Up to my eyes

Categories: life, food, translation

Date: 03 June 2008 23:59:25

in elderflower cordial. This gentle little project is beginning to turn into something of a monster... to the extent that the education translation is turning into something of a displacement activity from the cordial production line.

I had a couple of disasters today. I was attempting to sterilise the bottles when the phone rang. It was a client wanting me to adjudicate on another translator's choice of word (yes, just the one...). This discussion took so long that that bottles which were in the oven suffered a mishap. Two of them had plastic and rubber bungs attached to the bottles by wires. By the time I returned to the kitchen, I was confronted with two little puddles of molten plastic on the floor of the oven. They looked very like small fried eggs - quite sweet - but a bit of a nightmare to scrape up. This meant that I was two bottles down on requirement as I hadn't anything else to act as a bung.

To make up for lost time on the phone call and scraping up solidifying plastic fried eggs, I then tried to cool one of the bottles down to allow me to fill it. I put it under the cold tap - too soon. The glass cracked. Three bottles down - a third of my volume requirement.

By now all the cordial had strained through the contraption I had set up and I had jugs of liquid and insufficient bottles. I remembered I had some more bottles but had run out of time to sterilise them.

I had phoned a pharmacy first thing this morning to check if they had some citric acid. They were expecting an order in today. Hurrah! I arranged to go and pick it up at 4.30 pm. I arrived and the pharmacist said they hadn't any after all. After a bit of sweet talking (it's all that cordial, you know), she agreed to order some for tomorrow but I would have to buy in bulk as the wholesaler wouldn't deliver in small quantities (I only want 100 grams...). I have a basket full of elderflower heads which are waiting to be dunked in the solution ...they'll be ruined soon... and I have to go back to the pharmacy tomorrow for the citric acid which will take up another hour out of my day.... The pharmacist couldn't say what the shelf life is for citric acid so if it's short, I may have to go into full time elderflower cordial production.

In education news, I have translated 19 out of 116 pages.