Ireland day 0813. Wednesday 20 December 2023- Slug! *

Ireland day 0813. Wednesday 20 December 2023- Slug!

Today’s summary	We were both at work again today. In the evening I made lamb casserole for dinner and discovered a slug hibernating in the cabbage I had intended to go with it. Had to watch some sunny hiking videos to recover from the shock
Today’s weather	Drizzly and heavily overcast all day. Strong westerly wind. Appx 10c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where I walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

Anyone who has followed my online musings over the years will know that I have a bit of an on-off relationship with slugs. When on long backpacking treks, I more or less worked out an accommodation with them – even when I found them in my tent, on my sleeping bag or (most memorably) stuck to my face one morning.

But up until this evening, I’d never actually found one in my dinner. That all changed when I started to prepare our evening meal a couple of hours ago. It was casserole again (obviously) but I thought I would liven it up a bit by cooking some cabbage to go with it. All was going well until I noticed something a bit odd in the cabbage I was slicing. A grey blobby thing nestled amongst the leaves, which on closer inspection revealed itself to be a fully grown slug. He was obviously enjoying a well earned nap in my cabbage, and was happily oblivious to the mayhem he was creating all around him. Nor that he has just used up one of his nine slug lives as the knife narrowly missed cutting him in half.

I debated for a while about what to do and in the end decided that the best course of action would be to extract the gastropod and all the surrounding leaves carefully, then chuck him over the balcony where he could regain his freedom at least temporarily before the magpies discovered him. The rest of the cabbage I gave a good wash, then boiled vigorously for half an hour before eating it. I have to admit it was a bit stomach-churning but I was determined not to waste anything. As far as I could tell it tasted OK, though I am not sure what a boiled slug would actually taste like anyway.

Compared to this evening’s excitements, my day in the office, and Val’s at the museum and at Wonderlights, paled into insignificance. Although my idle explorations of the Spanish Indicative preterite tense were quite interesting. So there’s not much more to be said in this blog. I think it’s time to sooth my nerves with a couple of sunny hiking videos, before possibly venturing out in the drizzle to do a bit of the real thing myself (minus the sunshine).

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


More laundry. It’s endless, especially when you go to work

For some time now I have been bothered by the fact that I couldn’t remember the Spanish indicative preterite conjugations of “Ir” (“To go” and “Ser” (“To be”)..	..today I discovered the reason for my confusion. It’s because the conjugations are the same (so “I went” is the same as “I was” in Spanish – both are “Yo fui”). How odd!



Here’s my protein supplement, enjoying a nice sleep in my dinner