Happy New Year. Mum and Dad came home from the restaurant smelling of all sorts of exotic foods - stuff you'd only read about in Africa geography books - they'd been to a "Taste of Africa" night, where-at the owner and staff were all dressed in trad African gear, and the food was stuff like well spiced veg dishes, cassava, yam, rice dumplings, dried catfish - various offal-y stuff like gizzards and tripe, and either goat or lamb.
Mum and Dad were buzzing with the deliciousness of it all, and still hyper from the traditional dance/drum music. I'm tempted to post my first link, just in case you want to go see, but I need to check the web address first. Everyone, incuding "Auntie Diamond" came back to our house for a few drinks till the midnight hour, to help us through the fireworks!
While we're on evocative smells, while we were in Ireland, Dad loaded onto the car a big bag of proper peat "sods", traditional fuel when coal was hard to come by. Tonight we have a real fire in the grate (first one this year - it's been so mild), and we are wafting evocative peat-turf-fire smells across the street from our chimney
And I finally got to meet Diamond's dog "ASBO" (actually Ragworth). He is a young (2) Lakeland / Patterdale terrier in black and tan, given to wispy hair on his ears and Denis Healey eyebrows. Not used to small (cough) vulnerable dogs to play with he can be a bit rough, so we all arranged a meeting back on the beach in Reculver, as neutral territory.
Scary - he piled straight in bowling me over and making me scream like a stuck pig. So we were separated while he ran off some energy, then allowed back together in a bit more of a controlled way. Anyway - suffice to say that by the end of the walk we were getting on much better (me only squeaking a little bit when he charged too close, and him not actually beating me up), so everyone thinks it was reasonably successful and worth keeping going. By the end of the walk I was actually letting curiosity get the better of me and chasing him about (from a distance)
An interesting start to the year
Get well soon, Archie
Deefer
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