When they eventually demolish the cinema in the centre of the town, this pigeon will have to find another home..
In a front garden of a neighbouring house, is a flower pot. In the pot is a cucumber plant. Suspended from the plant is a cucumber. Not one of your supermarket cucumbers, thin and straight as a rake, but a big, fat prickly cucumber.
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A generous basil crop produces three servings of pesto - made with handfuls of basil, Parmesan and Pecorino cheeses, pine kernels, olive oil - and used in different ways. The first, a traditional sauce with pasta, the second added at the last minute to sauteed potatoes, and the third dresses a rack of lamb as the lamb comes out of the oven. It proves to be a more versatile sauce than I had imagined in the past, and, if covered in olive oil to prevent it going black, goes a long way and keeps well in the fridge for several days.
9 comments:
1. Sincerely hope the pigeon will find a home
2. First time I'd ever heard of a cucumber plant - deeply intrigued!
3. Many thanks for the culinary advice ;)
Do you lie awake at nights wondering what they'll replace the decayed cinema with? I don't want to overdo the gnarled-pensioner-on-the-parkbench schtick but it's a sad fact that architectural replacements (especially in places like TW where property values are no doubt stratospheric) rarely improve on what went before. A betting shop? A video games shop? A block of flats for very small people?
J V Cucumber plants look like vegetable marrow, pumpkin or courgettes plants except that they have a tidier and less extravagant habit. They are of course of the same family.
BB The cinema site which is on a corner and encompasses a row of shops on either side( now all derelict) and a carpark behind, has been deserted for about 10 years. There are plans for new shops, a hotel, a night club, restaurants and bars but either the money or the vision or both are absent. One of the problems is that the site bestrides the top of the railway tunnel (the main line between London and Hastings), and there are fears that the foundations of the existing building and any new ones would interfere with the tunnel. New plans envisage a central walk way (I refuse to employ the word precinct) over the tunnel, with most of the new development on either side. No one is optimistic about the proposal, particularly as there is no need for more shops, bars, restaurants or hotels. A night club does of course present another opportunity for the guilded youth of TW to reinforce its capacity to range the streets of the town smashing shop windows, brawling, and shouting and screaming all night during the weekends, so it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. As a measure of its taste, TW Borough Council erected a clock to celebrate the millennium, of overwhelming ungliness, a sort of gothic Eifel Tower structure in miniature. Ask a local taxi driver to set you down at the "ugly clock" and he will know exactly where you mean. So planning permission, from an aesthtic let alone a practical point of view, is the last thing to worry a developer. Incidently the owners of the cinema before selling it, placed a restrictive convenant on the site, excluding its use as a cinema, because they are running a new six screen cinema on the industrial estate five miles out of town. As we have no car we have to rely on DVDs for films. This gnarled pensioner would like to see the site set aside for woodland.
With patience and continuing inaction on the problem, Mother Nature will take advantage of the site and you will get your wish. Though It may take the better part of the century to accomplish.
Mother N is doing quite a good job already. Photo opportunities have been lavishly provided by rusting fire escapes, weed inhabited staircases, dislocated pipes, trailing cables and cracked and broken windows.
I swore to myself I wouldn't take any more cheap shots at your spelling but "guilded youths" draws in additional meanings - medieval apprentices on the razzle after long hours spent beating gold?
I have made the same mistake before and corrected it in time unfortunately not this time.
As I have only been following your blog for the last few months, I try to read your older blogs from previous years when I have the time (like today!) Imagine my surprise when reading November 18th 2008 coming across the almost exact same photo as today! I have compared the 2 pictures side by side and Yes - its the same window - minus the pigeon!!
Regards Jane (from the Grove Tavern)
I had a feeling that might be the case. I was standing outside Lloyds Bank on both occasions on the same spot. Thanks for pointing it out and for your visits, which are always appreciated. The pigeon must have been down the pub on November 18. When the cinema is eventually demolished, these snaps will be of historical value!Cheers.
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