Liberties, the taking of: an example.

[desperance]

I make - I may have mentioned - the world's best pork scratchings. Think something the length of a pencil, a little wider and curiously curled; crisp and delicate, with all the weight of fat cooked out of it; rubbed with salt and herbs before its roasting... Om nom nom.

This is just that time of the evening when I eat them, here at my desk with a glass or two of wine, while I work: type, crunch, slurp; type, crunch; like that. Slurp.

Between crunchings, the diminishing scratching - much like a pencil ever shortened by the sharpener - is laid down beside my keyboard.

There are - I may have mentioned - cats. Who treat my desk more or less as their own playground/bed/whatever, but I have struggled manfully to discourage them from treating my snacks as their own.

Not infrequently, Barry makes a flying leap onto the desk in a frantic attempt to get away from a pursuing Mac, who is Teh Evil.

Tonight? I am sitting here going type-crunch-slurp, om nom nom, omigod-I-still-need-a-page-and-a-half-omigod, type-crunch - and there is suddenly a small flying black furry torpedo materialising by my right elbow, shooting across the desk and levitating onto the mantelpiece beyond, all in a time too short to calculate.

I sighed, muttered imprecations, felt grateful that the wine was still vertical, and -

Crunch.

That was not me crunching.

That was Barry, that was.

Who in the very moment of his mad scramble across my desk had sighted, seized and run away with my scratching...

Comments

[brisingamen.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about your pork scratching but this has provided a badly-needed good laugh.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I have more pork scratchings. And I am so sorry about your accident (and sympathised immediately with that combination of uncertainty about the cause and precise recollections of its effects: I've known the same thing in other circumstances, that transition from blur to clarity), and so pleased that you've come through it so comparatively unscathed. Best wishes to you both, because shock is a shared symptom - and I hope the laughing didn't cause too much ouchie. I was in hospital one time post-op, and my beloved-but-idiot father brought me "Three Men in a Boat". I got about four pages through, and had to give it up in favour of "Far From the Madding Crowd". And blessed Hardy, for his utter lack of humour...

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I can't have commercial scratchings... Just saying.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I'd always assumed you wouldn't have scratchings at all, on account of the general porkiness of it all...?

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I eat bacon. I eat ham. I can't stand the smell of roast pork. Scratchings *after* they have been cooked--yummy.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Noted. *g*

(And of course I've seen you eat my ham persillade; I was just remembering the other thing instead, that you'd said "no pork"...)

[badbookworm.livejournal.com]

I would ask you how you make these wondrous little niblets of desire, but then I would have to sue you for making me fat. So I won't.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Dear Barry,
You rock. Keep it up!
Ish

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Go Barry. Deft little monster, eh?

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

Me want!!!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You no can haz. Barry haz, and he's not good at sharing.

(Actually, to be honest? There's a new batch in the oven as we speak. Drop by.)

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

I shall, I shall!

How's your hand now? I've been meaning to invite you around to feed you for ages - basically since you had your accident - but I've been utterly crap about it.

Of course, if your hand is now better, the offer is null and void.

Well, not really.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hmmph. The hand's okay, I guess. It hurts. I actually thought about taking painkillers this morning, for the first time since - well, since I stopped taking painkillers for it, a few days after I got out of hospital.

It may be a good hurting (I have to stretch the tendon if I want to get the movement back, which I do, rather), but it still hurts. And is boring.

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

I shall discuss with my beloved this evening and we shall invite you over soon.

And don't worry, it'll be Candy cooking, not me...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Marilee wouldn't but I will...

How do you make the best pork scratchings in the whole world? I have some pork rind in the freezer and can experiment. Tell me oh great pork-scratchings-guru.

Please.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

With pork rind in the freezer, you are well begun. I'll describe my method in a separate post, rather than a comment; people do keep asking...