My parents are away on holiday at the moment, so I'm looking after the house, and the garden, which although not big, is crammed with lovely fruit and veg, including strawberries, new potatoes, lettuce and lots of stuff which isn't ready yet (squashes, sweetcorn, raspberries).
The one condition of me staying and guzzling all the food is that I have to water the plants every day (the dogs are in kennels, phew). Except it's been raining every day since I got back, SO I HAVEN'T HAD TO DO A THING! HAHAHAHAHA!
Sometimes it's the small victories that count.
The Jeremy Clarkson book was the one about machines, which was quite good. Last christmas some buffoon gave my dad a collected Clarkson columns book. I will always treasure my Dad looking pleased, settling down to read and then continually saying 'Hmm, not sure I agree with him there', 'Not got his facts right on that one' and 'What's he talking about?'
For the record, I would quite like Jeremy C if he just stopped going on about The Gays, even in semi-jest. I've been watching too much Top Gear though, I was wandering about with Patroclus the other day, walked past a small black sports car and said 'That's the one I want, it's on a Smart chassis you know'. It wasn't of course. In fact I think it may have been a tree.
PS: I have looked in the cupboards for cooking chocolate and jelly cubes, but thus far have found none. The search continues.
PSS: Richard has reminded me that my encounters with the parental garden have not always ended positively.
24 comments:
Ah, Jazza, thank God for Jazza - what would I get my husband for a present if Jeremy Clarkson didn't spout all that tripe?
My husband has most of Jazza's books, but he hasn't read one yet. He prefers the top tips in his Viz annual.
cooking chocolate and jelly cubes? Have you tried the shops?
flipping hellfire, jeremy clarkson ? i met him once in barcelona wearing the tightest whitest jeans i have ever had the terrible misfortune to see on a man. that sounds like it should be a more interesting story then it was, sorry about that.
he has a column in a newspaper too, doesn’t he ?
i cannot stand the man, sorry.
Do your parents not grow jelly cubes in their delightful garden? Mine do. And baked beans, and rawlplugs. But the paperclip bush was consumed by aphids last year.
Jelly cube season was in March EVERYONE KNOWS THAT.
Make sure you show your commitment to their garden by clearing unnecessary trees.
I would, but all the saws have unaccountably been hidden.
I make preserves out of the produce of my jelly-cube bush, which I then export to America. You should see their confused faces.
Does JC count as a guilty pleasure? I only watch Top Gear because Mr. r. appears to watch about 16 episodes a day and I do often snigger.
PS James we are going to Cornwall on our holidays and I have just read that there is now a Cornish Liberation Army threatening to blow stuff up. Look out the window, is there any shrapnel flying?
Hmm, I have a whole post brewing about that, although whether I really want to give them even a tiny bit more publicity, I don't know. As far as I can tell, there's only four of them, and they're all full of shit anyway.
In fact, I have a nasty feeling they're some kind of front for a BNP-style outfit, trying to whip up locals against out-of-towners first, then yer ethinic minorities (both of them) afterwards.
Either way, both Rick Stein and Fifteen do employ a lot of local people and bring plenty of tourism down here, and yes, rising house prices are part of that. All of this would, for example MAKE AN AMAZING TEEN DRAMA SERIES, HINT HINT.
So they might actually be doing me some good, the silly sods.
your cornish teen drama has me intrigued - is there any more you can say about it ?
anything ?
Not really - I've written a pilot script for BBC drama, and I should be hearing whether it goes any further in the next couple of weeks or so. These things do tend to suddenly fizzle out though, so I'm wary of saying too much...
I beat Clarkson at go-karting once, at the press launch event for the Top Gear website, back in the heady days of 2001 when 'launching a website' was considered an important enough event for the Beeb to wheel out The Talent to schmooze with journos for an afternoon.
I think he falls into the Boris Johnson category - a bit of a twat, but entertaining enough to get away with it.
Top Gear seems to have some mysterious, irresistible allure. Load sof otherwise very sensible people I know love it, including Mr Violet and I. We don't know how to drive, know anything about cars, or ever intend to own one. I think it's the over the top bravado that gets us. And envy over the fact that they get to smash stuff up and do things like making real cars radio controlled and crashing them into stuff for a living. Or maybe we're just stupid, I don't know.
rain in veg patch = slugs. if you were really doing your filial duty, you'd be out there picking them off by hand! i think, on balance, i'd rather be watering.
realdoc when you asked 'Does JC count as a guilty pleasure?' just for a moment, i thought you meant jelly cubes.
Of the Clarkson Collection, I own 'I Know You Got Soul' and 'Born to be Riled'.
I quite enjoy them... but I agree with you about the gay thing. He tends to emulate the Japanese-english accent a lot; a la the elderly too, which - despite the fact I don't take offence to many things - made me cringe slightly.
Otherwise I think Top Gear is the best programme in the world; and if The Hamster, Jezza or Captain Slow ever leave, I shall stop watching.
But then, I said that about Chris Eccleston and then Billie Piper leaving DW...but the difference in dynamics between the two shows are that it's the chemistry between the presenters of Top Gear that make it great, whereas that's only a small contribution to what is FANTASTIC writing in Doctor Who.
Half the time Clarkson makes me giggle and the other half of the time I want to smash him in the face with an iron. I'm not sure which is worse...
Neither jelly cubes nor cooking choc in the house? I think your mum has out-manoeuvred you. If mum's were in charge of the War on Terror, Osama would be at home now wondering why he was whitewashing the pebble-dash instead of hanging out with his mates in a cave.
Why do you want jelly cubes, my mother always has a packet of geletine in her cupboard. Have you looked for the geletine, it's like making jelly but it's magic as the stuff never sets! Always goes well with Angel Delight.
Do you think Angel Delight actually brings Great Joy to Celestial Entities...?
[/nabbedfromNoble]
Avoiding spoilers in case you haven't seen it but...
Doctor Who!!!!
Re. Dr Who: Oh. My. God.
I agree! Also, Jekyll, James Nesbitt doing a rather wonderful job there, fantastic.
Hehe Jeremy Clarkson book. While you were reading it, did you hear the words in Jeremy Clarkson's voice?
I shall be leaving for Cornwall in ten minutes.
I will not be unduly keeping one eye out for a couple (she in earth tones, he with interesting hair) and the other for Cornish Liberationists.
No doubt we will bump into each other anyway, Cornwall being such a small place.
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