Self-Catering

New Year’s Eve in the Nurses’ Residence (my temporary self-catered accommodation at the hospital) was not as exciting as you may have expected, and the catering experience was mixed with the breakfast working well (thanks to plentiful supplies of cereal, milk, bread (and toaster), butter, jam, tea & coffee) but the evening meal more challenging as my attempt to microwave a Sainsbury’s ‘ready meal’ was hampered by my lack of experience in such culinary arts and the presence only of instructions for an alternative appliance, which meant all I could get it to do was a thirty second blast, of which twelve were needed, each terminated by four loud beeps that got more annoying with each repetition well before the forty-eighth and final one; on the plus side the lasagne was very tasty, washed down with a single can of Newcastle Brown, appropriate to see in the new year in such solitary fashion.