Pudding

Sunday lunch wrapped up today with a rather spectacular sponge pudding, completed with a strained blackberry sauce, blackberries from Horton Lane, vintage 2016. Not to say a coulis.

Given our very real problems with making a reasonable fist of Brexit, which last we do seem to be stuck with, we are getting rather irritated by the amount of unnecessary noise coming from north of the border, so we accompanied the pudding with trying to enumerate all the proper countries of the world, taking it in turns, in which the peace and tranquility was or had been disturbed by the barbarians from the hills, barbarians who, on the whole, were not very good at making their own countries, but who were very good at disturbing those of other people. And who usually fiercely resented attempts to tidy them up. There are certainly plenty of them, and more if you allow deserts and other inhospitable fringes as well as hills.

With some good examples to be found on the western fringes of China, the northern fringes of India and Pakistan. Not to mention the big hills of the Caucasus. Or the Bedouin of the Middle East. And then, nearer home, we have the fictional example of the Doones from the wilds of Exmoor.