Shellfish as ever

Oh, I forget what I was going to say. Hang on, I'll go and make some coffee, that might remind me.

Nope, it's gone. Gosh, I wish I had some sweets. There's chocolate, but Reformed Characters such as what I am don't eat chocolate without better reason than simply wanting it. Black coffee isn't quite cutting the mustard. Never mind. Dinner was nice though.

Did you know that kippers cost more than scallops nowadays? I asked Matt (I'm quite sure his name is not Gary, Badgerdaddy, he has it painted on his van - Matt, that is) for three kippers, and mused that in my young day one would have eaten a pair of kippers. I wouldn't, as I was a child, but my parents would, sometimes for breakfast. Kippers were not a dinnertime (that is, evening dinner) meal. One might eat kippers for tea if one ate tea, but we just drank tea. I'm quite glad that we now eat our evening meal at any time, call it whatever we fancy and eat what we like.

Anyhoo, he weighed the kippers and apologised that they cost 9 quid. He suggested that the kippers of my youth were local kippers for local people, whereas these were smoked from Norwegian herrings. I asked for a dozen scallops. They cost £8 (and formed the main interest of dinner. Or should I say supper? Tea, if you prefer). He rounded the bill down to £15 as he is nice that way.

I left the fish in Al's shop fridge and headed on over to Weeza's place. I took her some cherries, greengages, Victoria plums, peaches, raspberries, cucumber, bread (which was coated with toasted sunflower seeds), ham, salt beef and chocolate. The chocolate was Fairtrade milk chocolate and orange, Green and Black's butterscotch and chocolate and Fairtrade praline chocolate. The last was 100g bar and she is allowed to share it with Phil at the weekend. The rest was littler bars for her to eat all by herself.

It reminded me of my father, when I was little. They were friends with an entertaining but eccentric couple who lived in a house done up with castellations and turrets - the previous generation who built it were a bit unusual too. The wife, Dorothy, developed cancer.. The husband was very interested in numbers and their meaning and believed you could use formulae to predict the course of the future. He would come round, in a state of despair.

"My darling Dorrie will die on the 27th September!" he declared unhappily. He accepted a couple of glasses of sherry and some nice cheesy biscuits and went home again. "No she bloody well won't" declared my father, with equal certainty, and got on the phone to the wine merchant. The next day, he'd go round to the Towers with a crate of quarter-bottles of champagne. He put them in the fridge and instructed Dorothy to have one of them every day at 11 am.

She went on for longer than expected. It was all down to the champagne and the love - of my parents and her husband and family.

For now, I have delighted you long enough. And I haven't even mentioned the baby. She deserves posts to herself, you see.