On Being a Pudding.

During the course of beating the Shire bounds today (not quite literally, but you know what I mean) I took my customary repose at the half way point – by the south wall of the church, where the spring sunshine was bestowing its modest munificence and my only companions were two squirrels, two pheasants and an unusually vocal jackdaw. And as I drank in the unpolluted peace, a thought occurred to me: what would I do if the Priestess turned up on my doorstep unannounced? (We went to the church frequently, you know, back in the days when new connections were dropping from the internet like cockroaches from the ceiling of a Bronx apartment.)

The writer’s instinct set a little scenario in motion, and I watched with amusement to see how it would unfold. How it unfolded I needn’t go into; suffice it to say that I was the personification of a perfect baked Alaska, fresh out of the oven – only the opposite way round.