Tag: London

April 28

~ coronet22 ~ Leave a comment

Readers have been telling me what symbolises Lockdown for them and they’re such differing things and so fascinating, today’s post is a report from three special friends about what they will will look back on from this weirdest period in our lives:

First is from Trisha, who you may remember, is still away from her city home, marooned ,comfortably, in the Highlands of Scotland and getting used to country life.

“There are two things (or perhaps three) that will always remind me of Lockdown. The first is queuing outside the Co oP. The next is opening and closing farm gates for us to drive through each day and the last is being forced to re introduce lentils to my diet – and remember that I love them!”

Next is from a couple, let’s call them Peter and Amy, who are in their home in the heart of London, locked down as severely as we are. As far as I know, they have only been out to water their window-boxes in the past five weeks and collect food delivered to their doorstep. Amy sends this:

“What will symbolise Lockdown for us? Here’s ‘our’ blackbird. He is a champion 
and we are eager to gain his trust.  He has a wife and they have raised a handsome chick in a nest on top of our outside privy, in the thicket of plants we have been reluctant to prune. They love the meal worms we bought for them, and we now hear Dad. chirping to ask for them at the door. He rewards us by singing each morning from 3.30.”

Which leaves me with a question. Where on earth did you get meal worms during lockdown?

And this from Warwick, in Australia:

“For me, it will be Anzac Day last Saturday. It’s the day we remember all those brave, or foolish, men who waded ashore at Gallipoli, many of whom never got to see home again.

Usually on this day we tune in to the dawn service held at Lone Pine on Gallipoli and are always moved by the young people who are there to remember and to witness the sheer impossibility of the land the troops had to try and scale. Because of Covid -19 none of the normal services performed by hundreds of RSL clubs around Australia could be performed.

Instead they asked if anyone had a trumpet and could play Last Post at 6.03am, the time the first troops went ashore, in their street, would they do so.

This morning we woke to the sound of a lone trumpeter in our street doing just that and it was a sound I will never ever forget but a sound I cannot put in any museum. To say it was spine- tingling would be an understatement and to say it brought tears to the eyes would also be true. Our trumpeter wasn’t alone as others could be heard all over the suburbs. It didn’t matter that maybe not all watches read 6.03am at exactly the same moment it was the action and the paying of respect that counted”.

April 27

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

I asked you all to tell me what will symbolise Lockdown for you. A musician friend sent this wonderful picture of his electronic drum kit. He’s had to move it closer to his computer in order to record drum tracks so the rest of the band can play their parts. To me – a non-musician – it looks like the inside of the head of someone grappling with a very difficult decision! Boris on lifting lockdown perhaps?

The picture made me think about the sound of Lockdown. Perhaps the sound of Lockdown is actually the lack of the sounds we normally hear. There are so few ‘planes the sky is quiet, except for the occasional helicopter. One building-site of the five or six around us has kept going throughout, but, in the spaces between their drilling, we can hear birdsong and we listen for it now in the way that parched desert travellers search for water.

We have a trendy club only metres from our terrace. It boasts two outside drinking areas from which we normally endure the constant sounds of guffawing, chortling, screeching and lots of people having lots of fun after lots of booze. Funny, that something so convivial when you’re part of it, can have us behaving like Victor Meldrew when we’re trying to sip a quiet glass of Malbec on our terrace. Long Live Club Lockdown.

On Thursday nights, when we stand on our rooftop to clap the carers, we hear an echo of ghostly applause bouncing off nearby buildings but never see another soul.

The distant traffic hum is still a constant in the day . (Though where the traffic actually is these days, I can’t imagine) but, now, we hear, laid on top of it, the occasional roar of a single bike or car at night, speeding recklessly round the empty city streets.

The sound that is our accompaniment to waking, meals, tea breaks, and dinner is LBC radio. Masochistically, we can’t get enough of Covid-19 discussion and my beloved Radio Four doesn’t provide the incessant stream we both seem to crave. LBC delivers news every 15 minutes, Andrew Castle, Nick Ferrari, Shelagh Fogarty, , Ian Dale, Nigel Farrage – we’re anything but picky. Left, Right – we shout at the radio either way. Oddly, it seems to be harder to shout at the TV- perhaps there’s a feeling they can see us. So we’re quieter during BBC News At 10 followed by Newsnight. You’d think such overload would be depressing- and of course the daily death toll is just that- but the endless discussion and argument seems to produce in us an odd sort of unholy elation.

It was the same with Brexit. We listened for hour after hour and I distinctly remember wondering aloud what we would do when Brexit was “Done”.

Well, now we know.

April 26

~ coronet22 ~ 3 Comments 
This morning I remembered my "To Do" list. I've looked at my "To Do" list every day of my life for as long as I can remember.It gives me the greatest satisfaction to cross off tasks accomplished - so much so that, on occasion,I've added one 
already completed, simply for the pleasure of crossing it out. This morning, I 
realised that, not only hadn't I looked at it for over a month, but that there would be absolutely no point in my doing so. It's remarkable that, overnight, 
everything that seemed vitally important in life can become completely 
irrelevant. 

I remember when I stopped doing the job I loved and had been engrossed in for over twenty years, I couldn't believe that the work I had always had to do, no 
matter that I had 'flu or was missing a close friend's wedding, or an aunt's 
funeral, simply stopped being. All those birthday parties, dinners, plays, 
hospital visits I had given up because I had to work. Surely it couldn't have 
stopped mattering.I couldn't have stopped mattering? In an instant? Surely they couldn't just carry on without me? Why hadn't I known? Why did I think I had 
to be there? 

And now my "To Do" list no longer matters. Nothing much does, except not 
getting Covid-19. I thought I'd take a look at it and am shocked at how trivial the things on it now seem. (Apart, that is, from "Book Dentist", which I can't do anyway). Similarly, our diaries, which ruled our every waking moment, no longer 
have any use. Did you ever in your life imagine saying to someone "Oh I can 
make it any day, I've got nothing on 'til December”?

We have so much of what was once so hard to come by - spare time.
And what are we to do with it? All those things we promised ourselves we'd do “if only” we had the time?  It’s hard to remember what they were:

Ah yes: 

1.Learn Spanish.
2.Re-organise my filing.
3.Have a big wardrobe clear-out and give a load of clothes to the charity shop.
4.Go the full Marie Kondo on my underwear drawer.
5.Read all the books I'm ashamed of not having read.

That's plenty to be going on with. So why haven't I done even one of them?

1. I hate learning languages.
2. I hate reorganising filing.
3. I can't remember which clothes I can wear and which don't work any more.
4. I don't care whether my underwear brings me joy.
5. No excuse for this one whatsoever.

The awful truth is that I"m enjoying not having to hurtle from one job to 
another and not having the next one buzzing guilt in my head while I'm doing 
the first. For the first time in my life,this Lockdown seems to have legitimised my doing nothing in particular.I expect I'll regret it when I emerge without 
having written a symphony or tried my hand at creating an app - I've always 
wanted to invent a Shazam for birdsong - but, of course there's no money in it 
because users can't buy the track- therefore, no one will ever produce it.
 So, I guess the only thing I'll have achieved when we finally emerge from 
Lockdown, is this Blog  - and a lot of soup.


 

April 24

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

The Museum of London is looking for people to suggest and donate items that symbolise Lockdown, to help future generations understand this extraordinary period. 

It made me think and it would be interesting exercise to look around and see what, for me, epitomises this weirdest period in our lives.

The most obvious ones are the items to which I never gave a thought before Lockdown and now see as a normal part of life – disposable gloves, sanitising wipes, hand sanitizer bottles, some even with little clips so you can attach them to your belt to be certain of keeping them close. Cardboard boxes are emblematic of innumerable food deliveries and I would definitely include the page you find on line when looking for a Waitrose delivery slot.

Sweaty Betty Yoga pants. This is the most comfortable garment known to woman. I have lived in these for the five weeks of lockdown so far (Not the same pair!) and don’t ever want to put on anything else again – which is just as well, as I’m eating so much chocolate, I won’t be able to.

Kitchen scales. I only started cooking about 10 years ago , having been too tired after work to bother and, living in the middle of London, only too delighted to eat out.

When I did start, I decided that, if I were to do it properly, I needed the best equipment. Really, I didn’t. It was like smoking or going ski-ing, accumulating the paraphernalia was half the fun. My cooking friends thought I was mad, buying such old-fashioned scales when there are so many streamlined, digital ones on the market. They could not have imagined – and neither could I – how much pleasure I would get from using them. The weights are satisfying to hold and sit cooly in the hand, there is the thrill of watching the balance equalise – pouring in just the tiniest bit more of something to see it shudder and come to rest in a straight line. It brings back hours of playing shop as a child, tipping conkers or rose petals onto plastic scales to see which was heavier and they somehow help me understand weight by seeing a substance literally “tip the balance”. I’m cooking so much more during Lockdown, I use them almost every day and, since I’m still not a good enough cook to depart from a recipe, I actually enjoy the act of being able to stick, slavishly, to the exact number of grams required.

This is My husband’s favourite mug, which has become his substitute comfort blanket during Lockdown. I like china mugs. I like their lightness in the hand and coolness on the tongue. He likes earthenware. Says the weight and slight roughness is more masculine. He’ll drink tea from a china one but coffee has to be in this.

His “Geezer” hat. “The Writer’s” pride and joy during Lockdown is this hat. He calls it his “Geezer” hat because he reckons anyone wearing such an accessory has given in to becoming an old boy, the sort of man who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, does his own thing and lets the rest of the world go hang. He also loves it because it reminds him of Australian friends who, he says, were content to become geezers when they were only half his age. He tramps up and down the terrace in it, doing his 10,000 steps and on the day he couldn’t find it last week, he got sunstroke!

What things symbolise Lockdown for you?.

April 23

~ coronet22 ~ 2 Comments

What is it with men and hoses?

Stupid question, Freud would explain in an instant what it is with men and hoses. Trouble is, Freud would also maintain that I, too, am desperate to grip this thing and spray it around everything in sight. He would be wrong.

We have a mediteranean garden on our terrace. Most of the plants and flowers were wedding presents and we can still remember which Olive tree came from which couple and who gave us the pots in which they stand. The garden was designed by Mark Helston, who specialises in making a small terrace feel like acres of land and Mark visits every so often to maintain it. At least, he did.

We are hopeless gardeners. Although he would be happy to instruct us, we know the names of nothing, nor how to care for the plants we love so much. Mark has spoiled us by keeping it in shape. But Lockdown has changed all that. The garden is our lifeline. We walk in it,10,000 steps up and down, and up and down again, past the white daisies with the deep, blue centres, which probably aren’t daisies at all, past the olive trees and the sturdy green plants that look like a cross between a pineapple and a palm tree. There are Lilly-of-the-valley hidden in the shade and tulips pressed up against the kitchen window. Mark delivers tomato plants each year, which I water, diligently, with a watering can and have seriously competitive conversations with friends, whose terrace he also tends, about whose tomatoes are doing better and whose chutney recipe is tastier.The year my tomatoes got blight gave rise to the most unseemly delight in their house and the texting to me of many photos of their thriving, bursting fruit.

Still competitive, I need to tell you these are not theirs but mine from a good year.

Without Mark, our garden is beginning to look “leggy” as he calls it and, although I water the tomatoes, I’m not sure I can manage all of it by can. Enter”The Writer”, who loves the garden as much as I do but has, hitherto, declined to have anything to do with its upkeep.

Anxious about its welfare, I have an inspiration. I suggest he tries out the hose I hate and never use because I can’t ever manage to regulate it properly. I either have the water pressure so high it blasts the earth out of the pots or so low, it trickles away to nothing and wouldn’t give a dousing to a violet.

Reluctantly, he agrees and half an hour later, I wonder where he is, only to find him, waving the hose about masterfully, directing it in a powerful stream at the thirstiest plants, holding it out, rigidly, in front of him with pride and coiling it up back in its place with what seems to me like reluctance. Did I catch him stroking it?

This is a picture of “The writer watering but the only thing it shows clearly, is how dirty our windows are!

I have a great deal of sympathy with men of certain age, who need to dash for toilets while out walking or have their prostates prodded by gung-ho doctors. Where once they were a source of joy, their appendages have a tendency to turn troublesome.Watching how much fun”The Writer’s” having with this green plastic substitute , I wonder whether I’ll ever get back the garden that has always been my my territory .
Could this be a twinge of envy I’m feeling?

April 21

~ coronet22 ~ Leave a comment

The country is playing a numbers game and the numbers are making my head spin. 87,022 cases in England, 114,217 cases in the UK, 510 healthy volunteers for vaccine trials. 16,509 UK deaths. These are the numbers in the face of which I am helpless. The numbers I concentrate on are the ones I can do something about and need to know in order to to keep us safe.One thing I need to know is how long Covid-19 lives when it is no longer in its human host.

Take paper, for example. We haven’t opened our post for weeks. It falls through the letterbox and lies on the floor in heaps, while we pretend we haven’t seen it. I admit I’m given to not opening post at the best of times and this, being the worst of times, gives me the perfect excuse. However, suppose there’s a Premium Bond win in the pile or a summons we haven’t seen for a bill we haven’t paid because we haven’t opened the post. I decide to find out for certain how long we have to leave it before it is safe:

“Some strains of Coronavirus live for only a few minutes on paper. Others can live for up to five days”. So I now have to sort the post we haven’t opened for weeks from the post we haven’t opened for days. I make separate piles and open the oldest: One Premium Bond for £25. How come it’s always £25 , charity appeals (That takes care of the Premium Bond), bills, of course. The best things we find are two home- made Easter cards from Trisha and Tod’s grand-daughters. How sad that they’re young enough to look forward to some acknowledgement of their hard work and thoughtfulness and we’re old enough to be protecting ourselves so carefully as to be unaware of what they’d sent. I email our belated thanks and they seem to accept the fact that, though Easter, which we usually spend with them, was 12 days ago, we’re delighted to hear from them at any time.

Milk cartons harbour Coronavirus for 2 to 3 days, as do lift buttons and the outside of fridges. (What about the inside of fridges?). For cardboard boxes, it’s 24 hours (72 some say), drink cans 2-8 hours, mugs, plates and doorknobs 5 days and fruit and vegetables don’t “seem” to retain the virus at all, though we are advised to wash them thoroughly and I have heard it’s not a great idea to disinfect apples and tangerines with alcohol wipe, as I have been doing. Apparently that particular kind of alcohol is better not ingested.

However, all this is academic, since nothing gets through our front door without being sanitised so thoroughly I’ve occasionally rubbed away cooking instructions on the ready- meals we are eating increasingly often.

Radio and television spew out increasing numbers of numbers to buzz in our heads. It’s all the journalists have to hold on to and it becomes a mantra for listeners and viewers to repeat to themselves and one another: 400,000 gowns trapped in Turkey, 3 more weeks of Lockdown, 18 months for a vaccine, 2 years before it’s widely available, 12 months “shielding” for people over 70. Of course, none of these is necessarily accurate. We are 100 per cent certain of nothing.

April 19

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I’m missing the city below us.

My husband and I are city-dwellers very much by choice . We love the buzz London has delivered over the past years. (Whether it will continue post- Brexit and post -Covid is impossible to imagine). We have led our social lives going to the pictures, sampling new restaurants and re-visiting old favourites, meeting friends for jolly Sunday breakfasts in a nearby hotel and attending galleries, museums and theatres far less often than our country friends, who don’t have them on their doorstep. We appreciate being able to walk home from The Royal Opera House while frantic out-of-towners queue for taxis in the rain. London’s beautiful parks are so precious to us, we get irritated when they’re appropriated for cycle races and art fairs. We don’t have a car, since most places we visit are within walking distance and, for those that are not, we have generous, motorised friends who give us lifts.

Being in the epicentre of Britain’s fight with this hideous disease – 3,522 deaths in London hospitals so far – we have chosen to take this Lockdown hyper-seriously. We are not going out at all, we are exercising solely on our terrace or indoors and relying completely on food deliveries. We haven’t seen another soul, other than on a screen, since March 12th.

Friends, walking and ethnic food are highest on my miss-list. Culture is available on TV and, though it’s not the same as experiencing plays, concerts or opera live, the Arts have offered us all a feast since Covid -19 hit.

There’s one thing, though, that is, by its very nature, unavailable at home and that’s the magic of Serendipity. Out walking the streets as we used to, we might come upon a mass ballroom-dancing session on the Plaza outside the South Bank, or a Klesmer band playing on the bandstand in Regents Park. Maybe we’d drop in to the annual food festival in the grounds of our local church or marvel at the apples growing on a tree in the middle of Soho.We’d spot the familiar posse of large, leather-clad, gay men sipping coffee on the street and coo-ing over their assortment of tiny ,white, fluffy dogs. And here comes the local tailor, always immaculately turned out in a suit, waistcoat and tie, or the man who must, surely, be a jazz musician, dressed in a grey pin-striped frock -coat with a matching Borsalino. We haven’t seen the elderly woman with grey and fuschia-pink plaits down to her knees, for some time. It’s Serendipity who or what turns up in the pageant of the city.

It’s that Serendipity I’m missing as we pre-plan our day’s meals, decide when we will exercise, when to clean the house and what to watch on TV. The spur-of-the-moment moment is no more and I envy those of our friends still experiencing them. Here’s Tod, for instance, still accidentally locked down in the Scottish Highlands, relishing a serendipitous experience:

Don’t worry, he didn’t kill anything.The deer shed them annually.


And here’s the serendipitous dinner another couple of friends never knew they were going to have, until they came upon a new takeaway chippy during their daily exercise.

When Lockdown is over and we are free to go where and do what we choose, constrained only by our implacable diaries filled with their unmissable appointments, I vow to savour the impromptu and remember how much I missed it.

April 19

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

On the day Lockdown was extended for another three weeks (at least), crowds of people left their homes and crammed together, barely inches from one another, let alone feet, on Westminster Bridge, to clap for the carers – many of whom will shortly be looking after them when they end up in hospital. I discover I’m becoming judgemental and dogmatic as the lockdown goes on, pronouncing on the actions of people about whom I know absolutely nothing and laying down the law to the government as to how they should be handling this crisis, by shouting at the radio and television.



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My husband gave me a most beautiful anniversary present. It was our Crystal anniversary and he found this wonderful piece of Apophyllite, Stilbite and Chalcedony.

Apophylitte is supposed to “help develop faith and trust in the Divine”, Stilbite “emanates unceasing joy”, as well as helping one make the right choices and sleep better. Chalcedony absorbs negative energy and promotes harmony and clarity – so it looks as though I’m well- equipped to get through the next period of Lockdown. I’m particularly keen on the Stillbite. We could all do with some unceasing joy.

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London’s Mayor, Saddiq Khan, has said he wants everyone in London to wear face masks when we are finally allowed out of Lockdown. Trouble is, there’s too much choice. Do we buy the flimsy white papery ones? But shouldn’t they be three-ply, or is it 2-ply? Oughtn’t they to have a valve? And, if they do have a valve, what’s it for and do we have to change a filter? Or should we go for one of the sinister, black, gas-mask variety that make people look like Darth Vader? And is it true that they’re only useful if you’ve got it? Or is it true that it might protect you if you haven’t, but only a bit? Who knows? The only absolute certainty is that, by the time we have to have them, there won’t be any.

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After much angst, we decide to risk a takeaway meal. That momentous descision having been made, brings an avalanche of others in its wake. “Deliveroo”?, or not to “Deliveroo”? Or should it be the new ‘Supper’, which boasts only the most prestigious restaurants on its list? ‘Deliveroo’, we reason, has been doing it longest, so is the most experienced, which might make it safer. On the other hand, its bags have also been around longer so might be less hygienic. But ‘Supper’ is so new, maybe it doesn’t yet know what precautions to take. On the other hand, its bags are newer and it seems to send its drivers out in little cars, which might be more hygienic than “Deliveroo’s” motor cycle gear. Back and forth we go before eventually deciding, after much rational argument and employment of the finest logical deductions, on “Supper” – Smarter logo probably swayed it.

We order a divine feast at one of our favourite restaurants featuring Rotabaki Cuisine. I’ve never really known what that is, only that its flavours are ones I can never hope to reproduce in my own kitchen. We select about ten little dishes of exquisitely spiced delicacies.

Given that it’s such a special occasion, we both put on actual clothes – that’s to say, ones that don’t have elastic round the waist – and set the table with new Lockdown chic.

The doorbell rings and mayhem breaks loose. We shout through the intercom for the delivery person to come up to the sixth floor and we wait, peering through the spy- hole to see when he arrives.We are still waiting when he rings the bell again, having gone back downstairs, unable to find us. He comes back up, we wait for him to leave, then open the door. Outside are two plastic carrier bags filled with innumerable cardboard cartons of food. First, I sanitise the bags, then each carton in turn, handing them to my husband, who can’t work out whether, at the moment of receiving them, he should be taking off his surgical gloves or keeping them on, so stands, paralysed, by the door. We take the many sanitised boxes into the kitchen, where I re-sanitise them as I can’t remember which ones he carried and whether he had his gloves on or off. Finally, we plate up our dinner, look appreciatively at the first meal we haven’t cooked for four weeks, raise a glass to each other and begin on the divine, celebratory, and very expensive feast.

The food is, of course, by this time, cold.

APRIL 17

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

Today is our Wedding Anniversary

If we have to stay locked down for another eighteen months until there is a vaccine, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend this time with than my beloved husband.

There are reminders of our wedding all over our apartment, which is one of the reasons we’re glad to be locked down at home. The one I see most often, because it sits outside the kitchen window, is this gift from a couple of our guests, an exquisite reminder of our wedding flowers in vitreous enamel by textile designer, Janet Haigh, who also works across different materials and media.

Lily-Of-The-Vally were the flowers in my wedding bouquet and also in the huge bunch that Tricia and Tod brought, secretly, to the hotel where we were staying and had placed beside the bed so we were enveloped in their glorious scent as we collapsed after the celebrations and when we woke on our first morning as a married couple.

We were given another Janet Haigh work on our first Anniversary – traditionally commemorated by articles made from tin. Loving this, we wanted to display it to its best advantage and I even managed to contact the artist to see what kind of frame would suit it best. “Oh just bung it on a nail”, was her reply – and I do believe one should always pay attention to the vision of the artist.

Any marriage is going to be tested in these terrible times. I’m not talking abuse but the normal wear and tear of constant proximity. We are lucky to have enough room if we want to be separate, outside space to walk about in and deliveries of food by heroic young men and women swathed in motorcycle gear that looks more effective than PPE. But most of all, we are lucky to have each other.

My love, we are living through an apocalypse. All around us, people are dying, and we may be here for months or even years. Let us celebrate love, cling together and wish each other

Happy Anniversary

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If you’d like to see more of Janet Haigh’s beautiful pieces, you can Google her at Janet Haigh: Her Work

APRIL 16

~ coronet22 ~ Leave a comment

We are on the horns of a dilemma. Here we are, in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world, surrounded by some of the best restaurants in the world and deluged with torrents of cajoling emails from ‘Deliveroo”, “Uber Eats” and now, “Supper”, which claims only to deal with the most high end of the Capital’s establishments. So far, so good. I sit at my computer for nearly an hour, happily scrolling through the cuisines of the world. and relishing the taste of every dish in my head. Finally, I put together my perfect meal from one of my favourite Chinese restaurants, desperate for the sharp flavours I can’t seem to reproduce in my own kitchen. I wave my list of spare ribs, soft shell crab, hot and sour soup, and other delectable items at my husband and suggest he prepare his own and I will phone in the order. He agrees, turns, there is a pause, and then he casually enquires, “But is it safe?”.

I know him well enough to understand that a breezy “Oh, I’m sure it is” from me, won’t reassure him. We have both seen, often enough, the food delivery boys lounging on their bikes outside restaurants, food bags slung casually over their shoulders, empty ones jammed against the lamppost on which they’re leaning, full ones going cold as they chat. They don’t look particularly hygiene – conscious, but, then, what young man does?

I have what amounts to a reverence for the people doing deliveries at this treacherous time. Jumping on and off bikes, in and out of vans, traipsing from one household to another, not knowing what awaits them when they turn up, liistening to the alarmed shouts of “Can you leave it on the floor outside?”. Surely that must feel like an insult? I notice they’ve stopped taking the envelopes filled with the small change of gratitude I leave out for them. Of course they are as frightened of catching it from me as I am from them and I do worry about the selfishness of allowing them to put their lives at risk so we can live in comfort.

I Google “Is it safe to eat takeaway during Covid-19″ and get, as you would expect, both negative and positive answers delivered with the same assurance. Yes, so long as you remove the food from the packaging with an implement, transfer it to a plate, then wash your hands. No. You don’t know if the kitchen staff might be infected so you should never eat cold food and, although there is no proof that the virus can live on food, you might want to microwave it when you receive it, just to been the safe side.”

I end up more confused than when I started. My conviction is that it would be perfectly safe but there is enough doubt in the replies to unsettle me. After all, if there is “a safe side” to be on, there must also be an “unsafe side”and, since “The Writer” is already anxious – it’s looking very much like another night of baked beans on toast.