Rain falls on tiles; receipts fall on floor.

Pardon me if I seem obsessed with the weather, but the biggest, darkest cloud I ever saw just floated in from the south, settled itself above my house and then proceeded to dump its contents on the roof. (The roof is tiled. It muffles the noise of the rain. I once lived in a house that had a corrugated iron roof. You can't beat an iron roof for rain noise. When it rained heavily in that house, it sounded like elephants stampeding in a thunderstorm.)

The rain set in and stayed all afternoon. I wasn't doing anything, just cooking up a nice slow stew of lamb cooked with lemon and egg, so I listened to the rain and chopped and stirred and had a sip of the white wine used in the recipe, which is a Sardinian specialty by all accounts.

Agnello in salsa bianca.

Seal a kilogram of cubed lamb shoulder in olive oil, then cover it and let it cook on a low heat for fifteen minutes. The juices will run, so uncover it again and reduce these juices so that the meat is once again frying.

Scatter the meat with a handful of chopped parsley. Score six garlic cloves and add these to the pan. Shake the pan as it cooks for a minute, now add half a cup of white wine. Slosh it around, deglaze-style, to reduce slightly.

Now add some stock, veal or chicken. Just cover the meat. Now comes the real cooking time: about two hours on a bare simmer. The meat must remain just covered. So you have to stay around and check it and adjust it with water or more thin stock. I sat at the table and did my tax. I took a million receipts out of a box, totalled them up and tabulated the totals into neat columns under single word titles - 'stationery', 'reference' etc. - on a lined foolscap page. Then I put the receipts into an envelope on which I wrote '2006-7', crossed out the same figures on the empty box and wrote there instead: '2007-8'.

Two hours went by in a flash.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the juice of a lemon. Now slowly pour into the pan three well-whisked eggs in a slow stream, stirring all the while. The sauce should thicken and coat the meat. You're done.

Grind black pepper over the meat and serve with mash, polenta, some good quality egg noodles or a nice bland risotto. Drink the rest of the wine ... no, wait, open another bottle.