Bill Owens : Consume

Presents, Singing Waiters and Too Much Happiness

On Funerals, Eulogies, Wakes and the World Wide Web

I like to arrive at funerals a good 45 minutes before the host. Unless of course it's a Catholic funeral, when the body is brought into church the night before. Arriving early enables you to seat yourself in the appropriate part of the church. Not too near the front (unless you are family, very close friends or just plain rude), half way back (if you are distant family i.e. second cousin status and beyond, work colleagues and parishioners), or at the back (people of no faith, those who need others to show them when to stand when to kneel, etc., and drama queens.) I sat myself quietly with the better dressed and distant family and friends in the middle section. Packed church, lovely funeral, on point eulogy and a good spread afterwards. Three hours later I'm still there renewing distant family relationships and swapping email addresses. Then I blackberry my PA.

"At wake. Negotiating purchase of coat. Google up musquash. Not rabbit is it?"

The Slacker Diaries Part 2

If it's not swine flu, it's safeguarding. I'd just like some time to get to that part in the manual where it describes how to upload my new camera's pictures onto the memory stick, then onto my pc. If I see one more disgusting oik sneeze like a barking git onto those around them I'll take a stick and beat them to the floor screaming, "Who the hell made you Typhoid Mary!"

During this time of global public health concern, I've hardly done a thing in the garden. Hardly been online and almost completely ignored my favourite blogs. Not only is Daniel walking, he's got a teething new baby sister! How did that happen? Even Jan, my original transatlantic laundry buddy removed me from her list of favs ( she probably thought I was dead); (no, not dead, just boring!)

Then I came home in the dark (again) and fell over a brace of pheasants left on the back step and realised I'd have to prep them that night or they'd rot off before I next had time to do them. That meant I needed to go online and Google up a pheasant n bacon combo, but that just overwhelmed me with nearly a quarter of a million pages, so I flicked into Fiona and Danny's website (Google up pheasant recipes and see who's at number 2 and 3), and found myself in tomato heaven.

I left a little message about not buying packets of tomato seeds. I sometimes buy packets of tomato seeds because I have a hard core, horticultural addiction to tomatoes. I've disclosed this before, so it won't come as a surprise to my erudite, witty and urbane readers, (or what's left of them).

But what I really like to do is get some seeds for free. If I'm eating out and come across some really delishy tomatoes, or some really good looking stunners, I'll squeeze some of the seeds onto a sheet of ordinary copier paper, and let them dry off overnight. The copier paper always looks too soaked, but dries off to a crackle-hard sheet again. I then write onto the paper a description of the meal or the circumstances, maybe even stick on the supermarket label, and file the sheets of dried-on tomato seeds into cardboard seed boxes in the study upstairs until needed.

This year I successfully grew three year old seeds, some pictured at the copier paper stage below. Just pick the rock hard seeds off the paper with your fingernail, and sow in the usual way.

Hair Apparent

"Since nobody else has noticed it, I would like to send my belated congratulations to Reginald Bosanquet for his touching tribute to Lord Avon on "News at Ten". It was a moving and appropriate gesture to wear his wig at half-mast. I only question his apparent decision to take part in a private wake before the broadcast, but I am sure he knows best".

Tragically I was an Only Twin, by Peter Cook