Month: August 2011

As the ‘oosbind and dawter watch Komodo dragons eat their way through a dying water buffalo it’s time for an update.
The cellar is full of unwanted kitchen equipment, plates, bowls, tureens, sieves, knives, forks, big spoons, little spoons and a forest of wooden spoons.
The chest of drawers at the bottom of the stairs has an array of electrical equipment that can rival Dixons, Curreys and Harrods 330 versions of a juicer.
The sitting room has a new revolving rack, a new lamp, several thousand new CD’s, three more bean bags, eighty three thousand books and Gawd knows how many cushions.
The kitchen has been blitzed, re-stocked with fourteen hundred spice bottles, seventeen thousand oil bottles and a pantechnican of teabags.
The bathroom is a slalem of bath salts, bath oils, bath bubbles and creams.
The spare room now has a hat-stand sporting coats, scarves, jackets, macintoshes, and a hundredweight of Gods Gift’s charity shirts.
My bedroom is stuffed to the gunwales with more shoes than Clarks and more clothes than Primarni.
The studio has 35 years worth of dairies, hoards of sheet music, 1 cello, 2 saxophones, 3 bodhrains, 4 xylophones, 5 sets of fairy lights, 6 guitars, 7 whistles, 8 piano octaves, 9 cases of percussion and 10 reasons to be cheerful which includes a banjo, congas, synthesiser and a double bass – all hidden under so much ivy, Virginia creeper and nettles that the brambles that have taken over would shame even the hardiest of barbed wire.

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The television has gone from the corner of the sitting room. The rug, the pictures, the clock, the big table, the armchair, the cushions, the colour, the mirrors, the atmosphere. The room is very big and beige. So big that without my glasses I can’t see clearly from the door to the windows.
But I still managed to step on the only glass in the flat.
It made me shriek.
The colony of moths that took residence in the red rug are now homeless and bothering me by flying into my hair. Pesky varmints.
My blood sugar is as high as an elephants thigh and my eye continues to weep for Wales.
After breakfast in the square, an Aero Chocolate bar at East Croydon Station and butter mints in the car, its not surprising I feel sick.

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Gods Gift drove us to a 70th birthday do at THE GROVE in Watford.
Imagine twenty very noisy friends and family.
Imagine a dining hall full of tables with the same.
Imagine people who like to eat seated round those tables.
Imagine balloons and bouquets at the tables where celebratory parties gather to sample the buffet.
Imagine flowers and vases and Eastern European waiters.
Imagine whistles and finger clicks to get the attention of the aformentioned
Imagine the heat and the fuss.
Now imagine the buffet.
Shell fish, smoked fish, pickled fish and mussels.
Red pickles, green pickles, mayonnaise and chutney.
Russian salad, fennel salad, green salad and beetroot.
Bloody beef, bloody lamb, bloody Hell more meat than graze the ranges of Wyoming.
Imagine mountains or crispy roasted potatoes and plains of Yorkshire puddings.
Imagine hot woks and super-sized serving tongs that spring off into the gravy.
Imagine a chef wearing a white hat stir-frying your very own vegetable selection.
Imagine cheeses, and bread and more cheese and even more bread.
Imagine Ethiopia.
Imagine plates piled high with food and then some.
Imagine super-sized eaters shuffling to get their third helping.
Imagine cheese-cake, fruit-tarts, pear-crumble, fresh berries.
Imagine the colon of the guests.
Imagine water and wine.
Imagine stained white linen napkins.
Imagine the grounds.
Sculpture and lily ponds.
Flunkies on the hoof, sycophants in reception.
Imagine the bill.

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