Bean Bonanza
I have been in the mood for cooking lately since our dreams of showjumping triumph went pear-shaped. This leads to problems of its own and today I found myself tramping round to my elderly neighbour’s with a plate of offerings. The curtain twitched so I knew she was in and eventually she had to answer the door and take it from me. She got her own back though – “I know what you like! You like – beans!” Oh corks! I have only just finished using last year’s lot, long tough stringy specimens that appeared with dismaying regularity on the doorstep. I made soup, I made casseroles, I made bean cakes; in the end I was chopping the things into tiny pieces and concealing them in sauces, which meant they were scraped into the bin afterwards when I could have saved time by dumping them straight there in the first place.
Therapists say that it’s essential for families to sit down regularly for a meal together, but this is dodgy advice. No other situation lines people up in better battle formation, more ideally placed for confrontation and lots of angry eye contact. I’ve learned a lot from watching master practioners (PG and RPD) at work so here’s a hint: if you have just insulted another member of the family, always look wide-eyed and hurt when they fight back and say, all aggrieved: “But I was only joking!” This is very neat: you have slid in your deadly insult and at the same time proved that your victim has no sense of humour. Double points!
As for our Clydey-boy, Pat has pronounced him fit and well again. He’s been jumping low fences in the cross country field with his usual enthusiastic panache, so he’s clearly not racked with torment about his disaster at Sudeley, ‘where did I go wrong? where do I go from here? ‘Ave I lost me nerve’ kind of thing. Pony-girl however has come down with the ‘flu and currently has a temperature of 103. Guess who’s mucking out Clyde this week?
Therapists say that it’s essential for families to sit down regularly for a meal together, but this is dodgy advice. No other situation lines people up in better battle formation, more ideally placed for confrontation and lots of angry eye contact. I’ve learned a lot from watching master practioners (PG and RPD) at work so here’s a hint: if you have just insulted another member of the family, always look wide-eyed and hurt when they fight back and say, all aggrieved: “But I was only joking!” This is very neat: you have slid in your deadly insult and at the same time proved that your victim has no sense of humour. Double points!
As for our Clydey-boy, Pat has pronounced him fit and well again. He’s been jumping low fences in the cross country field with his usual enthusiastic panache, so he’s clearly not racked with torment about his disaster at Sudeley, ‘where did I go wrong? where do I go from here? ‘Ave I lost me nerve’ kind of thing. Pony-girl however has come down with the ‘flu and currently has a temperature of 103. Guess who’s mucking out Clyde this week?