Scrambled tofu, litter, Elizabeth’s hair and a playground for the primary school

This week I made scrambled tofu – think scrambled eggs but with tofu. It worked splendidly. I put some chives and wild garlic from the garden into it plus some turmeric but you could put anything you would normally mix into scrambled eggs. I also added oat milk.

Mash up the tofu first then mix in the extras and fry it.

I put it on a slice of freshly baked sourdough bread with mushrooms, kale and tomatoes.

Yum!

Today I spent a couple of hours picking up litter in Torry. We walk there every Friday evening for Elizabeth’s musical theatre class and I was horrified by all the litter I saw there last night so went back today to clean some of it up. I feel as though I barely scratched the surface so I’ll make it a regular activity. But I did clean up this little patch on Walker Place. Here’s before and after.

Torry is an underprivileged area in Aberdeen and the litter problem is particularly bad there. Are people who live in poor areas more likely to litter or is it that there are fewer litter-pickers living there? I think when you are down and out in life or struggling perhaps litter is not something you worry or even think about. What can we do to turn the situation around?

Litter attracts more litter. When a place looks neglected and unkempt then people think it is socially acceptable to litter. There is a train of thought called the broken windows theory which says that visible broken windows, litter and graffiti create an environment that attracts more anti-social behaviour. Start by fixing the little problems and the bigger problems are less likely to follow.

I managed to get Elizabeth to the hair dresser today for the second time in her life. She’s not interested in clothes, hair, makeup or other teenage girl things – thank goodness! – but her hair was getting very long and difficult to manage. She’s got beautiful thick, wavy hair and it’s looking particularly fine after a cut.

The cat has decided that since we’re not getting any visitors in the near future, she’ll take over the spare bedroom, thank you very much.

When our kids were in primary school I tried very hard but failed miserably to make their school playground look less like a prison and more like a play area for children. There was immense resistance from the teaching staff at the time that I still don’t understand to this day but I remember it caused me a lot of grief and stress. One reason the school gave against making changes to the playground was that play equipment would make it impossible for a fire appliance to get into the grounds but when I asked someone from the fire service about it they said an appliance wouldn’t fit through the gates and they’d instead work from the street. Here’s a photo of the playground back in 2016 when our kids were there.

Fast forward to now and it seems a teacher at the school has managed to spear-head a campaign centred around the importance of play and not only is the school getting a whole new playground but they’ve demolished the ugly tunnel you can see in the left of the photo (this was something I suggested back in 2016) and also a building that you can’t see that connects to the other end of the tunnel. I’ve seen the plans and they are way more ambitious and impressive than I could ever have imagined back in 2016; I’m so glad that my hopes for the playground never came to fruition because what’s happening now is far more transformative. We walk past regularly and have been eagerly watching the demolition and transformation. You can see in this next photo the ugly tunnel is gone. I always thought it looked like a cancerous growth.

This is the building that got demolished at the other end of the tunnel. It was not built at the same time as the original school which is Victorian and will remain in all its glory thankfully. This building was called the annex and was built in 1935. It wasn’t particularly attractive so I don’t think anyone will object now it’s gone.

A new extension for the Victorian building has started to take shape.

I’ll post photos of it once it’s finished.

And lastly, Bertie visited us again last night.