I had a domestically productive day today – making next week’s breakfast yogurt, and then batch-cooking some stifado for the freezer. But in between, I also made time to go into Stratford with R, for walking, coffee, and cake. The bottom of Mill Lane was flooded, preventing us from reaching Lucy’s Mill Bridge, so we only managed to do the shorter, north side walk – but the coffee was excellent and the cake was superb, which in my book more than compensates for a paucity of steps. As the bathroom scales would probably confirm.
As we walked through Holy Trinity churchyard we could hear a Robin yelling its head off nearby, so I told R that I’d catch him up, and veered off the path to look for it. It wasn’t much of a challenge, to be honest, partly because of the noise level, but also because I suspected – correctly, as it turned out – that the Robin was singing from the same holly tree in which I photographed one calling a couple of weeks ago. In fact, Robins being the highly territorial little beasts that they are, this is probably the same bird. Every time it completed one of its extravagant, full-throated arias it would throw its head back as it closed its bill, which put me in mind of Luciano Pavarotti in his later years. Its shape was somewhat similar too, though obviously not its mass: I doubt that this small tree would have been up to supporting the bulk of the late, great Italian tenor, though watching him belting out Nessun dorma while sitting on a slender holly branch is a spectacle I’d have paid good money to see.
On the subject of things worth watching, I prepped my stifado later this afternoon while keeping an eye on the Winter Olympics on TV, and by the time I’d peeled a kilo of small onions I found that I’d accidentally become a world authority on the Women’s 3000m Speed Skating. My delight when it was won by Francesca Lollobrigida (great-niece of another late, great Italian performer), on her 35th birthday, in a new Olympic Record time, was exceeded only by the joy of the Italian crowd in front of whom she was competing. If I was a bit tearful when she took her two-year old son into the stadium to join the celebrations, it was probably down to the onions.
R: L2, C5, D2.
