Dublin

Tintin is rough in Dublin, I see. Why might that be? Your thoughts? Is the Hergé estate happy with this? A mystery.

Do not cycle in a wrap dress.

I was trying to buy quails at the butcher’s but he had none and, in a moment of weakness, I was upsold. He pulled a pair of pheasants from the freezer and sold them to me with the novel line that they were only a bit larger than quails.

I retained dim memories from my youth of my mother’s cousin, a farmer, turning up at our front door with birds he had shot but didn’t fancy eating which my mother subsequently hung in the attic. I feel they were nice when we got them. They were not, however, frozen. The non-frozen pheasant may be the better bird. On the plus side, I didn’t have to pluck them myself. [Aside, once my sister’s friend, the vegetarian, called to the house and my mother answered the door in a lab coat covered with feathers while holding a largely plucked pheasant by the neck.]

The pheasants lurked menacingly in the fridge for a bit but tonight I decided to cook them. I feared that the outcome might be reminiscent of the great wild boar disaster of ’07. Certainly, pheasant is not seasonal at the moment. I decided to create pheasant stew. I lashed in the root vegetables, bacon and red wine. I couldn’t easily source chestnuts, what with it being May and everything and substituted mushrooms. It cooked happily all evening filling the summer air with toasty winter smells in a disconcerting and ultimately unsatisfactory manner.

It’s just out of the oven and there is masses of it. The stew is actually quite tasty in an ideal for mid-winter kind of way but the pheasant itself is, alas, deeply unpleasant, stringy and tough. Alas. Still, that’s dinner for tomorrow ready all the same. Hurrah for me.

The other day, I saw two teenage girls walking along the street. One asked the other whether she wanted some Lucozade. When her companion said no, she just tossed the bottle on the ground. I was outraged. Particularly since there was a bin only about a metre away. I toyed very hard with the idea of saying something but my nerve failed me. We live in quite a rough part of town, you will recall.

Mr. Waffle tells me that our neighbour, who was born in her house around the corner and who is quite elderly is more than a match for the local young people. He, she and other virtuous members of the residents’ association were out cleaning up litter (thank you Lucozade girls) which they do a couple of times a year. As Mr. Waffle and our neighbour were working away, a boy of about 14 came by with a girl. He threw some rubbish on the ground. “Pick that up,” said our elderly neighbour. “Ah feck off, missus,” said he or words to that effect. At this point I would have abandoned in fear and mortification. Our neighbour is made of sterner stuff. She reached up and clipped him round the ear and said firmly, “Pick that up now and none of your nonsense.” He picked it up.