Dog days and tortilla flats…

The cat appears to have got my tongue. It has also laid claim to my pen and my keyboard. The cat in question is, contrarily, a dog. Dog days of summer render me contentedly comatose.  Although always peaceful, this little corner of France becomes dormant from this point to the end of August. What little is normally here, has upped sticks and  gone fishing. I relish this time particularly as the pool, realising how one person can spoil it for everyone, has pulled itself together. From the moment the pool acquiesces to the blue drugs, I lose the desire to swim in it. I don’t think the desire to swim in it is ever as high as it should be. it’s just there and if it’s there it needs to behave in a pool like way. I suppose that’s like saying children should be seen and not heard. I’m still looking for the mistake in that…..I give up.

The song should read “Summertime, when the eating is easy..”.Summer food is truly effortless. I managed to drop a tortilla effortlessly onto the floor, as I turned it over to cook the the other side, whilst preparing our supper yesterday evening. The damage was hardly noticeable, so I won’t show you… a bit like damaging your Dad’s car when you’re young. I once had an assistant who, as he hurriedly gathered up his belongings, said to me :“I scratched the car whilst parking in Wardour.St. You can’t see it..really”. Strangely enough, the one thing I didn’t see again was him. The “scratch” involved a lorry taking off one side of the car. Back to the undamaged tortilla. The plan had been to serve it with pepperonata, in a sort of “tapas” style of dinner. As I made the pepperonata I kept eating damaged pieces of the undamaged tortilla, which soon rendered it tiny as well as undamaged. It was not long before it became apparent that the dinner would comprise pepperonata alone, which quickly rendered “tapas” to the singular form, “tapa”. One “tapa” for two people was not going to do it so, in one bound Dick was free ( sounds worrying, but followers of Dick Barton will get the gist) and the “tapa” became a pasta sauce, changing country as smoothly as catching a train from Waterloo in rush hour. It’s not surprising that Wellington named his famous battle after a railway station. Getting home to Stratfield Saye on the 6.05 must have made facing the French Cuirassiers a piece of cake. The pasta was a huge success, as was the Battle of Waterloo, and it was served with crisp fried breadcrumbs which Napoleon hadn’t been expecting. So victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat,,,, a welcome change for me.

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