My web friend Jedrzej has a superb picture on his blog, Venividi of two old men on a park bench in Munich.

It instantly reminded of Simon and Garfunkel’s song from the early seventies ; Bookends

As it just illustrates it so well I asked him if I could reproduce it here with the words-(these were harder to get than I thought, eventually I had to transcribe from You Tube)

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
Newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old friends
Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sun

The sounds of the City
Siftng through trees
Settles like dust on the shoulders
Of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a Park bench quietly
How terribly strange to seventy

Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears

Time it was and what a time it was, it was,
A time of innocence a time of confidences.

Long ago it must be,
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories,
They’re all thats left you

I found this reproduced post-card in an Olde Worlde shop in St. Guilhem a couple of weeks ago.
I think it’ll do nicely as a label for the Seville Orange Liqueur

Which is now just about ready to be sweetened and bottled.

It now has leached most of the colour and flavour from the Seville, smells wonderfully aromatic and when -at Sile’s suggestion- I sprinkled a spoonful on some strawberries last week the effect was magical.

In Tin Pan Alley songwriters used to play their compositions to the ‘old greys’, the elderly doorkeepers and other employees in the offices of their musical publishers.
If the ‘old greys’ were still whistling their tunes after a week or two they were likely to be worth publishing.
They would be reckoned to have passed ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’.

I always wondered what whispering Bob Harris was on about.

Thank you Mr. Brewer for that little gem.

In my last post I mentioned that I remembered learning that the musk gland of the civet cat was used as a perfume fixitive in Shakespeare’s time. This I had been told about in school.
As You Like It was the play I did for the Inter (about 44 years ago!) so off I went googling through it to find the reference.
I was pleased to find it in a little bit of rapartee between Touchstone (the clown) and Corin (a rustic).
They are having a little debate about which is the cleaner, court or country.

What really surprised me was the piece of dialogue directly following the reference; about animal copulation and about Corin’s part in it. This was certainly reckoned unseemly for our young ears and firmly censored in the school edition.

No wonder most of us thought Shakespeare boring.

Corin
Not a whit, Touchstone: those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not at the court, but you kiss your hands: that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were shepherds.

Touchstone
Instance, briefly; come, instance.

Corin
Why, we are still handling our ewes, and their fells, you know, are greasy.

Touchstone
Why, do not your courtier’s hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say; come.

Corin
Besides, our hands are hard.

Touchstone
Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again.
A more sounder instance, come.

Corin
And they are often tarred over with the surgery of our sheep: and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier’s hands are perfumed with civet.

Touchstone
Most shallow man! thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

Corin
You have too courtly a wit for me: I’ll rest.

Touchstone
Wilt thou rest damned? God help thee, shallow man!
God make incision in thee! thou art raw.

Corin
Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm, and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.

Touchstone
That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damned for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst ’scape.

Corin
Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress’s brother.

I have a huge problem with all of these products which (if tele ads are anything to go by) everyone else in the world is using.
Now don’t get me wrong-I’m as fond of a bit of nose caviar as the next -but those synthetic things just don’t work for me.
I blame the Bowling Alley in Cork in the sixties.

To our great excitement Cork opened a bowling alley the mid sixties when I was about sixteen.
I promptly started to haunt the place.
Now one of the great traditions of bowling alleys, I have never worked out whether this is a ploy for extra income or a genuine concern for their floors, that one should rent their special shoes before playing the game.
This sounds fine but the standard of hygiene in Cork in the sixties was such that having gone through lots of Cork feet the shoes started to smell fairly rank.
The bowling alley faced resolutely up to this problem by spraying the shoes with various room freshener sprays in between rental periods.
Now I am certain that these products contain some sort of nasal fixative which insures that the smell hangs about a bit, I mean the evanescent odour of a violet wasn’t going to quench serious Cork foot odour.
Now my theory is that this fixative (I know from my Shakespeare that in his time they used to use the musk glands of the civet cat for this) has a tendency to blend with the odour produced by Cork feet and then produce a new and penetrating evil odour all of its own.
But we were hardy people in Cork in the sixties, and we kept at the bowling for several years.

The problem is that, being conditioned by this smell over that time has now fixed it firmly in my nose and now whenever I get odours of “Room Fresheners” I inevitably smell the background of serious Cork Foot Odour.

Therefore I don’t use the things, but I have discovered another fix for my nose caviar.
I can use scented flowers from our own garden.

Here are some of the current crop, Rose, Carnations and Lavender.
They smell marvellous, not a hint of feet.

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

Beau–ootiful Soo-oop! Beau–ootiful Soo-oop!
Soo–oop of the e–e–evening,
Beautiful, beauti–FUL SOUP!

said Lewis Carroll

I have a soup which I make every time I feel in need of comfort, or when its wet, or cold, or when I have a hangover, or feel sickley, or have unexpected company, or am one of my diets or for any other reason.
It can be made from what ever I happen to have in store, I have made it without each of the ingredients which I will list if they happened to be not at hand a fair smattering of them will do and various others can be substituted.
It is not original, it is a first cousin of the Italian Minestra di Verdure, the French Potage Paysanne and even of Weight Watchers No-Point Soup.
I made some this morning, a cold wet summer day when i wasn’t feeling great having perhaps had a little more white wine last night than I should.
I felt much the better for it.
Here is this mornings version.

110g (4 oz.) Smoked Streaky Rashers
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 med Onions
3 Carrots
2 beef Tomatoes
1 Pint Good homemade chicken stock
300 ml (10 fl.oz.) tomato passata
1 pt water
12 fresh Basil leaves shredded
Prolonged grating of Black pepper
Sprinkle Maldon Salt.

Chop the bacon finely and fry in a pan in the olive oil until crisp.
Leave the fat in the pan and scoop the bacon into a pot.

Chop the onions and carrots finely and toss on the heat in the fat until they start to colour.
Put these into the pot with the bacon.

Into this pot now add the chopped tomatoes, the stock, the passata,the water, the basil and the pepper and salt and bring it up to the boil and simmer for about 15 mts until a piece of carrot scooped out is tender.
Taste again, it may need a sprinkle more salt.

Serve with plenty of fresh bread.

Things I have put in to it from time to time:

Chopped Celeriac or celery
Chopped cooked ham
Vegetarian stock cube in place of the chicken stock (be careful with the salt)
Diced Smoked haddock for the last few minutes of simmering.

I have used garlic, and shallot and scallion in place of the onion.
Sweet potato in place of the carrot (it cooks faster)
And all fresh or all canned tomatoes in place of each other-I have even used tomato puree and extra stock when out of both.

To make it heartier I have served it with grated cheese sprinkled in at the last moment, cheddar, gruyere and parmesan all work.

Add crisp croutons for crunch or stir in some aioli for pizzazz.

It is the worlds most forgiving soup and never comes out quite the same but what the hell.
It always comforts.

I am having great fun with this Readers Digest book.

With a flick of my clone stamp I managed to move a camelia from one bowl to another.

(okay I know, this time you can see the join)

Sile came home from school with a book she had bought from a travelling salesman which she thought I might like.

It is The Readers Digest; “How to do just about anything with your Digital Photos”

I was delighted and started almost at once to play with it.
Now all you young people out there must realise that I came to the whole business of computers a mere couple of years ago and things like Photoshop are still an almost complete mystery to me.
The first random page I opened was entitled ;”Using the Clone Tool”
It seemed to make sense.
I immediately thought of a post I had done of The Doors of Faugères only last week where I had a photo which I felt I needed for the continuity of the piece but which was spoiled by me leaving the light on behind the door and so, I felt, spoiling the shot.

This was the moment to see if I could fix it.
I took one piece of the curtain from the bottom of the shot using my clone stamp and substituted it for the offending place in the picture.

Here are the before and after;

Voila! Its hard to see the join.

I think I am going to have fun with this.

Still on the old Dungarvan line (now sadly very overgrown)

Walking the old railway line between Waterford and Dungarvan last Suinday