pumpkinstrokemarrow

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.