Bernard woke up with crusty eyelids and purple shiners, but I thought I could get away with it and sent him to his childminder anyway. She’s the one who takes him to all these toddler groups, where he picks up nasty eye infections, so she can jolly well see him through it.

Meanwhile the carpet cleaning man arrived and got started on the feat of revitalising the hideous yellow carpet that seems to ooze vilely across all of our floors.^[1] Thank goodness, then, that there was one room with a dry floor, because at 11.30 the CM brought Bernard back to me, ringing a bell and shouting unclean!

Read the rest of this entry »

1. all except the bedroom, which has an ancient, papery green covering, that I plan to replace with jute. [↩]

As a student, I was a devoted follower of Cas Clarke, author of Grub On A Grant. When I say devoted follower, I mean I bought the book and cooked nearly everything in it. There are still one or two recipes that I use regularly, and she is responsible for my love of slow-cooking. Some of the recipes are nonsense, but I reckon most recipe books contain at least one piece of utter nonsense. Take for example the gnocchi recipe in Jamie’s Kitchen.

I liked Cas’s casual style, and the recipes were always easy, interesting, cheap, and quick: perfect for students. So when I saw that she had also written a book called Great Grub For Toddlers, I rushed out (to the Amazon Marketplace, as it’s out of print) and bought one. Oh. Dear. Me.

Read the rest of this entry »