling, would have been better with some sour cream on top. Next time.

Purple season

 October brings the Jacaranda out in flower, I almost missed it this year.

After many wet Mondays and having to resort to cafes, last week was a park day with a Jacaranda in the distance. It had almost finished flowering. One of our group, Lesley to the right

Smells of spring

 Walking Lucy the other day we came through an alleyway and the smell was very strong.

Jasmine on one side 

Gardinia on the other, I only took one pic, Lucy was on a mission to get home once she gets into the alley as it's her breakfast time after she gets home.

Shenh hao

 Found a new to us restaurant closer than ones we have been before. Reviews looked good so we decided to try it out.

The decor looked like many places we have visited in China, wooden tables and chairs with plastic table cloths.

Pictures of the food in the window outside, we were excitedly looked at them when the waitress popped out and invited us in. We told her that we were seeing many dishes that we used to eat when we were living in China.

Warren had found his favourite, twice cooked pork, that he used to order several times a week from the school canteen. That's what he ordered, I went for the braised pork.

Mine, big dishes.

Warren's some la there (chilli).

He said it was the same. We couldn't finish it, did have two spring rolls for starters, came home with enough for dinner. Great value for $40.