pumpkinstrokemarrow

So off to the offie for a drop of the amber nectar. For a change thought we would use the posh offie in (I think. A to Z not very clear on the point) Bridge Road at Hampton Court. The road which also contains a real butcher and one of those cooperative antique emporiums. Acquire a bottle of pudding wine by the name of Saint Croix du Mont, Chateau Grand Peyrot 2000. Very nice it was too too, with a strange, light, but rather splendid nose. Mr G. suggests that it is a very dinky little appellation, only known to serious cognoscenti. Must go back to Bridge Road and get some more while he still has some left.

The following day chanced across a fine new variant on the kedgeree theme. Take three ounces of cold boiled white rice. Stir in seven ounces of warm boiled smoked haddock. Cook gently in a little butter with maybe a couple of tablespoons of water. The variation arose by adding two finely shredded brussels sprouts rather than butter fried chopped onion. Gave the kedgeree a little bit of colour and lightened the taste a bit. A cleaner, less greasy taste than the onion version. Will try again next time I have a bit of smoked to hand.

Another letter from the bank yesterday (HSBC) telling me all about my shiny new overdraft facility, due to kick in in the new year. This took about three pages of letter and one page of small print. Didn't bother with the small print but it took me several goes to understand what the letter was about, and I am supposed to have slightly higher than average reading skills. What someone with lower than average reading skills would have made of it I know not. Which reminds me that I was told that the banking custom of charging for their services by punitive fines on minor infractions, rather than by the bank charges you used to have when I was little, is a very regressive arrangement. The effect being that the less well off who are not too hot at managing their bank accounts are the ones who wind up paying most of the charges, rather than the more well off whom one might think could better afford it. Another not too impressive outcome of our best of all capitalist worlds with its cherished belief in the magic of the market.

Which reminds me of something I once read in a Russian novel. Something about how some country folk hated markets, which they regarded as hot beds of cheating, thieving and chicanery. How much better if one could simply live off one's own land with one's own people and not have to have recourse to such places.