Duck and cover...

We returned from a morning checking out garden centres close to the market town of Beverley with half a dozen duck eggs in the boot. It might seem a strange admission for one of advanced years to make, but I've never had a duck egg in my life. I was after some eggs freshly laid by the chickens at the place we'd been swanning around but they must be on a go-slow as there were none available. So, duck eggs it was. They're a lovely shade of blue and will be turned into an omelette tomorrow. My mother, who came with us to buy pansies (as if her pansy son isn't enough for her!) and some over-priced muck with which to re-pot her collection of cacti, balked at a suggestion that she take some of the duck eggs off us. "I can't eat them. I've never had them," she protested. As if you can only eat things that you've eaten before. I mean, where would we be with that attitude? Very thin, I can tell you. The lack of duck eggs in my life up to this point can, of course, be traced back to my mother and her strange attitude to food, which is mostly limited to huge portions of chilli con carne, bacon sandwiches and toasted tea cakes. Although when I lived there she also rustled up minced beef and onions on a Sunday for a 'special treat'. The bloody working class, eh?

Also re food, there was a mad woman serving at a cafe in one of the garden centres. Apropos of us making our way to the counter, she started announcing, "that's ham that you can smell. The ham's on. Lovely piece of ham. The smell of ham. Mmm". Which didn't go down too well with the vegetarian members of the party (or make any sense - there wasn't any smell), nor my mother, who's equally as mad and lacking in social etiquette. "Is that woman talking to us?" she said, loud enough to be mistaken for being rude and aggressive. I ordered a cheese toastie, which came with a peculiar side order consisting of six quite small ready salted crisps. That must be a market town thing, is it?

Listening: Nada Surf - High & Low