My elder daughter tells me I gave up on Twitter too soon.  People get interested in your life, she says, if you just keep going. 

That’s probably good advice for blogging too, and for life in general.  Success is mostly about showing up.  I admire those like Ruth who always have ideas and themes and structure.  When I don’t manage, and then say nothing at all, later it seems to me that I should have at least mentioned what I ate for lunch.

So here’s the latest on my life, in case you got interested:

Last night I tucked my radio under the bedclothes and listened to the late night news.  Recaps of Andy Murray’s defeat in Australia were interrupted outside my window by a swan calling for her lover, a lone, mournful sound.

The fire must have gone out soon after I closed down the dampers, judging by the unburned coal in the morning and the deep chill on the boat.  There was a dusting of snow outside, and my indoor basil plant was stone, cold dead.  I guess I shut the stove down too tight, trying to conserve coal.  I needed the remnants of the last bag to keep me warm one more day.

I’ve got porthole covers on all the windows in the back part of the boat, but I still feel vaguely public when I linger under the covers past 7 or 8 o’clock.  No one can see me, but their footsteps along the tow path, right by my windows, make me feel slovenly.

Eventually I dressed under the covers, and though I thought I was very careful, wore my knickers inside out all day long. 

Once I got the fire going again, I spent the morning finally filling in the insurance form detailing what was stolen when the boat was burgled while I was away.  The only thing I really cared about was the iPod my ex husband bought me the first Christmas we were friendly again.  He had my name engraved on it.

I spent the afternoon dealing with British Waterways who were refusing to license the boat because they insisted it had no safety certificate, though I sent them proof a whole year ago and wrote about it here.

And I am sorry to disappoint you after all that build up, but I didn’t exactly eat lunch, unless a grumpy grande latte counts (grumpy is another story).  So when I got back to Pangolin after sending faxes and making phone calls and all, I was awfully hungry and still cold. I spread chicken fat on bread, poured myself a glass of wine and heaped about ton of coal on the stove.

The chicken fat is because I was Jewish in another life, and the wine is because I am middle class and anxious and all middle class anxious Brits guzzle wine like they have two livers.  The coal is because this is the room of my own. 

I opened up all the draughts on the stove and let it get really, really hot.  Dusty is coming tomorrow so tonight I can be as profligate as I like. 

I also let the engine run for a really, really long time, because the engine charges my batteries and that means my computer will run without alarms screaming.  The engine also heats the water to lovely internal combustion hot, and in a few minutes I can get into my teeny tiny steamy boaty bath and then to bed.

I hope the fire stays in.  I hope the swan finds her mate.

There’s a book of advice on blogging called, “No one cares what you had for lunch,”   I don’t own this book, but unfortunately I recalled its title just as I happened to be writing about that very subject, so I got discouraged and went out and weeded the garden instead.

But, honest, it was more interesting than it sounds.  My stories always require patience and I began by explaining how I had gone from burning up 45 litres of petrol a week (= about 10 gallons costing more than £45) to using less than half a tank in a month.

Instead of taking the car, I wrote, I walk.  This is apparently unusual enough that even strangers are noticing.  Yesterday a driver pulled up beside me and called through her window, “Do you like live here?  Because I keep seeing you walking all over the island.”  The island is only about nine miles long and two miles wide, so that might be true, though I don’t hang out a lot on the mountainous south side.

In my meandering way, having started the subject of walking, the lunch post would have mentioned that as I strolled up the road that divides the north side of the island in half, I heard some heavy breathing behind me, and since I haven’t heard any of that sort of thing in a while I was naturally interested.

When I looked to my left I saw

which surprised me rather, and I swear they weren’t there the last time I took this road, because I definitely would have noticed.  I’m not really a country girl, but I didn’t think those were your run of the mill cows – I’m telling you they don’t moo, they groan – and until I know otherwise I’m calling them water buffalo.

The water buffalo incident was on the way to the office where I work hopelessly for a group of good people who badly need an economics lesson – that is another, maybe never, post, but it could have been an aside, I suppose, to the lunch post.

In fact that whole bit with the water buffalo and the job was something of a digression because all that walk chit chat was leading up to the mailbox where, on a good day, I can trade $3 left in a tin for a dozen fresh eggs, some of them blue (which is quite cool).  If I take the last carton I am invited to turn over the sign so that instead of “eggs” it says, “sorry sold out”. 

And frankly, it wasn’t even strictly relevant to the lunch post because I eat the eggs for breakfast but I am betting what I had for breakfast is a banned topic too.

Finally, I was going to write about the Saturday market where the hot gossip was the cameras recently installed so that you can turn on the tele and check out the line at the ferry in case you need to hurry on down and join the queue.  Apparently one camera shows someone’s bedroom window and the market view was They Should Be Told.

A common complaint amongst women when the cameras first went in was that all the men on the island spent the whole day stuck to the television watching the line at the ferry.  So when our informant mentioned the bedroom angle there was some speculation that perhaps this was the reason, though when I checked, even when I looked hard, I couldn’t see a damn thing.  So I think we are stuck with the original theory that men are plain weird.

And, then, in my lunch post, I had thought I would mention, just in passing, and just so you can get a sense of my life here, that the ferry line is the only tele I have looked at in seven weeks (not that I watched much before) and I don’t miss it at all.

Finally, and back to the Saturday market, I was going to get to the point, which was that having not been driving and so not getting off the island for a couple of weeks now, I am running short of fresh food – though the Survivalists’ stocks mean I could go for months on the freezer and cupboards.  My Sunday lunch was limited to, besides the freezer stock, what was on sale at the Saturday market.

This week it was arugula (rocket) and radishes.  That’s it.  It has been a cold spring.  As luck would have it, though, arugula turns out to be its own niche topic ever since Barack Obama mentioned the price of arugula nowadays early in his campaign.  The NY Times and the Washington Post wrote about it, and I am thinking I may have stumbled on the only acceptable luncheon item for blogging.

This was my Sunday lunch:

Whole wheat bread grilled with sliced sweet Georgia onions, topped with shaved parmesan, garnished with arugula and a side of radishes, drizzled with olive oil and served with a glass of chilled white wine.

It was quite nice, really.   Though apparently you lot couldn’t give a toss.