pumpkinstrokemarrow

Two oddities from the Clapham Junction Odd Bins, a chain I generally approve of. First, they were selling a red wine for about £8 a pop, which was described amongst other things as having an interesting, challenging flavour with caramelized overtones. Now, in the world of work, the word challenging usually means there is a problem. Perhaps the sense here is that of difficult, when applied to a peice of classical music, when it usually means that hard to get to grips with but probably worth the bother. Still not deeply encouraging, and the man behind the jump was unable to help, so settled for something with a more neutral blurb. Blackberries or something like that. Second, no thin white paper - the sort of stuff used to wrap blouses in in ladies' clothes shops - to wrap the booze in. They expected me to march down the road clinking. Reduced to accepting a copy of London Lite. But still probably better value than the rather grand 'Eagle Wines' just up the road. That is more for yuppies, a label for which I no longer qualify, that is supposing that I ever did.

Cod fish on Saturday not great; entirely eatable but a little mushy and BH was not impressed by the extent to which the fish stuck to the foil cover. Now it may be that having bought it on Friday it was getting a bit old, or it may be that we getting into the summer season when white fish generally is not so hot. Made up on Sunday however, with a bit of organic outdoor vegetable fed loin of pork. A good way of eating pork chops, with the meat nice and moist. Plus we had some new season curly cabbage. Preceeded by the first globe artichokes that we have had for a while. Good as a light weight appetiser; too many of my appetisers are very splendid but apt to remove rather than stimulate appetite for the intended main business. That said, it remains odd that the calorific content of food is a poor guide to the amount that it fills you up. A butter filled meat stew or curry certainly does fill you up. But a cake, maybe filled with fluffy white stuff, every bit as calorific as the stew, if not more so, does not. Clearly the stomach is not a very intelligent organ.

Perhaps the pork brought on the vapours because I have been wondering what the Lord would do in the event of the human race being exterminated, something that seems reasonably likely over the next thousand years or so. Nukes itself or runs out of fresh water or something. Would he just forget the whole humanity business and get on with the main business of life, viz playing backgammon with Satan? Or would he try again? And if he elected for trying again, would he just throw the dice again or would he fiddle with things a bit? Maybe cut down the ration of original sin a bit. Go for a peach rather than an apple. Maybe try with whales rather than monkeys. Take a leaf out of Tolkein's book and go in for intelligent trees. Maybe he would move onto another stellar system and try with a whole new world. I guess the trick is that the life form he goes for has to be sophisticated enough to be interesting, but not so sophisticated that heaven on earth is established after a few millennia and lives happily ever after, to the greater boredom of all concerned.

A more far fetched possibility would be that there are a whole bunch of Lords up there, and they take it in turns at creating heaven on earth. They take bets on how long each creation lasts before it all goes pear shaped. Maybe Satan could be charged with writing the rule book. It would need to be a bit like the class books which regulate, for example, the size and shape of racing cars or ocean racing yachts. Then who would the best job on a Formula 3 ape? A throw back to the ancient Greek way of seeing things.

PS on Churchill 2: maybe he was fascinated by the whole business of the personal treachery by Churchill 1, being a serial side changer himself.

This from my cheapest place yet, 50p a go, somewhere near the Wandsworth Road Sainsburys, on the other side of the road.