The Mrs and I are separated by two great divides. The first is that she is a deluded lefty who belies in the State rather than the individual and that capitalism is the root of all evil rather than the engine of mankind’s progression whereas I am a libertarian. The second is that she is a townie who has never lived where I grew up, the country.
So though an enthusiastic meat eater she recoils at the idea of killing anything. I find it easy. And I sometimes think that she thinks that raspberries and potatoes grow in punnets at Tesco. So just for her a couple of pictures…
My father’s garden in Shipston is full of life. And so there are raspberries a plenty to pick, the last of the potatoes and strawberries, red currants, black currants and still to come gooseberries and yet more raspberries.
Note to the Mrs & other townies: potatoes ( dug up hence the earth) are the white things, raspberries (picked from bushes hence no earth) are red.
My step mother makes fools, ice cream sorbets and summer puddings. The latter brings back memories. When I was a kid my mother made almost everything at home including our own (brown) bread. As a birthday treat we were allowed white bread from the shop.
But white bread also entered the house for summer pudding: red currants, raspberries slow cooked together then put into the sort of bowl you use for Christmas pudding which is lined with white bread (crusts removed). That is then put into the fridge to set and chill and served when turned out onto a plate. The juices soak into the bread which comes out a bright pinky-red. Add lashings of cream. Amazing.
If I was my father this would be a cue for a joke about how the Women’s colleges at Oxford (both my mother and step mother attended St Anne’s, albeit about ten years apart), must have taught the girls something useful in the kitchens.
But that would be sexist and as you know it is my father who has the odd reactionary thought, not I.
