I had it all planned out. Nine months on, another post, telling you all how it had turned out for me.

It took me some time to write my post What In Hell Am I Doing: I mean, rather like the decision it was explaining, it felt like I should take a bit of care over it. All the same, I never imagined the wave of positive energy it generated at the time. It really seemed to strike a chord with so many people.

So the temptation to follow it up nine months on with something as long was almost – almost – irresistible. And then I thought, nah, let’s do a scallop recipe instead.

More of that in a paragraph or two. Meantime, short version: for those of you who read the original post about my leap into the unknown back in January, giving up a well-paid job of 30+ years with no immediate parachute – it’s gone well. Really, really well. I have good quality, challenging work, that lets me draw on my previous experience but still stretches me, two or three days a week. I have two public sector clients (with maybe another couple in the pipeline) and the people I work with are a pleasure to work with. I only have to manage myself.

The rest of the time, well, I just have a blast. Inasmuch as any of us is having a blast at the moment, that is: my world of work changed just as everyone’s whole world got turned upside down by the Covid thing. Working from home, though, wasn’t a problem: and the people that matter most to me are all doing well. The people I’d worked with, or worked with previously, have variously stayed in touch, or not, and that’s all just fine.

I don’t mean to go all Hare Krishna about it, but it kind of feels like I’ve reached the next level in terms of accepting the things I can’t change and changing the things I can and all that.

Okay, so that was three paragraphs.

So. This scallop recipe, then. I had originally planned to try a Tom Kitchin recipe that was so incredibly faffy and cheffy I thought it would be funny to see just how long it actually took, without an army of sous-chefs to bark instructions at. But life is short and so is the prep time for this one, which I kind of made up a few years ago:

Scallops with Thai Yellow Curry Sauce and Chorizo

Decent slug olive oil

2 – 3 scallops per person, depending on how big you like your starters

Packet of ready cubed chorizo, or half a real one, cubed small

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 to 1 tsp Thai yellow curry paste (we use Mae Ploy, available in all good Chinese supermarkets)

Herbs of some kind to garnish (maybe tarragon) if you’re feeling fancy

Method: fry up the chorizo till the oil colours up nicely and takes on the flavour, then reserve the chorizo using a slotted spoon. Raise the heat a bit and do the scallops for a minute each side; add in the paste and the lemon juice, put the chorizo back in, stir and heat through. Garnish with chopped tarragon, and you’re done.

Serve with bread because you’ll really want to mop up that sauce.

…and that’s it! This weekend has been my birthday weekend, which is one of the reasons I’d originally planned to have a Big Update on my adventure into the unknown. However, I also had time to upload another new song on Friday, which pretty much says where I’m at right now, in a roundabout way.

I’ll be back to my mostly tongue in cheek miserabilist stuff next week though, don’t worry!