I've got a memory like an elephant... that's lost its memory.
- Mrs. Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith), The Vicar of Dibley... a nasty fall up the front steps in the freezing cold. Or something to that effect. I could blame it on pride or my over-large slippers that I happened to be wearing at the time, and in which I have a hard enough time while walking on level surfaces, never mind brick stairs.
The pride being due to the happiness I was feeling from the completion (or near-completion) of various chores around the flat. I'd done my laundry, all the little scraps of useless paper from my desk-side bookshelf had been thrown into empty shopping bags, and the trash-full shopping bags had been placed in trash bags.
And before cracking down on the havoc that is my desk, I decided to take out the two full trash bags I'd already assembled. On my way back in, I was thinking of vacuuming my floor as well.
Zeal is randomly punished.
I misstepped and fell up the brick stairs that lead to the vistibule of our apartment, managing to smash both left knee and left ankle. It's been a while since my clumsiness has led me to fall up the stairs (or down the stairs, for that matter), and I'd forgotten how falling on my knee seems to drain the energy out of the rest of me, my arms especially.
Hobbling back inside, I collapsed on my bed for a minute to groan and let the wave of nausea pass. Then, after a few minutes I shuffled to the kitchen, emptied what was left of an ice tray into a ziploc bag, shuffled back to my room, and crumbled again--only, this time, with a bag of ice to transfer from my knee to ankle and back again.
Thus was my work ethic was fairly well squashed for the evening. After an hour or so of icing my knee-cap I decided to have a shower. I spent it wondering how and when the other shoe is going to drop; clumsiness for me isn't a case of "a little here and there." No, it comes in batches, and there's bound to be something else around the corner.
Natalie Dee knows my pain.
In the end, I managed to put brooding aside by way of entertainment, and fell asleep watching more Netflix deliveries: Series Three of The Vicar of Dibley.
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On another note completely, I wonder if an ibrik is entirely necessary to the physics involved in the creation of Turkish coffee--or if, indeed, a small pan would do the job just as well. I get the feeling that the almost Erlenmeyer shape serves a particular purpose, and probably something to do with restricting the surface area of the brew exposed to air.
I was reading several tutorials yesterday about coffee, and came upon instructions for brewing Turkish coffee, a process that involves pulverizing coffee beans beyond even the fine-grind typical of espresso. You also apparently require an ibrik (a very small pan, the shape of which reminds me of an Erlenmeyer flask). The whole business sounds easy enough in theory--though I've been reading the several possibilities of disaster--and I kind of want to try it myself.
What is Turkish coffee like? I've only ever had it once, to be honest. I could say it's like espresso, but that's really not doing it justice, because its flavour is much stronger than any espresso. I suppose it would be like finding an espresso concentrate in a syrup-like form and drinking that straight, hot, and usually with sugar.
Turn the page ...
Close the book ...
