Rotten Red Pepper

I CAME HOME with a carrier bag full of shopping, all gleeful with myself at this wealth of goodly indulgence. Tore upstairs, grabbed plates, sliced (wholemeal) pitta breads open. I was going to make chicken and mushroom pittas with red peppers and Lurpak butter (by far the best ~ barely salted (or unsalted if you prefer) and not sweating with artificial colours).

Imagine my sheer horror, on slicing the pepper to see the dark splotch I hadn't noticed, or I'd have picked another one, had completely invaded the inside, spreading fur right down to the seedy pumble, which had assumed a gruesomely dark green hue.

No wonder the Anatolian woman who bagged it all up flashed such an evil grin. Which I naively took to be "motherly" at the time!

Now poor Carrot Nose is deprived of her pumblechook. She has no other veg bar one wilting strand of grass left over from an enormous clump of dandelion leaves and clover I popped in her manger the other day ~ the swine. She does love her greens. That clump was bigger than her and she nibbled it all in three days. Poor swine!

Never mind, Carrot Nose, you can have some mushroom stalks instead.

PS Carrot Nose hates carrots.

PPS Does anyone know how I can order a book in German, bearing in mind I live in the UK? I want to get Wir Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo, basis for the film Christiane F. Is it possible to order foreign stuff from an ordinary bookshop? Do I just come in with the ISBN?
I SHALL speak fluent German even if it kills me!

Illustrated: a red pepper; rotten red pepper (further gone than mine ~ though you ought to see the inside; a non-rotten pumblechook; Carrot Nose Roborovski