ice cream dreams

Cats, a vet once old me, are desert animals.  I was reminded of this as I looked at the big anxious tabby, lying full length on the kitchen floor pressed up against the Aga on one of the warmest days of the year.  We have been celebrating the full-blown advent of summer with ice cream, home made and bought.  Yesterday it was ice cream soda.  I hadn't eaten one since childhood, but was seduced by a display of long, chunky glasses at the end of a Tesco aisle, only a pound each.  After that I had to get two long handled spoons, which John Lewis obligingly supplied via click and collect.  I was waiting for the person on the Waitrose information desk to ask me whether my parcel was heavy, as they usually do, so that I could say no, it only contained two teaspoons, but she didn't.

Ice cream soda is fun.  I wouldn't want it all year round, but on a hot day it goes down very well. This lunchtime was the turn of the maple syrup and pecan ice cream, and as I feared the texture wasn't great, or at least not to my taste, too dense.  The Systems Administrator said that it would be better without the nuts, while I thought I preferred the Dulche de Leche recipe.  Given the relative cost of maple syrup and pecans versus a tin of caramelised condensed milk, there's no contest.

The SA, who is as soft about the cats as I am, bought a tub of Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream, which is the big tabby's favourite.  You might ask why a cat that likes to sleep cuddled up to a gigantic heat source on a day like today should like ice cream, but he waits for it to melt.   I know that ice cream is not good for cats, but I can't believe that a very small taste is going to hurt him. He is so skinny, he could probably do with the extra calories, and he is very old.  Refusing him the odd small treat would be about as effective as denying a ninety-five year old the consolation of an occasional tiny nip of his favourite tipple on health grounds.  You know it isn't really going to reverse the odds.  Cookies and Cream is the big tabby's absolute favourite, and when a fresh tub is opened he will appear at your elbow as if by magic or telepathy, mouth silently opening and closing.

Addendum  The SA discovered the reason why the maps in the nineteen volume digital official history of the Great War would only run on an old laptop and not the current one.  The CD set included a programme to prevent unauthorised copying of the maps.  Now the SA already possessed a complete set of digital trench maps from the same publisher.  The trench maps came with an earlier version of the same copyright protection software.  Result when trying to read the new maps on the laptop which already held the previous maps, anti-piracy software chaos.  Who would have thought it, that when you released a long and highly detailed specialist history, it would be bought by people who have previously bought other long and detailed books on the same topic?  It seems that the SA had to explain the problem and the solution to the publisher's technical department, rather than the other way around.