On cooking and politics.

Petronilla was holding forth.

"Society is a bit like a big cook pot" she said "And I like to view it rather along the lines of pease pottage."

"I'm listening with equal trepidation and interest m'dear" said Percy.

"Well let me put it this way" said Petronilla. "The mass of the people are like the dried peas that go into it; wholesome but essentially not very interesting, but necessary as the matrix to the whole thing. Within them there are onions for flavour and chunks of bacon to enable strength and growth to the consumer, salt, pepper and herbs. And when you cook the peas, you have to skim an awful lot of scum off the top. It looks like cream you know; and even as the so-called cream of society are mostly useless parasites so too is the scum on the top utterly useless."

"I might have known you'd manage to come out with something totally republican in your views" sighed Percy.

"Personally" said Chauvelin "I consider it an excellent analogy; and may I say that the Revolution of France was a very poor cook who did not add any onions and mistook the good pork for scum."

"And must have put the herbs in first before getting rid of the scum that they were removed from the top along with the unnecessary" said Petronilla. "Losing the spice of freedom and not encouraging the flavour of diversity, goodness and the taste of new ideas."

"Egad!" said Percy "I ain't letting you loose in my kitchen m'dear; I dread to think what you might manage to do; and if I have things under the control of my turnips I should be most upset."

"Oh?" said Petronilla "And I thought most of the turnips were Members of Parliament already!"