Sloppy travesty

My MP has been reshuffled from not fixing the NHS to not fixing the environment.

Storm Debi rained on us overnight, and blew and blew during the day, especially in the evening, when I went out to Pilates.

The sloppy travesty in the photo turned into panettone while I was at Pilates.

The secret in the box was the tin to bake the panettone in.

Mr Perkins helped with the sloppy travesty by jumping up onto the surface where I’d kneaded soaked dried fruit and nuts into the dough, and walking all over the sloppy mess left after I’d put the sloppy travesty in the secret panettone tin. He regretted his actions when I grabbed him to clean the sloppy mess off his paws.

My fellow Pilates class members were terribly disappointed when the instructor said there wasn’t time for another set of her evil bridge routine. Terribly disappointed.

The instructor said she could switch the wind off. We weren’t so sure.

After tea, while catching up with Professional Masterchef, we had some panettone, still warm. Then we had some more.

Incidentally, we watched an episode of Masterchef at the weekend where, during the skills test to make poire belle Hélène, Gregg Wallace said, seemingly in all earnest, that the word scoff ‘eat (something) quickly and greedily’ comes from the name of the father of modern cooking, Auguste Escoffier, who created the aforementioned pear dish.

The Oxford Dictionary of English says the origin of scoff is ‘late 18th century (as a verb): originally a variant of Scots and dialect scaff. The noun is via Afrikaans from Dutch schoft “quarter of a day, work shift”, (by extension) ‘meal’’.

Gregg Wallace or Susie Dent; whose etymology do you believe?

Gregg Wallace, Monica Galetti and Marcus Wareing all kept shtum about Escoffier’s criminal behaviour.

Marcus Wareing went on to say some other nonsense, but my brain has saved me from this nonsense by declining to remember it.