Liver's off mate

New names

Mr Milton marries Miss Jackson and they become Mr and Mrs Milson, or Mr and Mrs Jacton.

Called melding or something like that.

So. Watch out for the Farquar / Hewitt wedding.

Mr Dickson, meet Miss Woodhead.

Mr Leggitt, have you met Miss Bollsover?

Probably best to keep Mr Bellton and Miss Overend apart.

New words

After the lorry shed it's load of vegetable extract, such incidents are known as Marmageddon.

Similarly difficult cleanup operations result from a pooh-nami.

There's a raft of them relating to that reluctant volunteer at someone else's suggestion thing. Volunteer / nominate becomes Volinate. The victim has been volinated by the volinator, and is the volinee. You will end up undertaking actions known as voluneering.

Lamb's liver...

...has to be cooked at 70 degrees for at least two minutes. Them's the rules, apparently. I wounder if there's others for other dishes? Anyway, two people fell ill after eating at Raymond Blanc's restaurant and he's taken liver off the menu rather than serve up the dried out atrocity that two minutes at 70 degrees would make it.

That is a very prescriptive approach, isn't it? Does it not depend on the thickness of the liver? Does it not also depend on the robustness of the diner and their ability to eat out without a spell in the hospital for tropical diseases? Digestive tracts are highly personal things and their operation depends on the conditioning their owners' give them.

I'm not the least bit medical. Not in the slightest. Hospitals and surgeries make me feel ill. After the mechanism of contagion was explained to me at a young age, I wrongly assumed that you could catch anything. A hangover from those days makes anywhere crowded with people somewhat scary. I hate packed trains full of coughing, sniffing, spluttering people. That's another probably entirely wrong medical thesis I resist giving up on:

If you expose yourself to the cold, at least for a little bit, and get some fresh air in your lungs, you will be less of a coughing, spluttering, sniffing wretch than if you sit in your car, engine running, heater on, then sprint for the overheated, unventilated train, and sit there with your coat on and your hat pulled over your ears. Yes, you're toasty warm, and yes, you're always ill and yes, you feel the cold. Give yourself a chance to toughen up a bit.

Same with the digestion. If you follow the use-by guidance to the letter, only eat pre-packed supermarket food cooked according to the 70 degrees for two minutes regulations, you guts never get a chance to deal with anything and you never build up resistance, so when you get some properly cooked, pink, perfect liver, well, everything rebels and the rest of us don't get to eat anything that isn't incinerated to bug-free charcoal. Thanks. Wimps.

Good on you Raymond. If you can't do it your way, take it off the menu.