Pastry in the fifties, spring cleaning at midnight

Since we are all supposed to be broke as a result of the Credit Crunch, nineteen fifties cooking is becoming popular. I hear that people are going back to suet puddings and suchlike. My mother never, ever cooked suet puddings - in fact nothing stodgy like that. Her pastry was excellent and she could turn out a wonderful Dutch apple pie, which has a top crust, covering apples cooked with currants, which would produce a wonderful winey flavour. There was no bottom crust. She also created her version of milles feiulles - layers of pastry with jam and custard filling with a final topping of pastry cover with icing. And another of her success stories were marmalade tarts - a simple pastry made into a sort of envelope with marmalade sitting in the middle. Come to think of it, why haven’t I tried that? I can’t equal her pastry, though the family always enjoy my apple crumble. I make it so often for company that I’m sure they must be bored by it, but it seems to be everyone’s favourite. I didn’t bother to do one this time, partly on that basis, and partly because strawberries and soft fruit is in season. However, the girls were disappointed and I promised that I would produce one next time. I don’t quite know when that will be, because we each have arrangements taking up part or all of the weekend for several weekends into the summer.

A Great Disaster occurred this week - I lost the 4,000 words I had written during the holiday. I guessed it had got caught up with other papers, and maybe filed or deposited with M’s stuff in one of the cupboards in my office, or in my filing cabinet. When I thought I had looked everywhere, we examined the contents of the dustbin - not something I’d choose to do too often; checked the waste paper recycle bin and then M pulled the filing cabinet forwards to make sure it hadn’t dropped down there. It hadn’t, but the sight of a hundred cobwebs caused me to rush for the vacuum cleaner - even though it was midnight. Eventually at 12.40 a.m., we gave up and went to bed. Naturally, when in the morning, I had another look, I found it. Nice to know my office is clean though.

The next day, another drama - my computer screen petered out. It did it a few times, which was an early warning, before giving up the ghost. I took it to the local computer shop and they confirmed it had reached the end of its life, and I ordered a new one and took the old model home for M to play with. He then carved the back off with a hacksaw, fiddled with some plugs inside and got it going again. As I rushed to catch up on emails, I asked myself how I could tactfully say that I was not going to put up with a machine whose back was stuck on with sellotape. Fortunately, after 20 minutes or so, its brief second life was over, and I didn’t have to convince anyone.

On my way out of the car park at Knaphill, the following day, I met my hairdresser, which was useful, because it reminded me that my hair was a mess and that I must make an appointment. Her mind though was on other things. As soon as we neared each other, she said, ‘I really, really enjoyed your book,’ And when I returned today with a copy of A Bottle of Plonk which she had requested I bring her, she told me how she got involved with the characters and had now passed Tainted Tree to her daughters who were queuing to read it. We even, as I sat in the chair being shorn, discussed the characters and how I came to write the book. Every author’s dream, I imagine, being asked to talk about themselves and their work.

So now my screen is installed and I’m able to get back to the computer and the writing, etc. My printer appears to have gone wrong now, but I’m philosophical. Only thing is that the new screen is a rectangle instead of my almost square one from before, and all my pictures look fat, particularly the ones with me in them.