Fine words butter no parsnips

Try explaining that one to a foreigner!

I was prepping the veg when Elspeth rang to say Happy New Year. She lives in Glenfarg, and we were at school together. We've decided to go somewhere together, sometime. Maybe in February, if I don't go to a carnival in Germany.

Tonight we're having nut roast (again) with loads of roasted root veg, because I've got Hugh F-W's book about Leftovers out of the library, so I can always use the leftovers for something else. This morning I made breakfast rice pancakes with leftover rice, and flapjacks out of leftover cereal. The latter burned horribly, and when I opened the oven, off went the smoke alarm! One thing I like about the holidays is having more time to cook.

In other news, I finished my book, the only one I got for Christmas. It's Gloucester Crescent, the autobiography of the childhood years of William Miller, the younger son of the polymath Jonathan Miller. I'd requested it because I'd loved the hilarious letters of Nina Stibbe, published as Love, Nina. Nina was a nanny to the children of Mary-Kay Wilmers and Stephen Frears in the early 1980s. However, it turns out that Nina is by far the better writer, and her account of life in 'Corduroy Crescent' is vastly more entertaining! A feature in both books is the almost-constant presence of Alan Bennett at meal times. Did AB ever cook for himself, I wonder? Alan moved from the crescent in 2017, and has a partner, so maybe he has some home suppers now. I have to add that when I was in London in 2017, I actually got off the bus and walked along Gloucester Crescent, so famous has it become through the film and book of The Lady in the Van (Alan Bennett) and the book and TV series of Love, Nina (Nina Stibbe).

I'm very glad I didn't have Jonathan Miller as a father: he was the kind of tortured soul who threatened to kill himself when his work wasn't going well, and who would seize a book out of one of his children's hands, critique it, and tell them what he thought they should be reading instead! Alarming. Young William failed most of his school exams because he could never answer the questions straight, without going off on a tangent about what the real issue should be! He knew the answers, but didn't deem them worthy of discussion without a lengthy detour down rabbit holes. His connections paid off in the end, however, so I don't feel sorry for him now. As a child, however, he just wanted to be in a place where he could be listened to without being judged. At his comprehensive school, he was bullied for being a 'posh musical boy' and at home he lived in the shadow of his famously critical, anti-establishment father.