Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness...

Yes, I know it is still August, but I didn't want to leave it until the first of September in case Weaver got in before me. I have a record to hold.

Now that I am here, I might as well blather inanely about Autumn for a bit. I am hoping that we in Southern England will be treated to a nice crisp one with a bumper crop of mushrooms to hunt for. The last few years have been shite.

The weather conditions might be good for mushrooms, but the low temperatures just before Spring did for the blossom this year. There is a sour plum tree near here which was creaking under the weight of fruit last year, but there is none now.

Looking on the bright side, I believe the weather on mainland Europe has been similar to ours, so with a bit of luck we will not have Cro asking for easy quince recipes as he has for the last ten years of glut. I have tried to tell him that there is no such thing as an 'easy quince recipe' that doesn't involve the use of a tree-surgeon's chipper, but he just doesn't give up.

Yesterday's relentless downpour of rain coincided with the peak (or trough) of my very heavy cold. I didn't need an excuse to stay indoors all day, but it was the perfect one. In a strange way I enjoy a good (bad) cold, once it has properly set in. The combination of loss of taste and smell coupled with the slightly delirious detachment makes slipping in and out of reality that much easier.

Sense of taste gone, I had to ask H.I. how delicious the Dijonnaise sauce I made last night was. Brief rant alert: The mere typing of the word 'Dijonnaise' has confused this American spell-checker. You would think that if the human American programmer says 'erbs' for herbs and 'omarge' for homage when attempting to talk normally, they might recognise a few other household French words that they can mangle to make people think they are well-travelled.

The great thing about heavy colds and the consequent loss of smell is that certain aromas and perfumes can cut right through the mucus and send you flying back in time to when you first smelled them. All you need is the slightest hint of a familiar scent, then your memory draws on a vast reservoir of archived aromas that you didn't even know existed.

You know the perfect scent for me which does this transportation-through-time trick the best?

Quince.