Thursday and Friday were so full of paperwork, answering e-mails and other computer stuff that it wasn't until Saturday that everything started getting done in earnest. Not that it was totally without hassle. My favourite credit card had given me yet another bout of aggravating officiousness and hassle, so much so that I was pretty close to telling them to stuff it. As Philip has finally got round to sorting travel, car hire etc. relating to next summer's Scottish trip I thought I would finalise my arrangements as well now that I know how it would fit in with Philip and Richard. On Friday I bought my final airfare which was from Edinburgh to Gatwick and then set about trying to find reasonably priced accommodation in Edinburgh in July. I think I would have had more success if I was looking for a Tyrannosaurus Rex, methinks. Finally I did find a room in a Travelodge for just over £35 a night, so I went ahead and booked that on Saturday. The card went to Verified by Visa, which was bad news as I had a great deal of hassle with somethig similar back in November resulting in me having to have a new card. So I was extra careful to make sure I was putting all my codes, passwords etc. in correctly. In spite of all that (I will not bore you with the details) it declined my purchase. So I paid with my other card, beginning to think that after about 35 years of faithful service me and Barclaycard will soon have to part company.
An hour or so later while I was chatting to Callum, Alex and Meaghan on Skype my phone goes. Barclaycard automated security wants all sorts of security detail, asking stupid questions etc., etc. Finally they put me on hold, 3 or 4 minutes of which I thought was enough and I put it down. Needless to say not only they instantly stopped my card (again!!), but they even stopped my internet access to my account, which was just about as aggravating as they could get. So I called them back, was very assertive (politely put) and 5 minutes later my card and account were back. Well, I think this was the last occasion I am prepared to cope with this amount of crap. No way I am going to give the satisfaction ever again to some hopeless little git to lecture me on internet safety when 9 times out of 10 all this hassle is caused by hiccups in their programming and bugs in their system. And even if it is me who is accidentally putting in the wrong code (which I do not think was the case), why can't they just tell me that I did that and give me another chance to put it in properly? They are so utterly neurotic about security that the default position is that you are a fraudster and it is up to you to prove you are not. Bankers are the newest swear word and I know why!!
OK, rant over. Now to nicer topics: as you can see from my snapshots Callum was in good form. He sat in one place for quite a while crunching on cheerios and yoghurt to start with, but eventually we were chasing after him all over the flat. Good job Alex has a small netbook or he could get a hernia running about with his Apple desktop! Callum is still a real cutipie and I loved my chat with him as always.
After all that was over came the long awaited truffle making. It took me from 11th December to 22nd January to get all the equipment and ingredients together to have a go. Standing up for hours was seriously exhausting, so much so that at the end of it I just plain collapsed. I think I was also quite ambitious at trying to make 5 different flavours all on my own, especially for the first time. I made lots of cockups: overheating the chocolate, overcooling the chocolate, being impatient and not waiting for it to cool down naturally, then putting hard set ganache into the cone which then got demolished in the process. It turned out that I didn't put enough falvouring in any of them, so next time it has to be more chillis, walnuts, whisky, rum, although the one with the marmalade was quite interesting. I gave Nelly a few of each and she seemed to like it, but could not differentiate the flavours. Mind you, it might have something to do with the fact that you do need a discerning palate for this sort of thing.
In flavour (other than the need of more of the same next time) they were great. In looks, not so much. Aesthetics will need some more practice, although who cares, I think for personal consumption anything goes. I photographed a plateful of the best lookers, so they were not so bad.
We are off to town tomorrow, some more remedial back exercises await and I think we will not take the car, so bumping on the bus is on the cards. Next Friday and Saturday I have two interesting concerts, the first being free and the musicians are playing 18th century pieces on antique clarinets; the Saturday one has Kristof Barati in it, of whom I have enthused a couple of posts ago. I am really looking forward to both.
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