mangoes

Now that the thaw has set in, the pigs' living space has reverted to
its normal state - ie knee-and in places thigh-deep in thick glutinous
mud. The piglets are ok with this, but mother pig rarely ventures off
the concrete area where her ark is sited, because if she does, she
sinks up to her udders in seconds and might well disappear without
trace like the floundering villain in "Hound of the Baskervilles".

Still, it's nice to visit them and see them basking in spring sunshine
- their snouts taste the air the moment I appear to see what I might
have for them today - less than there might have been as the bloody
freegans have raided the veg box I was saving for the pigs, taking all
the apples. Luckily the best stuff was hidden under a layer of slimy
lettuce which they declined to move, Clifton's freegans being of the
more sensitive variety and not liking to get their hands dirty.

Anyway, I gave the pigs curly kale and cavolo nero, but they ignored
it, rightly suspecting there was better to come. They tried an very
soft avocado with some garlic, a kind of deconstructed guacamole, in
best Michelin-starred restaurant style; then they had a few dried
apricots but when I produced some large Ecuadorean mangoes which had
"gone over" they went into raptures and devoured them with little
piggy squeals and grunts of pleasure - so fast that not even Poppy the
greedy labrador who currently holds the world record for speed-eating
could have matched the rate at which these disappeared. As mangoes,
they went. Very fast indeed