A MODELMAKER’S LIFE: A DAY AROUND THE HOUSE…

Truth be told, I really enjoy cooking, finding the process of preparing food as relaxing, as it is fulfilling. I may not be the best cook in the world, but that matters little to me so long as Liz enjoys what I prepare and we can have different meals to try throughout the year.

11th November 2025

Having completed SMW, I decided to have a couple of days off, one to do absolutely nothing (tick) the other to catch upon some shopping, cooking and reading. I’m delighted to say that I managed all three of those as well, so again, that’s a big tick!

Shopping is something that in the main I dislike. Unless that’s food shopping, especially when that involves smaller shops that I can relax into rather than the bunfight arenas that seem to typify most of the local supermarkets. I began with a local butchers.

Despite not being the most voracious of carnivores, I do like to eat meat if not regularly, on the occasions when the mood takes me. This morning, having thought about the next few weeks and what we are likely to fancy eating now that the warm summer days are a distant memory and the cold, bleak and in my case unwelcome autumn days are upon us, that means stews, chilli, bolognese, et cetera, et cetera. So, off the butchers I went, list in hand.

My plan was to batch-cook a few meals that we could have this week as well as freeze, ready to be eaten over the next few weeks. This frankly surprising degree of forward planning would allow Liz and I to work without having to think about too much cooking in the evening, only an early decision having to be made in the morning, meals being taken out of the freezer to be cooked later on. So, decisions made, I grabbed a couple of pounds of beef mince, some chicken breasts, gammon steaks, sausage and bacon (amongst other things) before handing over a reasonable sum of money for the amount of nosh I’d purchased.

Before leaving though I managed to get into conversation with the chap behind the counter. He asked if I worked from home, which of course I do. Having described my job, he went on to tell me that his interests lay in LEGO Technical sets. He went onto to describe his collection and how on occasion he’s sent these sets to assess, something that takes him nicely away from the day job. It was fascinating to hear stories like this and serves as a reminder that we all have interests away from the demands of our work lives.

Having visited the butchers, I then decided to pop over to a local farm shop to buy some of their amazing, frozen pies. Created on site from locally sourced produce, these have been something of a staple since I discovered them last year, so I was excited to restock the freezer with some of my favourites. That excitement abated somewhat as I arrived at the shop, one;y to discover it was not open until tomorrow. Perhaps if I’d check on the interwebz for opening times I may have saved myself a 20 mile round-trip in freezing fog and drizzly rain. Amused I was not, but lesson learned I guess.

The next few hours were spent in the kitchen, cooking. Bolognese first, two batches, followed by chilli con Carne, three batches. Truth be told, I really enjoy cooking, finding the process of preparing food as relaxing, as it is fulfilling. I may not be the best cook in the world, but that matters little to me so long as Liz enjoys what I prepare and we can have different meals to try throughout the year.

The one thing I don’t enjoy though is the cleaning up. I’m a heady mix of incredibly untidy whilst cooking and incredibly tidy once it’s done. Liz will tell of kitchens that look like war zones when I’m cooking, an accusation I’m ashamed to say is undoubtedly true. But I have to have everything tidy once I’m done. When things would be so much easier and obviously quicker, if I cleaned up as I went along, I choose to spend silly amounts of time clearing the work surfaces, washing up, loading the dishwasher and emptying bins in one extended session after I’ve finished cooking. I feel that this is a lesson I will never learn…

And so onto reading.

Liz reads a lot. Me, not so much, unless the books are hardbacked and filled with images of aircraft and tanks. I used to enjoy the odd novel, but that stopped at about the same time I started to edit, the reading of a book seeming to be a little close to work for my liking. Early this year though I started to once again pick up the odd book here and there and enjoy losing myself within their pages.

I’m a slow reader I have to say, pages hardly turning at pace, so a book that would take Liz only a day or two to complete is taking me a month or so. No matter though, I’m loving the distraction that these books provide, taking me way from the real world as they dive into imaginative worlds generated by words on a page that are interpreted differently by every person who chooses to read them. So far, I’ve been enjoying the crime fiction of Ann Cleaves, righter of the Vera and Shetland TV series. She has a wonderfully descriptive way with words, painting pictures of locations and characters that are easy to visualise even for a novice reader such as I. My current book ‘The Heron’s Cry’ is set in North Devon, amidst the coastal towns and villages that I’ve visited in the past and crave to return to once more in the future. It all seems rather idyllic, well, that is for everyone except the poor guy who’s murdered at the start of the book, but you get the picture…

Today has been one of those days that serve to remind me what’s important in life, away from the endless doomscrolling that seems to dominate most of my waking hours as life that seemed so easy, becomes increasingly difficult to navigate. Furthermore, as this is being written early this evening, I now have chance to go out and watch friends play darts as Liz enjoys the local book club, both of us filled with some of the food that I prepared earlier.

The morning will see me return to work within the confines of my studio to begin my next build for work. Who knows though, I may still have time to read more of my book, diving into the life of Matthew Venn and his case on the shores of North Devon. Cooking though, that will have to wait for another day.

See you tomorrow.