Saturday, July 30, 2011
Suburban shocks
On return to the suburbs, off to the chemists to collect FIL's parcel. I am quietly waiting for it, pretending to take an interest in various preparations to cure smells in mouths and trying not to overhear what other people are up to, when two girls walk in. If they were boys one might have said that they were scarcely old enough to be wearing long trousers; children in fact. Then one of the girls explains that she has been sent by some drop-in clinic and would like an emergency contraceptive, presumably the after the event sort. When questioned she admits to being 14. This particular chemist does not seem to have the stuff in question but does phone around to try and find some. My parcel turns up before this little story reached its conclusion but I left wondering whatever sort of a parent the girl would make, should it come to that.
Next stop WHSmiths where I was quietly waiting again. This time the girl in front, perhaps a year or two older than the last ones, and buys two very fat and very flashy magazines called 'Love'. How on earth can she afford them? What on earth are they about? Mr. Google reveals that I can subscribe to two copies a year for £12 a year but is a little vague on what it might be about, apart from featuring fashion and scantily dressed models. Perhaps this young lady comes from our very own university of the creative arts (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/) and is looking for ideas. Was she studying for an MA in design, innovation and brand management? What will she do when she has got it?
Then home to do a roll call on catering during our recent holiday in Brading.
Apart from a special mention for the lunch time crab salad in the Spy Glass Inn at Ventnor, I confine myself to fine dining, as pubs like to call it these days. We ate out 3 days in 2 places. That apart, there was something of a gluten fest. with 3 days macaroni with vegetable sauce, touched up with a bit of processed pork of one sort or another. 1 day spaghetti with mince in tomato sauce. 2 days beef pie from the lady who mainly sells vegetables from the town car park. Then 1 day each for corned beef hash, lentils and potato pie. I day unaccounted for. The potato pie - a confection of potato, egg, cheese and onion - served on this occasion with runner beans - was an excellent reminder of what home cooking is all about. Something which, as it happens, could quite easily be served in restaurants but never is; in any event a real treat after rather overdosing on said restaurants at lunch times.
Followed by a roll call on second hand book purchases. Of which there were rather a lot, particularly considering that they were not particularly cheap.
A Collins German dictionary. Two paperback Shakespeares; one paperback Arden and one paperback from Oxford in the same sort of style as the Arden. One biography of Margaret Clitherow, already mentioned. One history of the Indian Mutiny by Surendra Nath Sen and published in Delhi in 1957. Smoke by Turgenev, of which I had never previously heard. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. This last a war time economy edition in two volumes from the Everyman's Library which was intended to replace my existing copy, also dating from the war but falling apart. Now not so sure: the binding of the Everman's version is fine but the paper is very cheap and the typeface not so hot. The existing one the other way around, binding bad but paper and typeface good. Have to think about this one.
I also had a close encounter with a field from which the rape had recently been harvested. I learn that rape seeds are small black jobs, perhaps a millimetre or so in diameter, in pods about the size of a long thin twiglet. They appeared to be being harvested with combine harvesters with the straw being made into bales in exactly the same way as it if were wheat straw. With the odd thing being that the rape stubble field smelt exactly the same as a wheat stubble field. But how many square feet to the 250g pack of finest marg.?
# posted by Jim @ 8:49 AM 
