The Fugitive

This will be a hurried post over a bowl of onion soup, lest I be discovered. Because I’m in London for a conference – a corporate do which I’ve managed to finagle my way onto. Not my usual environment, I hasten to add.

This rips me away from the Hollow garden for a couple of days, forcing me to put aside my present dilemmas (such as which is first – chopping the winter firewood, repairing the shelter for said firewood, or putting wood preserver on the ad hoc gate repairs? There isn’t time to do all these before the weather closes in.) and replace them with the hurly-burly of a corporate-sponsored event. To whit, three hours of boring presentations by the sponsors, two hours of boring speeches, a trade show and several heavy meals in potluck company.

But the hotel – the hotel must surely be a mistake of some kind… because they let me in. I mean, surely something must be wrong here. Black marble and white porcelain, complimentary everything, and bar prices that would make a banker blush. I’m wearing my best suit, but even the bedspread is making me feel underdressed, for God’s sake.

So, swiftly now, before the concierge comes to catch me and take me away in a big net.

The mushrooms this year are good. So good in fact that my storage jars are full of assorted boletes before the season’s really got started. I’m risking giving a couple of guided walks (though I should really know better) and have made a few cracking mushroom dishes already – of which more when I get back home – but there’ll be no shortage of shrooms for stews for several years, thanks to my Stockli dehydrator.

Homebrew also promises to be busy, while I’m trying to put the outside garden to bed for the year. The garage and my office are full of finished but unbottled wine, and although I’ve tasted a few (damson thin and unsatisfying, Earthenwitch’s mead floral and fragrant) I have yet to get the corks in on anything.

But for now, I’ve managed to snag a free dinner and a bath, and the complimentary horror movie is starting, so if you’ll excuse me…