The Farmer & His Wife
Cheese? Yes, please, says John Taylor – as long as it leaves no crumbs!
ANNE tries every dodge she can think of to try to get my weight down. I know she’s only doing it for my own good, but it goes against the grain.
Anne had been visiting a friend who’d recently suffered a heart attack.
“Poor Alice,” Anne said. “I could hardly believe it. She always looked the picture of health.”
Alice was a dear soul, always smiling. She, like me, loved to eat.
Anne said the doctors had told Alice to lose weight and that the best way to do it was to eat little and often.
I agreed with “often”, but was doubtful about “little”.
One of my biggest downfalls is cheese. Often, as I pass the fridge, I open it and break a goodly piece off the lump of cheese there.
I particularly love the crumbliness of Lancashire cheese. It also has a tang I like, but I don’t buy it any longer for one reason.
As I said, it’s crumbly, and if I break a piece off there are always tell-tale bits left on the floor.
Six-thirty in the morning is not the best of times to find fault with your loved one. He’s not in the best of tempers at that time of day.
“Did you enjoy the cheese last night?”
As always, Anne’s eagle eyes had spotted the bits on the floor.
My advice? Buy a hard cheese if you don’t want to be caught out!
Recently, one of our grandsons was invited to a partners’ party and the burning question was, what should he take?
I suggested an Orkney cheese; Anne suggested a plant.
My cheese, which I thought was very practical, was dismissed out of hand.
We spent the evening, or at least Anne did, working out what he should take.
I tried to read “Scottish Farmer” between bursts of suggestions.
In the end, he pushed the boat out and did his boss proud.
He went for the Scottish option and took a rich fruitcake and a bottle of twelve-year-old whisky.
Anne and I have decided that we are really back numbers when it comes to young people’s ideas of the perfect present! ■