Last week my computer died. After hours of tireless resuscitation, The Man, like a Doctor on Casualty, with a nod of agreement to me declared the time of death and a new machine was ordered. During the dark days without a computer my downward spiral of despair led me to consider emigrating, how you do. The principal being that if you can’t beat them then run away. The Falkland Islands came to mind.

It seems that Stanley, the capital, is having a remarkable economic boom that has produced six new millionaires. Benefits of living there do not end with financial prosperity. Not only are the incomes higher than in Britain but there are also better schools and hospitals. The Government is keen to encourage immigration, and results at Goose Green, the site of the Falklands war battle, where understandably enough, the population has fallen from 100 to 23, have been encouraging. Two families have been persuaded to move there thus boosting the population to 33. Admittedly it is a modest step forward. Before making a final decision on this, I have decided to give England and my new computer a little more time.In any case I am too busy for packing up.

Having very successfully avoided cooking for 60 years, I have recently taken it up with the enthusiasm of a convert. It has been an expensive business requiring the very best kitchen equipment , which I justify on the grounds of ‘investment’, and the sourcing of precious ingredients. Modern cookery no longer consists of making a meal out of mouse cheese that has been in the fridge for six months but the discovery of a particular parsnip, from a special field, grown by a named farmer with whom one is required to bond. We are fortunate locally in having the Ducy farm, which is owned by a local dignitary with an exquisite taste in brown paper bags so at least we can sport our ugly, grubby, deformed over-priced veg home in style. Last night we ate chorizo and butter bean stew with garlic and thyme. Not just any old chorizo or beans but parilla chorizo picante and Judion de la Granja...what with the cost of the heavy based pans, these ridiculous pretentious ingredients, a set of digital scales and the possible price of a new kitchen, it would have been a lot cheaper to get Rrick Stein around to cook it for us.It is one of the peculiarities of our appetite for celebrities that we really only like them when we kid ourselves that we discovered them. As soon as they become universally famous we go off them accusing them having sold out or lost their charm. So I declare that I have eaten at Rick Stein’s restaurant way back before he took over television and became laid-back in the way that only the obsessive and compulsive know how...If I can summon up the strength I am going to venture to produce his steak and kidney pudding though I am hesitating at the daunting beef stock stage.

It is as well that I do not try and emulate the wife of my favourite, Charles Dickens. Like all great celebrities, Dickens had to solve the problem of what to do with his wife. When he met her she was a plump and rosy cheeked girl but we all know what happens to plump girls 15 years and 10 children later...so modelling like the stick-thin Mrs Beckham, being ruled out, Dickens with typical genius decided she should write a book herself. Thus was born ‘What Shall We Have For Dinner Satisfactorily Answered By Numerous Bills of Fare From Two to Eighteen Persons’ by ’Lady Maria Clutterbuck’. It is the only book written by Catherine, but reading it I have my suspiciosn that Dickens may well have had a hand in it. In any case it offers wonderful insights not only into the eating habits of a wealthy Victorian family but also into their marriage. Proof that their marriage was over came when Catherine stopped serving cheese on toast, a particular favourite of Dickens, at the end of meals. Spiteful.I am distracted for a literary feast of snipe, woodcock, mutton stuffed with oysters, salmon, lobster, soups, curries, and a full dessert board by rumblings from Mr Brain.

There is much in the newspapers for the plans for the 65th celebration of the D-Day Landings. Except that the thrust of the reports is that there is to be no celebration. Every year there is talk that this will be the last year that there will be veterans available to ‘say goodbye to fallen comrades’. Each year a few confound and surprise the reporters by stubbornly lingering on. Mr Brain is one such. He describes that day in 1944 when, not quite 19, as a young naval officer his was one of the first of the landing craft to arrive on the French beach as the most exciting of his life, second only to our wedding day – and in that I think he is being gracious to me. Mr Brain bemoans, as he does each year, that he has yet again ‘been over-looked’. I choose not to mentioned that his wearing his row of shiny medals plus his CND badge on a previous anniversary-while being totally logical-caused some discomfort to others who cannot always see the link between having experienced a bloody event and the abhorrence for it. I do not tell him that it may well be assumed, not unreasonably, that he too has now ‘fallen’. I settle instead for remarking that it is reported that the Queen, too, has not been invited to join the non-existent celebrations. He is unimpressed. This year I do not intend to greet the great day unprepared. I suggest that in June we settle down to a glass or two of Pomerol and Mr Stein’s steak and kidney pudding. The Queen is welcome to join us if her invitation does to materialse. After all this seems entirely appropriate since the whole purpose of the conflict in which David served was to prevent Hitler sitting down some 65 years later to enjoy steak and kidney pudding.I have put my plans to emigrate to the Falklands on hold while I concentrate on the urgent matter of beef stock.