Good morning on a wet and fairly dreary looking day in beautiful downtown Byfield. This is in marked contrast to the weather we have enjoyed for most of the week which has been generally sunny and even pleasantly warm for the most part. We had been expecting the tail end of hurricane Gordon but fortunately for us, that went through the north of the British Isles, disrupting some of the preparation for the Ryder Cup in Dublin and lashing Northern Ireland and Scotland but seemingly leaving us pretty much alone. Thanks Gordon.
I ran across the attached Oliphant cartoon earlier in the week on one of the numerous sites I visit to entertain myself and have to confess I didn’t understand a word of it. That is, until, the BBC finally carried an article about your (those in the US at least) current spinach crisis. What a blow! I am a big fan of spinach and, while I don’t wish to rub anyone’s nose in our bountiful circumstances, but we have an abundance which is completely, guaranteed, certified e-Coli free. Actually, to be fair, Pen grew Swiss chard this year instead of spinach but it is effectively (to my tired taste buds at any rate) the same and exceedingly enjoyable. Pen does a mean spinach cutlet with onion, garlic and parmesan cheese and I simply adore fresh baby spinach leaves in my luncheon salad each day. I would offer to ship you some but I fear that by the time it arrived it would have degenerated into a soggy mess and be no better for you than your current crop. So, instead, I will make a promise to eat as much of it as I can before a frost knocks the crop on its head. Pen – spinach cutlets for dinner tonight?
Our delivery department still seems to be suffering some disruption to our services. After week before last’s mysterious delay, this past week one of our subscribers suffered an intolerable service. I won’t mention any names but it seems that Hanover Bob’s delivery failed to arrive on Sunday. He very politely e-mailed to enquire about its non-arrival and I immediately dispatched another copy via our alternative delivery source. This too failed to arrive, I was informed in slightly less modest language along with the suggestion that I should attach it rather than sending it in the body of the message. Our delivery services duly complied with his request which still, apparently, failed to materialise. By this time, as you can imagine, I was somewhat perplexed as I had not received any other messages concerning non-delivery so I checked with one of our premium subscribers, the artist formerly known as Miss Pissed Off in Portland. She very kindly informed me that her subscription had been delivered on time and that, in any event, she certainly would have let me know in no uncertain terms if it had failed to arrive. So, as you can imagine, I was stumped. By now it’s about Wednesday and neither Hanover Bob nor his delightful live-in companion have received their respective copies of Sunday’s Befouled Weakly News. So, in response to a further request I again attached it and dispatched it and it finally arrived. I can’t think what was going on there unless there has been some tweaking of junk filter rules at Aldephia so that this mass circulation spam was quite justly condemned to the junk mailbox – who knows. If we have similar troubles this week no doubt we’ll hear!
I won’t mention the fact the he then began to complain about the quality of some of the allegedly amusing anecdotes included. Some people just don’t know when they are well off, i.e., when the Befouled Weakly News does not soil their inbox.
Love to you all,
Greg