Cwtch as cwtch

Friday August 31, 2007

“It’s only four weeks now,” Graham said when we spoke yesterday lunch time.

“Thank the gods of cheese and tomatoes,” I said.

“You could say that.”

“I just did.”

“Thought so.”

And so, after the usual farewells and frolics, we put our phones down, Graham snuggled down in the caravan and I snuggled down with Dolly in the little brick house.

“Did you hear what he said, Dolly?  Only four weeks!”

Then I started worriting at it. Four weeks? How can that be? I’m sure it was five the last time we worked it out.

I counted on my fingers. Two weeks of old folks, starting on Saturday. Then a week each of organists and accordionists, though not necessarily in that order. Finally, a week of transvestites.

“That’s five weeks, not four, Dolly,” I said. “He’s got his sums wrong again. Should I phone and tell him, do you think?”

She opened one glary eye at me, groaned slightly, and cwtched back to sleep, tight as tight.

“You’re probably right. He’s doubtless doing just what you’re doing. I’ll tell him tonight.”

So I snuggled down, too, and drifted off for my siesta.

Cut through a late afternoon and evening of no interest whatsoever unless you have a deep fascination for sausages and chips.

“You lost a week when you told me it was only four,” I said when we spoke again shortly after midnight.

“No I didn’t. It’s four. I worked it out.”

“You’d better work it out again.”

“Well, if you say so. Hang on a second.”

I heard a low muttering and I swear I could hear the finger counting, too. Then he picked the phone back up.

“Oh, shit,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Not to worry. Dolly and I will forgive you. And, after all, it’s you has to work with all these strange people.”

“You’re right. What’s she doing now?”

“She’s all curled up on the foot of the bed, cwtch as cwtch.”

“Sounds like she has a plan.”

“Oh, yes. It’s a plan. The same old plan. What say we follow her example?”

And that, as they say, is what we did.

Better than playing the horse

Thursday August 30, 2007

It was one of those funny old days yesterday, swinging from feeling rather collywobbled first thing to finding it difficult to go to bed at a sensible hour because I was bounding with energy.

I resolved to do better today.

It’s all somewhat similar to rehearsal night at an amateur dramatic society:

“What’s my motivation?

“Whaddya mean, motivation? You stand there, hold the horse still, and try not to fall over.”

“That’s the problem you see. Is my motivation to hold the horse, or not to fall over?”

“Any more of this and you’ll be playing the horse.”

And that’s the reality of it. Sometimes you just have to get on with the job, hold the horse secure, and do your best not to fall over. Anything’s better than playing the horse.

A NEW SANDWICH

It’s not often that I come up with a new sandwich idea and it astonishes me that, after all these years, I haven’t done this one before.  Or tasted it, either, which could mean that it’s genuinely new. I doubt that, but it is new to me:

PAN FRIED TOMATO SANDWICHES

For one serving:

• Butter two slices of bread as thinly as you can manage and set them aside.
• Slice one (very) large tomato, not too thin, and arrange in a single layer on the base of a frying pan you’ve sprayed with 1-cal olive oil.
• Cook quickly, turning once, and remove from the heat.
• Using a spatula, remove the tomato slices and place them carefully on one slice of bread.
• Apply the other slice of bread to the top, press lightly, and cut with a sharp knife into halves or quarters.

That’s it. Eat quickly, though if you’re a fan of the tomato as I am, you’ll need no encouragement once you’ve caught the aroma and tasted the indecent deliciousness.

The last days of summer

Wednesday August 29, 2007

Another of those lovely late summer blue sky days. Out in the hedgerows blackberries ripen and field mice fatten as they feast upon them. There’s a slowness in the air as the season readies itself for the turn.

It’s perfectly possible to burn in the sun at the height of the day but things cool down fast once evening comes in and by the time it’s properly dark you wish you’d put something longer sleeved on in the shirt department. Bare arms seem always to be the first to feel the chill.

There’s a discernable change in the tide of human affairs here in our urban close, too. At the end of the long summer holiday the kids have started to go back to school, or to hide in darkened rooms labouring over the vacation work they were supposed to do but which, unaccountably, got buried under the fun of summer.

You could almost miss the noisy little blighters. The road is quiet and empty. All the bicycles, skateboards, rollerblades and other wheeled vehicles of the young are put up in garages and back gardens and cats snooze contentedly on the vacated pavements.

Even here in our secluded house and garden where kidlets never tread, the peace is noticeable. Dolly was a little worried at first, and would lift her head at every sound. She’s entered into the spirit of the thing now, dozes softly on, and such twitches as you may observe are reactions to some internal rustle of dream mice.

And so it goes. Summer is turning over to Autumn. I may be wishing the weeks away to the end of the holiday season but I am pausing, too, enjoying the last days of summer, and the last of the summer wine.

A happy event

Tuesday August 28, 2007

“I think I’ve decided to sell my piano,” I said, closing the lid quietly and with reluctance.

“Oh. Why’s that, then?”

“The tremor in my right hand isn’t going away and it irritates the heck out of me when I’m trying to work out a fiddly bit. The consultant was right. It isn’t getting worse, particularly, but it’s a thing I have to learn to live with.”

“Poor chicken. Is there some other instrument you could have a go at? Just don’t say accordian, or I shall kill you.”

“Tee hee.  Tempting. No, I don’t think it’ll be an accordian. Nor bag pipes. Leave it with me.”

“Fair enough. Ready for the garden centre, then?”

“Yup. Wagons roll.”

The only wagons rolling at the garden centre today were on the bottom of zimmer frames and underneath people who can’t or won’t walk.

Actually, it was a very routine visit. I was disappointed with the ‘English Breakfast’–over priced and under featured–but even so I found the outing a happy event, and enough to tide me over until Graham’s return next Sunday.

These slightly longer weekends are very much more to my liking, and they’re liable to get longer now, quite rapidly, as the weeks run down to the final last gasp of the season.