Cooking

Well, two minutes in our very own kitchens and we discovered we loved cooking didn’t we Marie. So cool cos we like making similar things and testing (sometimes improving?) each other’s recipes.

Highlights:

Red carmague rice and feta salad. Garlic heaven. So good.

D’you remember we met up in St James Park once (think I may not have been working) and you brought me some pasta salad and I’d eaten it within 7 minutes and then you told me it was supposed to be my lunch the next day..!!

The goddam marrow. Remember that. Tasteless massive thing. I know it’s not fair on you but you’re the only person I could have ‘inflicted’ that on. Ah, you live and learn…

Muffins, muffins and muffins

In fact do you remember leaving me muffins on the cottage doorstep. Chocolate ones as I recall…

All those crackers at Christmas!!

And where would we have been without Nige and all her domestic guidance and lovliness. We can all aspire eh…

Let’s start a list of all our favourite recipes. Start it in the comments box below. Either ones that are your favourite to make, or your favourite to have made – and who by!

xLuce

Merstham First

As we’ve seen from previous posts I clearly struggle with remembering stuff, so that chances of 1984-1988 (?correct?) being accurate are minimal yeah. This is a starter for ten and very much open to amendment….

• I remember a Christmas Play where I played the xylophone and wore sparkly black tights. This may have nothing to do with anyone else…
• The swimming pool was excellent. And the swimming exams to get our different ribbons – not excellent, but memorable in terms of achievement!
• The playgrounds felt huge. Clearly they weren’t.
• School dinners
• Milk. Breaktime milk.
• I have no idea what it was to do with, but I know I was a worm in a school play. I mean, how to give a child a complex…
• Story time. The only story I remember being read is the BFG. I think this is selective memory (for excellence) on my part!

xLuce

Playing

What I was really thinking of here was the times when you and I, quite literally, played Marie. In the summer holidays, at the weekends etc. Out on the street, in our gardens, in the park etc. Not that we did so much of this but a bit…

I particularly remember:

• A hot summer when we lay in your garden putting our faces in buckets of water, jumping through the sprinkler and eating cucumber
• Coming round to yours on rollerskates
• Things may (may) have changed, but I remember where the spare key is for your front door!

xLuce

The first years at work

Well I don’t have any pictures of this ‘period’ (phew) but it was definitely one of the funniest times of my life. We’d finished university (well, Catherine had another year to go!), spent the summer looking for work etc and now we, Marie and I, were commuting, working, and, well, drinking.

It seemed that every morning we met in a cloud of hangover (ok, I admit, Marie was dedicated to her job and was on the platform looking fantastic and professional, while Vicky and I were a mess); nattered our way for the 35 minute journey Merstham-London, doing make up, planning shopping, putting tights on etc; struggled through a days work (media darling); and then met up at AllBarOne to do it all again!

I honestly thought I wouldn’t have changed a thing about those first years of working, and then I realised that Marie had saved for a flat and I had nothing. So, er, should have planned that better…..

xLuce

ACYS

We went to church and ‘youth group’ together Marie which was fun and had some entertaining moments, including:

• Our Winter Wonderland tap routine one Christmas that involved cotton wool ‘snow ball’s as a prop
• Getting our ACYS jumpers – this was pretty wicked at the time
• I have just remembered that of course you didn’t do pilgrimage…
• Helping with the little kids, scramblers and climbers?? No, that’s not right…
• Doing all sorts of plays for family service

xLuce