Meetings Museums and Musings

Monday- blah-blah-Committee Meeting

The Doggy Charity Committee Meeting is in full swing; the discussion moves to producing a really nice calendar for next year. Finding donors and sponsors is hard work. As we don’t have  corporate sponsors for all of the twelve months some one suggests that we invite anyone who wishes, to submit a photo of their own pet and pay a small fee to have their little darling feature in the calendar as  “Miss Doggy December (Miss Dodgy December more like) or Miss Feline February or whatever.   There then occurs a robust debate (to use committee-speak), as to whose dog is the best looking.  The Chairman and the Treasurer nearly come to blows as to whether his Jack Russell terrier or her walking shag pile of a collie is the prettiest… I can see trouble ahead here so I suggest we do a “Calendar Girls” job instead – i.e., topless volunteers holding strategically placed dogs, cats or even draped in collars and leads…Strangely, no one warms to my suggestion.

Wednesday with Youngling

Today I am minding a young relative. We are going to the National Museum to see the Bog Bodies Exhibition titled “Kingship and Sacrifice”.

We stand in the Museum looking down at what remains of “Clonycavan Man”. He was found in a bog by a turf cutter. I have to say he’s not looking great but then neither would you if you were born around 392 B.C.  On top of his shrunken scalp there is a bird’s crest of dull pinky/red hair and a few feathery red hairs still cling to his leathery chin. His skin is stained orangey/brown, the colour of bog itself. Apparently he wore French Hair Gel, not what you’d expect to be freely available in the Iron Age. Maybe he was the first Metrosexual. Now what remains of his worldly self lies curled up in a Perspex display case under dim lights.

A little boy and his Dad enter. The little guy holds his Dad’s hand and stands thoughtfully looking at the Iron Age version of a man about town. “Well, what do you think?” asks Dad. The little guy looks up. “Is it a mutated prawn?” asks this child of the graphic novel age, in an awed whisper.  We leave before I crack up.

Later that evening  the Youngling is asked what she thought of the Exhibition; “If you’ve seen one Bog Body you’ve seen them all”. Very hard to impress the younger generation nowadays…What with the internet and all…

Free House Saturday

Earlier I cooked a patriotic dinner. Green, white and orange.  Salmon, potatoes and broccoli. I am now drinking wine in a midnight garden with my best friend and watching the sky for shooting stars. Dust from Halley’s Comet should be producing the Eta Aquarid meteor shower this weekend.

Let me tell you, the therapeutic value of a good old White Wine Whine is greatly underestimated. We verbally shred anyone who has had the effrontery to annoy us and get indignant on each other’s behalf. In between slurping down the vine and talking, we gaze at the sky as if we knew what we were looking at.  The bottle is empty. A foray to the kitchen is required. On the way, I trip over the garden hose lying hidden like a snake in the grass and pitch head first into the cotoneaster. Thank God it wasn’t the pyracantha. Otherwise I’d have more body piercings than a punk rock band.

Single Sunday

In between slurping Solpadeine, lying on the sofa and looking up the signs of alcoholism on the Web, I decide to make something simple for dinner.  There is a recipe in the Foolproof Cookbook for baked potatoes. I take out two enormous potatoes from yesterday’s shopping. As instructed I use a large knife to score lines across them from side to side and then sea salt is rubbed into the lines. Into the oven on the wire rack.  As they are very big potatoes I decide to increase the temperature a few degrees and leave them baking. Three hours later I have the steak grilled as his key turns in the lock. I put the steak and peas out on the plates with the potatoes. The potatoes are a bit overdone. Well they’re black actually. Big black things with lighter coloured scars. The chip shop connoisseur stares at his plate. “We are having giant woodlice for dinner?”  Words fail me. But the frying pan doesn’t.