On Sun, 3 Jul 2005 13:23:14 +0100, "Mike Lyle" wrote:

You've helped me with a step toward clarifying something I read in a
sixties cookery book I sadly no longer have, so can't give the title.
The author was describing a friend's kitchen, and referred to a
demijohn of "bee wine" on the windowsill, with, s/he said, a dead bee
going up and down in it. Have you got more detail?

(Was it Katherine Whitehorn's _Cooking in a Bedsitter_ ? How we've
travelled on since then!)


O Guru.

Dunno bout that !

If you can answer the question, I think you'll have earned the title!

I may be able to lay claim to that title after all :-)) --

" There is perhaps only one man* in Britain who has wholly solved the
problem of eating well in a bedsitter. When I went to visit him ,,,"
",,,, Marcus set about making coffee, and settled me comfortably on
what later turned out to be a haybox**, ,,, "

is this ringing any bells ? :-))

",,, At one end of this mantelpiece, which was broad, a large jar of
bee wine was in full activity , the bees with awful*** deliberation
floating very slowly up and down. ,,, "
Katharine Whitehorn - "Cooking in a Bedsitter" 1967 Epilogue, p 180
Interesting spelling of her first name, was that a Penguin misprint I
wonder ?

* Well, dunno about that, but she was writing in '61 to '67
** don't see many of those anymore
*** awful ??? I would have said beautiful

No mention of actual dead bee nor of demijohn, so I am not sure if I
should commend or commiserate on your memory ;-)
However, it was first published as "Kitchen in a Corner" in 1961
then in Penguin 1963 and reprinted in 65 and 67 so they may have been
in that earlier book and corrected later ?

Does the title "O Guru" come with any lands and benefits :-?))