polkadots and moonbeams

Fortnum's window. Wonderland indeed.

Surprised to find myself in the Crystallised Fruit Centre of the Universe at the weekend. Every fruit imaginable had been drenched in and dusted with sugar and joyfully wrapped for Christmas. One shop had a river of fruit running through it. It all looked so lovely but, let's face it, crystallised fruit never lives up to the promise. The texture is always a bit weird and the sweetness too sweet. Gimme a packet of Fruit Pastilles any day.

...takes two or three days to prepare. It involves using a dyson, several plastic bags, a cocktail shaker, paint rollers and trays, an aerosol spray, lots of banging things on counters and sweat. This homage to Seventies kitsch cooking takes so much effort to make that you would actually lose weight just making it. However, I think Heston is missing a trick here. All the layers in his gateau have a perfectly acceptable, ready made, authentically 1970s equivalent which means you could knock together a Blumenthaley-stylee-gateau in about ten minutes and save a load of money. So here is my alternative recipe: For the biscuit base - use two or four Jaffa Cakes (this saves you having to make the apricot compote) Place a bar of milk chocolate Aero on the top of the base Add a layer of chocolate Instant Whip Add some cherries (glace or tinned) Add a good thick slice of chocolate Swiss Roll which has been soaked in kirsch Add another Aero (optional) Add another layer of Instant Whip Add some...

Brian's been blogging about funny foreign stuff so here's my contribution! The coffee is from Spain and is just the thing for a post-prandial pick-me-up, while the can of "refreshing water' was purchased in Japan. My all-time fave was a bar of chocolate I bought in France called Crap! ah - le plaisir de crapsiller. I ate it and it was indeed a plaisir. I should have kept the wrapper. There also used to be some French Lemonade called Shittt but they've stopped making that now which is a pity.

...than they used to be. In Days of Yore a cold was an excuse to snuggle down on the sofa with the cats, a pot of tea and High Society. Today, feeling coldy and unwanted at the various social things I had lined up I have spent the afternoon in the study with my credit card, Amazon, iTunes and Britart. I will not end this month (or the next) in credit.... The telly beckons now but I'm not sure I can face Planet Earth as apparently the Polar Bear dies. I still haven't quite recovered from the grieving elephants on BBC Two last week and am certainly too low on tissues to risk too much more Natural Cruelty. At least I still have the one millionth episode of The Archers on Tuesday to look forward to.

Mildly Diverting pointed this out to me today (in true Mildly Diverting manner) and, as ads go, it's mustard. Unlike the Budweiser ad mentioned elsewhere in this little blogiverse, this ad is aimed at me! Woo!

so far all my Archers predictions have been right. David has made a fool of himself. Ruth has fallen into the arms of Sam I Am. Kirsty has yet to find out the Awful Truth (heralding a long overdue cat fight in The Bull in which Jolene might have to intervene). No sex has taken place. I should have put on a spread bet at Ladbrokes. Meanwhile I am listening to the band with the fabbest name in the world, Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly and wishing I'd thought of it. With a name like that it wouldn't matter if all their songs were rubbish, but actually they're not bad and they've really cheered me up on this wet and rainy Sunday. They remind me a little of Pale Fountains - whatever happened to them?

...if everybody (and particularly those in public life) wore shoes like these.

I've been harvesting this year's chilli crop and there's a mini-Festival of Chillies going on in the kitchen. The purple ones which look like baby aubergines are really evil . If they were bagged in a supermarket they would need at least five chillies to symbolise how hot they are and as far as I know the scale only goes up to three. I haven't actually tried them myself but I tested them on a friend last night... he's still alive I think and his cold has gone, but I doubt he will be able to actually taste anything until 2007.

Sophie's back! So David is going to make a fool of himself and "aw naw" Ruth is going to fall into the muscular and welcoming arms of Sam. There'll be a cat fight at the Bull with Kirsty and somebody will leave Ambridge forever. There will not, obviously, be any actual sex.

in a rush this evening and bought lots of slightly wrong things - beef and heart cat food (instead of chicken and rabbit) and smooth instead of crunchy peanut butter. Bother. On the other hand, I did catch a glimpse of the Queen Mother's sprightly ghost in the ice cream department. Meanwhile, try as I might, I just can't seem to care about Nectar points. Am I alone in this?

The castles were held on the first Sunday of the week of Santa Tecla celebrations. I don't really know who Santa Tecla was. Edward told me once that she came out of the sea and killed a giant spider, losing her arm in the process. I think he made that story up. The official guide to the festival is delightful but not very helpful. The description of the castles is as follows: "From the last third of century XVIII Santa Tecla has welcomed the best local gangs and they have reached constructions up to nine levels or floors of people like in the mythical celebration of 1881 when it was reached the four of nine without support and the three of nine without support which were performanced respectively by the gangs. At the end of the performance it will be served a vermouth and aperitive with the typical musicians which go always with the humans towers and cheer them " So there you have it. I have to go back next year, if only to get a new offical guide and to see if I can fi...

That little boy is very very very high up. The pipers are playing, the crowd is cheering and I am standing there with tears streaming down my face trying to take pictures! Strange and very moving... but you gotta ask yerself... why?

It's at this point that you notice the Very Small Children wearing their very Big Hats. It's also at this point that I always start to cry.

Whoa, steady there gentlemen...

In Spain, last Sunday, I went to watch them making human castles. It all starts with a show of hands...

Seven lemons. There are seven lemons on this little tree which in previous years has struggled to produce even one. Obviously this is all the fault of climate change and shouldn't really be happening in South London but I see it as compensation for that future rise in water levels. At least when my house is under ten feet of Thames flooding I will be able to look back at the happy summer when I grew lemons, oranges and olives in my back yard. Not sure what one really does with seven lemons.. a very small bottle of lemonchello perhaps?

Here he is. The Mighty , The Incomparable , Jeronimo - defending the patch where he faithfully weaves his web every day. As I've said here before, I am rather scared of spiders and certainly can't tolerate them in the house but out in the garden they have their uses and this guy (at least, I think it's a guy, I haven't been that close) has obeyed my orders and stayed firmly in the same space for a couple of months now. He's a big chap - that pot in the background is a 12 incher - and sometimes the mainstay of his web is up to six feet long. It's stood up to some fair winds this week and today he had a bit of a set-to with a cat but I think he will still be there tomorrow. They say it's going to be sunny tomorrow too, so Jeronimo and I will be out there trying to get that last bit of tanning in.

In the light of the elevated threat level, the Federal Snake Marshals Service is providing expanded mission coverage for flights from the United Kingdom to the United States. Sighs of relief all round. Next up: Tarantulas on a Train...

I've been to a house, a very nice house in the country. Crunchy gravel drive, labradors, lavender, swimming pool, the sound of laughing children in the garden, tractors humming in the distance and all that sort of thing. Pretty well perfect... but still I couldn't wait to return to the rainy old Smoke and my cramped little garden because, deep down, I know that the country is full of psychopaths and wifeswappers. One of the Spiders I Have Trained, Jeronimo, has built an enormous web. I shall try to take a photo when it stops raining.