I slept in this morning, until twenty after six. So I was a little late into the pool - by twenty to eight. Someone came into the pool. (The earlier I swim the more I own the pool, have it all to myself, to think and swim. I call it wet meditation.) Anyway, we had a great conversation, about a number of different thing, some of them very useful to me. But here's a bonus. My neighbour (he and his wife live on thes same floor as I do) is not a reader, he says, but a film buff. However, he devours novels by Wilbur Smith. Who? I hadn't heard of Wilbur Smith. Of course, I Googled him and discovered he is my age and a fantastically productive writer (also a hunter, adventurer and, between wives, womanizer). Well, you can look him up. One of the real advantages of our current technology is the ability to be a polymath without any effort. You are as good as your Wifi.

Anyway, here's a tidbit I picked up from some of the good advice Smith had been given as a writer. It's a line by Rudyard Kipling:

"Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run."

Wow. Keep blogging.

Along with a present (a book) I cooked something for a friend whose birthday it is today. He likes this and I hope you do, too. I never even heard of fennel until a dozen years ago - actually, I had heard of it, but it wasn't available in the little village on a lake where I lived for 16 years. Now it's one of my favourite vegetables. If you can get one with the fronds still on, not chopped off by a zealous produce man, all the better.

FENNEL AND BEANS

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice a small red onion and a small cooking onion and dump into a roasting pan on top of the stove with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and several cloves of garlic, minced. Add a fennel slices, sliced lengthwise, quite thin. If you think the whole fennel is too much, save some to sliver into a green salad. Stir and sauté the vegetables, , adding a little salt to taste and a tablespoon of fennel seeds, if you have them, plus a couple of grinds of black pepper and a few squirts of Sriracha sauce. Cut two or three Roma tomatoes into nice chunks and stir in, then transfer the pan to the oven. Roast for about 25 minutes, stirring a couple of times. (if you don't have Roma tomatoes, then halve a bunch of grape tomatoes or quarter some other tomatoes - whatever.) When the vegetables are al dente, pull out the pan and stir in a can of white beans, drained. Spoon into one or several serving dishes (depends how many you are feeding, doesn't it?) Sprinkle snipped fennel fronds artistically over the surface. This freezes well and makes good neighbours.