Part I

That is to say, first installment of festive fare, lunch on Christmas Eve.

Notwithstanding the remarks at reference 2, or even because of them, we went for lamb cutlets on this occasion, the first time we have chewed on them for quite some time, probably years. Taken grilled with mashed potato (hidden) and stewed celery (visible), which worked well.

Don't know what prompted me to do stewed celery, but we did have a not very fresh stick in the vegetable stand in the kitchen and it suddenly came to me that it could be stewed with tomato. What actually happened was that I started a couple of onions in a knob of butter. Then added the celery, put the lid back on, and simmered for a while. Then added some quartered tomatoes and simmered for a short while longer. No added water. It turned out rather well, and despite appearances in the snap, the tomatoes were indeed cooked. With some left over potatoes heated up in the oven and masquerading as roast potatoes. While the spoons were an oversight, not noticed at the time of snapping. While I had forgotten how much spluttering, sputtering and smoke you get when grilling fat meat, with the smell lingering for some hours. One advantage of the outdoor barbecue being that you can share this smell with your neighbours.

Unusually, the magpies took the left over fat rather than the crows, which did not turn out at all.

Later in the day, turned the pages of 'Murder is Easy', noticed at reference 1, turning the pages rather than reading them as I failed to get properly into the thing, unusual as the Christie story usually overcomes her very flat prose. And it turns out that the adaptor had indeed taken considerable liberties with the story as supplied by Christie. Miss. Marple being added to the mix. Rape and abortion being added to the mix. Oddly, dodgy antique dealer, black magic and orgies on the hill being removed from the mix, despite the latter being fully included in the adaptation of 'The Pale Horse'. Superintendent Battle being removed from the mix. The class and servant talk being thinned out a bit, not of great interest to today's audiences, most of whom will have never known servants. The newspaper proprietor being morphed into an aspiring politician. And I dare say there is more, but this adaptation is rapidly fading from memory, getting muddled up with the one that followed a day or so later on the way.

PS 1: a plus of the adaptation was the performance of Shirley Henderson, whom we had liked in the film 'Topsy Turvey'. Whom I now know to be a girl from Fife who has done well since graduating from the Guildford School in the Barbican in 1986.

PS 2: Topsy Turvey was first mentioned about five years ago at reference 3. Searching the archive for which caused Windows Explorer to splutter a bit. Cured by closing it down and restarting it, after which the search which caused the trouble has been completed. An occasional feature of Windows search, in this case of a folder of getting on for 200 Word documents. A fairly static folder, so Windows search does not have the excuse of continual change for losing its indexes.

PS 3: a light frost this morning. More visible on the extension roof than on the back lawn. Not as much as we had expected from yesterday's forecast.

Reference 1: psmv4: Pennyroyal.

Reference 2: psmv4: Fewer pies.

Reference 3: psmv2: The Mikado visits Leatherhead.