Good Queen Sicknote

Queenie's off Tom Dick

I know she's eighty-four. I know she's got gastroenteritis. I know she misses about one royal engagement every ten years. That's all taken on board.

I also know she's mad keen on the horses. The Cheltenham festival meeting started yesterday. Just a bit too convenient? Telly on, corgi on lap, mobile phone hotline to Paddy Power.

Someone should make a You Tube video, a mock advert:

“Hey. Liz. Open the new hospital? No! Racing? Yes! Labrokes. Game on.”

Onion bhaji by Alfred Prasad

I'm going to try these today. It seems an elegant and sensible recipe. There's fresh garlic and ginger and chilli added to the onions, as well as the spices and then it all gets a dusting of gram flour and just enough water to bind the ingredients into balls for frying. That makes much more sense than: make batter, add onions, try feverishly to adjust the consistency, end with with all batter and no onion.

Today we've been shooting clays

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Pop out (well, just over an hour (according to Google Maps directions service), more like and hour and twenty according to experience). I tidied up the car. That should read: I even tidied up the car. It's bit of an annual event, and it was overdue. By tidy, I mean empty some stuff out of the back and into the garage, freeing up space in the back to empty other stuff off of the back seat and into the back. The sacrifices I make, eh?

BLISS and DLL safely on board, we set off, just the regulation ten minutes late. We arrived at the farm just about in time. Clays this way, the signs said, so we followed them. The road deteriorated pretty quickly, to become just a rough track. Time was ticking by and the signs continued to say Clays, straight on. Straight on it was.

“This is ridiculous” said BLISS, and it was. About two feet of drifting snow, and some icy tractor tyre tracks the only guide. The thing was, if we stopped, that would've been it. No starting again. There was nowhere to turn around. Eventually the inevitable happened and that was that. Left front wheel spinning in mid air, the other one doing nothing at all.

BLISS made some phone calls.

“I'll come and tow you out with the Landrover” said the shooting instructor...”just as soon as the tractor tows me out...”

We tried a few things to pass the time while we waited for the cavalry. Nothing worked. Eventually the Landrover arrived and got me moving. Just reversing back half a mile through snow and deep puddles of melting snow, and we were in the Landrover and away.

We learned that BLISS is a natural shot as much as I'm not a natural off-roader. DLL nailed a few, too, and she's a rarity (we knew that), a left-eye dominant right-hander. When they started making it difficult and firing them from left to right, my percentage hits improved. Oh, and the girls are photogenic. Equally photogenic, with and without guns.