Tuesday 26 October 2010

Wild Duck Chase

I left work to be with my wife and we went from the "Imaging Room" at The Whittington, up the hill to Waterlow Park. It was a beautiful day but unfortunately renovations to the Waterlow Cafe ruined our tranquility and we trudged off for a glass of wine and some onion soup in the Cafe Rouge. Then we took a long stroll through the whispering trees and wheezing joggers of The Parkland Walk; an abandoned train line left over from Dr Beechings cuts, now overgrown and full of bats and monkjack deer (never seen either). We alighted at Crouch End and I continued my search for ducks.

There were none in Waitrose, Budgens, Tescos or Marks and Spencers. I bought a couple of bottles of South African red and we continued our search. We made it to Finsbury Park. No duck in the Sainsburys. Tescos offered something called a "duck crown" and sold "duck legs" separately; a self assembley duck, if you will. I won't. We weighed up the pros and cons and finally trudged over to Green Lanes where the Sainsburys is so big that they have to have two everything; it's a noahs ark of rotting pumpkins and scowling, indifferent staff.

They had a duck! With giblets! Success. By this point we had been walking for about four hours and had been talking constantly. We had been through shell-shocked, to weeping anger, to stiff lipped denial and were now in a good place - chatting and joking. By the time we got home and I opened a bottle of white ( a cheap but rather nice vouvray) we were almost happy.

The duck was a success (though the giblet stock wasnt really worth the hour and a half it took to make) and our cotton wedding anniversary was memorable - if only for being one we woould rather forget.

We get the results of the biopsy back tomorrow. That may take more than a duck-walk to fix

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