Monday 14 August 2023

Pepper-gate!

It was pouring with rain this morning and horrible and dark when Sophie set out for the gym at 6am, and it hadn't improved when I left at 7.30am!

Much to my disappointment, I was back on the phone today as the girl covering me didn't want to work on a Monday... Hmmm! Who does? It was a bit of a shock as I haven't answered many calls so far during the school holidays! I said to Sara I would try and answer the emails in between calls, which was quite hard as some of the written queries were complicated!

At 4pm, I dashed home and started to prepare dinner. Keith had made himself a celery and stilton soup as he didn't fancy our planned meal of sausage and vegetable bake. We had only decided on this to use up three wrinkly peppers in the fridge, and when I went to get them, I spotted another three that he'd bought today! I went mad as we now had six and they definitely hadn't been on the list! Arrgghh! We had a few words and when Sophie arrived home, she went mad as well! It may sound petty, but I do wish Keith would keep to the shopping list when he goes, and not go off-piste! We are trying really hard to use up the food we have and not waste it, and we had planned meals around the food we already had in the fridge!

Dinner was lovely, though, even with the slightly aged, wrinkly peppers (we're going to have to come up with another meal to use the new three, and Keith doesn't even like them, which is madness!). I padded the traybake out with new potatoes, mushrooms and carrots and served it with salad and roasted vegetable cous cous. Yum!

After dinner, Keith disappeared upstairs to watch the football while Sophie and I chose a documentary on Netflix to watch about the tragedy in Nepal when sixteen Sherpas were killed by an avalanche in the Khumbu icefall.

I have very strong feelings about climbing Everest and believe that climbers should be stopped from going up now. The problem is that the Sherpas all make much-needed money from their job of helping foreigners make the summit, and Nepal derives a huge income from trekking permits. 

In the documentary, after the tragedy, a small group of Sherpas refused to go up again that season (2014) which caused amazing reactions in the people organising the expeditions. I won't repeat what some of them said here, and both Sophie and I were shocked. However, it was an excellent documentary and the dignity and compassion of the Nepalese people shone through. They were portrayed in a much better light than the foreigners!


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