Constructing wooden legs…

But first the matter of “seasons”. Last night the wife and I consumed avocado pear, cauliflower, rhubarb (crumble) and a rather pleasing Waitrose “rich and creamy” stilton cheese with some walnuts. I mentioned to her that no food seems to have a “season” anymore. You can buy asparagus, raspberries and oysters at any time of year thanks to modern farming techniques and local suppliers in places like Peru. Hot cross buns are readily available from Sainsburys in November, and Spring Lamb in August. She managed to counter this with “what about marrows, then?” but it must be only a matter of time before I find a marrow in Waitrose proudly labelled “product of Zimbabwe”.

Now to these wooden legs. I am indebted to Dot Wordsworth’s Spectator column for drawing my attention to the wondrous vocabulary of church furnishings – “dossals and paenula-shaped chasubles, footpaces and tables of prothesis”. Now what is a table of prothesis doing in a church? It surely has something to do with artificial limbs? Off I go to seek out Shorter OED Volume 2 (Marl – Z) but somehow I have mislaid the mighty volumes. So it’s the Bloomsbury Encarta Dictionary that sorts me out: prothesis being, as all my readers will already know, another term for the Eucharist, and prosthesis being the wooden leg word. Bah, ignorant Nappa!

Moreover, the subject of wooden legs reminds me of my Long John Silver impersonation at the granddaughter’s splendid birthday party last Saturday. All was going well with the twenty three- and four-year-olds happily playing on the bouncy castle in Grayswood Village Hall and eating lots of M & S junk food. Then the son wickedly produced pirate hats, eye patches and plastic swords for all. In the ensuing mayhem the children decided that there was only one real target for their politically incorrect aggression – the ancient Nappa. Every time I tried to slope off back to the bottle of Cotes du Rhone (provided for the parents and consumed by the Nappa) a little person would track me down and solicitously hand me a replacement sword. This done a hoard of little monsters would move back in for the kill.