My resolve falters as I reach the kitchen door. It will be huge and offensive. It will require a delicate touch. It will be mine to deal with – yuk! As I approach, an advance scouting party of flies lifts off and disperses itself across less appetising surfaces to wait, I imagine, for the all-clear. Well, not for a while and not here I tell them. I peer forensically at the agglutinated mass, put on gloves and aim a squirt of surfactant at the festering heap. Then, dissecting out two small bones and a piece of cartilage, I wonder for … Continue reading ‘Kitchen Forensics’

‘So they want us to use a particular font of a particular size and a particular colour for our email signatures?’[1] ‘Yep’ ‘And there’s no corporate stationery or template for this?’ ‘Nope, you make your own.’ ‘I see.’ I think it over, devoting a whole nanosecond to the process, which still seems rather too much in view of the subject matter. I deliver my judgment. ‘And when, collectively, we blow it out of our arses, do they want it to be a particular fragrance?’ Ok, not exactly constructive, I’ll give you that, but when the boat’s sinking, you don’t call … Continue reading ‘Micro Management’

You have to be a certain age to remember dressing up boxes. Today’s tiny tots can put in for a replica of the entire Beckham estate for Xmas & call their lawyers if Santa doesn’t deliver, so the frisson of transforming cast off curtains and abandoned antimacassars into theatrical costumery will be lost to them. Our dressing up box was a battered old suitcase out of which we selected ancient curtains & lace doilies to serve as the trappings of royalty. Net curtains became the wings or the floaty ethereal dresses of fairies; the big velvet ones you had to … Continue reading ‘Dressing Up Boxes, and Dressing Up By Wearing Boxes’

Saturday and I’d spent most of the morning keeping an eye on the weather as we had been promised our seasonal blend of sun, showers and thunder storms and, finally judging it safe to head for the fields without a wetsuit, I strapped the dogs into their harnesses and hit the road. Naturally, as soon as we arrived at a wide open space devoid of any cover, the sky assumed the quality of the inside of a biscuit tin and the rain came down in stair rods, thereby putting paid to any chance of a future career as either a … Continue reading ‘Glastonbury, Meteorology, and Shouting at Swans’

Do you remember when mowing was something your dad did on Sundays while your mother got tea ready?  A gentle click click click up and down, and the result looking like a cricket pitch but without the silly mid-off or blokes hammered on real ale and expecting to intercept a small leather missile travelling at light speed. Of course this was a less relaxed activity when, instead of tea, something called High Tea was scheduled.  This was generally a tuna or spam salad which comprised a precise number of lettuce leaves and slices of radish, a couple of large semi-indestructible … Continue reading ‘Lawn Dogs and Budgerigars in the Cress’