You can’t always get what you want

Just got back from the recording of the News Quiz at the BBC Radio Theatre – excellent panel and a very amusing evening. Thank goodness that we were both well enough to go! I have not recovered as quickly as Alison from this bug and this has caused me some difficult moments. My stomach has been rumbling like thunder moving over the plains after every (light) meal and we all know that a storm follows thunder! So, when my light lunch today heralded a new, non-celestial chorus I began to wonder if it would be wise for me to leave for the BBC.

At the very least they might have decided that my stomach was too loud for the recording studio equipment!

Happily, the storm passed and I refrained from even a snack until now (10:53pm at time of writing this bit).

I came home imagining a meal of a lovely bag of chips..... perhaps a saveloy as well, as it was too late for a bit of cod, but I decided that this would not be a wise choice for both digestive and pecuniary reasons so I sat in the kitchen wondering what to have.

It was one of those times when the kitchen seemed to have nothing available for me to eat. Admittedly, this is Thursday, and Friday is shopping day, so the cupboards were a bit lighter in available foodstuffs than usual - but that was not the real reason. It was just that when you set your heart on something it can be hard to move yourself towards a lesser alternative. Couple this with it being a bit late in the day and with hunger nagging you in an annoying way and you begin to feel that nothing will do.

Then I looked in the cupboard where we keep our various tinned goods and I saw that we had some tinned tuna and tins of chickpeas and an amusing thought occurred. Fish and chips, fish and chips, fish and chicks! Weak link, I know, but I was clutching at straws.

So I am now eating a salad of tuna and chickpeas with some onions caramelised in olive oil (from yesterday) and some left over salsa with a bit of lemon juice, white wine vinegar, pepper and Tabasco. It is a pleasing mixture.

All that this illustrates is that, as Mick Jagger tells us, you can't always get what you want, but you can get what you need (rough quote).

So, what relevance has this to the walk?

Well, firstly, it is a reference back to this idea of making do as you progress along the road – we are not always able to make do gracefully but whether we do or not, we can make life easier for ourselves if we try to focus on the possible rather than the most desired thing. Of course, even if we fail to do this we will still survive and the next day will be different.

And then there is the ongoing story of our preparations and I have been trying to find a particular type of rucksack, one made by those wonderful people at Osprey, and it seems that every store in the world has run out of the particular version I am looking for and they are not likely to get any more from Osprey for a while!

The Exos 34 is what I can't seem to get but want! It weights under a kilo and for my medium height it can pack up to 34 litres inside, it is the state of the art and when I didn't have the means to buy it I tried one on and it fitted like the proverbial glove. Bah humbug!

Tomorrow I will write to the Osprey people themselves and ask what's going on – perhaps they might even offer me some much needed help when I explain the good use it will be put to and that it will be undergoing a 1600 mile road test, to boot!

Otherwise I will just have to find another light weight sack to meet my needs.