You wouldn’t think having a boiled egg for breakfast would create such a bother.
I’d chopped the top off my egg and plunged my horn spoon into the yolk when the most revolting smell filled the kitchen.
I was about to upbraid Inka roundly and chase him into the garden, and the Doyenne was having serious misgivings about me. The penny dropped – it was the egg.
The Doyenne reckons it’s the first bad egg she’s ever encountered in a long and varied lifetime of cooking, and I doubt if I’ve ever had more than a couple before. But once experienced it’s a smell never forgotten.
Once we’d consigned the offending egg to the bin and recovered our composure we made up for it with a couple of slices of the Doyenne’s homemade sourdough bread and newly made marmalade.
Strangely, the little saucepan we boil the eggs in has sprung a leak. I didn’t think a stainless steel pan could leak unless you took a hammer and sharp pointed implement to it.
If disasters really do come in threes, what’s the next one to be?
There are two schools of thought about how you should break into a boiled egg.
One is to tap the top into little pieces with your egg spoon and scoop off the demolished egg head. The other is to cut off the top with a knife.
I favour the latter, the Doyenne the former.
I suppose it is such small domestic divergences that add spice to a marriage.
Garden menu
Our garden must be the best snack bar in town for earthworms and insects that young birds thrive on.
Starlings nesting in our neighbours’ eaves will have laid up to seven pale blue eggs and, now that they have all hatched, more than two dozen of the young fledged birds have been invading our garden.
They run all over the grass squabbling among themselves and jostling each other in the free-for-all to get the most.
A couple of adult birds with them appear to be there as minders, though they still feed an occasional demanding chick.
At a secret signal, recognisable only to starlings, they rise as one and fly off to plunder the next unsuspecting gardener’s pride and joy.
Blossom-lined road to the beach
I have a handful of favourite roads – ones that are not on my direct route to wherever I am going, but I’ll take a detour to drive down them just for the view.
One such is the narrow, unclassified road running from the former handsome entrance gates of Kirkside House, St Cyrus, surmounted by stone eagles with outspread wings.
Known as the Waterloo Gates, they were built by Lt. General Sir Joseph Straton, commander of the 2nd British Cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo.
The roadside verges are awash with wild flowers from little blue forget-me-not to white and pink dog roses
The narrow, winding road runs down to the St Cyrus Nature Reserve where I was headed.
At this time of year the roadside verges are awash with wild flowers from little blue forget-me-not half hidden amongst the tall undergrowth to white and pink dog roses which will carry on flowering into August.
I parked at the reserve and walked across the dunes to the shore.
The sun shone out of a peerless blue sky, bouncing off a sparkling sea. The full tide was on the turn so there wasn’t the great expanse of firm sand for dogs to race about on.
Lazy waves soughed in and out on the shore and I lost myself in their ceaseless, metronomic regularity.
There’s something comforting in knowing that however troubled our world may be the tides are an enduring constant.
I took the opportunity to carry out some on the spot research and I think I can confirm that the seventh wave is always bigger than the preceding six ones.
Down the coast the white finger of Scurdieness Lighthouse poked up from the rocky headland at the mouth of the River South Esk, at Montrose, where it has blinked out its message of hope and comfort to mariners since 1870.
Away beyond it, on the horizon, it was clear enough to see the Bell Rock Lighthouse marking the treacherous Inchcape Rock, eleven miles off the coast at Arbroath.
There are threats to erect wind turbines on the reef which would tower over the 115 foot-tall lighthouse, which in this columnist’s view would be an outrageous desecration.
I listened for skylarks’ song which is usually one of the pleasures of a visit to the reserve. But it’s the middle of their nesting season and they are too busy with family affairs to be entertaining visitors.
And so it was back home where Inka had a long drink because he still hasn’t learned, after all these years, that sea water makes him thirsty.
I tucked into a bowl of the Doyenne’s roast tomato and red pepper soup which I had cold with a couple of bannocks.