I am unashamedly garlic-breathed at the moment, having recently prepared and devoured a combination of grilled aubergine, greek-style yoghurt, chopped garlic, onion seeds and fresh mint. Pressed against chewy bread rolls of dubious origin (possibly from the local Co-Op), it was a satisfying snack of contrasts: warm aubergine and cold yoghurt; the coolness of mint against the heat of raw garlic.

Hopefully this blog won’t veer off into food blog territory too often, but food is one of my passions. The image above is a page from this year’s Moleskine and from my visit to the Christchurch Food Festival, where I sketched many varied things, with wildly differing degrees of competency! A man from a barbecue stall asked if I was from Environmental Health; apparently they are always going around and spying on innocent venison vendors and ought to be wearing ID. I explained I was just drawing his buns. There were a lot of buns.

I bought a really fantastic chocolate orange fruit cake and got to sample (amongst other things) some mead. I also ate some paella containing octopus, which I had never eaten before (but have dressed up as for Halloween, more on this later, perhaps). I did draw one of the half-eaten octopuses (octopi?), complete with grains of paella rice stuck to it, but alas have neglected to scan that one in. It occurs to me that an interesting exercise might be to buy some Fruits de Mer from Waitrose and to draw them. Although I believe the insides of most shellfish are basically kind of amorphous blobs, and squid rings are just, well, rings, so maybe it’s just the octopus that would be visually interesting. Anyway, that’s one to add to the list of things to do when there’s nothing else to do.