GALLIMAUFRY

Or Odds and Sods

My father kept a drawer full of junk in the old brick lined scullery of our North Wiltshire home, a collection of odds and ends, junk mostly, but a goldmine to him. This drawer has become iconic in my mind, defining him, forming me and evoking feelings akin to veneration. I shall explore this wonderful, magic drawer elsewhere but I mention it here because it serves to introduce the general idea of gallimaufry.
Whatever seems not to have found a natural home elsewhere in this volume will find itself in here. I have a natural inclination to operate mainly up one those tangents that fly off of from life’s roundabout fluttering off, I nearly used the word soaring but that would be over egging it, enthusiastically fired up by some spark which has set off my imagination. Off on yet another new interest or endeavor invariably confident that I am about to become master of it or at least expert in it. So that the most serious and enduring of these excursions - most are blind alleyways - do not feel left out of my story I have made a space for them here. Publishing recipes for my modest efforts to cook without gluten is one of them. Another to follow eventually will be on the subject of wood turning. I restored my father’s lathe, rapidly disappearing up another tangent and it is now my averred intention to become proficient at wood turning and present my results here.
Given long enough there will no doubt be others.

There will be others. I shall return.