Another dinner cooked by someone else...

I am getting spoilt, you know, I could get used to this sort of treatment.
Sunday we went to a friend's birthday party which took place on HMS Warrior - we were expecting a few nibbles and were presented with a huge buffet, wine, the works - it was lovely!  I still think it was all done under false pretences, because I still don't believe that she's seventy!!! I'd have raised an eyebrow at sixty, but claiming she's seventy seems most unlikely, and if she is I hope I look half as good when I am!
Monday I grabbed a sandwich and went out to a Neal's Yard party - you know the sort of thing, a bunch of (usually) women congregate at someone's house to look at things that they'd never generally think of buying... It was a fun evening, a chance to meet some new people, and I ordered some essential oils... so poor M had to sort out his own supper!  Well, actually all he had to do was pour boiling water on the spaghetti which was already in the pan waiting for him, and pull the bolognaise sauce from the oven... he managed this and enjoyed an evening of doing whatever it is that blokes do when the wifey has left them in peace for the evening.
Then the poor lad had to do it all again the next night - I had a day at the office, and on the way back I'd arranged to meet my sister in law who has just started a new job and is on a training course about fifteen miles from here.  We don't see very much of each other and when we do go to see her and my bruv there are generally children and dogs getting in the way of the socialising, so it was nice to have a girly night out.

She was extremely supportive of my recent trials and tribulations - she has some experience of the work of headologists, as she'd needed a good deal of counselling after the loss of her baby son some years ago, and it was interesting and valuable to hear of her experiences, which she hadn't talked about before.  I can't begin to imagine the pain of losing a child like that, another example of the fact that no matter how rotten things seem there is always something that could be worse.

My sis-in-law's new job involves training and working with assistance dogs for people with a disability.  The dogs are capable of astonishing things - she has spent the week with a group of new "partnerships", people getting to know their new dogs and the things they can do.  Tuesday's task had been a trip to the supermarket, where the human side of the partnership would tell the canine part what they wanted - and the dog would get it off the shelf and put it in the basket!  It sounds as though the local supermarket is well used to this sort of thing, as the training centre is just up the road, but some of the shoppers found it quite disconcerting to see dogs walking around with packets of pasta and the like!
It hadn't really occurred to me when setting up the evening that she'd have her current trainee, a lovely Labradoodle called Essie, with her when we went out, so I was a bit startled when she got in the car and the dog jumped in and curled up by her feet.  We drove down into the local town and wandered up and down the street, eventually falling for the charms of a fish restaurant which was handily by the car park.  In we went, and the management there scored points for being welcoming, not even raising an eyebrow at the dog, and mega points for offering a bowl of water as we sat down.  The dog curled up under the table and we ate a lovely meal, caught up with gossip and generally set the world to rights.  Marvellous!
Some of the other patrons were slightly curious about the presence of the dog, and after we'd eaten it rather delayed our departure as we had to stop to explain about the dog, the training, the program and the charity that makes it all happen.  It costs about £10,000 to train a puppy for this sort of work, and takes more than a year to get the dog to a position where it can go out into the world, and then another £10,000 over the life of the partnership... If you want to know more about this work, could support them with a donation or fancy being a volunteer puppy parent, they would love to hear from you.

So, I actually managed to eat out on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday.  That's pretty good going, and I am going to find it hard to get back into the swing of actually doing cooking again!