Reward

Rewarded myself for the short winteriese with a drop of Martell at the 'Cricketers on the Pond', Martell which came in a fashionably square glass. There was some change from the tenner.

So off to a good start, promptly at 1200 on New Year's Eve. I gloss over what happened after that, but I can report that just over 24 hours later we were sitting down to our first lentil soup of the new year, fortified with left over mashed potato, left over gammon and some entirely new saucisson sec, thinly sliced for better digestion and which may have accounted for the stronger than expected taste of garlic, having fried up just the one clove. Or maybe I chopped finer than usual.

PS 1: I notice, en passant, that the venerable House of Martell has been swallowed up by the Pernod Corporation.

PS 2: I also notice, having just made a modest hotel booking through a hotel company, that that booking has been swallowed up by the Google Corporation. That is to say that when I go to google maps to check where exactly it is, I find that the hotel, has been annotated with the dates of our intended stay. Which says to me that my browser, Chrome, is keeping a more careful eye on what I get up to than I had realised.