Well I'm back from a holiday, in case you'd noticed I'd gone, and there's no reason to suppose you did. For the first time in years I didn't go anywhere. I just stayed at home, experienced two weeks of the best weather we've had this year, read about 25 books, gardened at a slow and gentle pace, and indulged myself with two new Italian cookery books. Lovely. No travelling, no airports to negotiate, no being squashed into seats which would constrict a hamster, no lugging over-large suitcases up and down endless corridors and wonky escalators. No facing grumpy security staff who look through my handbag with increasing astonishment at the motley collection of items I carry in it. And I could smoke anywhere I liked. I don't know why I've never done it before. I certainly feel like I've actually had a holiday for once. Normally one arrives back from a break with a suitcase full of dirty clothes and a purse empty of cash. Holiday memories flee the moment you step out of the airport building and try to remember where you parked your car. By the time you get back to work the golden sands have receded and the credit card bills have begun to arrive. If you don't believe me just listen to other people's holiday tales. Late flights, appaling meals, rats floating in the hotel pool, the bore from hell in the next villa, attacks of whatever the local virulent food poisoning bug is called and attacks by dive- bombing mosquitoes which leave you looking like the Elephant Man. And that's only when you holiday in the UK. Sorry, only joking. On the other hand, I can now recommend letting your brain run down to near zero, just enough to take in your latest novel. Avoiding any news on television, not buying a paper, and not bothering to go further than the centre of Callington a couple of times a week, because, no offence meant, there's not a lot of opportunity to spend much money there. My broadband isn't working so I couldn't even get my fingertips onto ebay It was also a great pleasure to do some experimental cooking with my new cookbooks. I love Italian cooking, it's a culture of using food ingredients in season, a funny old fashioned idea which has gone by the board here now we can get strawberries in December and new potatoes all year round. By the end of the first week the family was a little underwhelmed with yet another experimental basil and sun dried tomato loaf and on the third appearance of a new meatball recipe were thinking of calling me Mama Mary. Incidentally, shopping the other day I spotted a package of 'genuine Swedish meatballs'. This as opposed to what? Fake Swedish meatballs? Meatballs which are posing as Swedish but are really Norwegian? It's like yoghurt cartons which say 'containing real fruit pieces'. Does that mean that other yoghurts have ersatz fruit in them, made from some soya product and dyed to look like strawberry, banana or peach? Why don't they just say 'containing fruit', and have done with it? The word 'real' has joined the world 'fresh', as a totally unnecessary addition. I suppose you can get away with fresh fruit as opposed to tinned or dried, but not fresh cream. It's either cream or it isn't and if it's not fresh then they shouldn't be selling it. The other day I saw a sign reading 'fresh crab sandwiches today'. You immediately think, what about yesterday? Possibly slightly whiffy crab sandwiches? Salmonella here we come sandwiches? It's all hype. Like packets of fish in one supermarket which says 'fresh herring fillets with parsley'. Apart from fresh again, and one hopes that all fish is fairly fresh. Anyway, this fish, fresh as a fresh daisy, had one sprig of parsley with it. Does the shop think this attracts buyers who wouldn't buy the herring if it didn't have its single parsley sprig? Do they sell herrings without parsley at a slightly lower price? I can only think that the parsley is there to prove the fish is fresh because if the parsley is all green and sprightly looking we're going to believe the fish is as well. Not green, one hopes, but pulled protesting from the ocean sometime earlier that day. I suppose that really is the parsley's job, to act as a foil. Get some dog eared sandwich with slightly curly bread, bung a sprig of parsley on it and it somehow looks acceptable. Oddly enough few people eat the parsley, which has more vitamin C than the entire sandwich.
THE only other item of news I noticed during my break was that we are now well on our way to a new way to buy and sell houses. Successive governments have promised over the decades to change the outdated and totally stress- making home-selling arrangements which have made grown men cry and women vow never to move again for the rest of their lives. What was needed was to get rid of all the hassle and time-wasting, such as the sellers who firmly shake hands on a deal and then continue to market their home trying to get more money, and those who happily show you round knowing someone else has put in an offer. Then there's the endless wait for the survey, the searches, the signing and exchanging the contracts, then the worrying time of waiting for the completion date, thinking that nothing can go wrong, except it can. The money is not actually handed over until that day. With your removal van's engine running round the corner you have to wait until the all clear is given or find the buyer of your house is on his way to Venezuela. And we haven't even mentioned the nightmare of chains, where your future depends on some little old lady eight chains down who is now not entirely happy that moving her seven cats to a fourth floor flat is the right idea. So change was needed, and why not adopt the system which I believe works perfectly well in Scotland. You make an offer, it's accepted. I presume there's a short cooling off period, then you hand over a deposit and from then on it's a legal contract to buy for both buyer and seller, and if anyone backs out they will lose the deposit. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons to back out, a bad survey etc, but essentially it stamps out gazumping, wonky chains and paying for a survey then finding the house has been sold elsewhere. It must make estate agents' lives incredibly happier and stress levels on buyers and sellers are reduced. Simple. Too simple for our government, who are now introducing a sellers' pack, which it says will cost up to £1,000, will be mandatory, will run out in a few months if the house isn't sold making the seller buy another one (ditto if the house comes off the market for a period of time). I can't see how it will help chain-buying, or gazumping, or dithery buyers. You'll probably still need a survey, either your own or a mortgage company one, and maybe will even want an independent search. Is it just me who thinks that there must be some unwritten rule in any government department which absolutely forbids taking the simple route when there are far more complicated ones to follow? Well that's my rant over, it must be a surfeit of meatballs getting to me. Back to normal next week with jumble sales.