Post-Christmas lull

Easy on the toes
 

Musta costa fotune

The tide of guests flows and ebbs. Last night we were eight, tonight we are three. Last night we engaged in noisy, incompetent charades, tonight we'll probably read in silence broken only by the sound of sipping. Last night Beef Wellington, tonight spag. bol. albeit enlivened by a pinch of chili.

VR looks up from her smartphone and tells me Russian TV has sent Salisbury a chocolate model of the city's cathedral.

As a goodwill gesture!

Salisbury!

Where  KGB agents, recorded almost continuously on CCTV cameras, and subsequently identified by their fake and real names, strolled from the railway station and sought to poison two Russian natives. They failed. However their discarded poison (in a perfume aerosol) was picked up by a woman and it did for her.

More like: Yah-boo, catch us if you can.

The leg throbs and I shall shortly take a hot bath which won't do any good at all. But it will be a pleasure working the new lever taps with my toes. A step towards paradise on earth.

Far too much of The Observer’s full-colour supplement is devoted to fashion which is of no interest to me. However, flicking through the pages  some weeks ago I paused. Said to VR, “Just for once, something that appeals – a Paul Smith scarf.”  Guess what I got for Christmas. It’s gorgeous except for the fact I’ve forgotten the price, only that it was monstrous.

Blabbermouth guilt.

Speak not of problems,only of successes

VR's GREATEST culinary skill is improvisation. As on Boxing Day when we dined à deux.

This Christmas British supermarkets competed suicidally over cut-price luxury consumables. I've mentioned champagne at a tenner (the dozen I bought is now down to three). But how about lobsters at £6? Not big, of course. A pair boiled and eviscerated made a disappointingly small pile of meat. VR contemplated the pile for - oh, fully four seconds - then out came the ramekins.

To the lobster were added breadcrumbs, butter, garlic, parsley, a squeeze of lemon and a "tiny" pinch of chilli. Into the ramekins, the grill and then our gastro-intestinal tracts went yet another unnamed fishy calypso.

About the ramekins (pictured). Possibly that isn't their technical name but it'll do, for goodness sake. They were bought in the Brittany town of Perros Guirec where we holidayed with Joe and family in the mid-seventies. They have a sweet elegance and have been used endlessly.

THIS MORNING the woman working one of the Tesco checkouts asked me if it was cold outside. I said it was but given I was her only customer I felt emboldened to go further. The previous midnight I'd put out the garbage and no doubt it was damn frosty. But there was compensation in the pin-point clarity of stars in the night sky. "I've just had a cataract op and things like that are a treat," I said.

She nodded. "I had mine done a year or so ago and it was wonderful. I was fearful but there's less in it than going to the dentist." We smiled at each in the esoteric complicity that has enveloped me since November 19.

Generation gap gets wider

POP EXPLORED, part eight. Resuming Cool Kid’s list (December 11)

Danny le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip. Letter from God. But not from an avenging Yahway, rather one who’s down in the dumps. To heavy three-chord guitars, increasing in tempo and volume throughout, this panicky accountant Deity, burdened with an estuarine accent, praises Man for “all the beautiful art you’ve created with such grace and finesse.” but whinges that “a lot of the good I tried to do was corrupted when organised religion got into full swing.” In unmusical recitative he apologises “to Mother Nature because I created you.” Not a whole lot of fun.

Bright Eyes. Lover I don’t have to love. Ding-dong introduction. Whispering monotone vocalist gradually assumes an understated melody. Lyrics tend towards incoherence “I picked you out of a crowd… I said ‘I like your shoes’” plus repeated reference to a man with chemicals. I’m much too old for this. YouTube commenters are very acrimonious to each other about this piece: “I’m through with you and your stupid mouth; you give people a bad name.” and “You disgrace literature with your blatant corruption”.

Ed Sheeran. Small Bump. (Cool Kid admits Sheeran is the most popular singer on his list). Although modestly employed the guitar has a plucked theme to introduce things and there are sufficient chords thereafter to identify a tune. An incredibly young-sounding voice sings about a child “unborn for four months then brought to life”, capable of wrapping its fingers (“nails the size of half a grain of rice”) round the singer’s thumb, then “torn from life and maybe you were needed up there but we’re unaware as to why”. Some pediatric inconsistencies here. But it’s a song with a tale to tell.

Pic: The LdPs’ latest act of patronage crossed a very significant price barrier.