...dawns reluctantly, grey and damp. Although the dawn slips forward for a few days, it's a comfort to know that the we'll gradually get a bit more daylight. But I can't forget my grandmother's dictum: 'the day lengthens, the cold strengthens'. It was already bitterly cold in the county town on Friday when I was there for the hobby. We had an hour's gap in proceedings while professionals scrabbled about for evidence they in due course found they didn't need anyway. During the gap I went in search of some motor maintenance bits, and almost froze in the process.
Cars are so clever these days: at intervals a warning light would come one to let me know a light bulb was literally on the blink, and the system even told me which one it was - one of the number plate lights, which I could easily change myself. Not so a few years ago, when a headlamp bulb failed on another VW product I owned at the time. The approach to said bulb was so tortuous that I couldn't get near it before my rheumaticky hand cramped up. It really offended me that I'd to get the garage to replace a bulb! But there's so little maintenance an owner can do on a car these days. Just as well: I'm not to be trusted. When I replaced the brake linings on a certain Renault 16 some years ago, I made an utter pig's tit of it, and had the wheel and hub cap back on before realising that I hadn't replaced the split pin when I reassembled the hub.
A trip along the beautiful lanes of the county next door yesterday. Our farmer friends had just got some beef back from the butchers, having recently slaughtered the first of their small Dexter herd, so I'd to go and collect our Christmas joint and some other cuts, plus a couple of bags of bangers. The house was quieter than usual: mother was at hospital with a very poorly daughter who was to go later in the day to a specialist hospital in London for further tests.
Our house, on the other hand, was substantially less quiet than usual yesterday evening. Each year around this time one or other of the neighbours throws a drinks bash, and we decided that, seven years on, it was our turn. We had quite a good crowd: twenty including ourselves, and the 6:30-8:30 pm forecast ran over to closer to 9:30. Martyn's Mary Berry mince pies, topped with crumbled marzipan, were the star turn.
We catered it ourselves: a couple of big pizzas, sausage rolls, hummus and crudités, blinis with crème fraîche and caviar, shrimps or gravadlax, some spicy koftas made with a nod to Madhur Jaffrey, some little onion bhajis (the only shop-bought ready-made component) and the mince pies. The left over crudités will shortly find their way into a casserole of Dexter braising steak!
Practically all the ingredients and drinks came from one or other of the discounters, Lidl (known as Fortnum's in this house) and Aldi. True, the makings of the sausage rolls were from Sainsbury's, but these days we darken their door rarely. What we save, of course, we partly spend in diesel getting to our nearest Fortnum's, but the experience is so much more pleasant. Of the other lot, founded by Albrecht and Dietrich, I've less experience, and the one I used the other day was a bit like a North African soukh. Their wines are on the whole more recherchés than Fortnum's, though.
So, with the festive hostilities officially started, the next job is to gear up for Christmas Day. The bread is proving as I write, the Dexter topside is in the fridge and we're turning our minds to the cheese board.
For the annual blethers, click here.
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