Monday, April 24, 2006

Masterchef

You'll be pleased to know that I now have another signature dish. Last night, ably assisted by my sous chef (er Jan), I cooked linguine with asparagus, pancetta and lemon. It was good for Jan to be with me in the kitchen so that I could pass on some of my culinary secrets. I decided a long time ago that I would not keep all my kitchen knowledge to myself and I encourage Jan to be near me, in the kitchen, at all times (anymore rubbish like this and they'll take you away - Ed.).

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Jan has threatened to burn my old tee shirt (yesterday's post) just in case I retrieve it from the dustbin. What she doesn't know (until she reads this) is that I've found another one, and it's even older. Nobody tells me what to do!

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I fixed the pool alarm to the side of the pool this afternoon, with a view to 'installing' it in a day or two. 'Installing it' means completing various tests that I am not yet prepared for. One of the tests is to drop a 6 kilo dummy into the pool to simulate a young child falling in. I asked a neighbour if I could borrow her child but she was very rude in declining, so I now need to go to the supermarket and buy 4 1.5 litre bottles of something and tape them together. The more I think about the practical implications of this law the more stupid it becomes. It was introduced to prevent injury to children up to 5 years old. We may get a visit from a 5 year old, or under, once a year. What about the thousands of families that are never visited by children? Talk about using a sledge hammer to crack a nut. France loves its laws and regulations and this is yet another example of bureaucratic meddling. The State insists that you protect your pool from infants (or is it the other way round?) to prevent a handful of deaths but can't implement a law forbidding smoking in public to prevent thousands of deaths. They're not likely to have riots and strikes over their pool laws but you try and stop people smoking.

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As a final note, you may remember that one of my football teams was playing yesterday. Well, against the odds; West Ham beat Middlesborough and have made it to the final of the FA Cup. Well done lads!

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