Harry's Blog

I can cook. I'm no Jamie Oliver¹, but I can throw enough interesting things onto a plate to satisfy a variety of tastes and do it in a relatively stress free manner. Relaxation is the key to cookery – get too anxious and you're only going to burn something, or even worse not cook it enough.

A wonderful evening spent with adorable company should leave one with a fluttery feeling in your stomach, but not one that needs to be fixed by a handful of Imodium tablets.

But then concentrating on cookery is not entirely easy in company of the gorgeous RJ, who made her first foray over to chez Harry for dinner yesterday. Her sparkly eyes and enchanting smile meant that the planned meal of home made lasagne required an ability to concentrate I did not posses and an attempt would have resulted in serving charcoal briquette avec manky evil.

Something simpler was needed – yet something a bit more ambitious than microwave TV dinner. If you have to microwave it, it's probably not a romantic meal². Some people feel the need to visit hippy shops that sell esoteric concoctions such as love potions, others may call on the conjurations of white witchcraft, but there are powers much stronger than these available – and they are available on your high street, if you're lucky.

The little corner of England's garden that I inhabit is blessed with a purveyor of the very finest of meats. Selling organic, free range food of the highest calibre – these tender creatures positively leap onto your plate they are so fresh. And so my magic potion for the evening consisted simply of sprinkling some basil and thyme on a slice or two of such happy meat and letting it slowly cook in my erratic gas oven. And thanks to the timer on my mobile phone³ I completely failed to burn dinner.

RJ paid me the highest compliment a chef can expect, she ate everything on her plate and even offered to do the washing up. And so we survived my first attempt at cooking us a meal.

Today I do have a fluttery feeling in my stomach thanks to an evening spent in such beautiful company, but nothing that requires the administration of pharmaceuticals or would prevent me jumping on the tube and heading west.

Something I'm sorely tempted to do right now.

Not bunking off work and heading west to see RJ requires a good deal of will power, as much as I posses. And of course it might be rather embarrassing for all involved to recreate a strange alternate version of the final scene in The Graduate.

¹_{You can keep those letter bombs to yourself.}
²_{Of course any dish served without meat isn't a meal, it's a snack.}
³_{Does anyone actually make calls with these things?}