New Year's ablutions..

When you turn on the oven and it immediately smells like you've got a full roast cooking, you know that your mother is calling you from beyond the grave to stick your head in it and get scouring. The new year, bereft as it is, of exciting things to do, has just seen me experiencing an orgiastic burst of joy by removing shedloads of burnt fat from the inside of my cooker. In this gleaming clean machine, I cooked a pretend Christmas cake. Well, the original one was divided into three and two sizeable slabs sent off to the banished families. Our third rapidly disappeared in the usual excesses of Christmas gluttony. Last night, however, I heard fumblings and foragings from the kitchen. Dearest was on the prowl for something sweet. Ridiculously he was still looking for Christmas cake that had long disappeared.(Mainly down his gullet. And possibly some down mine. Actually, I like to wear mine on my hips..) "I'll make you one tomorrow," I promised. So today I got out my Slimming World All Bran fruit cake recipe, and soaked the fruit in Brandy. (Bit off-piste that, not strictly S.World but never mind.) Well, dry January was rather tiresome. All I can say is that the cake mixture tasted divine. So much so that I swear the cooked cake is half the size its meant to be. Whilst I most likely am twice the size. Happy New Year! (A little behind? Not me. I've got a bloomin' big un.)

Farewell, my lovelies...

Well, hello, readers everywhere. I've been on a break. Not an exotic one. A long weekend in Southport actually. And very nice it was too. I have to confess that one of my primary objectives in accepting this invitation to stay with these friends, was to try out their new toilet. Yes, they have got one of these weird and wonderful ones that wash your derriere, dry it with warm air and then powder it. Well, not the last bit, obviously. I spent the whole weekend sucking in my cheeks to gather courage to use this magical feat of engineering.  I finally steeled myself to go to their ensuite. Only to find that mine host was truly enthroned. I beat a hasty retreat and the moment passed. So I have to say, I cannot report back.
Rest assured I will, at any time in the future.. However, I have to warn you that I am thinking of extending my current blog break. It has occurred to me that it's a bit rude to bugger off into the wide blue yonder without so much as a wave goodbye. You might think that I'd been run over by a bus or something.
I would like to think that come the autumn I will be impelled to continue. However, at the moment I am about to embark on further house renovations, involving plaster being removed and replaced in living areas. The garden, small though it is, is demanding more attention, and I have to confess, I am really enjoying the atavistic thrill of slugicide. I have to practice the piano to calm myself. Currently on Summertime which should be perfected by Christmas; Sherlock's theme, by Christmas 2019, and Fly Me to the Moon by next week.

So thank you all for following me for the past couple of years. I have so enjoyed myself. If I've occasionally made you smile, then that makes me very happy indeed.
I wish you all a happy Summer.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the tortured chords of a rookie pianist playing us out....

"Who's Eaten My Petunias?" You sing it, I'll play it...

Leave a garden for a few days at this time of year and expect a jungle on your return. Mine was well-watered, thanks to the ministrations of my sister-in-law. It was also, in part, well-eaten. A bit like me on holiday, come to think about it.
Shrubs are shrubbing like mad and in a small garden need to be given a haircut. Roses are blossoming earlier than anticipated and filling the air with fragrance. Shropshire Lad out the front and Gertrude Jekyll out the back.

Before I'd left for Cornwall, I'd planted a petunia I'd been given, amongst some established violas in a tub. It never occurred to me that slugs and snails would slime their way across the patio and up a terracotta pot to munch the blooming lot.  I showered the slug pellets with maniacal zest over what was left.
I then looked at the gooseberry bush. It was laden with small green pellets that you could call young gooseberries. The leaves also bore signs of another garden invader: tiny black caterpillars. Last year they munched their way through leaves and goosegogs, so this year, I cleared the branches of every berry. Poached with a bucket-load of sugar, they were delicious.





Summer is a-coming-in.
"Summer Time" is my latest piece on the piano. As I resumed my practice, a gruff  not quite sotto enough voce was heard to say,
"Well, that's one thing I haven't missed.."
What can he mean?

Uplifting tales or pressing the wrong buttons?

When I worked at BBC TV centre in the late eighties, the lifts were a heavily relied-upon form of transportation. If one arrived, you would run for it. To save a tedious wait for the next.
I remember being one of a crowd that had sardined itself inside one of these capacious boxes. The comic writer Denis Norden leapt in as the doors were closing and found himself facing a crowd of twenty people.
“Now I expect you’re all wondering why I’ve asked you here!” he chortled. He probably used that line habitually but it never failed to please.

I dare say Richard Ned Lebow, the hapless professor, thought he too would get a little chortle, when he found himself in a lift. When asked which floor he required, he answered,  Ladies Lingerie.  He hadn’t reckoned on his audience containing a raging feminist who took exception to this. This feeble joke she believed, was  designed to offend and denigrate women. He has refused to apologise (He should of course, have waded in with, I'm sorry I dropped a bit of a bloomer there...) and it is now being taken to another level. (The Men swear department?) It certainly makes me swear at the supreme idiocy of the situation.

Years ago, when people asked you what you were working on, you’d say the name of the director followed by his show. Like Mike Newell's Mayor's Charity. One day, in a lift at the Beeb I was asked what show I was doing. To which I replied,
“Roland Joffe’s Willy." as the lift doors closed.

I wouldn’t have offended anyone then, and in a similar context I wouldn't be taken to task now,  as seemingly I have a licence to say what I want.  Men, it seems, no longer have that option.
The swing of the pendulum is so weighted in women's favour that  instead of being mesmerised, we  all should be asking questions.
No one seems prepared to stick their heads above the parapet. To ask the right questions.

Star-Grazing in Cornwall....

Nobody ever wants to be a sub-prefect. Or a deputy Head Girl. In the same way, I imagine, that if you are a celebrity then you don't really want to be a minor celebrity. So with this is mind, I feel a little on the mean side by describing the two well-known faces I spotted at fifty yards as minor slebs. They were staying at our hotel in Cornwall last week.  I was as chuffed as punch to have identified them, as I only know one from the radio. I then studiously avoided eye-contact with them for the rest of the week. Because the last thing you want to do when on holiday is make eye-contact with outsiders. Nest-ce pas? That goes for me, rather than them. At the end of the week they might have been wondering, "Doesn't anyone here know who we bloody are??"

But the hotel we stay at, is such a charming bastion of English refinement  (boasting an hors d'oeuvres trolley as well as a pudding trolley) that nobody heeded their presence and concentrated on consuming as many calories as it is humanly possible to do, in any given day.
What I did learn, however, is that when, in future, I spot someone well-known, I do not discretely nudge Dearest-soul-of-discretion, and draw them to his attention. Not unless I want to hear the immortal words,
"Who??? Never heard of 'em!"
Not even when I Googled him a picture.
Maybe I was the only one to recognise them.
If they are reading this Bunion Blog in search of guidance and stumble across this entry then I am sure they will be impressed by my consummate discretion.

A Lighter Inbox...

Oh, I feel refreshed. Revitalised. Nothing to do with the wedding. Caught up on that. A précis  on late night news... plenty. The bride looked exquisite; the groom looked like.... Harry. Some magnificent frockage. Hattily, nattily, stylish. And all went swimmingly.
Marvellous feat of British pageantry.

I'm actually talking about my Inbox. And yours. Because this is big stuff. I am so tired of Bitcoin emails. So fed up with being seduced by Russian women. Why don't they send me some women from North Yorkshire? I don't need any more insurance, and am not ready to put my first down payment on my funeral. Thank you, thank you, but finally no thank you.... No more raking through hundreds of unsolicited emails searching for the one that a friend might have sent you. Or missing the only genuine one because you have been trigger-happy in exterminating  all the trash.

Now we have emails asking you nicely to press this button if you wish to continue to receive emails from their company. No, thanks! The power. The pleasure. No more bombardment. No more delectable temptation. Control.

My Inbox is going to be lean and mean.
I'd like to have been mean with the Ben and Jerry's  cookie dough this evening. I'd like to have been mean with the Digestive Lights I spread with butter. It's all because I wasn't mean with the Porta 6 tonight. Which means that there is fat chance of me being lean in the foreseeable future.
If only I could zip up my personal Inbox....

Eve of the Royal Wedding ..

Well, I don't know about you, but I will be getting myself an early night. I want to look and feel my best, in readiness for the Harry and Meghan wedding fest. Tomorrow is the big day.
Steady the buffs. You might be watching, but I have to say, really,  that I will be quite happy to dip into a few edited highlights on News at Ten.
Because my dears, I have already done the Royal Wedding. Do you remember my mentioning a wedding filming date a month or so ago? Well, I was attending The Windsors Royal Wedding, filmed for Channel 4. If you like satire served hot hot hot, then this is the dish, or rather, the silver server for you. It is very funny. Rude and irreverent. Just my cup of cha.
So when gaga Britain is glued to their TV sets tomorrow, I will be planting my begonias. I wish the happy couple joy. And if they have as much fun as I did on those four days filming, they will have a ball.
Cheers! Time for one of my Negronis, I feel.

Not to be confused....