pumpkinstrokemarrow

And according to the BH, according to the DT, once upon a time there was a young lady in a house with a bedroom. One day, the young lady takes a young man back to the bedroom for some frolicking. In the course of which, the young lady takes a crossbow out of the cupboard and shoots a cat from her bedroom window. Cat dies. Young lady sent down for three months. Which strikes me as completely disproportionate. OK, so shooting a cat, even while drunk, is not the act of a very nice person. But is it really a good idea to bang up the population of our grossly overcrowded prisons by 1? Where the room rate for a year varies between £20,000 and £50,000 according to class, with an average of £30,000. So we are going to spend £10,000 on making the young lady into a young villain. Doesn't seem very sensible to me. I bet the owner of the cat would have settled for half that.

In the course of getting these numbers - easily culled from http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/ - I find that the prison population presently stands at 70,000. I remember a time from the world of work when the then current population of 50,000 was thought to be outrageous.

Various culinery discoveries yesterday. First, there used to be a pub in Tooting called 'The Forresters'. People used to do drugs and drink there. Some people smoked. Some people did the horses. Some people consorted with loose women. The place had quite a name. So the local Harriet Hardcore thought something ought to be done and the place was renamed 'Jack Beard's'. Things moved on a bit. But it seems that it was no longer a proposition and the place is now called 'The Antelope'. The only pub I can think of, apart from the 'Fire Station' at Waterloo, which has exposed structural steel work decorating the ceiling. The sort of steel work you see underneath railway bridges. But, that apart, it is now a gastro-pub selling an interesting range of warm beer. The clientele looked as if they ought to be in Clapham. Far too posh for Tooting. But the 'Landlord' from Taylor Walker was really good. A really good first pint of the day. And then, from a DIY cake stand, they were selling home made segments of sausage roll at £1 a pop. Slightly warm with a hint of meat. Excellent appetiser.

From there to a cafe a bit further down (heading east) the road to a place where I learned all about clams. Something I had heard of, I think in the form of chowder in Moby Dick, and rather assumed were a small version of scallops. I ordered mussels and they saw fit to decorate the not very large heap of mussels with three razor shells. Which they assured me were clams. The sort of thing you find, in the empty state, all over a common or garden beach. Not that impressed. Did not think they looked very well on the plate; far too big. Not that keen on the taste of the things. But the designation confirmed today by a piece in the DT which tells me that the fancy restauranteur who got closed down for making his customers sick, did the deed, in part with razor shell clams. I wonder if there are any other sorts?