Courting trouble

Today is International Women's Day (IWD, only a v away from a contraceptive device, what irony? I was going to go on about patriarchal imposition and phallocentric  irresponsibility, but I thought better of it).
What better way to celebrate IWD than by making a lemon meringue pie?
"Wha...?" I hear you expostulate, let me explain:-

Lemon meringue pie (LMP) was one of my favourites when I was little, well, smaller, the best LMP was made by my mother's Auntie May (whose recipe I appear to have lost), and it would be this recipe that Mum would use. She detested making LMP as it takes time, patience ... and luck, and would then inevitably be declared as "Not as good as Auntie May's", so why did she bother? Because she loved me, and would selflessly grate, squeeze, shell, whip and stir to deliver the goods (and cos it was a lot nicer than Steve's favourite Queen of Puddings".

So then, I celebrate IWD with LMP to remind me of the selflessness of my mother,  a woman, and to get rid of the inordinate amount of lemons I got on the market the other day.

Domestic blis(ters)

A grey-haired man is standing in the garden next to a green bin, a pair of secateurs is grasped in his tanned, muscular hand, and with them he is calmly shredding the shrubbery that he has so far removed into 4" (10cm) lengths, so as not to fill the green bin too quickly. Occasionally a look of concern will eclipse his ruggedly masculine features as he contemplates whether it is the shrubbery that is actually holding the fence up.
The unnatural February sun is warm on his hands as they ply the secateurs, the rueful smile that plays across his lips as he encounters a particularly reluctant twig is prompted by the knowledge that the arthritis in his hands is going to play merry hell, unnatural sun or no. Smaller twigs he leaves on the ground as a boon to nesting birds (expect new posting soon, called "Bloody Birds").
Soon it will be time to go in and press his tofu, but for the moment he passes an hour in sylvan slicing, while trying to incorporate "O tempura, o mores" into something about Japanese health professionals. Later he will discover that "o mores" has nothing to do with death and will therefore give up the idea.