Yesterday, I was able to wave farewell to the last of this session’s exam papers. The hideous business of coping with scripts has dominated my life for the last three weeks, and thus, I emerged, blinking, today, feeling a bit like a battery chicken who has found the coop door mysteriously open. It […]
I am delighted to say that when the Northern Gentleman was shambling about the streets of Aberdeen, muttering; he found himself (without any solicitation on his part) in receipt of: a tangerine, a bunch of grapes. 4p in cash, a cigarette, and the comment, from a genuine local homeless person who had spotted the […]
Maddened by the many and various demands on our time, we are composing a Cad’s Song. So far, we have the chorus:
Oh, I’m off to Bordighera on a one-way ticket
And I’m never, never, never coming back
If you find you’re stuck with batting on a really sticky wicket
Then you might as well go home and pack.
I’m […]
The Northern Gentleman has gone off to be in a film. We have a Film Studies unit at the Vinegar Works, and where there’s a FSU, there is bound, sooner or later, to be some keenie or other trying to make a film. One such has emerged, and the N.G. has agreed to take a […]
One of the subjects which has been much under discussion hereabouts is The Man from Maryport’s book: this is a climbing thriller, and is not called The Swinging Detective, though someone suggested it should be, probably that sarky Dr Biswell. Anyway, the draft was read by various household members, and commented on. I have been […]
The Man from Maryport contrived to get himself here from Heathrow (considerably harder, in the present state of things, than getting himself half-way across the world), bearing with him a variety of useful and acceptable gifts, striped cotton, things made with chillies, and ostrich biltong, to which the Northern Gentleman and I have become mildly […]
In the course of yesterday it became more and more obvious that Ben the Trailhound was limping. Leaped one five-barred gate too many, we reckoned, but then became more concerned as it seemed to be getting worse not better. We had a date in the Vinegar Works, but we went off with some confidence since […]
Someone, the Hamster-Loving Hippie, I think, gave Miss Kit a lovely Christmas present. A kind of Tesco cat-treat. I found the packet the other day and in a moment of general indulgence, opened it up and gave her one. Miss Kit is very far from being a greedy cat. She clamours for a bit of […]
There is another burst of bothy-related activity, instigated by the Gamekeeper, who is a bit short of work in this dodgy weather — it’s beautiful today in fact, but it has not been exactly suitable for shinning up trees for quite a while, and various of his other avocations seem to be seasonally fallow. He […]
I have just been through the spam filter, and was struck by a new and annoying development: there was 90% sex as always, film stars with their kit off, promise of augmentation to organs one doesn’t even own, promise of pornography of all descriptions, some of which suggests a level of sadness which is completely […]
Miss Best Friend continues to be very shocked by Ben the Trailhound and his disobedience. We have found him susceptible to three things: firstly, the Apparitional Gamekeeper’s dog-whispering (he becomes strangely good, if not for very long), secondly, Dr Biswell snarling, with a full Cockney lift and spin on relevant vowels, ’sling it, Smiler’, and […]
Hey-ho, back in the jug agane, and discovering all the things I couldn’t quite bear to do in the last days of last term … and how many of them there are … I am now diligently compiling lists of marks, pushing paper in many directions, and generally, trying to GET A GRIP. We are […]
The Calendar is an annual problem, to which various solutions of taste proposed by the Tasteful, alas, do not quite answer the household’s inner needs. Two years ago, I found the Professor a Labrador Calendar, which delighted him so much that he insisted on another for 2007 — I successfully managed to find him […]
We are saying goodbye to Kingstown tomorrow, so a little gastronomy seemed in order. I decided it might be nice to make a crème brulée; for two reasons, the first being that the filling from Christmas’s Boston Cream Pie struck me as eminently adaptable for this purpose, and the second, that it is an old […]
Happy New Year, everyone, and love from the Deep North. The Man from Maryport left us at lunchtime, with decent expressions of regret, but with a certain South-oriented gleam in his eye. His sense that he might perhaps have had enough of les delices du Nord to be going on with was perhaps enhanced by […]