Nothing in life is certain, except food and ranting.....

So the rillettes are made and look and smell so damned good that I want to take a spoon to them right now, if not sooner. I have a real penchant for this sort of thing. There's nothing nicer than a bit of slow cooked stickily soft meat, all herby and garlicky, bound with soft meat juice jelly and served with a lump of rustic bread.

The Boy's guinea fowl wrangling paid off, too. He turned out a very fine dinner, stuffing the bird with a mixture of mascarpone and brandy, browning it in an INORDINATE amount of butter and pot braising it, before flambeeing it with more brandy. The juices left in the pan were reminiscent of that sort of unappetising but deeply delicious curdled stuff that you get left with after cooking pork in milk. Lovely saute new potatoes with bacon and a side of wilted spinach and it was a very fine dinner indeed for a Wednesday.

Yesterday, dodging the rain, we did a quick zip down to Bugville on the bikes, ostensibly to 'have a break, a coffee and a trip to the library'. Break was nice,but we forgot that practically everything closes in Bugville at about 5pm so coffee was a rush job in Tchibo and the library visit was as stressful as last time. I now, though, have an official form to fill in so that I can complain about that. Shame I can't get one for Bugville....................

Tchibo are closing down in to weeks time, apparantly. We asked why and were told that the German parent company is closing all the UK stores because they're not making money due to the Euro/pound disparity. Ah, good. Another empty shopfront in Bugville - well, until either a pound shop opens up, or another mobile phone shop - because we REALLY, REALLY need another one of those.................we crawled home, against the wind, dead dispirited. Not because of Tchibo, that fazes us not one jot, never really shopped there, but just because this town is dying on it's feet. Woolies went, Mothercare went, Tchibo's going, even the Pound Market went. We have no decent cafe, no book shop (well, we do, but if you want any sort of intelligent book, you have to go to West Snobton), no decent clothing stores. However, if you're into the latest mobile phone or other electronic gadgetry, World of Warcraft, shiny sports clothing (not to be worn for sports), charity shops or pound shops, or cafes serving greasy shite food and unspeakably weak coffee to non-caring tourists, the Bugville's the place for you. The Town Centre is supposed to be under some sort of regeneration programme. Yeah, right......

In a non-thinking mood, we have spent that last two evenings (to our eternal shame) watching crap movies - Mad Max on Wednesday and Terminator 3 - the Rise of the Machines yesterday. I'd never seen either and there's probably a good reason for that, as they're both Crap with a capital C. Mad Max put me in mind of a seventies porn movie, for some reason. I can only think it's because it had that hand-held, shaky camera vibe, a slightly off-key soundtrack and terrible, cheesy, badly lip-synched dialogue.

This evening, once the Boy gets back from t'Smoke, we will mostly be slumped on the sofa with glasses of wine (this being a non-school night, I shall be indulging) and a large and fragrant plate of homemade paella, for in the fridge are crayfish tails, long red pepper, the remains of the guinea fowl and some fennel which, with the addition of good stock, a bit of saffron, garlic, smoked pimenton and some chorizo should turn out pretty authentic, in a cod-Spanish stylee. Last night's effort involved white beans, served warm as a salad with onion top, parsley, chopped fresh tomato and a bit of Greek yoghurt and grilled (outside, lest it stink up the whole bungalow), lamb rump chops, pre-marinaded in a herb, garlic and grated onion paste, which was my tasty attempt at a sort of Greek/French hybrid stylee. As we have zero spare cash at the moment and can't afford to be sitting somewhere Spanish, Greek or French to eat the real thing, the Verandah Cafe in Gardenia will have to do.

It's June, Jim. But not as we know it..........

I seem to remember, not long ago, being told by the Met Office that we were due for a scorching summer. The weather today, yesterday AND the day before belie that and today sees me indoors with the doors firmly closed, wearing jeans, sox, jumper and an old lady shawl. The sky is leaden, the wind is whipping the treetops into a perfect frenzy and everything has a completely downcast and dejected air about it.

Being hermetically sealed indoors, there's no escape for the cooking fumes - the house smells slightly of a rendering plant, due in no small part to the slow cooker-ful of meats confiting down in duck fat. There's pork hock off the bone, guineafowl and chicken, thyme and bay from the garden and tons of garlic, all gently stewing away to unctuousness and destined for a pate of gargantuan proportions and yumminess. Once cooked, I've got an idea for finely mincing the porky bits with a bit more seasoning (perhaps a blade or two of mace) and layering that up in a Kilner jar with the roughly chopped bird meat. A bit of stock to moisten and a topping of duckfat to seal it all in and I'd call that pretty damned good, in a rillettes sort of a way. I feel the call of toasted bread and cornichons with......

The Runts are coming for lunch on Sunday, along with Lord and Lady Grangefield of Aldwick. The Pa was 70 on Sunday, so lunch is by way of celebration for that. L and L G were official 'Lookers after of Boy' whilst I was away last year, so it's partly a gratitude lunch as well. The Boy is planning a garden produce showcase extravaganza, so whatever else we have, there'll have to be lettuce, peas, courgettes, cucumber and strawberries with it.

I have a sort of plan involving a trip to Shoreham Farmers Market this weekend - if we can get some good fish, the menu will go something like: stewed peas and jamon in Little Gem cups, herb and ricotta fritters, hot chorizo (as hapjes with fizz)), the rillettes as above, three sorts of warm fishy dishes - I'm hoping for mackerel, whiting and trout so that I can do semi-soused mackerel with black olive sauce, trout with orange, white wine and fennel and whiting with stewed onions. Dish of warm new spuds. What's not to like? After, a cheese course (hopefully a nice local sheep cheese, shaved thin, served with salading, raisins, nuts and a bit of balsamic glaze) and finally, blueberry, strawberry and lemon cheesecakes. Good enough for Jazz.

The Boy is cooking tonight. He will be wrestling with guinea fowl.

I'm completely folked.............

Ah, the Coco Lounge. Such style, such class, such ferkin expensive drinks. The Festival Club Night was held therein in a room of such slumminess that any self-respecting tramp would have turned their nose up at it. Lovely formica tables, drinks in plastic beakers, dirty beige walls, loudly grubby carpet, a background of pumping disco sounds through the walls. Three drinks for £10.60 - I nearly carked. Nice bar staff, though and the musicians were very good, if a little teeny, weeny bit.......peculiar.

Well, to be fair, one of them was. The rest were just folky.

Poor N came down from t'Smoke and got dragged along. I think she enjoyed it, but she might just have been being polite. She arrived by train on Saturday evening with Betty Brompton the Incredible Folding Bike and a lemony smelling box of bathroom goodies and we hurtled back here from Bugville station in time to wolf down a sticky chicken salad and a blueberry cheesecake before introducing her to the delights of Tinytown. As if Tinytown Folk and Roots Festival weren't enough of a torture to inflict on one's friend, the Boy introduced her to his geetar repertoire when we got back here and there was singing in the sitting room until quite silly o'clock.

This was slightly daft, as The Boy had to get up at stupid o'clock to oversee catering numpties in't Smoke, leaving us to while away most of the day in the sun on the verandah, chatting. Like girls do. We did go for a bit of a stroll on the beach as well - down to the Greensward and back. N collected stones and shells and wrote our names in chalk on the groyne post. Like kids do. Luckily, the sun was out for that bit, unlike later, as we left for Bugville and the train, when it was pissing down and we got soaked. Like idiots do.

Later, the Boy and I, as gluttons for a bit of punishment, drove to Tinytown for yet another concert at the Windmill. This was a real class act, costing £4 each.
The Windmill is quite sweet. It's a little theatre come cinema, staffed mostly by volunteers, unlicenced (so you have to go to the Arvester next door for anything verging on the alcoholic), but with a dear little kiosk where you can indulge your fancy for Losely icecream and Minstrels ad lib.

The concert itself was excellent, though. Once we'd got over the shock of seeing what looked like a small bundle of tie-died, velvety hippy dangly-ness stroll onto the stage carrying a guitar and begin to sing, we were mesmerised. This Sue Dubowi was the support act and she was awesome. Intriguing, other-worldly voice and stunning guitar playing. She just looked like an illustration from a 'There once was a kindly old witch....' book. She sings in a really quite languid and lowly sexy way, like you imagine a siren would, all beguiling and come-hithery which is bizarrely at odds with the way she looks. The Boy is ever so slightly in lurve. I might be too, were I that way inclined.

The main band were Legacy - one of the fiddle players and Mal from Friday's Triskel concert, plus a different guitarist and another flute-playing girly, from Ireland, to be sure, to be sure, but posh. They were pumping and diddly and channelling the Chieftains, but none the worse for that. We had a great time.

What was sad about the whole weekend was that it was pretty poorly attended. The theatre was only about a quarter full, there were only 30 or so at the Coco Lounge and about the same at the Squash Club. I don't know about the pub gigs inbetween. The Tinytown Council had put up some money and were supporting the whole Festival but personally we'd not have found out about it had we not been last month to the Bugville Folk Club and seen a flyer on the table. We get the local paper, but there was nothing in there, nor did we see publicity anywhere else. It's the sort of local initiative that really should be encouraged.

Having said that, should you be a Gay Hussar, a salty old seadog, a rosy cheeked ploughboy or a maiden of any sort (abandoned, disappointed or betrayed) with a penchant for blossom picking and listening to the birds that do sing or be there any sort of three day folk festival nearby in the next few months (or even in the month of May), I'm not your woman..................

All around my hat..........

I wore intricately woven verdant plant material, but it wasn't for a twelvemonth and a day, just figuratively speaking on a jaunt to Tinytown last night for the opening gig of the Tinytown Folk and Roots Festival. Cost 2 of our English pounds for a comfy seat in a slightly strange venue (the Tinytown Squash and Badminton Club - wall to wall beige with uncertain curtains and a less than competent barmaid fighting with a barrel of Upper Snobton real ale). Good bands, though. A couple of unlikely lads playing bluegrass-y Americana stuff and jigs and reels, followed by Triskel, a 4 piece Celtic roots band of some repute. Serious fiddles, classy guitars and a crinkle haired Oirish maid on flute. She sang a good tune, too.

We enjoyed it a lot. What we didn't enjoy, and can never really get our heads round, were the Tinytown mutant contingent in attendance who seem to think it's OK to talk bollocks and laugh very loudly when the 'turns' are on. Why in Cliff's name would you go to a niche folky event and not listen to the chuffing music? Tinytown is known round here for it's mutant inbreeding and blimey, you could see it in every beetle brow. Obviously, folk music's a bit too challenging for some - all that wordy narrative and difficult foot stomping - you can see how the concentration might wander a bit. As I'd had a less than serene day (what with the specs debacle, the pre-apocalypse planning re-write and De Quervain's Hand of Doom playing up quite considerably)) and being somewhat hormonally challenged at the moment, I was getting a bit...how can I put this.......MIFFY. Luckily, the band had their speakers turned up a bit and that eventually drowned out the mutant braying.

We don our hats again (and I may even stick my finger in my ear and join in the singing) this evening for the Festival Folk Club event, being held back in Tinytown at the ...ahem....Coco Lounge. We passed the....Coco Lounge on the way to and from the Squash Club last night. On the 'to' journey, it looked OK, in a modern, open bar sort of a way. On the 'from' ....hmm....Grant Mitchell looky-likey 'door personnel', lingering puppy fat in unfeasibly tight and short skirts, shaven headed swaggery lads smoking outside and a drum and base riff thudding through from inside. That'll sit well with the be-sandalled, cheesecloth wearing, crinkly haired folky crowd..........and their verdantly bedecked hats.

Through with glasses, darkly.....

I've finally finished the coups, insurgencies and disasters documents - timely indeed as I was getting ready to stab myself through the heart with a biro through the sheer boredom of it all.

In between hurricane planning, wildfires and kidnapping, I had a bit of a moment with Glasses Direct who have had my prescription and an order for new specs for the last three weeks. As they'd been spectacularly lax in communicating, I rang them last week and was assured that things were in hand. Today, disappointed, as the glasses certainly weren't, I rang them again, only to be told that erm, they'd lost my paperwork and prescription somewhere on the transfer between warehouse and glass making place. Oh, says I, is it a long way between your sites of operation, then? - thinking perhaps Doncaster to Cornwall or someplace. Oh no, says charming girlie on help desk - it's downstairs. Sigh.

I despair. Really, I do. I order stuff so rarely off the pixieweb (being a bit of an untrusting and everso slightly paranoid clog-wearing Luddite)and I only did this time because The Boy had used this shower before and had been impressed with the service. Now I'm perched on the horns of an oversized dilemma - do I take the 15% discount they offered me off the cost of the (already stupidly cheap) glasses bearing in mind I've got to get a copy prescription from the opticians, send it to them again and then wait for the specs to be made or do I just huff loudly, tell them where they can stick their Lauren frames with scratchproof lenses and go elsewhere where I'll doubtless pay triple for privilege, but get them within about three days?

Lettuce be lovers..............

We've eaten produce from the garden every day this week - sometimes twice, if nothing else to keep the rampaging lettuce crops under control. The Boy has gone a bit crazed, bringing out new trays of seedlings (mostly lettuce) from the greenhouse nearly every day to fill in the every decreasing gaps in the already overburdened borders, raised beds and pots. With the warmer weather, everything is sprouting really fast - I can't get down the path beside the garage without fighting my way through a jungle of potato plants (now in flower, so not long til the first crop), the greenhouse is full of tomato, radish, pepper, aubergine, okra and strawberry plants, there's chard, curly kale and broccoli, cavolo nero, celery, leeks, garlic, shallots, spring onions, beetroot,carrots, blueberries, strawberries, cherries and plums outside and courgettes, squash cucumbers sprouting in the compost bins and herbs fairly burgeoning on the potager.

It's just unfortunate that all that's actually ready at the moment is lettuce - 10 different sorts, it's true, but lettuce all the same................to be fair, we DID eat the first of the peas on Sunday, stewed up in that particularly delicious Spanish tapa-like way with little bits of jamon and garlic, but since then it's been lettuce. All the way.

I've been doing the proofs for a staff evacuation plan for one of the clients today. They're a small company operating in a support role on an on-shore oilrig somewhere in one of the less stable parts of the world. They've suddenly decided, what with terr and the war thereon, porcine and avian flu and being in a pretty jungly sort of a place where insurgency and coups are, shall we say, the norm, that they need a staff evacuation and Crisis Management plan. The Boy has gathered together pretty much everything there is to know about any sort of emergency, both natural and not and has spent a week writing a coverall policy. There are pages and pages, covering flood, hurricane, tempest, plague, wildfires, earthquakes, civil unrest and the rest. What it boils down to in essence is: Managers: Keep a helicopter on standby on the roof and get in it at the earliest possible opportunity. Staff: Kiss your sorry arses goodbye.

I corrected the grammar and syntax of 64 pages this afternoon, sitting in the sun on my verandah. That was the introduction. I lost the will to live at about 4.30 and had to eat a couple of slices of banana cake. I have five more similarly sized sections to correct and he's STILL writing it. Still, what we'll get paid will go some way towards the huge second home tax bill we have to pay for the other house this year, which seems to have increased by a phenominal amount since last May. I may have to insert the babelfish and ring up the belastingsdienst to see what the hell's going on.

In the meantime, there's always lettuce...................

De Quervain and the Hand Of Doom....

This is the first day that I've really been able to use my hand for anything meaningful for about five weeks, given that I've developed what my GP says is De Quervain's tenosynovitis. Well, bloody De Quervain can keep his chuffing tenosynovitis to himself, the shite.

I haven't been able to really:

Do up my own bra.
Wipe my bum properly.
Wash my hair with any degree of success, let alone hold the hairdryer to dry it.
Cut anything resembling a slice of bread.
Hold and peel spuds.
Chop anything
Pull my rubber gloves on or off without swearing with pain. Very loudly.
Turn the pages of a book.
Use the bell on my bike
Use a pen and write with any sort of legibility
Press the buttons on the phone
Do up buttons
Pull up my own pants very easily
Pull up a garment side zip
Lift anything heavier than a bee's wing
Get money out of my purse
Do anything requiring small motor movements of any of the fingers or my thumb on my left hand which, considering I'm VERY VERY left-handed, has made life VERY VERY difficult indeed and if I were to meet this bastard De Quervain at any time now or in the future, I'll be forming my good hand into a tight fist and inviting him to run onto it VERY VERY HARD.