Jottings

Clean clean clean, cook cook cook, shop shop shop, drive drive... (Beloved forgot about MOT on his truck till this week, just imagine - entails much driving too and from garage. GROWL.) Granny's life just now - do you want to hear about it, detail by detail? - surely not. Granny doesn't want to write about it either. She doesn't have time to write about it. Though she will tell you she made two ricotta, lemon and almond cakes yesterday - River Cafe recipes - yummy; now safely in freezer - ditto some mango ice cream. Shopping enlivened by trip into hills to buy seven week old lamb for the barbecue with which visiting scientists will be entertained. And made harder by the fact that all the good supermarkets on the island have been gobbled up by downmarket chain owned by a local Mr Big, which sells a quarter of the vegetables (many of them in plastic packages) and a much reduced line of goods generally. This makes various items hard to find - fact that logo of said chain is a smiling cartoon dinosaur just about sums things up. 'What prices!!" It screams. Yeah yeah yeah.

Other odd fact - Granny was down on the land picking pimientoes for one dish next week early this morning, displacing the birds their little smallholding feeds - a pair of hoopoes, ditto turtledoves, a covey of partridges - when she noticed how many flowers there are around; some marigolds, wild geraniums, some equivalent of birdsfoot trefoil - unheard of at this time of year when everything else is brown and burnt. They've had rain this summer, that's why, also unheard of. Good for the vegetables, though - and those that feed on them; which included this morning two brown pullets and a black bantam which had got in there somehow and had to be chased out. What fun. BACK TO WORK.