Doesn't turn into a pup during cooking

It's that time of year again when Dad gets to lead the Bluebell Walks in Challock Forest, for the Friends of Kingswood. These are always a bit of a lottery as the walks programme has to go to the printers pre Christmas, by which time you never know what stage the bluebells will be at in April or May. The FoKW try to pre-empt this by straddling a number of dates, and the first of these this year was today.

To be honest the hot dry weather through March, April and now May has marched everything on a bit too much, so that in many areas the bluebells are well past their best - drying and faded to the pale blue dusty stage, and the leaves on the trees are too far out to give that lovely filtered-down cathedral light which makes for the best "carpet of blue" effect. It also chose today, early on, just when people were deciding to come on the walk or not, to give our town a short sharp shower.

No matter, the few who did show up got a good walk and saw some nice patches of bluebells. I got talking to a nice little 7 year old named Saffi who made a big fuss of me (even when I jumped up and planted 2 dusty dog foot-prints on her black leggings!). She'd been on at her Mum for ages to buy a dog and liked Westies, so I was charm itself to encourage Mum that this was a good idea.

Meanwhile in Project Erroll, it all just got a bit more focussed, urgent and solid, with Mum inviting the lady from the estate agent round for a look and getting a load of paperwork to complete to agree the description of the house and sign us up to having them as sole-agent. We've got a valuation and the lady thought we should stand a chance of getting some interest soon. I think it's a-coming at us now like an un-stoppable bull-dozer.

Mum spots an interesting cooking instruction on some "Arosis" Greek pudding-rice, which may have lost a little in translation. "In areas with hard water", it advises, "you should use bottled water. Rinse the rice thoroughly without letting it soak, so that its soluble vitamins and beneficial metals wont be destroyed. Proceed to cooking. Arosis rice remains granular and doesn't turn into pup during cooking"

That's handy. I'm enjoying being the youngest in this family.

Deefs