Food - and Wind....

Granny is lucky in having a Beloved who is a good cook.

On the other hand...

After years of having cooked for a family, in the middle of writing books, she is of the school that slopes into the kitchen around 6 o'clock thinking, oh god, what are we going to eat tonight? - and proceeds to look in the fridge and the vegetable rack and then get on with it. Of course it isn't always quite so spontaneous; - she has shopped, looked at this or that - thought this or that would make a nice this or that - but she hasn't thought much further till the six o'clock deadline when she just hopes that any extra ingredients for the particular this or that are hanging around: if not improvisation is in order.

This is not the way Beloved cooks. He has things planned out for days ahead; stews this, stews that, marinades the other, makes stock with something else. All very laudable of course - and it makes, usually, when he is not being just a bit too experimental, for some very nice food. The only problem is the way the stocks, marinades, bones, flesh, leaves, all lurk meantime. They lurk on the stovetop, in the fridge, on the worktops, in the bowls/saucepans/frying pans Granny wants to use for her more spontaneous efforts. They lurk alongside the equally lurking bones, leaves, pods, scraps, designated for this or that animal - all very virtuous; little organic waste from this household goes into landfill.

Granny admires this. In general she admires Beloved's way of things a lot.

On the other hand....she does sometimes hanker wistfully after a Nigel Slater do-alike who can wander into the kitchen around the time she does, find a beanpod or two, a tin of tuna, the odd salted almond, some rice, say, and within half an hour turn it into a gastronomic delight. Not least it means he must lurk less around the kitchen less than Beloved does - Beloved's lurking preventing Granny from lurking herself and listening to Radio Three on the their digi-box, while writing this, for instance. Damn it.

Also it must make for A LOT LESS WASHING-UP. Enough said.

*******

Now for something completely different; well mostly different - politicians do, after all, fall into categories as different as those of cooks. Don't they? It is general election day today in Spain. If Granny isn't out there it's because a) she's not allowed to vote, even though the machinations of any Spanish government can affect her life, and b) because the wind has been blowing furiously for the past few days and she's had enough of it. So she keeps herself and her post subject indoors. Strange really - wind has no sound of its own, it creates sound in conjunction with solid or not so solid objects - like trees - but there aren't many trees here. It has to do what it can with the products of trees turned into windows, roofs, doors. And doesn't it do just that - swoop, swash, bang, crash, rattle, wallop. Wearisome.

As for the election - made melancholy this time by the ETA murder of a socialist politician in the Basque country - though not as melancholy as by the Madrid bombings last time - she does hope Zapatero - the Socialist - gets back in. The 'conservative' candidate, Rajoy, is a bit too conservative for her and charmless besides. She can vouch for the fact he doesn't do charm, relaxed, flexible having seen him in person, complete with embarrassed almost manic grin when a local fisherman's straw hat was dumped on his head at a rally here for last summer's local elections. Charm, relaxedness. flexibility does not necessarily make the good politician, let alone statesman, but boy when you have to listen to him banging on, it sure helps.

Also Rajoy is of the 'don't talk to the bastards' (ie ETA) school - and this we know, in the face of Israel and Hamas does NOT.

Vote with 'all your might' Zapatero has been urging his followers from every PSOE poster. Please do, please yes.