Mostly But Not Entirely About Food

The most delicious thing I've ever eaten was a dish of pate de foie gras- which is just about the least ethical food on the planet.

I'm not a foodie. Neither is Ailz. Once we've got this vegan thing sorted I expect to shut up about it.

I've yet to make my mind up about alcohol. Many beers and wines are non-vegan- and use products like isinglass in the fining process. "Bugger" is all I can say. Bugger.

Isinglass is a such a glorious word. "And so Sir Gawain came to a castle where he was received by fourteen beauteous maidens- the daughters of the king; and the name of that castle was Isinglass." Isinglass, the product, is made from fish bladders- so not glorious at all.

Last night I dreamed I went to heaven and met lots of old friends around a table. Among them was a girl I knew when I was 17 (not a girlfriend but she might have been if we'd known one another a little longer)- also my father and my great aunt Joan. It was a splendid, happy dream, if a little muddled- because Colchester gaol came into it somehow- but I knew- because of the quality of the feelings it evoked- that tenuously, cloudily, it stood for something real. (O, words how they let us down!)

War Movies

Dirk Bogarde served in the war and made a lot of war movies afterwards. My mother is watching one of them now. I wonder whether actors of his generation got sick of having to keep going back into uniform.

David Niven- who had a "good war"- is reported to have encouraged his troops before a fight with a little speech that went, "It's all right for you chaps; you only have to do it once. But I'll have to do it all over again with Errol Flynn in Hollywood".