I seem to have been talking about cooking a lot recently, but quite a funny thing happened last weekend so please indulge me. I should at the outset concede that half term had passed without undue incident other than when Bob compromised our home internet security system by having a protracted phone chat to a guy in Mumbai. He spent much of the break, following his dire half term report, revising for mocks and trying to put his filing system in order. To be honest, he didn’t really have a filing system previously. Just a random stack of folders and piles of paper. It has been a gruelling exercise so I was on particular tenterhooks and expecting sparks to fly, on the penultimate day of his break, Sunday, which had been set aside and even marked down in the family diary, as “The Day for Bob and Lottie’s Adventure”. Anything can happen and normally does on such occasions.
Mid morning, Bob and Lottie, his 12 year old sister, together with Twiggy the lurcher, set off from the house into the neighbouring countryside. Bob made a brief, lone reappearance just after noon, collected two large bottles of water and headed back out on a bike. Otherwise they were gone till dusk. I was in the kitchen cooking supper….a leg of lamb and a pecan pie….when Bob nonchalantly wandered in and sniffed the air. “I wonder if supper’s going to be as delicious as our lunch was?” I kind of knew what was coming, but still I had to ask.
It turned out their lunch was two courses if you will excuse the pun though it is quite an esoteric one which only a few of you may get. They had built a den, lit a fire, boiled some water in a tin and for starters they had nettle and hawthorn berry soup. Perhaps I should add a note of caution here. Please don’t try this at home yourself. You could end up picking all sorts of poisonous things off trees. Bob now has a book by his bedside called Food for Survival which he can recite pretty much by rote, but he has had a few scares in the past. A year or two ago Sophie came into the kitchen to find him brewing up some tea with what he thought were pine needles but were actually cuttings from a yew tree. Could have been fatal. The soup though was considered a rare success and while Lottie was polishing it off Bob told her he would go and try and get something for mains. That’s where Twiggy comes in. Moments later Bob was back in the camp carrying his quarry and whilst you could accuse the survival cooking techniques as being a little monotonous, the hare soup was also, according to Bob at least, delicious. Lottie, it is fair to say, was more equivocal.
He needed that day to let his hair down, but there was a sense that we sent back to school a boy with a new sense of purpose. Lots of revision behind him and armed with a pristine set of well organised binder files, albeit also with a PC that doesn’t work anymore and instructions to get that addressed as a priority. Just to be on the safe side I sent him a text message on his first morning back.
“Bobster….remember to take computer to IT. Xxxx”
Much later that day he replied….
“Yeh I did, well will do. So nearly caught a fox, 2.5m”
Aaaaagh! And to finish on a culinary note, though at this point I should probably warn the more squeamish amongst you that things are about to get quite nasty, last night as I wandered out of a wonderful dinner at Justerini & Brooks where I had been sitting next to the Marquis D’Angerville and drinking the most delicious flight of Volnay wines, I had another series of texts from him…..
B: Just killed a squirrel Do you have a knife in ure house?
Me: Did you mean to text me???
B: Yeh
Me: Why ask if I have a knife in my house??!
B: Kinda no!
Me: I really don't know what u r going on about. Speak English u berk!
B: Haha, I killed a squirrel!! So I wanted to know if there was a knife in the house!
Me: U r gross Xxxx are u working hard...that's what I want to know!
B: Yes xx i cooked it
Me: Delicious???
B: Not bad at all, I didn't have any herbs or even olive oil I had to use some flora
And on that gruesome note I arrived at the equally ghastly £75 a night two star hotel at the back of Kings Cross Station that I had booked for the night and fell asleep to the roar of traffic five yards from my ground floor bedroom window. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Just one addendum and I’m not sure how this will come over in print, but I laughed out loud as I ran across St James Park in the pouring rain and this is the gospel truth. I was on my way back from lunch which I had enjoyed with a very senior ex PM from Blackrock and the former head of UBS IB – the circles I trade in – when nature called and I nipped into the public loos. Whilst there the heavens opened so I sheltered at the exit with a small group of tourists. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about but I decided they were Spanish. Being the sociable friendly sort I am I addressed them in carefully articulated English and blow me when they replied I almost understood what they were saying. This is extraordinary I thought to myself. The odd word of Latin I might have been able to pick up, but certainly not Espagnol. And then I realised they were Glaswegians doon frae the weekend. Furst time ever in London. Goin on a cruise doon the Tames tomorra. Hey ho.
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