Doctor Who

When I began this daily blog in May last year, it was possible to provide an individual header picture for each post.  Following my acquisition of a digital camera that June, I have illustrated posts ever since.  Some time later, WordPress made amendments to the presentation of articles.  I was unable to use the new system to introduce a different header each day.  It may be my lack of proficiency, but I managed to lose all my individual feature pictures and abandoned the idea of one general series header. I thought I had permanently deleted those I had used .  Recently I have discovered I hadn’t, and have been able to reintroduce them, not as headers, but in an appropriate place within the text.  I spent the morning taking this process up to mid-August 2012.

Showing a great deal more respect than those of you who know who you are, my old friend Geoff Austin, still under the illusion that I resemble Jon Pertwee, had the good grace in an e-mail to point out that, as I was never as scruffy as Worzel, the role of the third Doctor Who would be a much more appropriate comparison.  Maybe, back in the 1980s when awestruck children gaped in my direction and exclaimed: ‘There’s Doctor Who’, it was Jon Pertwee and not Tom Baker they were thinking of.

It had been a pretty uninviting morning, strong winds having buffeted the trees, and grey clouds having produced hailstones to hammer them and our windows. This afternoon sparkled by comparison.  Leaves adhering to the Nattier bonnet of Ari’s resplendent Rolls Royce, somehow managing to look more delicately decorative than those on that of Jackie’s more mundane Modus, which seemed rather like an unpleasant rash.

Thus bedecked, at the wheel, wandering at will, Jackie drove us up Roger Penny Way and meandered through pretty villages, now in Hampshire, now in Wiltshire. Bramshaw, Langford, Hale, Woodgreen,  Downton, Redlynch, Nomansland are a few of the names I can remember.  It would have been possible to add another portfolio of stunning autumn colour to this post.  I refrained, but thought a pony in Shave Wood and sheep on a hill in Bramshaw worth getting out of the car for.

Harissa was an unusual, but effective ingredient in Jackie’s chicken jalfrezi this evening.  Served with savoury rice including an unknown powder, part of a Christmas present, that was probably garam masala, this was as delightful as ever.  Spicy pumpkin pie and cream was the perfect sweet.  Finishing the rioja with this, I knocked over my last glassful, which was a shame.