Well yes it was lentils again last night for dinner with la charmante Maxfield, who graciously - as always - made me feel ten feet tall, such is her anointing of encouragement... even my little culinary skills solicited forth some scraping of plates and servings of seconds, thirds, and, was it fourths!?

The famous tower room dinner party with Rondle, Aviary, Me and Lydia

Ant bought me breakfast this morning - very kindly - and Yaro had a chocolate present for Aviary and I at lunchtime, so I've hardly gone hungry...

Barnarnaby with the version of my poem he illustrated
for the Walpole Bay Napery Gallery

Feeling very peaceful still from the levels of clutter-be-gone around the flat. Even tidied up my nigh empty jars of honey, with their hopeful "one day they might come in handy Piglet" Pooh-bear scrapings. There's fast growing a similar sized depository of nigh empty peanut butter jars, mostly bought from Ajez, my local Halal grocer.

Stuart Reid - District line - Ash Wednesday 2011
No prizes for guessing Stuart's profession

Ajez and I chat most days - principally because his shop is right beside the 345 bus stop which I use several times a day/week. He's got the finest selection of meats on Lavender Hill - well... the only selection of meats on Lavender Hill that is: I've not bought any as yet - nor am I likely to - but he also does a brisk business in the sorts of cans and veg and spices that my regular grocer, John Sainsbury's emporium around the corner, is as yet to stock.

Aviary and Lucy Britton in Pimlico, March 2011

Ajez has a fine selection of every type of lentil (viz) and bean you could imagine, and sauces and packets of flavourings to boost the culinary compliments of pretty, female, Oxford English literature graduate visitors to the dining room of Harper Hall. Today's must-have dinner investment was two sweet potatoes for the grand total of 70pence. He'd sold out of butter beans.

Ajez regularly gets up the early side of 430am to drive trucks of meat from forecourts near Peterborough to the Halal hungry enclaves of SW11. There's a telltale sign next to the electric saw mounted behind the counter...

         'DO NOT TALK TO ME WHEN I AM USING THIS MACHINE!'

so it's evidently not just me that he's chatty with. He still has both hands with the usual complement of 5 apiece, but it must have flashed through his mind to be careful more than once. Ow!

Not a good sideline career for a pianist (or harpist for that matter)...

The Heartspeak meeting in Ealing last Spring
L-R Sarah de Norwall, Piotr Stolarski, Sarah Fordham,
?Forgive, me and Bess Twiston-Davies

Ajez is quite tough about the occasional - for want of  a better word - 'oiky' youth that circulate on the Hill, kicking bus stops and tin cans. Billy, from HTB, said the other day that some chaps tried to nab his pension a little while ago. Not a good idea - not anywhere. Billy's not up on Lavender Hill of course, but it's the sort of grandad-mugging tendency that Ajez would probably solve with a few dozen friends and some handfuls of local half-pound pebbles: we've not had any stonings as yet here in SW11, but I'll keep you posted.

The window of St Paul's bookshop at Victoria had that passage displayed today about 'do not judge and you will not be judged. For in the measure that you meet so shall it be done unto you.' You know, the one that comes just before 'Do not give to dogs what is sacred.' Guess Jesus wanted us to consider both statements in the light of each other, what with them being so neighborly in the text. Not sure where that leaves Billy's would be pension grabbers, but he assured me that after they'd been caught and done the appropriate time, they were now congregation members somewhere - HTB possibly; I don't remember.

At the other end of the spectrum, La Max was telling me about The Assassins - evidently some quasi-religious/a-religious/anti-religious society/brotherhood that simmers amongst the elite fraternities of Heifferford Univarsity. Not sure what I should say about what I was told but it was all news to me, the pigs head on a stick routine etc. Wasn't like that at York (as far as I know) although there was a rumor of various shenanigans in the drama barn, and there was definitely something dodgy and 8 legged under our fridge at Neville Terrace that I wouldn't have been surprised had something to do with George "or-was-it-really-Graham" Pickett's Alastair Crowley obssession...

           "Beware the duvet of doom and shun the sofa of shame..."

Thus we chanted to keep the pixies of student vacuum cleaner shyness from their belemnitous practices.

Julian and the Buffalo Mozzarella

(Very glad that Chloe doesn't appear to recognise 'belemnitous' which is a real word; honest!)

My producer - Aaron Harry.

I just "bless you'd" the somewhat sneezy gentlemen sitting opposite, here at Batt man's Gotham City office, in Victoria. The other day, and for the first time, I heard someone slam the "bless you" door in the blessers face. Can anyone else corroborate such an event? I know (or think I do) that it is a quasi-medieval practice - and I guess I'm going to have to google it in a second - but the intention must be at some level "you are sneezing and therefore possibly ill - God preserve you from sickness." What's the irritant there? Does it feel somehow religio-patronising possibly? Meanwhile I think I'll carry on "Bless you-ing" folk rather than run scared of a tish-mob armed with Machiavelli and Kleenex.


(Quite like that last sentence... especially the tish-mob bit)


Anyhow, just thoughts and reflections, and for the giver of both thoughts and the ability to sneeze...


MOLTO Grazie!!

Hugh-Guy Lorriman at St Richards' School, Herefordshire 2012