What's Cooking With Dive? Pig Fat Pasta

Three guesses what we're making this week!

Yeah, okay, so maybe the title gave it away …

This post is respectfully dedicated to Katherine, who at the moment is unable to eat certain things including cake (AUGH!), pork and pasta.
I'm crap at cakes (legacy of having a mum who bakes constantly and incomparably; I've never had to learn), so here, especially for Katherine is Dive's own "Pig Fat Pasta".

As you all know by now, I am a lazy-assed cook. When I get home just before bedtime after my crap commute I often turn to a bag of dried organic pasta as a time-saver, but back in the days when I had a life I used to make my own pasta all the time.

So as part of my ongoing quest to get my life back I've decided to do what good Italian mamas do and make a monthly batch of my own, eat some and freeze the rest.
The advantage of home-made over bought stuff is that bought, dried pasta - even the good organic stuff - is made with water and not eggs.
Ironically, this makes even better "al dente" pasta than home-made for certain dishes, but it doesn't taste anywhere near as nice.

Some of you may make your own pasta and you'll know that once or twice a month is quite enough for all that mess and effort, but that it is definitely worth doing as a treat.

In the good old days I used to roll all mine by hand, but since I bought Phil a pasta roller a few years back, which he actually uses, I decided to invest in one for myself.
Hoorah for the recession and half-price cookware sales!

Anyhoo, get your pinnies on and let's head for the kitchen and make a mess.

First up: Ingredients.
All organic, as ever, and as local as possible.
Onion, garlic, eggies, 00 pasta flour, lardons, Prosciutto, Gran Padano and Parmesan cheeses and some Kalamata olives on the side.

What we're making with that lot will be home-made Prosciutto di Parma e Gran Padano Tortellini (that's ham and cheese but it sounds so much sexier in Italian) simply cooked with garlic, onion and organic smoked bacon fatty lardons.
Pig Fat Pasta.

Later on, I might get into classic sauces, green spinach pasta, black squid ink pasta, red tomato and brown wholemeal pasta and lots of other related things that make for a delicious meal and a cheap photopost.
Today, however, we're doing basic pasta making so we'll dispense with any sauces and keep things plain dumb simple, just the way I like 'em.

For anyone who may not have made pasta at home before, this is one of the most fun ways you can possibly spend an hour or so of your weekend (and a lot of that hour is spent just sitting about). It's a truly awesome thing to do if you have someone over for coffee and a chat; two people can have even more fun than one making pasta.
Lotsa mess; lotsa laughs.

So …
As we're making tortellini, we're going to need something to stuff them with.
Today's theme is pig fat, so let's choose one of the finest culinary pinnacles pig fat can attain and grab some Prosciutto di Parma.
We're talking at least two year old matured and of course we're talking organic.
You want flavour? This is a wafer-thin, concentrated taste-orgasm.
Chop it up nice and finely.

Add to that a finely grated wodge of Gran Padano cheese (we're saving the Parmesan to serve it with).
Mix well (added bonus points of licking your fingers clean. Cookie dough got NOTHING on this)!

Done that?
Right … Eggies!
Organic, local, yadda, yadda …
I don't usually specify amounts (other than the glop, the sploosh, the roughly-a-handful and the about yay much) but it kinda makes sense here, so for my pasta session today I'll be using 300grams (that's around ten and a half ounces in real money) of organic "00" pasta flour ("farina di grano tenero" if you wanna be pretentious and I usually do) and I'll add to that two whole eggs and one extra yolk (for yumminess).

The white from the third egg can go in with the filling to make it easier to work.
Oh, and don't waste those shells! Crunch 'em all up and put 'em on the garden around hostas and cabbages; like coffee grounds, slugs can't bear eggshells.

Hokay … Sieve your flour onto a board or clean worktop. You want to make it into a cute little mountain and then bash the top in to form a volcano. Yay! Back to kiddie cooking!

Into the caldera of your volcano go the two and a half eggies. If you do it right, they stay in focus but if your hands are covered in flour your camera might sulk a bit like mine did.

You can use your fingers from the start if you like but I prefer to break up the yolks with a fork and start it off that way, gradually incorporating more of the flour into the eggs.

Which is very relaxing, if slightly gross to look at.

When you can't contain your childish excitement any longer, get your fingers in there and start having some serious gloopy fun.

After a while, you'll end up with a sticky, floury ball and a load of leftover flour (important).

Now comes the fun part.
This is what pasta making is all about. This is why Italian mamas don't have to spend time down the gym to get forearms like Popeye's.
Get kneading!
YAY!

My stupid, cheapo digital camera decided that "Way Overexposed" was the correct setting for these and who am I to argue with a piece of plastic crap?

Keep on kneading until your forearms inflate, remembering to keep changing hands at ninety-nine.

After a while, your dough will start to feel more elastic and silky and less lumpy and floury.
Time to really put the hammer down and take out all those anger management issues.

When you can poke your finger into the dough and it springs straight back out, your pasta and yourself are both ready for a rest.

This is what all that effort has produced. A kinda doughy lump.

Some people wrap their doughy lump in clingfilm and pop it in the fridge for half an hour.
I prefer to cover it with a damp teatowel and leave it where I can see it.
Time to chill out with a coffee and the paper.

I gave my lump around forty minutes and then got that leftover flour and sieved some onto the worktop (having cleaned off all the doughy crap first).

In the good old days when I had a big enough kitchen and a really long rolling pin I would roll all my pasta by hand, but now the longest piece of worktop I have is only around four feet so it's machine time.
A lot of people have an "unwanted gift" pasta roller or a "we thought it looked nice but we never use it" pasta roller tucked away somewhere and now we're going to get that out and play with it.

Anyone here have "Play-Doh"™ when you were kids?
This is just the same, except you can eat it this time around.

So …
Let's rip that dough ball into two and give the first lump a quick roll, leaving the rest under the damp cloth for later.

Clamp your pasta roller to your worktop and open it to its widest setting, then simply crank the dough through it.
Simplissimo.

Close it down a notch and squeeze it some more.
You really want to then put it back on the wide setting, fold the pasta in half and then repeat the process several times on the two widest settings.
This conditions the pasta nicely and helps it keep its shape rather than just springing back. If you've ever rolled it by hand you know just how frustrating it can be when you've at last got it to condom thin-ness and you breathe a huge sigh of satisfaction, only for it to spring back to four times as thick as you want it.

Once you've run the dough through the widest settings a few times, folding it and re-pressing it, you can work your way down through the settings, squeezing your pasta thinner and thinner each time.

You might notice it getting a bit long.

Or even a lot long … In fact by the time this little doughball is done it will be a little over eight feet long.

For things like spaghetti and lasagne you'll want the second from thinnest setting, but for stuffed pasta like tortellini, you want it so thin you can read your paper through it, so you go right down to the thinnest setting.

If you want to make wide sheet pasta, when it's reached the thinnest setting, simply fold it neatly and start again with the thickest and you should get nice, square-edged lasagne sheets.

Today, though, we want an eight foot long, three inch wide strip for the three inch circular pastry cutter to play with.

Thusly.

Now's the time to add your filling.

Kinda like this. I added some fresh parsley from the windowcill to the Prosciutto and Gran Padano and eggwhite mixture and then plonked a glob onto each little pasta circle.

Next, slightly moisten the edge closest to you and fold the little circle in half, pressing lightly to seal the edges.

Simply wrap the thing around your finger …

And lo … a tortellini (or whatever the singular of tortellini might be … a tortellino, perhaps).
Whichever of you at the back of the room who said it looks like a vagina is going to get a slap after class.

Set those little guys out to dry. Turn them over after ten minutes or so to let them dry out evenly.
If you're going to be cooking them later in the day, pop 'em in the fridge. If you don't they tend to come apart when you put them on to boil and you end up with a wet soup of your filling and some floating pasta circles.

While they were drying I made some more. Four times this amount in the end, plus a load of tagliatelle, all for the freezer for treats later in the month.

Now let's get cooking!

Heat up a non-stick pan or wok and whop in a handful of nice fatty lardons.
No oil; we're cooking our Pig Fat Pasta in pig fat.
F L A V O U R !
Lean meat is just an exercise in chewing; all the flavour is in the fat, which is why nicely marbled beef is pricier than lean.
People forget that simple fact. Eat fatty meat for flavour but eat less of it than you would eat lean. You'll be just as healthy and a whole lot happier.

Oh, and of course, this has got to be organic. If you use factory "chemo-pork substitute" and whap it in the pan like this you'll end up with an unpleasant watery soup as that stuff has at least twenty percent water added by weight after all the chemicals.
Cheap "meat" is a false economy.
"Like a Sunday in T.J.
It's cheap but it's not free …"
as Steely Dan so nicely put it.
It's certainly not something I want to put in my mouth!

Anyhoo … While that's sizzling nicely, plop your pasta into some boiling water (not salted, unless you like everything to taste of salt, which I don't … add it at the table if you really can't survive without it).

Get a good sizzle going with your lardons and then toss in an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic, turn down the heat and let the onion sweat clear.

When the pasta is done (four minutes), drain it and add what have become entertainingly mutated tortellini mis-shapes to the pan and stir them around until they're liberally coated in pig fat (don't let the term gross you out; if you eat bacon, you'll LOVE this).

Then simply add shaved Parmesan and olives, plate it up and eat it up.
Yummy!
Rich, eggy home-made pasta, perfectly al dente.
With pig fat.
Old Dive's Pig Fat Pasta.

Enjoy!

Maude's Back

What is it with US beauty spots and murder?

First up it was the female Mafia hit team from last June …

"Okay, Maude, fetch the shovels from the trunk."

Now it's the Mount Lassen stoning.
(Click on 'em to blow 'em up)

Sorry, Katie, sometimes your wonderful postcards just call to me and I cannot resist reaching for the Photoshop.

εδακρυσεν ο ιησους

εδακρυσεν ο ιησους

"Edakysen ho Iésous", the original Greek text of John:11:35 … "Jesus wept."

Jesus wept for the death of Lazarus, out of compassion for his grieving family, but today is Good Friday and today day we meditate on Jesus' own death, and what has become of that compassion.

Good Friday.

The one day of the year when even this lost soul heads off to church to mourn the torture and murder of a blameless man.
This year, however, I am staying home, reading John's account of that awful day and listening to Bach's dark masterpiece the St.John Passion together with my favourite Stabat Maters.

I do not want to sit among hypocrites and mourn Jesus.
I do not want to be surrounded by what Christianity has become.

Good Friday.
There's nothing good about it. It is the worst of days.
It commemorates the day when a man who had taught nothing but compassion, forgiveness and unconditional love was beaten, flogged, humiliated and nailed to some wooden cross pieces where he took six agonising hours to die.

Some of my Christian friends believe that three days later he rose from the dead, then ascended to Heaven and will come again.
I used to believe that, but nowadays I don't.
After what we put him through, do you really think he would be happy to see a bunch of self-righteous and hypocritical bigots waving crosses at him?
His crucifixion is surely the last thing he would want to be reminded of.

Good Friday forces me to contemplate Jesus' life and teaching, the human condition and what Christianity has become.
Good Friday seems to me to be the day that Christians forgot everything Jesus taught them and learned to hate.

They started early, at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD.
The Emperor Constantine had become a convert and convened a meeting of church leaders to thrash out which particular version of events would satisfy the majority of the population of the Roman Empire and therefore keep him in power.
They threw out Gospels by Mary Magdalen (because she was a woman; women played a great part in the early church shortly after Jesus' death but the patriarchal bishops wanted the show all to themselves, so women were excluded), Peter, Judas, Paul, Thomas, Philip and many others, keeping only the Gospels we know and that suited their political purpose. They so thoroughly destroyed all copies of the rejected accounts - accounts written by Jesus' own friends and followers and of immeasurable historical and religious importance - that we only know of them from a single copy discovered in an Egyptian archeological dig in 1945.
They also set out to destroy anyone who did not agree with their particular version of the "truth", a nasty habit today's Christians still enthusiastically embrace.

First up, they set out to completely destroy paganism, the traditional way of worship in the Greek and Roman world.
How did they go about it?
Did they follow Christ's teachings and persuade by example, loving their enemies and forgiving them?

No.
Let's take Hypatia of Alexandria as an example.
She was a mathematician and teacher of Aristotlean and Platonic philosophy at the Platonist School in Alexandria around 400AD.
Bishop Cyril didn't like her. She was an uppity pagan woman in a position of power and even taught more enlightened Christians in her classes.

Here is Socrates Scholasticus, a Christian writer at the time:
She was "… hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them."

Christians? Following Jesus' example? …
Read the passage again.
Bishop Cyril, who set off this disgusting event and published a fake letter from Hypatia shortly after her brutal murder, claiming she attacked Christianity was made a Saint for his sins.

Let's skip forward to the Inquisition.
Here we have the official policy of the Christian Church for hundreds of years: torture and burn alive anybody who publicly disagrees with us.

They did this in the name of Jesus. For Christ's sake.

Okay, so they've calmed down a little now but they're still hating.
The so-called Christian Church is split into thousands of fragments, each and every one of them claiming exclusive right to the TRUTH; each and every one of them bitchily claiming they are RIGHT and all others are WRONG (and they do it loudly, too, hence the upper case).
They may not go in for torture and murder quite so much these days, but they still vilify and persecute those who they are frightened of: Jews, Muslims, Atheists and just about anyone else who doesn't bow down before their superior knowledge, before their own particular twisted version of the TRUTH.

In a particularly ludicrous (and grimly hilarious) twist, these so-called Christian Churches spend a great deal of time and money sending missionaries to other so-called Christian Churches to tell them the error of their ways and to try to SAVE them by forcing their own TRUTH upon the UNBELIEVERS.
We in England are flooded with US Evangelical missionaries, standing on street corners, shouting and waving pamphlets, telling us how WRONG we are. They even send missionaries to the Vatican! Sheesh! I mean, do they really expect Ratzinger to say "Oops! We were wrong these past two-thousand years; what we should really be doing is giving all our money to some mall-like church in the Mid-West"?

They are all hypocrites. All they really want is power over others.

Jesus' suffering should have brought about an end to suffering.
Instead it taught Christians to hate, and they gave themselves license and free rein to cause suffering wherever they went.
In his name.
And they are still doing it.

Today - Good Friday - above all other days, Christians should look at Jesus' own humble life and meditate on his teachings:
Compassion.
Forgiveness.
Unconditional love of others.

Stop pointing and shouting at other people and look at yourselves.
You claim to be followers of Christ.
This weekend, share something you covet with a stranger; go and worship in another denomination's church (HORRORS!); forgive the people you disagree with.
Be compassionate.

If you cannot bring yourself to do even that, you cannot truthfully call yourself a Christian.
And Jesus will have died in vain.

Meanwhile …

Busy, busy, busy …
I hope to catch up with all of your blogs this weekend (yay for a four day break).

No post today, but the coming soon board here at the Planet (currently a load of scribbled pages in my train notebook) includes some predictable Godbothering for Easter, messy fun with pasta and "Waiting For Godot" with Sir Ian Mc.Kellen and Patrick Stewart.

Book now to avoid missing the disappointment.

Sleeping With Drag Act And Lefty

I bumped into Drag Act in the car park this morning.
We smiled and said good morning and headed off to the train together, parting as we sought out our regular seats, which prompted me to continue where last week's "Some People I Slept With" post left off, describing the many and varied denizens - fellow damned souls - with whom I share my seven-hour-a-day commute from Hell.

Drag Act has been journeying with me across the Styx for at least five years now, yet I still have no idea what her name is.
She is a lovely, friendly woman who I imagine is in her late fifties, but it's difficult to tell because of all the make-up.
Not that she plasters it on, trailer-trash style; oh, no! It is immaculate, as is her hair and her clothing.
All three are merely unfortunate, that's all …

Let me describe her …
She must get up around midnight each week-night to give herself time to do "that" hair.
She wears a massive, and I mean MASSIVE back-combed, eighties, peroxide "blonde" frothy confection on her head.
It is a work of art but it is also strangely hilarious.

Her make-up is, as I have said already, immaculate; it's just that her lipstick is a leeetle too vampirically red and her mascara just a teensy bit too lashy for comfort.
I may have been watching too much Buffy, but when she smiles I want to take a step backwards just in case she goes for my throat.

Her suits - she always wears suits - are beautifully tailored; navy or black single-breasted jackets (and yes; shoulder pads are big for Drag Act) and pencil skirts with a white, slightly frilly blouse.
She completes her ensemble with seamed stockings (black) and black stilettos.

All of which probably makes her feel fabulous but actually makes her look the spitting image of Lily Savage (Colonials should Google our Lil … a truly glorious drag queen).

Drag Act is a lovely lady but I can't imagine her doing the washing up in anything other than long, black gloves.

Sharing a carriage with Drag Act and me is - among others from last week's post - the bona fide baffling nutjob that is Lefty.

Lefty had been a regular for many months before I noticed anything strange about him - other than that he is in his late thirties but still mistakenly wears that stupid "footballer", flicky-up-at-the-front gel hairdo, that he will look back on in years to come with deep and deserved shame and anguish.

Lefty is a therapist's wet dream; he has the most wonderful and entertaining affliction; one that I couldn't quite believe the first time I noticed and that took me several days of frankly obsessive stalking to verify.

This is what makes Lefty the strange and … er … special person he is:
Lefty simply cannot bring himself to turn right.

This is absolutely true.
When faced with a 90º right-hand corner the poor bastard instead turns 270º to the left to end up facing the way he needs to go.
He seems to have developed quite a cool little pirouette that doesn't attract much attention; he just looks like a guy who's realised he's going the wrong way and changes direction.
But the truth is - and I've travelled with him for years now so I know whereof I speak - the guy simply will not turn right.

At all.

EVER!

He has, however, developed coping strategies.
When he exits the turnstiles at the end of the platform at Liverpool Street Station he has to turn right and right again to head down onto the Central Line, but the canny bastard craftily SIDLES to the right while still facing forward until he reaches the Central Line entrance and then spins a 180º left turn to head down the tunnel.
Cunning!
On numerous occasions when the weather has been too crap for my five mile walk across the city I have caught the tube with Lefty.
Jammed like sardines into the stinking morning carriages he very gradually shifts and shuffles around to the left until he is facing the correct door. Almost imperceptible unless you are actually watching him do it.
What's more; he never faces the door straight on - just in case someone like me nudges him off line and forces him to turn all the way around again … no; he always faces about ten degrees to the right of straight on, so that when the doors open he has a little lefty leeway in the scrummage to get out safely.

I have no idea what psychological trauma in his childhood might have kicked off this tic; this unfortunate loss of the ability to turn right, but I know that an awful lot of people suffer from similar compulsive actions - though rarely one as amusing to watch as Lefty's - and cannot find a way to stop once they've started.

I once had a girlfriend who - if we were walking along, holding hands - would freak if it looked like we were about to walk one either side of a bollard or some other obstruction like a dog or a small child.
She confessed to being scared shitless that if that happened she would suddenly find herself all alone in an alternative reality with no way of getting back.

The mind is indeed a wonderful, strange and hugely amusing thing.

Anyhoo … Here's to Drag Act and Lefty.
One day I'm going to have to kidnap Lefty, carry him to the middle of Somerleyton Maze and then film him trying to get out.

What's Cooking With Dive? Οκταποδι Κρασατο

It's all Greek to me.
Οκταποδι Κρασατο - Octopodes Krasato, that is … one of my all-time favourite dishes.
Simple, fun and so intensely delicious it could blow your tastebuds clear into the middle of next week, this - like a long evening spent with good friends at a Greek seafront restaurant - is leisurely, beautiful and full of wonderful memories.

Enough of scene-setting. Pinnies on!

We're back with these sweet little guys today. Octopodes. Yummy, scrummy octopus babies to be precise.
Sorry to gross you out on your birthday, Lynn, but this one's going to be moist. A traditional Greek delight; a rich, herby, red-wine and tomato and olive and octopus stew that needs only the addition of some deliciously crusty fresh bakery bread to sop up the slop.
Eight-legged Heaven!

This requires a completely different approach to my last octopodal outing. This time we're gonna sweat those little suckers in their own tears until they squeal (yes, really … read on).
Heat a good-sized stew pot over a medium flame and toss in the cute little babies.
No oil! Not yet.

Stir 'em around for a bit (don't worry; they tend not to stick) and after a minute they'll start to cry.
Little, pinkish baby octopode tears will leak out of them.

Eventually, you'll get about this much. Keep the heat on medium and just stir from time to time until the liquid evaporates, keeping your very best olive oil handy for that moment when there's none left.
You'll know the moment is coming when the poor babies start to squeal at you; letting out air from their mysterious nether parts not unlike a screaming lobster.

When the moment arrives, whap in a good gloop of gloriously wonderful single-farmhouse vintage olive oil and stir things around until the li'l guys are well and truly oiled up.

Next up, toss in a couple of rough-chopped shallots and a fat clove of organic French purple garlic, squished and chopped finely.
Stir this lot around until the shallot starts to sweat down and become clear.

Oh, and you'll want a boffo-quality robust red wine … I'm using - as you see - a Rioja Gran Reserva because (a) it's perfect for the dish and (b) I'll have something mind-buggeringly delicious to drink with my meal.
It should be uncorked, aired and waiting ready beside your hob for the next bit.

Octopodes can be contrary little bastards. Let 'em play in a pan all by themselves and they'll happily not stick, but add oil, shallots and garlic and they get all stroppy and start tossing their toys out of the pram.
We're talking messy.
We're talking lots of cack up the sides of the pan and all over the base.

But …

Yay for one of my favourite moments in life: de-glazing!
Now is the moment to add your red wine. Little by little, all the while scrubbing furiously around the pan to get every last bit of that intensely-flavoured brown gack assimilated into the wine.
I've added almost a third of a bottle here, which leaves me plenty to drink after. Yum!

Right!
We've had the fun part; now comes the relaxation.
Add to the pot:
- rather a lot of ripped-to-shreds basil leaves and a generous helping of oregano.
- One tin of organic plum tomatoes, chopped up small.
- A fat squirt of sun-dried tomato purée.
- A handful of olives of whatever sort you fancy/have to hand.
- Half a glass of good-quality red wine vinegar.
- A bay leaf.
- A small amount of crushed black peppercorns.

Reduce the heat to your lowest simmer, pop on the lid - nice and tight - clean up your kitchen, then go and amuse yourself for an hour.

Check from time to time to see if it's thickening too early (you'll need to add more wine) and to test when the octopodes are done.
Between an hour and an hour-fifteen they should be tender enough to be easily pierced with a skewer, as soft and delicate as perfectly cooked pasta.
Remove the lid for the final few minutes. Add a small handful of flat-leaf parsley and increase the heat a little.
We want to reduce the sauce until it is the consistency of a slightly runny paste. Thick and rich, just like a banker, only not so nasty.
As it thickens and intensifies it should turn the colour of Homer's "wine-dark sea" … indeed this wonderful dish is probably at least as old as the Iliad and may well have stained the lips of the old man himself, all those thousands of years ago …

Now's the time to break out a side plate and fill it with delicious, crusty, fresh country bread, to pour out a generous glass of that beautiful wine and to inhale the aroma from the pan and give your tastebuds a whopping stiffy!

You've all eaten this in Greek restaurants (or at least you should have done if you've lived). You know how intensely delicious it is, and home-made it is even better!
Plus, with home-made you don't get the staff strumming their bouzoukis and trying to sing Nana Mouskouri songs at you afterwards.

Enjoy!

Why I Am Like I Am

Many apologies to my lovely Blogville neighbours for not coming round to visit much these days but things at work are stupidly busy and I've just been getting home and going straight to bed.

I've also got no time to write anything, but I was talking to a friend in the Colonies a little while ago and discovered that the TV of our respective childhoods came from two completely different planets.

Mine revolved around "Watch With Mother" - featuring such awesomely freakish wonders as The Woodentops, Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, Andy Pandy and Muffin The Mule.

So today, in lieu of a post, I have been wallowing in nostalgia for the vanished world of my childhood and staring - frankly open-mouthed with horror - at these clips of long-vanished shows I loved.

Creepy beyond all measure (especially Andy Pandy) these will raise a smile from mum and Phil - and probably Lynn, who will be twenty-eight on Monday and of course cannot remember this stuff, and hopefully they will explain a lot about me to my Colonial chums.

And of course, they save me from having to write a post.
First up comes the wonderful innocence of The Woodentops, then the sheer imbecility of Bill and Ben, followed by a whole episode of shudderingly scary Andy Pandy and a final clip of Muffin The Mule (an act legal here until a few years ago).

What the fuck was going on with kids' TV back then?
Scary, creepy puppets and plummy-voiced upper class women and awful, awful songs.
It's a wonder I'm not in therapy.

The freak show starts here.
Enjoy!

Spring Break

Here at the Divery back garden, spring has finally yawned, stretched, finished its ablutions and is getting down to some serious action.

As the plum trees finish blossoming and get down to the business of leaf-making …

It's cherry time!

Yay!
Actually, it's pretty kitcsch and tacky out there right now. With the forsythia going full tilt and the last of the winter jasmine, the view from my window is all white, pink and yellow; it's a little like living inside Barbie™'s vacuous brain.

Pretty, but Icky.