pumpkinstrokemarrow

Two foodoids before the conclusion. Firstly, the DT included a very odd recipe for bubble and squeak the other day - involving things like olive oil and onions. There was probably a drizzle of something. But the readers of the DT are awake! There was a drizzle of letters about how the proper way to cook bubble and squeak was with dripping (with chloresterol and other good things). Secondly, Mr Sainsbury is trying even harder to be cuddly. He has amused me for some time with his Yeo Valley natural yoghourt (so organic and natural that it contains no fat), alledgedly from some cow shed in Dorset, and he has now come out with Porky White's Surrey sausages. As it happens, Porky White used to live up the road, on the way to Chessington and knocked out his excellent sausages from a shed behind his bungalow. One of his customers was the Marquis of Granby (when that establishment was still a pub rather than a pen for the herding of youth), who used, in turn, to knock out excellent sausage rolls, with the sausages still warm from the oven. Best sausages for miles around. Now, although the shed up the road has been long gone, I did once meet a young lady who claimed to be some scion of the White stock and who claimed that sausages were still in production near Dorking somewhere. Someone has pulled off the trick of flogging the brand name if not the sausages to Mr Sainsbury. Our sample is presently in the freezer but we will report on whether the sausages have survived branding in due course.

And for the record, before the verdict on the Brazilian H&S case is in, I would like to record that, from what little has been in the press about the case, if the verdict is guilty (which I think it might well be), it would be very proper if both the commissioner and the commander on the day (Ms C Dick I think) were to resign on the spot, take their very fat pensions and go. Quite apart from the shambles that this case has emerged from, it is about time the great and the good started taking a bit more responsibility for their doings. And talking of fat pensions (noting in passing that I do not disapprove of people who get the push retaining them), Mr Merrill Lynch clearly had a very good pension deal - collecting £100m or something in the wake of getting the push for losing £10b or something.

Day 7: decided that Versailles was not quite the thing for a last day outing so headed for Sainte Chapelle. Getting in involved X-rays and so had to deposit my knife with the security people (along with maybe twenty others) against a labouriously written out receipt. (As it happens, the Cafe de Commerce of day 6 had the same brand for its steak knives - Laguiole - but in their case rather than presenting customers with a clasp knife, they presented them with a peice of stainless steel which had been moulded to look like an open clasp knife, complete with marque). On entry, it turned out that the chapel was not really a chapel at all but a reliquary - in this case for the original crown of thorns, purchased for some horrendous sum (around three times the cost of the very flashily turned out chapel) from the Emperor of Byzantium. Perhaps this is why the Ste Therese reliquary we saw a few days ago was shaped rather like a Ste Chapelle without the spire. Not nearly as holy as the last time I was there. In full daylight, with scaffolding over the altar end, with lots of tourists and lots of painted wood at ground level, the effect was a little tawdry, despite the huge stained glass windows which we could see. More impressive from the outside to see the chapel rearing up in all its ornateness from the side of a court in the middle of the Ministry of Justice. Then onto the Conciergerie with its rather grusome office de toilette where they cut your back hair off so that it did not get in the way of the blade of the guillotine. And also releived you of any valubles that might have survived up to that point. No point in giving them up to the blade operatives.

Then a circumnavigation of the quays of the Isle St Louis, at least nearly a circumnavigation. We were stopped by a stair at the Eastern end. Puchased picnic from boucherie and boulangerie (artisanal but no pains. Had to settle for a baguette - one being not quite enough and two being a little too much. All wrong) and settled down on a quay to eat it while we admired the large barges chugging up and down between the tripping boats. Especially intrigued by the tractor units of no size at all which pushed one large barge which pushed another. Not always clear how the barges (or tractor units as the case may be) got their cars off the top of the cabin onto the road. Then over the water towards the Pantheon where we found an expatriate (rather sloppily) run establishment called the Bombardier which actually sold quite decent pint of same. Hard to see how as they did not seem to be selling very much of it. But it was rather dear at 6 euros or so. Then the last church of the holiday - St Etienne du Mont. Another older baroque affair which has got rather lost in the haze after a week. (Maybe blotted out by the heavily restored and very handsome Hawkesmoor church in Bloomsbury which we visited yesterday. The English way of churches at approximately the same time). Passed on the Pantheon itself and finished up with a turn and a snooze in the Jardin de Luxembourg followed by a beer and a smoke in a cafe de quartier just South of the tube line (the square for which contained some unknown hero of Indo-China).

Dinner in the little farm which BH had been eyeing all week. Small owner occupier restaurant near the hotel. Not as good as the Cafe de Commerce but not bad at all. Good black pudding.