It was the Monday before New Year, I just got up and sat in my jimjams on the couch having my first-morning cuppa and watching the brand-new Wallace and Gromit bakery murder mystery: “A Matter of Loaf and Death” when the doorbell rang. intercom: “Hello here is the photographer from the press agency.” me: “Haeh?????” intercom: “I am here to take a picture of the worms” me: Double-haeh?? Anyways, as there is no use having debates on the doorbell system I buzzed her in. Neglected to mention that there is a lift, with the hope of throwing myself into clothes quick enough whilst the photographer climbed lots of stairs.

For the last week, me and my partner have had great fun joining privately into the Channel4 Cookalong. It’s basically a very enthusiastic cooking course on TV with lots of people cooking simultaneously the same dishes together. The first dish was a Salmon en Croute, here I made the mistake of first getting the wrong doe – a puff pastry – as I could not find any other pastry in the shop, but then realising it was supposed to be a shortcrust pastry. I also got a piece of salmon that was too thick to be flipped on top of each other with the filling.

Norman Duncan died last Tuesday, 11th of November. He is the third Muirhouse Salvesen community council member to die this year, after Jenny Marrow’s death in late spring and Elizabeth Maginnis start of September. We also had a series of resignations from the community council and with the tense situation of cuts of more than 150 000 pounds in our community in the provision of public services to the elderly, the young and the socially excluded we are having a tough year ahead in our community.

I promised to write a positive blog entry about the firm that kindly exchanged my faulty digital kitchen scales. Due to my own fault, I lost the receipt when buying these scales several years ago in Saturn, a German electronic warehouse famous for its good offers. I tried out the scales quickly as in switching them on and then took them with me over to Edinburgh, where I realised these were switching themselves off too quickly to be working properly. The batteries might have been too old for the scales not weighing, so it took me some more years to buy a number of batteries.

We brought the worms indoors now as it was getting colder and colder and they were all cuddling up to each other in a big ball in the middle of the wormery. However not sure if they are happy beside the washing machine as they seem to be quite sensitive to vibrations. The last two weeks we have also joined the cookalong: it was very hectic and the first Friday I was behind about 45 minutes because of difficulties with my pastry and lack of preparation. Never got to make the crumble! Last week was much better though I was still about 10 minutes behind and also I never eat the starter during the broadcast as am worried I am not finished with it quick enough.