pumpkinstrokemarrow

A set-up captured for posterity a long way southeast of Gibralter.

Dennis Skinner used to be known as the beast of Bolsover, but became, or at least became seen as, a loveable rogue in old age. Tony Benn has followed a similar path. Now it is the turn of Bill Deedes, the subject of acres of fawning prose in the DT. One Richard Davenport-Hines writes about him in the TLS, a propos of a biography, and makes him out to be a very rum cove, but one who had what used to be called a good war, despite trauma near the end. A wow at office politics (although not a wow at more personal relationships) and greasy pole climbing, a feeble Cabinet minister in 1962 and a not much better editor of the DT in 1974. Got on by being nice to those with the power to advance him. But became a very successful columnist in 1987 towards the end of his very long career. And now resides in glory on his cloud on high. What, one wonders, has R D-H got against him? But the lesson is clear. If you last long enough, you will make it to secular saint. Not the other sort as the church still has some standards.

This despite the rather tortuous derivation of secular, being something to do with gaming in ancient Rome.

A new kind of lorry on the way back from Cheam the day before yesterday. A Travis Perkins lorry, with the usual grab between cab and the back (surely there is a proper word for the back half of a non-articulated lorry? Not trailer that is. It will perhaps come to me post-blog), but with two short flights of steel steps, one on each side at the rear-end, topped off with a railing across said end to stop one falling off again. Rather like a stumpy version of the companionways on ferries. And not reaching anywhere near the ground - although the idea is presumably to make it easier for people to get up onto and down from the back when unloading the thing. Maybe I will get to see the stairs at work one day.

Drawn to pompous thoughts by a peice in yesterday's DT about the seriously unpleasant way that negociations between supermarkets and their suppliers are conducted. One can see that there is a lot at stake and that such negociations can hardly be cosy - but do they have to be so nasty? Is it really worth having such cheap food in shops, if this is the way that the shops behave to make it so? What is the point of being rich if we sell - if not poison - our souls along the way? As, I think, Huxley pointed out, the ends do not justify the means, the ends are the means.

And then I was reminded by a discussion of aspect in Slavonic verbs, of the complexity of describing the time occupied by an action - an action (for these purposes) being what it is that a sentence with a verb describes. We suppose that an action occupies a closed interval of time, that is to say that it starts at X and ends at Y, with Y bigger than X. The degenerate case of an instant where X=Y is an unnatural, human artefact. Natural actions occupy positive time. Suppose further we have an interval A, about which we wish to say something. We might want to say where it is in relation to the present (an instant), in which case we have three options. A is before the present, in the past; A straddles the present; or A is after the present, in the future. Alternatively, we might want to say where the interval A stands in relation to the interval B, in which case there are rather more options. A can come entirely before B (A before B), can contain B (B while A), can be contained in B (A while B), can come entirely after B (A after B), or can otherwise overlap with B (A starting before B or A ending after B. I don't think think there is a neat way of saying these ones in English). Then, there is the question of the length of the interval. The intervals appropriate to some verbs - like hit - are presumed to short, while those of others - like is - are presumed to be long. And if one is well oiled, one might start to think about what one might say about discontinuous actions, perhaps better described as successive actions of the same kind. For example, the successive spittings of the decent widow being touched up by Richard III. How do we capture some sense of the number of spittings? Their duration in time?

Generally speaking, tense, auxiliary verbs and conjunctions like while & after enable us to talk about this sort of thing, in English anyway, in a very economical way. But, returning to the Slavs, it seems that they have lighted on a rather differant way of doing tense than us Germanic-Romantic types. As if they have come up with a differant set of axioms to ours, but which amount, in some sense, to the same thing. I dare say there were scholars in the last two centuries who wrote very fat books about tense systems across the world. And district commissioners who had to learn strange languages in the Papuan Highlands, who wrote thin books about their tense systems. These last were probably helped by having learnt Latin and Greek (grammer) at their public schools.

Following another tip from Tooting tried another new recipe yesterday. Get pie dish and cover it with large peice of tin foil. Take a slab of stewing beef, not too lean and with a bit of connective too, maybe 1.5 inches thick and weighing about a pound. Place it in foil. Surround with quartered onion. Pour on a mixture of three tablespoons of Theakston's XB and three more of Watkins' mushroom ketchup. (The wrapper on this last explains that this is what the Victorians used to gee up their pies and stews - in the days before proper E-numbers were invented. Never heard of the stuff before). Close up the foil and put in oven at 130C for four hours. Serve with entire boiled potatoes, beet spinach and Budweiser (Mortlake tinned variety, not the posh stuff from the Czech republic). Every bit as good as it was claimed to be in Tooting. Texture and taste of beef excellent.

Continuing to re-read Huxley in the intervals of Simenon. Done 'Point Counter Point' and now into 'Eyeless in Gaza'. Not for the first time, I wonder what on earth I could of made of them when I first read them as a child - no doubt prompted by my mother, for whom Huxley was one of the heroes of her young-woman-hood. I had not remembered how autobiographical they were - which must have been rather a pain for his nearest and dearest. Or how interested he was in mothers generally - having lost his much loved mother around the age of 12 - and in older, experienced women having affairs with younger, inexperienced men. Mother substitutes (surrogates?), no doubt. And despite the rather dated ambiance and clever-cloggery, there is still a lot to learn from him. Not least, being reminded to have a serious listen to the third movement of the Op132 string quartet which figures at the close of P C Point.

During which, I came across our copy of Uncle Remus. Looks as if it was new in the fifties, published by one P R Gawthorn of Russell Square (never heard of them, so presumably now defunct), and having passed through the hands of Bowes and Bowes (now also defunct) at some point. Can't find any date of publication in it. I remember reading some of it to one or other of the sprogs - who did not care for the lilting manner of reading which I liked to get into - a trick which seemed to make the thick accents of the fictional narrator more intelligible. The stories are wonderful - but I wonder what the nannies would make of it all. One rather suspects that they would condemn the whole book of Uncle Tomism if not racism. And blacks might well find it offensively patronising. Which is a pity because some good things come out of bad. If I remember, I will see if our library carries it in their childrens' section or their black studies section. Or at all.

Two of the thrush like birds noted earlier on the lawn yesterday. Maybe they are just thrushes.

A new smoked haddock recipe applied to tea, following a tip from Tooting. Simmer fish in skimmed milk, until the skin comes off. Make up a white sauce, starting with finely chopped onion, adding back the slimmed milk at the appropriate point and ending with a modest amount of cheese. Add flaked fish back at the end of the proceedings. Serve with courgettes halved crosswise (better whole, but this requires a big saucepan. And the courgettes being known colloquially in this part of Epsom as torpedos), and entire boiled potatoes. A sort of thick variant on the soup we had last week - ingredients not that differant.

Followed by earnest debate in TB about the smoking regulations, generally reckoned to have damaged trade in this (largely) smokers' establishment. It has been suggested that Boris J, should he get in, will do something to cut back the draconian regulations which have been implemented in this green and formerly happy land. While there was general agreement that maybe even the Major of London could not do anything for pubs in Surrey, there was very little agreement as to whether he could do anything for pubs in London (which included one or two within a mile or so of TB). I thought that maybe there was room for him to manoeuvre if he could persuade local authorities not to enforce the regulations in respect of certain premises, say those whose managers and staff elected to run a smoker's operation. Where would that leave central government? Would they send the troops in to sort out a local authority which declined to enforce the full rigour of the law? More likely, I imagine, that there is some general purpose power to fine councillors in authorities which do not play the central government game. No council is going to stand up to pressure of that sort for a minority issue of this sort.

Then maybe I thought that there might be provision in the act for exemptions, maybe in the gift of local authorities. Peeking at chapter 1 (smoking) of part 1 of chapter 28 of the Health Act 2006, I find that the appropriate national authority (presumably the Secretary of State for Health, whatever he or she might be called these days), can indeed make exemptions. But the words appear to specifically preclude exemptions being made in respect of pubs or clubs. The up side is that one can easily print this part of the act off without paying. This does not seem to be the case with the regulations which back up the act. While they are readily available on the internet, they are not in printer friendly format although there is an option to pay here to have the thing sent to one. Maybe I am not looking in the right place. In any event, the story seems to be that it is indeed the duty of local authorities to enforce the act but I couldn't find the bit that explained what would happen if they were a bit lax about it.

So one goes back to the hope that over time local authorities will not be too busy in the matter of enforcement and will tolerate a few dens - rather in the sensible way that they used to tolerate a few under age drinking pubs - I assume on the sensible grounds that a bit of moderate under age drinking indoors and under supervision is better than a free for all on the park - which might, after all, be infested with people selling far worse things that a few tinnies - or a few Woodbines for that matter. The pessimistic view is that there are enough busy bodies who will creep around smelling such places out and complaining to local authorities, to make it hard for these last to turn the blind eye.

And it seems that the chap who made a stand in Blackpool has been forced to back down if not out of business. But I suppose there was never much hope that such flagrant defiance of the law was going to be tolerated. Unless, of course, thousands of students had turned up to stage non-violent smoke-ins in his pubs. Maybe have lightening smoke-ins all over the country? How long would they have had to keep it up until the authorities saw a bit of sense? Would they be tough enough to apply punitive damages to the unwilling hosts for such smoke-ins? Would they use anti-terrorist powers to monitor the movement of the cars of smoke-in leaders as they travelled around the motorway network (as I believe them to have done during the miners' strike) under the all seeing eyes of the soon to be universal CCTV network? I guess all this falls apart because smoking is very much a minority sport these days, and a good proportion of those that do wish they didn't. One is not going to get a decent demonstration together. Oddly, anti-hunting seems to be another matter. Not heard much about them recently, but before the hunts were banned they seemed to be able to muster good numbers.

Calmed down by finishing weeding the Autumn Bliss rasberries on the Western edge of the deer exclosure. Pleasantly warm after the rain in the middle of the day. The things are sprouting well, despite all the weeds. Must try to keep it properly weeded this year.

Broad Beans mostly up now and quite a lot missing. Maybe as many as one in four which is worse than I usually do. And the slugs are moving into action on them. Most of the ones I have seen are quite small - but that will no doubt soon change. Regular weeding should help keep them down - if I can get around to it. Digging and planting is one thing, weeding another!

Another seed bed prepared and seeded on the Northern allotment. Two rows of Bulgarian wheat, two rows of Autumn Giant leeks, two rows of Primo cabbage and one row of radishes. Second and last items courtesy of Tompson and Morgan courtesy of a former employee courtesy of a denizen of TB. Fenced in with three strands of copper and red and white incident tape. The former for the slugs and the latter for the deer. And, given that there are signs of slug activity on weeds round about, scattered a few handfuls of slug pellets around.

The first lot of Bulgarian wheat (see 24/7/2007) coming up quite well with the tallest around a foot high now. Maybe two thirds of them survived the winter, the slugs and the grazing deer. Probably not a good time to plant some more but it is supposed to be tough old stuff. We will see whether it comes into ear before the weather turns in the Autumn.

I mentioned a bad loaf from Waitrose the other day. Not only was it bad to eat, it did something very odd to the bread pudding. Something that the BH makes on a regular basis and which varies quite a bit according to the exigencies of the moment. Dearth of raisins, milk with any fat in it and so forth. But with this bread made a pudding of most unusual finish. Very flat and yellow. Clearly something very wrong with the best organic flour used by Waitrose. The loaf was one of those with a cooked on (rice paper?) label - so beware!

Returning to Ely, our visit included a visit to the cathedral - our annual tickets proving a very good buy - where we focussed on the carving around the stalls of the lady chapel. A tropical exuberance, albeit on a fairly small scale. All sorts of strange animals, vegetables and minerals. Several green men lurking above in bosses. All much damaged, partly age and partly the reforming vandals of the reformation. Maybe we should persuade some rich person to build a new one, painted stone and all (using original (animal, vegetable or mineral?) pigments, naturally. None of this modern stuff. Church Commissioners to audit), to give us an idea of what it would have looked like when it was built. Assuming that it was ever finished as an integral design - which the cathedral itself probably was not, although this lady chapel might well have been.

Sadly, too many people about to test the accoustics on this occasion.

The carving of the windows, arches and so forth of the chancel was fairly exuberant too. Made that of the earlier nave look very stolid - although very fine in a differant way.

Perhaps the replica should be in Dubai to grace the new offshore housing estate being built for people with more money than sense (see yesterday's Guardian). Why on earth would one pay lots of dosh to go and live in a house on a sandbank in 45C or whatever it is in the summer? Where as well as feeling hot and uncomfortable, you can feel guilty about the probably dreadful conditions of the Bangladeshis who built the place. Maybe it is for the company - such a place selects people of a feather who are going to get on well with eachother. Who love playing my bank account is bigger than yours all day. But then again, maybe they get to dislike the place so much that they hire resting actors to impersonate them, while they themselves relax in pleasanter climes.

Or those who like height with their heads.

I think I must be in danger of becoming one of these, having recently sent off quite a few enquiries about matters of no great importance. BH says it is half a function of getting older and half a function of having time on one's hands.

Shippams score highly, having both bothered to read my letter - the first two paragraphs of the reply being custom built - I allow the remainder as boiler-plate - and to reply. It is possible that they will check what their pot packing machines were doing on the day in question. Epsom Council do quite well on systems. That is to say I send an email to some query address. Their computer traps it, assigns it a reference number and sends me an acknowledgement. Quite soon, a person replies saying that they will reply properly soon. A day or so after that, a substantive reply saying that they can't reply as the matter is one of common law which they do not get into. Try citizens advice. They don't do email so I don't suppose I shall bother. I guess Epsom Council know from experience that giving anything close to legal advice is likely to involve them in work and bother they could do without - so if they can, they do.

The matter was dogs. An inhabitant of TB asserted that if the fence between him and his neighbour belonged to his neighbour, it was the responsibility of that neighbour to ensure that the inhabitant's dog could not get through the fence to foul the neighbour's garden. This struck me as sufficiently unlikely that I remembered, through the haze of NBrown, to check with Mr Google the following morning. I found that most local authorities and lots of doggy organisations have web material on the subject of dog control in a general way. Some circumstantial evidence that it is the responsibility of the owner of a dog to make sure that the dog stays on his land when not being taken out. But no simple statement about fences. One US website started getting into the land law of livestock management - but which, I imagine, is rather differant over there with there being so much more land. Which was why I then turned to the council. I suppose if I was rich, I would now fire off a missive to my solicitor who could then, having spent a happy couple of hours in the pub, spend a happy chargeable afternoon poking the subject around - much more fun than yet another conveyance or divorce. But I am not rich so I won't.

Various matters of interest on the way to Ely and back - including Denny Abbey mentioned earlier. Sailed past the grandly named Waste Management Park on the A10 North of Cambridge to find the fairly small hedgerow trees full of rooks' nests and rooks. The WMP might be grandly named but a tip was still a tip as far as keeping a bunch of rooks going was concerned. There used to be lots of seagulls there but did not see any on Wednesday.

On to the Lamb at Ely which is not a bad place at all to stay but where we find, on reading the small print, that the special Internet package of room and dinner costs slightly more than buying the special Internet package of room only and buying the meal when one gets there. And was too tired or too wet to complain when the house speciality of steak burger turned out to have been reheated from lunchtime. Or at least it tasted as if it had been. Still, the Greene King IPA was up to scratch. Having done that we then found that the riverside stank of drains after all the rain. And then that there was another establishment just down the road from the Lamb - a very long establishment running between two roads - at which a bevy of middle aged chaps were being very convivial and who, after being seated at a suitably long table, were served with what looked very like a school dinner. That is to say something like cottage pie but served in a large oblong tub at the end of the table, with the chap at that end of the table dishing out the portions for the convives. Just like we used to do at school. There was also a healthy smell of well boiled cabbage to round out the impression. We didn't get to see what they got for pudding but I hope it was steamed with custard. Too scruffy to be masons and we were not there long enough to inquire what they actually were.

In the morning discovered that Ely ran to two bakers - both traditional in appearance and with middle aged female staff with regional accents - but I did not like the look of the bread in either. Looked to have been made out of cheap flour and they were going for compete with Mr Sainsbury rather than for quality - presumably because there are still more poor people working the land in North Cambridgeshire than suburban types with time and money to fuss about their bread. On the up side, there was a pork butcher, so we were able to buy strips of pork belly - far too common to be visible for sale at Cheam. So pork belly strip baked under onion and sliced par-boiled potatoes for tea last night, the first time for some months, maybe even years. Used to be a staple. The butcher also sold us a couple of thick slices of what used to be called gala pie and which looked as if it he had made it himself. Jolly good picnic they made too. Whole lot for £3.50 or so. Not sure why two hefty looking country butchers felt the need to have a security camera in what was quite a small shop. But then we know (a lady) someone who used to sell such things and would probably have suceeeded in selling one to these chaps.

Bluebells out down the bottom of the garden, where the celandines are getting towards the end. First newt of the season spotted in the pond, where the king cups are full on. And the first starling in the garden for ages. Being harassed (probably sizually) by a magpie. There ought to be a law about it.

First visit to Cheam for a few days. Managed not to wear my gloves but would have done better not to wear jacket either. It was actually quite warm for once. Nearly ran into a lady who cut me up at a junction - turning left right in front of me - so had to buy a Bakewell to calm my nerves. Might even eat it later.

They really do read their post!

This from the free internet cafe part of the educational area at Denny Abbey somewhere South of Ely. Been past it many times, now actually made it inside. Started as a retirement home for Templars, then a toy nunnery for a countess when the the Templars were chucked out, then farmhouse when the nuns were chucked out (Henricus VIII). Plus cute calves and ancient espalier fruit trees. So ancient that the trunks were flat rather than round. Never seen the same before. Well worth the £4 entry.

A newish sort of fish soup a couple of days ago, that is to say a variant on one reported before. Take a pound of smoked haddock and simmer to loosen the skin. Remove from water, remove skin and flake. Add a couple of pounds of peeled potatoes to water and simmer. Add a few stalks of celery (the clean green stuff, not the full on organic gear covered in black earth). Meanwhile, fry up some bacon and onions in butter. When potatoes cooked, add bacon and onion. After a few minutes add the fish and serve. Not bad at all. The two of us managed about half a gallon of the stuff.

The bad news is that, confined to quarters yesterday, I learn that organic white bread from Waitrose is pretty dire. Despite paying nearly as much for it as for a loaf from Cheam, one gets a very dull and stodgy object. Not even much use for toast. Now while supermarket bread is not really bread (white caps alone do not a baker make), I had thought better of Waitrose.

Resumed reading the slightly seedy - if honest - memoires of Simenon. It seems that he really got the pop-star treatment in his hey-day back in the early fifties of the last century. Feted when he got off liners and feted big time by his home town in Belgium. Money coming out of his ears. One could do a sum about how much he made for each of his 400 or so books compared with how much Ms Rawling made for each of her 10 or so. And it would be interesting to know about volumes achieved, numbers of translations and films. All that sort of thing. Presumably she wins the dosh-per-book stakes, reflecting the longer reach of fashions, fads and the marketeers in these globalised days. I also learn that the term for US style doughnuts in the Belgium of his youth was Berlin balls. Splendid name.

And annoyed to read that yet another rich and greedy lady banker, having lost her grip on the greasy pole, has played the sex discrimination card. Have these people no pride? Why does she not just retire to the country with her loot and take up country pursuits? And if they are so keen on their work, why do they do it? Someone who has been a plaintiff in tribunals of this sort will never be employed by anyone serious again. Her card will be well and truly marked. Fortunately, it is still relatively easy not to employ someone - compared with getting rid of them once you have.

Have got into the habit of eating breakfast white puddings at the rate of two fifths, two fifths and one fifth. On the grounds that a third is not quite enough - but with the downside that on the third day there is nowhere near enough. So today the last fifth was augmented with an egg which was hatched maybe fifty yards down the road. Not a particularly big egg - I think the chickens involved might be housewife hand reared on organic maize but are not particularly big themselves - but the yolk was enormous. Maybe half as wide again as a regular egg and very yellow. BH thought it was one of those yolks which nature had intended as twins, but which had quite made it to the point of division. Tasted OK, whatever.

As a result of a chance conversation in the Tooting Wetherspoons, am now an expert on English measures of land. One confusion is dispersed when I learn that rods (old English), poles (old English) and perches (French) are all the same as a measure of length at 5.5 yards (a fairly hefty pole if one is carrying it about, perhaps as a spear). There is also a measure of area called a pole, being a square pole or 30.25 square yards. A chain is then 4 poles or 66 feet (moving into proper, numerological or Babylonian numbers and also bringing in the good prime number 11) and 10 chains is one furlong. A furlong is old English for furrow, and a field which is a furlong square or 10 acres in area, was the proper size for a village field under the open field system, with any one villager having a one or more furlongs. A chain can also be expressed as a 100 links and an acre as 100,000 square links. Surveyors using chains would have to be careful as the length of their chain would increase by approximately one fifth of an inch if the temperature rose by 20F. Maybe there was an angle here. Finally, a furlong was conflated with the Roman stadium some time around 900AD, a stadium being one eighth of a Roman mile of 1,000 paces of 1.618 yards each, to give our mile of 1,760 yards. The Welsh, Irish and Scottish miles were somewhat differant. The mil(l)e word for 1,000 appears to appear in both old English and Latin, so maybe is of Aryan orgin. I also learn that one can either express a pace as the distance between one foot and the next or as the distance between successive footfalls of the same foot. I don't think the Romans were giants so I think they must have gone for this second option.

My own two allotments are charged in square metres, with a total of 540 square metres, maybe 20 poles, giving 10 poles as the standard size for an allotment. And now, having spent quite enough time on numbers, time to get to Cheam while they still have some white bread left.

The water filter people - Brita - sell two versions of the filter for our sort of jug which look identical but which have differant names - Matra and Matra Technology. As they are rather expensive and since we are easily confused by name changes of this sort, thought we would try the contact point given at the Brita web site. It turns out that they are another efficient mob. Get one email after a day or so acknowledging my important communication and an answer a day or two after that. The grammer of the answer not impeccable, but the gist of the thing was clear enough. Package changed but content not changed.

Interested to read a few days ago, a propos of the Diana business resumed (concluded even?), that the PR person employed by the owner of Harrods is a lady Oxford graduate earning around £300,000 a year. Given the form of the owner, I imagine she is a young and a good looker. But is it a good use of her expensive education? Did she go to some fancy public school and what is being bought is really a Sloane package? So that Sloane-ness can be acquired by association. I imagine that rich non-Sloanes - for example most famous footballers - are rather keen on that sort of thing. I wonder how I would feel doing that sort of work? Wake up in the morning feeling a bit grubby? Or would the size of the pay cheque enable me to wash away any doubts I might have about the nature of my trade?

Interested also to read that Pickering & Chatto have seen fit to publish 1,200 pages of the diary of one Elizabeth Inchbald, an all round thespian from the 18th century, of whom I had never previously heard. A snip at £275 for the three volumes. I wonder who buys this sort of thing? The odd PhD student or academic is going to want such a thing, but there cannot be that many of them. They do have the public service excuse that the originals from which they are publishing are starting to fall apart, despite the best efforts of the Folger library, and that if they do not do a proper transcription now, they may not be able to in the future. Perhaps a more sensible solution would have been to publish the thing on the web and save all those trees. Provided, of course, one could have come to some arrangement about funding.

Finished off the two half rows of leaf beet yesterday. Brisk wind out on the allotment - enough for one to start worrying about the ground drying out - at least drying out enough to interfere with seeds and seedlings. Cold brisk wind today. Very dull and not at all Spring like. But got to Cheam nonetheless to attend to bakery and fish-van matters. For a change, bought a small rye loaf. Very fresh, about the same size and shape as a small white bloomer and a rich brown colour. Not bad at all; much lighter than their wholemeal which is better as toast than as bread. Plus the usual fresh cod and smoked haddock.

In the course of which I learn that one of the side effects of the new rules about smoking is that the man who smokes the fish can no longer smoke in his smokery (which he owns, and of which he is the only employee), despite the smokery being full of smoke. Maybe he should just shut the door and hope for the best, or rather hope that Hastings Council have got better things to do with their money than send the smoking police around to inspect smokerys (smokes? smokeys?) in the middle of the night. Maybe they (Auntie Harman and her friends) will get around to banning smoke in the smokery in order to preserve the piscine rights of the haddocks. Or perhaps because it will no longer to be legal to run the risk of catching stomach cancer from smoked food and it having been deemed easier to control production than consumption. Perhaps they will trigger a wave of smoked haddock smuggling. A whole new illegal industry around which a whole new control industry could be erected. Job creation at its finest.

Following a query about the contents of Carling (the popular UK lager, not the fancy gear from Canada), I thought I would try sending in a query about ingredients to the (elaborate) Carling web site. Quite impressed to get an answer within a couple of days. Not a very elaborate answer - not a dietician's breakdown of the ingredients - but an answer none the less. It looks as if the reactions which prompted the query in the first place may be down to the stuff having wheat in it. I presume that the gluten in wheat survives the brewing process for lager - although I am told (by a denizen of TB) that it does not survive that for distilling whisky. So at least one coeliac can drink barley sourced whisky without pain.

Observed a trial of sucking pig over the weekend. So I thought I would ask the people in Cheam, who can indeed procure such an animal. Quite expensive they say as most of the cost of a pig is getting it to the sucking pig stage. All the weight put on after that is cheap. Be that as it may, they say they can do them for around £20 a pop at around a week's notice. Maybe we shall take them up one day. An entire pig on the table would be quite impressive - assuming, that is, that it fits in the oven. Wouldn't be quite the same chopped in half. With an apple in the mouth, naturally.

Two good shifts at the allotment over the last couple of days. On the first occasion, dug a six foot square seed bed. Three rows of leeks, two rows of summer cabbage and three rows of carrots. I won't attempt to transplant these last - although I am told it can be done. I will just be pleased to get some. Fenced the bed in with some of the copper wire stripped down a couple of weeks ago. Found that it does not come off the reel as well as it ought and resorted to untangling it - which only seemed to make things worse (as I ought to have known in the first place) - so had to cut it where I was not intending to. Got enough in the end and twisted the three strands together to give a rather springy result so had to stretch it round securely planted corner posts (sometime frame for a frame tent) and peg it down in the middle. Looks quite neat from ten feet. We will see if it keeps the slugs away. There was at least one quite large snail in the vicinity - the first I have seen this season.

On the second occasion, finished the second digging of the North Western corner of the Northern allotment. Now all ready to complete the two rows of perpetual beet sown previously in an adjacent patch. Dug up rather more large whites than I liked, maybe a couple of pounds, missed from last year's crop. They seemed sound but I was not sure about eating them having been in the ground for so long, so put them on the compost heap. Dug up the business end of a pair of secateurs - but with handles missing which was a bit odd. I don't suppose that handles have been made of anything that rots for ages. In any event, did not recognise them, so they must have come in with the leaf mould that I would have put under the potatoes. Dug up lots of worms which have suddenly reappeared after their winter absence. Some of them quite big, so where have they been hiding? I wouldn't have thought that they get down into the subsoil, nothing down there for them to eat. And lastly, threw (originally keyed as 'through') lots of very small white mites into the air. They may be a result of the bit of ground being dug also having been a cabbage patch until very recently.

The waste of these pototoes plus the probably waste of excess seed potatoes clearly got into the soul, as I had a dream last night involving much anxiety about where to plant potatoes. Which seemed to result in their being planted in trays in kitchen cupboards (amongst other inappropriate places) and I was not at all sure (in the dream that is) that this was going to work. I do not recall being concerned that the BH might take a dim view about finding rotting seed potatoes in her cupboards.

Then woke up to a rather unpleasant dream fragment about opening my laptop (somewhere public) to find screen and keyboard carpetted with a layer of small grey bugs, maybe a couple of millimetres long, pointed oval in shape with lots of very short legs - instead of the usual dandruff. Tried to brush them off but they were sticky and I did not like to brush too hard in case I scratched the screen. This last probably a result of the fact that the screen does have a lot of sticky finger marks on it (fortunately not visible when screen up and running) which I have not got around to getting rid of, my supply of screen wipes having dried out.

We find yesterday that the pond at Clapham Common is home to model boat enthusiasts on Sunday mornings. Or at least two of them. One with a model nuclear submarine - ballistic missile variety. Very clever, no doubt, but not exciting visually. The other was a model of a particular boat, a Norwegian ketch of some particular, heritage worthy (and probably very sea worthy. Like one of those Bristol Channel pilot cutters) variety. One small mizzen, one main gaff with topsail and two foresails. This particular boat was wrecked somewhere on the North American Atlantic coast, presumably quite a long time ago, then transported by cargo ship back to Norway where it was restored. At that point the model makers stepped in and started selling kits to make models of the thing, one of which was to be found in Clapham yesterday. I imagine it was the sort of kit which involved fixing individual planks to frames. But, nevertheless, we were told it was not quite a proper scale model as various bits had been added to add interest. Including a propellor in case the wind dropped. Unlike any model boat I had seen before, as well as working the rudder, the (six channel, formerly used for a model aeroplane) radio controls worked the navigation lights (not very impressive in April morning sunlight) and the sheets for the sails - which last meant that one could do things like sailing close to the wind. Must have been quite tricky to drive but we did not hang around long enough to see the action.

Clapham itself is getting very yuppified. We found a place for breakfast where one ate, semi communally, at big wooden tables. Tables furnished with large blocks of butter (maybe 5 inch cubes) and pots of jam. Butter being served in that way is something I have never seen before - although I have occasionally come across it being sold loose (although without the maker's stamps celebrated in 'The Rainbow'). Bread served as a breakfast bread basket consisted of two slices of white, fairly heavy duty (presumably organic, twice kneaded by dusky vegetarians) white bread in a small wicker basket placed on a very large white plate. A snip at £2.50 or something. There were also lots of exotic things to put on the bread, apart from the butter and jam, if one was so inclined. Place was reasonably busy and it seems one was intended to spend hours in there reading the Sunday newspapers and holding earnest conversations. We were gently chided for spending a mere 15 minutes in the place.

Balham much less so; neither Clapham High Street nor Tooting High Street. Neither trendy eateries nor sub-continental sweet shops.

To the allotment in the afternoon, after the lunch time rain. Got in an hour and a half or so before it came on again. Rough digging of what had been the not very successfull pumpkin and cabbage beds last year. Ground too wet for anything for sophisticated. Buds on the Morello cherry swelling and looking good. Quite a few of them. Maybe the tree is finally going to take off after having been there, a bit sickly, for three or four years now. They are supposed to be big and vigorous things - maybe the stock it has been grafted onto doesn't do big and vigorous.

Nice little anecdote from Simenon in Carmel in 1949 - my birth year and the town where Clint Eastwood was, more recently, mayor. It seems he had a coloured live-in maid, presumably a Latino. When she wanted to watch television she would wander upstairs from her quarters and sit down in the living room. If the channel being shown did not find favour, without bothering to ask anyone, she would get up and change it. It seems that the Simenons were so struck by the insouciance with which she did this, they let it pass. At least that is what I think he means by 'que nous ne lui en voulons pas' - despite it not having the right number of negatives. Mr Google, for once, not helpful. At least not in the first few pages of hits. He seems to think that I did not mean the 'en' bit.

DT does it again. Now I imagine that 90% of its readership live in urban areas. And 90% of that 90% fancy that they have deep roots in the country and know all about country matters. So the DT translates this into the marketting position that bashing townies in favour of hard-working decent country folk will find favour with its readership and sell newspapers. They are probably quite right about this. (And I believe that the French go for country even more than we do. Perhaps because they have more of it). Now, farmers have decided that badgers are a bad thing and want to thin them out a bit. They too are probably quite right about this. But in their efforts to be supportive of anything that country folk might say, yesterday's DT alleged that the 500,000 or so deaths down to TB in this country from, say, 1850 to 1950 was down to the fact that there was TB in cows which was transmitted to us through their milk. But according to my (admittedly elderly) Chambers, only about 25% of TB was of the bovine variety, the other 75% being of the rather differant human strain. I would not have thought that a fact of this sort would have changed in the last 50 years or so, so the DT stands convicted, yet again, of rather overdoing things. (They might argue that the proportion of bovine TB is now much higher, but don't. And in any event, the fact that there is TB is cows no longer translates into TB in people, given pasteurisation and tubercular testing of milk). Which all goes to show that it is hard to be accurate and concise and that you should not believe everything you read. Chambers also tells me that that the earliest records of TB are Hindu and are maybe 7,000 years old.

Not being able to read everything you read, might push one towards a serious reviewing regime. Nothing gets published without the imprimatur of at least three respectable people. With the government keeping a register of respectable people - known as listed people (in contrast to listed buildings). With a whole agency devoted to its maintenance, with its associated tribe of directors general, directors and IT contractors. But I have seen an allegation that the Wikipedia no-review policy (or at least, review with a very light touch) has actually resulted in a higher standard of accuracy than prevails in the heavy review world of the Britannica. I wonder? It would cost a lot of time and effort to check such an allegation.

On Thursday to Hyde Park for a circumnavigation. First rate place with lots of interest, including lots of interesting plants, including lots of flowering trees. For example, we learn that pidgeons do not eat grapes but blackbirds will have a go. That the park is home to starlings, something we rarely see in our own garden. Also yet another thrush like bird. Fat, dark brown body with paler speckled belly, touch of red about the throat. Maybe a redstart.

We also came across some rather ill trees with rather odd bark, which I had never noticed before, making the base of the tree look as if it had been decorated with flat plaits of bark. And by coincidence I come across another one yesterday in the cemetary on Garratt Lane. Inspection of Polulin suggests that they might have been hornbeams, carpinus betulus, a member of the hazel family.

Various plantings of things which look very like foxgloves, some in flower, but which are not the sort of foxgloves you come across in the wild. Maybe some domesticated mutant.

A very discrete cluster of memorial boulders, dedicated by the Princess D from on high, to the various rocks and boulders in her life. At least that was what we thought, but the cluster was too discrete to be labelled, despite being a composed cluster. Nothing natural about it at all.

That forsythia was invented by one Mr Forsyth, sometime superintendant of the park. One could go on. But I shall hold my water for the next occasion.

Interesting pictures. Not quite worked out what they are about yet. http://lamiapreistoria.blogspot.com/

Continuing to get through Simenon's memoires at a reasonable pace - his French being reasonably accessible. One phrase he uses quite often which caught my eye was 'montrer patte blanche' - meaning to show one's credentials on entry to something. Curious about the origin of the phrase, I was thinking maybe it meant showing the palms of your hands to the gorilla on the gate, perhaps to prove by the appearance of your palms that you did not work with your hands. Or, by analogy with a cat, to prove that you had your claws retracted. This didn't seem terribly convincing so ask Mr Google, who rather impressively furnishes the answer very quickly (http://www.pourquois.com/2006/12/pourquoi-doit-on-montrer-patte-blanche.html) and which on a younger day I might have remembered for myself. From a La Fontaine story where mummy goat tells baby goat to inspect the paws of any caller before opening the door. White paws for mummy is good and black paws for wolf in bad. But I think the wolf was a bit too clever for mummy, dipping his paws in flour (proper, inorganic flour bleached bright white with chlorine, like all the best supermarkets sell) and getting the kid. This last word presumably being the origin of the slang word kid for child.

The memoires themselves are interesting - but make me feel uneasy. It is proper to publish such intimate details about one's life? Is it fair on the people with whom one shares and shared one's life with? All very well to turn chunks of one's life into fiction which those that know might well be able to translate back into real life, but to publish it naked, as it were, seems a bit strong. Maybe not such a surprise that the favourite daughter committed suicide.

On holiday from Simenon, took in Trollope's Eustace Diamonds. Which led me to wonder why the television people don't turn it into episodic costume drama. Episodic by construction, plenty of goings on and love-interest. Why do we get treated to an unending diet of Jane Austen - which I imagine might be more widely owned but also be less read than Trollope? One theme in this book which struck me and with which a costume drama might have some trouble, is the unsuitability of the truth in all sorts of social situations. For example, we might only be able to afford a small and mean car but we want the car salesmen to explain how neat and nippy it is, not how small and mean it is. An interesting line of enquiry. On the other hand, there was a streak of anti-semitism which would not, I imagine, get past the publisher of a modern book. I do not suppose that Trollope was any worse than his contemporaries in this - but I was rather surprised that someone who seems decent and humane, should be so at all. John Buchan, a bit later, was another respectable gent (sometime governor general of Canada) with the same problem.

Having had the Friday lunchtime baked cod (plus crinkly cabbage and mashed potato), a minor senior moment. Not for the first time, tried to install our nearly new Brita water purification jug on the prong which takes the electric kettle. Maybe all those (originally keyed as 'although') omega fifteens in the fish are not so hot for the brain after all.

Interested to read in today's DT about the request of the Polish Church - presumably the Catholic one - to have the late Polish Pope's heart for display. When we were in Paris last year we came across some fancy urns containing the hearts (and maybe other internal organs - canopic jars I think the Egyptians used to call them) of the great and the good. I was not aware of organs being abstracted from the late Pope before his burial in what I remember to be a rather handsome and rather plain wooden coffin. I wonder if any were? Or if the Vatican authorities would contemplate such a thing so long after the event? And what sort of a display does the Polish Church have in mind? A travelling shrine mounted in a bullet-proof rollers? It might be, of course, no more than that the DT has got it wrong again. There was certainly at least one editing error of confusion between length and space - 'covers an area of two miles' - not being quite the right way to describe the coverage of a maze. Perhaps they meant the length of hedge making it up. Either way it sounds quite big and worth a visit (Longleat).

Got the second row of potatoes in yesterday. Which got frosted in last night, unlike the first which was snowed in. With the schools off, a quiet time doing it, apart from the first dreadful jingles of the year from an ice cream van. Which prompted the thought of what do people who sell ice cream from vans do in the winter? How many of them make enough to troll off to the Costa del Blanca for the off-season? There was a time when the business was rewarding enough for there to be battles - or at least scuffles - between rival operations. A good stand - say that on Epsom Downs - was said at the time to be worth hundreds of pounds per sunny Sunday afternoon. Worth a scuffle.

Having done the potatoes, decided to weed the South side of the short row of Jerusalem artichokes - which I had left undisturbed (and unweeded. This last being a mistake) over the winter in the hope that the crop of tubers from last year will sprout this year. We shall see. But in the course of weeding came across the most odd plant. About two feet long, a quarter of an inch thick at the green end and half an inch thick at the brown end, green end out but most of which was lying an inch or so under the ground. There were rings of buds around the stem about every inch or so, top to bottom. Those underground were sprouting vigorously, white shoots, straight out, with the longest shoots in the middle. The fat end had been hacked off something at some point, some time ago by the look of it. The fat end was also quite near the bamboo - which does send out strong shoots, but this thing did not look like one of them. Can't remember anything answering the description from last year. A mystery.

Rather a thin TLS last week - a political issue. But it did include a sorry little anecdote about how Mr Selfridge went bust at the end of his career and lost his shop - so he used to catch the bus from his modest flat in Putney or somewhere like, to come at gaze from across the road at what had been his shop. I remember Mr Lamont doing something of the sort once, from across the road from the Treasury building, but I didn't have the verve to greet him, despite having been one of his underlings (very under) once.

There was also a very vitriolic peice about the iniquities of the Audit Commission and how it had presided over the destruction of local government and the installation of of a very rampant variety of targetitis. What was puzzling was why should the executive editor of the Sunday Times (whatever that might mean) and a member of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission (that is to say a fully paid up member of the BBB), have so much spleen to vent on this, admittedly important, subject? What has the Audit Commission done to him? Was it just that he was the bosom friend of the Dame Shirley, caught for gerrymandering of a sort that her Labour colleagues had been doing in a slightly differant way for years?

Brown bird flashed across the lawn this morning. Another of those mysterious thrush like ones? Too fast to tell what size it was, let alone what shape. Another mystery.

The plum blossom was looking really good a couple of days ago. We will see whether yesterday's snow destroys the set. Apple blossom should be OK being some days behind. On the other hand, did a double take with the hawthorn in our front garden. With the snow on it, it looked as if it was in full strength flower. The snow mimicked the way that the white flowers carpet the top side of the long straggly boughs rather well.

Despite it having been a cold morning, virtually all the snow gone now. Just the odd patch on Cheam Park, the odd relic of a snowman (or snow woman) and that was about it.

Interested to see in today's DT that the conservatives say that they will restore the authority of schools to expell pupils. Now while it does not seem very satisfactory for schools to expell unpleasant pupils and for some local authority appeals board to say thay they have to have them back, another rule says that people of school age have to be at school. A head teacher uncle of mine had an in-between solution. He used to have a bare room - presumably with desks and chairs - to which he used to expel the unruly. His story was that no-one expelled to the bare room lasted more than a few days before asking to be readmitted to the fold. (I believe the Japanese use a related technique to get rid of people they do not like to make redundant but whom they do not wish to keep). One differance between then and now was that there were approved schools which were unpleasant without (one hopes) being abusive and to which the persistant unruly could be sent. I am not sure that we have such places now and we maybe settle for sending them to counselling sessions. Another differance might be that teachers, at least a significant proportion of them, have lost the authority needed to dispatch the unruly to bare rooms. They would need the support of guards of some sort. Who knows. Glad it is not my problem.

Been pondering about domes - things reaching such a pass that such pondering does not need alcoholic encouragement. The drum and dome of St Paul's in particular, a dome which I have hitherto thought rather splendid. But, suddenly, I have decided that it is much too big and heavy. That the dome and the lantern on top of it looked far too heavy for the thing to work - this in the knowledge of an invisible inner cone, between the inner and outer domes, which actually holds the lantern up. Now I was brought up to think that in order to look well, the structure and function of a building should be the same in some sense. Now while I don't think this does as the whole story, it does do as a starting point. Buildings do need to look as if they work, with look being the operative word. Most lookers - myself included - don't know too much about what holds buildings up - but on the basis of what we do know about building - perhaps from wooden bricks, sand castles and lego - we do want buildings to look as if they are going to stay up. This introducing the problem that what person might want on the basis of his experience with sand, another might not want on the basis of his experience with clay. But leaving that aside, some buildings look bad because their concrete legs - no doubt entirely adequate from an engineering point of view - look too thin for the building on top of them. While other buildings look OK without appearing - from a distance anyway - to have any legs at all; rather to float. Millbank Tower being a good example of this last. And then some of the appearing to work can be very fake - like the pilasters on many neo-classical buildings. Which look to be holding the building up but are entirely decorative. Or the stone work in some entabulatures echoing the ends of the wooden beams needed to hold the roof up. At which point the idea of structure and function being the same no longer seems to be helpful.

Nevertheless, I do not much care for those architects of making a point of their buildings being counter-intuitive in this sense. What on earth is the point of making a building which looks as if it should not work. A gimmick which might amuse for a while, but not one that runs the course with me.

Yesterday was also the day of the problem with fish paste, or to be more precise beef paste from Shippams. Somewhat derided in Islington circles (or even Dorset Square circles), but much the same thing as our continental friends serve as pate in arty tubs. The problem was that the inside lid of this pot was not very clean, and looked to have been put on the pot that way. In my new consumer activist role, onto the Internet to discover that Shippams is no longer some cuddly Yorkshire firm dating from grandma's recipe 0f 1845, but merely a brand name belonging to Princes, a food conglomerate, HQ'd directly underneath the Liver birds in darkest Lancashire - where they are not nearly as cuddly if the near zero tendency to use their accents in television advertisements is anything to go by - and who do not rate a mention on the pot. At least I think they didn't. Anyway, I have written to them, enclosing the offending lid, protesting my loyalty to their fine brand but suggesting they might like to know about the lapse in hygiene. We will see what they say. My bet is a £1 voucher for use in Sainsbury to buy more paste.

Passed a male blackbird sitting on the road next to the hedge on the way to Cheam today. Just about the spot I saw a greenfinch last year. Clearly the a top spot for falling out of nests. Assuming that the blackbird was a fledging which had fallen out of the nest or who had forgotten how to fly, it was very big and fluffy - more or less adult size.

Arrived at Cheam to be serenaded by the greengrocer's wife as she weighed up my cabbages.

Back at home to see a very bold fox neatly jumping over the fence out of our garden. Maybe three feet high. Never seen a fox jumping before. Not clean over, more of a scramble over, but fast enough. And quite a handsome fox as they go round here. Bright and brown rather than dark and scrawny. Maybe food has started to reappear for them after the winter (leaving out of account the various ladies that put food out for the things).

To the allotment this afternoon, despite the rain and sleet. The seed potatoes have big white shoots on them and need to be put in - perhaps a little early but I have yet to find out how to stop the potatoes sprouting. The book says to put them out in the light as soon as you get them to chit them - a procedure which is supposed to speed up growth, which I think to be a bad thing in my poor soil. So I don't do that, just keep them dry, out of the frost and out of the light - with the result that I have big white shoots on then a week or two before I really want to plant the things. I wonder what potato growers do - because I can't imagine that they mess about with chitting. Perhaps they have climate controlled potato stores - cold but not freezing to discourage sprouting. Anyway, one row in, two to go and used maybe a quarter of the seed potatoes. With a row taking me several days, will I find the time and energy to prepare a fourth row?

Good crop of grounsel this year - the first time I have been much aware of the stuff. Especially in in the Western end of the perpetual beet bed. Can't think why they should like it there particularly.

I did find the time and energy to fit my new brakes. Got the old ones off and decided that they did not really need to be replaced after all: they are some sort of solid rubber, without the metal shoe I am used to, and could of gone on for a bit yet. So they are in the useful box with all the other bits and peices from bicycles past. Got the new ones on OK - deciding along the way that alan bolts and keys are a much better way of doing things than the sort of bolts that need spanners - but not as much braking as the old ones. Maybe they will get better when they are bedded down a bit. Or is it a case of the bicycle shop selling you what they happened to have in stock rather than what you really need? Or a case of letting them fit them so that they work properly?

Overtaken today, on the crest of Howell Hill heading towards Epsom - by a middle aged lady cyclist all dolled up in blue and black lycra and crash helmet. Wouldn't have happened a few years ago.

Calves' liver for tea last night. Good gear - and it remains a surprise how raw one can eat the stuff. Wouldn't work with pigs' liver. But I fear we are coming the end of the crinkly cabbage - they are starting to blow inside, getting ready to bolt. My allotment January Kings have also either snuffed it or started to bolt - those that are left that is. The slugs had a good time of it even if we didn't; not that the heads were all that hot anyway. Maybe I am going to have to start feeding the ground a bit more? Frightful expense; would push the cost per cabbage to some horrendous mulitple of what the shop can knock them out for. And as for the slugs, does one want to get into slug warfare all through the cold half of the year? Would copper wire keep them out of the cabbage beds? Would the copper wire be pinched by the same gent. who made off with the fag end of my roll of line wire? Although fag is hardly the appropriate word. I cannot recall ever seeing anyone smoke on this allotment. Presumably still legal.

Two fag ends of dream to report. One involved my being rather alarmed about the very long cable on my mouse. Which seemed to run half way through a building and end up in some complicated computer room. I kept pestering the help desk people about it without achieving anything other than getting on their nerves. Then cut to a large and splendid (if dingy) office, of a sort now extinct, at least for us middle orders. 16 feet long, 8 feet wide and 12 feet high (clearly designed by a mason or at least someone otherwise into numerology). Desk at one end with sash window behind and office otherwise empty. Painted a dingy yellow/cream colour.

The last half row of onion sets now in and the balance of the bed made up with three and a half (short) rows of perpetual beet now in - the last row being a bit wet and grotty (the Western end row),0 perhaps reflecting its being dug when I was getting a bit tired and wanting my afternoon tea and Easter cake (originally with the apostular number of yellow marzipan balls). Copper wire defences yet to be erected.

My dubbullo friends will be alarmed to hear that the Spring container of gear from China failed to achieve lift off. Something about terrible weather in the vicinity of the relevant factory. The crew couldn't get into work for days on end. Loss of the shipment has, I think it was reported, pushed the Hornby people into making a profits warning. On the other hand I can report that the Tunbridge Wells outlet is well stocked with landscape, as opposed to rolling stock. Including rolls of turf and the smallest model cows that I think I have ever seen.

Very odd trees down under. And lots of other interesting sights. Pity it is so far away. http://kirschkernprinzessin.blogspot.com/

Now got four short rows of onions in, which near exhausts my two packs. I think I usually get three and only plant two - so Mr Sod rules that when you only get two you run out. Next move the spinach beet, then the potatoes.

Had the first rhubarb of the year. Slightly over cooked and over watered but not bad all the same. A reminder that food needs to be watched to be any good. Shoving it on the stove and wandering off not a good move.

Had the second New York Review of Books of the year, courtesy of Smiths at Waterloo station. Who, sadly, have put away their honesty dustbin so one has to queue up with the rest of the world. Presumably they decided that too many of us were dishonest. But not a bad mag at all: a sort of heavy weight cross between the TLS and the LRB. Maybe they have a bigger circulation and can afford better writers. So this week I learn that Condi having been pushed into piano lessons for most of her childhood, went to a summer school where she found out she was well short of the best and more or less stopped lessons on the spot and went in for politics. That Pakistan is not the basket case I had come to think of it as. OK, so it has its problems, largely rooted in the failure of the middle classes to take power from the landlords, but in recent years growth in Pakistan has matched that of their much more popular neighbour and it is possible that the middle classes are now flexing their muscles. That one of the origins of the present use of the word libel, was libelle in pre-revolutionary France where censorship forced a lot of writing underground where the dominant form became short stories about the scandalous private lives of those in power (who gave by their examples ample material for amplification), or short books or libelles or libels. On the other hand, a long article about the Iranian quest for nuclear capability in the previous issue seemed not to understand that people from countries outside the magic circle might resent the continuing drive of the countries inside the magic circle to maintain their monopoly. The only good reason being that the countries outside were too naff to be allowed such things - a reason unlikely to endear us to the naffs. Another good reason for countries like the UK to set a good example and to renounce their nuclear armed pretensions to great power.

Had our first doner kebab the other day, sold to us by someone who left Turkey four years ago for doner flipping in Kingsway (where the trees lining the street are a good deal bigger than when I was a student there). Not bad but not as good as the product sold in Tottenham. Pitta bread small, soggy around the edges and not filled with salad involving white cabbage - rather a sprinking of lettuce and whathaveyou round the edges. Doner rather crusty as we must have been the first customers for a bit and he was clearly anxious to scrape all the crust off. This did mean generous portions.

We also learnt from an Italian staffed cafe further down the road that cafe life was not that hot. The cafe was open at least six days a week from maybe 0800 to 1800 - and the same three people worked it the whole time. Presumably they lived in one of the wilder parts of London - maybe Camberwell or Finsbury Park - which would add another couple of hours to their day. So about the hours I used to do when I used to commute but, I imagine, for rather less reward. But they all seemed cheerful enough and quite happy to serve two teas while they were in the middle of washing up prior to closure. Good luck to them!

Today's DT marred by a large mug shot on the front page of one of those celebrity chefs. On the other hand, interested to read and see that as a result of global warming (something to do with the krill supplies moving North or something), some of the smaller Antartic penguins have been forced back into the air. By some stroke of luck, some RSPB cameras were on hand to record the historic moment.

Allotment turned out not to be as wet as I had feared, at least apart from the gullies down the side. Water not got down off the school field yet. So I now have one onion bed dug, although for the first time, when pulling out the bundles of fat white roots which often lurk beneath an innocent looking surface, I find that said fat white roots are striking down into the subsoil. Whatever can they be finding down there? The problem being that they are hard to get out from there, so they may continue to cause trouble into the coming growing season. That aside, with a bit of luck, I should get some onions in this afternoon.

The rhubarb appears to have survived the bad weather unscathed so, again with a bit of luck, rhubard first fruits for dinner. Peach blossom has been knocked out but the plum blossom is about to go and looking very good. Apple blossom a few days or weeks behind. Most of the gooseberry and blackcurrent slips stuck in the ground last Autumn look to be coming into leaf - so with a bit of luck and a bit of water we might have some plants on the cheap. The dandelion patch is still there but not doing much - while I continue to pull much larger and younger dandelions out of ground where they are not wanted. Must be something wrong with the Eastern end of the larger allotment from the dandelion point of view.

Another travel dream the other day, involving a mixture of real places, dreamtime places and entirely new places. For some reason I had to get from South London to some unspecified place just North of the North circular, distinguished by an odd junction of branches of the green (the colour being very significant at the time for some reason) District Line. The unspecified place was very important for some unspecified reason and has appeared in dreams in the past. Associates with Palmers Green. Anyway, got to Clapham Junction by unseen means, where I had to change. This involved going down a stairway marked something like 'ingelatos' - which I thought, in the dream, was Spanish for ice cream, to find myself in a very large, indoor, retail fish market. Struggle through the fish market, without buying anything, and up a stairway on the other side and find myself at a crossroads, in the middle of large yellow or green fields on a bright sunny day with clear blue sky. Hardly any trees or buildings in sight. Gently undulating. No idea where I was, quite puzzled that such a place was so near Clapham Junction, but quite clear that I needed to wait at the bus stop on the road heading North from the cross roads. Along comes a short red bus and I explain to the driver where I want to go and he tells me that the fare will be £56. I think I got a bit annoyed at this point and decided to wait for the next bus. This one, with a more reasonable fare, drops me off at a smaller version of the bus station at Morden. Forget what happened after that.

Unseasonal Easter weather at Snetters. But we need not worry too much about the weather. What about when the sea level is 10 metres higher in 100 years time?