The promise of chocolate
I love Easter. The squeaky clean green of the grass. The first primroses. Drifts of daffodils in gardens rather than the supermarket displays. And chocolate. Good thick 70% armbreaking stuff. Savoured in the greenhouse, behind the wheel of Jalopy and in bed. One terrible year Danny ate my Easter Eggs. I’d offered him a bit and he took this as a green light to gradually, secretly, wolf the lot. I’m a one chocolate a day sort of girl. Danny is an egg an hour sort of guy. I was happy just admiring the boxes for a couple of weeks until...
read moreMess
A few years ago Danny admitted that he had considered leaving me. “The problem is that you are so untidy. You have too much stuff and too little space. At one point I just felt I couldn’t cope.” He stared at me with a slightly pop eyed look. Probably expecting an explosion. I could only agree with him. Luckily he has very little in the way of possessions. Even the Min Pins have more toys. His arrival at the cottage had a big impact on my life and a small impression on the space. Until he tired of living out of a suitcase and...
read moreFarmer’s marrow rum recipe update
Marrows were half price in the supermarket last weekend. I hovered by the stand, wickedly tempted. It wasn’t the prospect of stuffed marrow that had this magic effect. We have completed stage one of our marrow rum experiment. It has finally been transferred to a demi john and is now skulking in the airing cupboard. It smells delicious, just like rum. Suddenly I joined those triumphant Neanderthals who discovered they had inadvertently made something delicious. When I appeared in The Rat Room with a very long plastic bucket and a marrow...
read moreDieting
(Written mid February 2007 and discovered when considering my waistline and searching for decent soup recipes on the laptop today. Inca poses with a twelve inch pocket tape measure.) Listening to the reports of the London Fashion week and the sizes of models. D and my sizes were not mentioned. I wasn’t surprised as we are drifting fast into the cuddly range that means clothes cling to our bodies rather than drop enticingly from the slimmest of shoulders. Before today, I hadn’t realised there was a size 0. In the UK, this is...
read moreJalopy
Last year we shared Jalopy for a few weeks when Danny’s car was out of action. Living in the country, this could have been a nightmare but Danny became the chauffeur and Jalopy the only executive car in the exclusive Cottage Smallholder Mini Cab Service fleet. I was driven to work and collected in the evenings. I must admit that I hadn’t realised quite how eccentric this old lady looks. She stands out from the crowd of other ancient Volvos. Not just the fact that her paint is now a stylish matt but her back seat and boot are loaded...
read moreCompanion vegetable
Danny and I both enjoy the weekly visit to our butcher. D considers them to be great “craic”. He shopped happily at Fred Fitzpatrick’s each week when I was down in Saffron Walden for months. When I was able to drop by again on Friday, Fred was able to do a passable Cork accent. I was impressed. Admittedly I had been away for some time. I spotted a large marrow lounging amongst the vegetables when I breezed in last Friday. It had a label stuck on its side which I examined as John sliced the sirloin steaks. It read “Free...
read moreDog days
I reckon that there must be a few dogs in my ancestry as most dogs get along with me, even the difficult ones with a history of biting tradesmen. Dashit had made an impression on the inspection visit. His owner holding him firmly by the collar as he roared and growled at me. After a vociferous struggle he was closeted in a separate room. It was clear from the thumps on the door that he didn’t like it. The job looked fine, wallpapering a hunting scene in a mirrored bedroom. I wasn’t so sure about Dashit. “Dashit, might growl...
read moreBonfires
John Coe arrived this morning looking chirpy and presented me with a bag of his own beetroot. He clearly had got over his potato blight depression. We sat drinking coffee and chatting and all was well until we tramped down the garden and I stupidly mentioned tomato blight. He stopped walking and turned to me immediately. “I had 15 plants standing out in the ground. They got the blight. Dead in three days. Disaster.” His face was grim. Last night I discovered that our broad beans had been infected with Chocolate Spot and Rust and...
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