Delayed Reward

The oven was so hot, when I got up on stove detail, that I could have cooked Tandoori Chicken, which I love, but I didn't have any chicken or yogurt. When conditions are exactly right, dry heart-wood, a perfect bed of coals, the temperature in the firebox of the stove is very high, I've replaced the cast iron grate twice. It just disappears. Stress-failure analysis always indicates some minor imperfection in the casting. A dog hair or an air bubble. Fully engaged hardwood, with a good supply of air, can burn at 1600 degrees. I can barely imagine the number of fires I've nursed, many thousands, and I'm always aware that it will, one day, devour me. A minor mistake, an over-looked detail, the next thing you know, you're a pile of ashes. My DNA says we're all related, on our mother's side, but that our father is suspect. It's a shifting brand, the shadows that sleep with you. I never signed-on to be a fucking rookery. Crows murmuring in the night. It's interesting that I had wanted to ask Jenny where the rookeries were and now I am one. I think the murmuring at night is just a product of their sleeping so piled together. They're so unkempt. When they leave, in the morning, they group in twos or threes and fly off in all directions. The Crows Of Low-Gap Hollow has a nice ring to it. I took a long duration walk that covered very little ground; mostly I sat on stumps and thought about which soup I was going to cook next. Or maybe a risotto, which I could take through several layers of left-overs: whatever, it would have to supply at least three or four meals. Maybe a stew. In winter this dominates my thinking.