Hi, Steve! Nice to see you in these parts again.

As we age, our olfactory senses change and foods we liked when we were younger lose their appeal. Many people try to fix this problem with salt and sugar, but primarily salt. Hence, salt consumption tends to increase with age, along with all kinds of health problems that may or may not be related to sodium intake. It’s notoriously difficult to tease out the various lifestyle factors that give rise to particular ailments, so salt gets the blame for lots of highly complex ailments. Sure, it may well contribute to high blood pressure, but how much? And what about all the other contributing factors? In any circulatory or cardiac issue, there are lots and lots, and more than a few are still mysterious.

Me, I like to eat different things now I’m officially old. Hot sauce, for example. I never liked it when I was younger, but I do now. A touch (or more) of vinegar in a stew or a soup lifts the flavour much more effectively than yet more salt. Likewise, a squeeze of lemon juice livens up a chicken cutlet or a pork chop.

The basement puddle is less bad, but not yet conquered — the rain continues and the ground water is still rising. I have now vacuumed up about four filthy litres.

I drove to London today with another load of books for Goodwill (6.5 cubic feet this time), and made a point of checking out the state of the countryside on the way. Soggy, in a word. Downright water-logged, in fact. Acres and acres with great expanses of last year’s stubble poking up through the water looked more like rice paddies than cornfields.

Ah, well, it’s only the beginning of April. No point in worrying until it still looks like that on Victoria Day.