Well, that worked out better than expected

As I'd used the last of the fresh pasta last week, and the dried stuff tends to be slightly chewy even if cooked slightly longer, I thought I'd try soaking some for a couple of hours before making dinner last night.

And I forgot about it - I wasn't very hungry and just ate a packet of crisps instead.

Apparently if you leave dried pasta soaking for 24 hours it isn't chewy at all, in fact it's quite floppy.

(Okay, 24 hours may not be necessary, but it took that long for me to remember it).

I spent a very pleasant afternoon in the garden, giving that rampant stuff at the top of the garden its long overdue introduction to Mr Strimmer. Though the incident where I forgot to lock the strimmer spool in place and it went flying was perhaps not my finest moment. On the plus side, I can now walk around the tree, which hasn't been possible for at least a decade - strimming got me far enough around it to confirm that the shrub blocking the gap between it and the fence was definitively dead and could be snapped off and hauled out. (Being able to snap a 3-4 inch thick trunk as tall as you are is probably a pretty firm indication it had been dead for a while). My neighbours on one side were outside with their young kids (3 and 6 weeks) while on the other side they were busy cutting down and digging out a conifer, and more particularly the ivy that came with it, which has been running rampant - getting rid of that one meant pulling out two fence panels and tearing it loose by hand, there's still some on my side on the fixed privacy screen panel, I may go after that tomorrow, though I really should concentrate on breaking up that shrub trunk so it can go in the garden waste collection due Thursday.

I also took the chance to start the car and run the engine for a few minutes given it hadn't been used in about three weeks and I'm traditionally hard on batteries given I do such low mileage.

And going to the car, which still has my chair in the back from the last time I used it, reminded me that I haven't actually wheeled anywhere in several weeks, so I may have to start doing some wheeling up and down the road as my daily exercise. (Up the road is a chore, there's just enough of a slope that down the road is fun).