pumpkinstrokemarrow

Yesterday, attempted to use our DVD player to play an arty film. Put in film, work both controllers vigorously. Get rather yellow film to appear. Yellow OK; maybe elderly arty films come in dingy yellow. But no sound, other that a faint version of the sound from the television part of the apparatus which I thought I had turned off. Summoned BH. Have you checked the start cable? No. So I check the start cable. No change. Have you tried one of those unarty films from the Daily Mail which we know works? No. So I try one of those unarty films. No change. Then I go back to working both controllers viorously. Maybe BH has inadvertantly set one of the obscure settings to something obscure which whacks the sound from DVDs. No change. Leave it all for a bit. Some time later try again. Still no change. Enter sprog 2. Have you checked the start cable. Yes. So he checks it again and everything springs into life. It seems that you need to check both ends for correct insertion into their respective holes. No idea how much of all this was down to age pure and simple and how much of it was down to the time spent at trough during the course of the afternoon.

Main trough event was cow chop, it being a Wednesday. That was fine, although as it turned out might have done better to go for two (conjoined) chops on this occasion as we more or less did it in in one sitting. But started with asparagus and finished with cheese and cherries, the first and last of which were sourced from a cheap stall in the market which I usually avoid and the cheese of which was sourced from Waitrose. Now, having got the asparagus home, it was clear from closer inspection that while it might of came off the same lorry as the stuff from Cheam, this stuff had been sitting around in the open air since Saturday market. A bit shrivelled and hollow feeling. A bit pale. Would it cook OK? Well, I need not have worried on that front, as cooked I don't think one could tell, even when one knew. But the cheese, called Swaledale, was not up to snuff at all. It was rather expensive and nothing like the stuff that I used to get from Upper Tachbrook Street. Crumbly like Wensleydate, rather than smooth and slightly creamy with lots of small bubbles. Tasted OK, but not what I wanted. A mistake not to be repeated. I ask Mr G. and it seems that Swaledale cheese is quite a big deal. Furthermore that if I had bothered to go to http://www.swaledalecheese.co.uk/, I could have bought the stuff for perhaps a third of what I paid Waitrose. On the other hand, the St Emilion from Waitrose, which reading the label afterwards was said to be just the thing for beef, was fine, despite the fact that I did not know what sort of pinot it was. And the cherries, also OK, but nothing like as good as the ones that I had bought from Crouch End earlier in the week. Maybe the yuppies from north London are more discerning than the patrons of this market in south London.

All these food worries were augured by the rather odd dream I woke up to, in four parts, one of which is totally lost, apart from still being known to have been present. First part, there is me in a bookshop with a bunch of people. Bookshop in the upper part of a building, but open to the sky, rather in the way of the Globe Theatre. Books in the courtyard getting wet in the rain. I get stroppy that no-one does anything about this, because, it seems, that I have donated the books to the bookshop for some reason. Cut to second part. I am making some rather grand bookcases, after the fashion of wardrobes. I am close boarding the back of them. Which all seems terribly fiddly as I am doing a bay at a time. Suddenly a brain wave. Why not make the bookcases to measure for the holes they are to fit it. Then the boards with which I am close boarding can be done in much longer lengths with much less fiddly cutting in. Associate to the strakes of a carvel built boat, the length of one I find myself looking along. Cut to an expedition with the staff of the bookshop to a pub. We are going uphill to a pub on the corner, somewhere in Norwich. Some of the people I had thought we were with were there already, sitting outside. We decide to join them, initial doubts notwithstanding. Cut, I think, to the missing fourth part. Something to do with the bookshop again. Tried to recover it this morning, but went off into a differant dream altogether, something about forgetting where I had parked the car when at work in Victoria Steet. Then getting the tube by mistake to some place, a bit like the shopping centre in Mitcham on the common or near a park, where the locals were a little harsh about my clothes. No help at all. Fourth part lost forever now I should think.