Canelés de Bordeaux, anyone? A gift, along with a grand vin, from a Grateful Cat, via his people - said cat is being a little reluctant to quit his makeshift home on my doorstep, which is causing all kinds of trouble and Suspicion in incumbent cat, and not a little grief to said cat’s junior people, who do love him - possibly a bit too enthusiastically at times.
They are delicious - the canelés, I mean, not the childer, although given the right marinade and so on…
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Very tempting! I still have a bit of gin and elderflower chocolate, if that sounds a fair swap?
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It being neither incest nor folkdancing, joe, it is gratefully received for a test-flight. I’ve never had elderflower in conjunction with chocolate, not even via my favourite chocolate people, and I am intrigued.
Favourite chocolate people are these, by the way:
And no, I have never had a box that big. But they are brilliant, and very pretty also. And their salted caramel wotsits were a marvel before salted caramel got bluddy everywhere. They do some very pretty, very thin little discs with mint, too - fresh mint flavour, not peppermint, which are spectacularly good.
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Any takers for a Bengal or three?
Please
I have three delightful 
in spotty pyjamas playing aerial tig around the hovel
I am trying to sleep
The Bengals are just getting started on midnight capers
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good luck with that…
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I hear you are good with Gus
I couldn’t deprive you of the opportunity to care for dear little spotty purry furry creatures
P
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Three large, well-nourished fecking hooligans with big feet and claws and whiskers and their own particular brand of humour, did you mean, Twellsy dere? Thank you, but I feel I must decline.
Anyway, you seem inured to their habits and tolerably fond of the brutes ;- )
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Swerving spotty hooligans, I bid you all as good a night as you might have.
Soo xx
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Home safe. Busy day tomorrow. G’night all.
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Gus only boy Bengals are big cats
Bengal girls are delicate refined elegant
I have two girls and a snowboy
The boy is a bit adventurous until you pick him up and carry him
Then he drapes himself on your arm and purrs sweetly
This enchants me
And I know it would enchant you to have hypnotic sapphire eyes looking up trustingly into your eyes
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Twellsy, I am familiar with Bengals and very much a fan - in the abstract. I was mistaken, though, in that I thought you had two males, one female.
Even the females are not a great mix with yer average domestic moggie (I am dead meat if Mrs B. Cat reads this, you understand) as they tend to dominate them, or try to. I would like to keep a few sticks of furniture…
Well that would certainly be an improvement on the sight that greeted me this morning, when I opened my eyes to a very close view of, shall we say, the other aspect of a cat. But on the whole - note the W - Pidgey’s eyes provide me with sufficient gorgeousness at the moment. Plus I am still repelling boarders on the doorstep, despite the return of the sat cat’s family, or three-quarters of it. The other quarter is Away on Business, which might explain the slightly fraught look of the other grown-up quarter of the household, bless her.
Anyway, if I took you up on your most generous offer, Twellsy dear, you would be as miserable as sin. Even allowing for parrot.
G xxx
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I would still have a jellicle and a tabby white cat
And the real boss
Ten inches tall with a scarlet rear end a filthy laugh and out of sorts as she is moulting
She is partial to peas in the pod
She fishes peas out and peels them before eating them
Clever clogs are parrots
Especially when they steal your 
Wee sparrers are always assured of a good gin and abit of grub as well
P
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A pygmy baboon, perhaps? Perish the thort.
How do the Bengals and your jellicle and your tabby get on?
Parrots is always boss. She sounds splendid, by the way. I am astonished by the number of things one thinks would be good feeding for parrots but aren’t - avocado, for example: I understand it is very bad indeed for them.
On the maternal side I come from a line of parrot fanciers. The egregious Bill ate the ration book. My grandmother, despite being married to a Met policeman, had an abiding terror of Authority, so you can imagine what fun that was at the time.
When the Cellar have all been very good, I shall tell you a bedtime story of another wartime bird.
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I went, on Tuesday, to Old Trafford (football) to watch a bunch of geriatrics performing old music. Not, of course, any-old geriatrics … nor any-old old music but the Rolling Stones.
I like the Stones, always have, but I expected a good, competent show. But that was not to be.
It was astonishing.
The whole deal.
20 song set … I knew all but 1. Sort of a greatest hits set so no new album of unknown stuff being plugged. In some cases that would be a negative … not in this case.
Their energy was amazing, start to finish.
The band seriously seemed to be enjoying themselves. They give themselves a 3 or 4 day break between shows these days and I guess that helps. It can’t be easy keeping 50 year old songs seeming fresh but they managed it.
The old singles, ‘Paint it Black’, ‘Jumping Jack Flash’, ‘Tumbling Dice’, of course the show closing ‘Satisfaction’ were superb but for my taste the longer, more complex ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Midnight Rambler’ and my desert island disc ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ were outstanding in an already outstanding show.
Added to which the tech. side of things … lighting, fx, big screens … &, of course, sound … were imperious. It was a lot of money but it was the best gig I’ve ever seen … & I saw ‘Darryl Way’s Wolf’ !!!
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[busy flappity]
Grey day, probably going to be hot in That London; it always is. Small tseepy birds out and telling the world their business.
yardarm
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I’m glad to hear that the Stones are still The Business, Armers. Sounds as if you had a splendid time, Hurrah!
Today the hunt for an outsize in linen or cotton jackets continues, but less alarmingly and in smaller places.
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Here I have a trio of flaked out in sunbeams Bengals
A crow tap dancing on the plexiglass roof of the conservatory and a tabby white trying to hunt said crow
Aaaah the peace of country life!
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I knew I should have caught them in Dublin… 
Is Bernard Fowler still with them?
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I believe that was the name of the male backing singer … the female was Sacha Allen & her input to Gimme Shelter was fantastic.
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The hard technical part of today’s work is done; the servers have been moved and are settling into their new home, corrupting their neighbours, etc.
You might not think that a server room, with coolish dry air, would leave you sweaty. But that one did. Oh well.
Now I need to go and make nice, briefly, to people who might give us money, then it’s off to 
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