A quick day

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I have now written today’s blog in my head about eight times. I cannot tell you how many philosophical, political and domestic matters I have covered. Unfortunately, events have conspired to keep me from the computer, so that now I sit down at five-thirty, and it’s pitch dark outside, and I am too tired for a long, involved blog. I know you shall be beating your fists on the table with disappointment.

Instead, here is a little digest of my Saturday:

I looked with pleasure at the elegant winter sun.

I ran errands in the village. Everyone was smiling. They said: ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’

I had a disastrous afternoon’s betting, which cut me down to size. But the racing was fascinating. I kept ringing up my mother and saying: ‘That’s one to follow.’ I always do this. Then I quite forget the One to Follow’s name, and it’s back to square one.

I got cross because a rather sneering journalist, of whom I had never heard, derided Britishness on Any Questions. Scottishness, apparently, is the one true thing. Britishness is just a pathetic nothing. I may come back to this subject. I thought she was wrong, but worse, she was very ill-mannered about it. There’s no call for that on the BBC.

I missed my dad. Time does not gentle the missing; if anything, it is keener and sharper now. But the recovery time is quicker; the gaps in between are more solid, and more real.

I laughed at the clichéd middle-classness of my food shopping. In my basket were: duck’s legs, puy lentils, Taleggio, rocket, dried mushrooms, and some yellow split peas. I am a parody of myself. At least I am not quite as bad as the very superior lady I saw in the Co-op last week, who roared at her husband: ‘Go and find the chorizo’. Chorizo in the Co-op? Good luck with that.

I awarded The Pigeon the Little Nell award for pathos. When I examined her sore foot she made little mewing noises, trembled, and gazed at me with ineffable reproach, like an orphan in the snow. The minute we went out into the sun, she got the scent of moles and voles in her nostrils, and galloped off like a two-year-old, with not a trace of lameness.

I listened to an endless debate about the direness of Ed Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party. I can’t quite work out if it is real, or whether it is just a herd meme. It’s a much more interesting story, after all, than Mili Minor does Quite Well. I must say, he does not fill one with confidence and conviction.

I made some minestrone. I am in a serious soup stage, just at the moment.

That was about it.

 

Here are some pictures for you:

I hope you are having a lovely weekend.