Carbonara reconstructed for casserole, with parsley.

There was this musician in the 1960s, I told them. He was huge, everywhere - when commercial radio played intelligent music. Sergio Mendes, I said. His band, which was more of a combo or even an orchestra, I went on, was called Brasil ‘66. Nothing they recorded then sounds dated today by even a second.

I was chopping parsley at the time. Heavy in the garden right now, on the poised starting gun of spring, is that herb along with its three song compatriots; hence the conversation, driven by random semi-conscious thoughts rather than by any ordered progression of script-like dialogue. It’s a lesson I’ve been teaching ad nauseam to my screenwriter-aspiring older (at least from this marriage) child: write dialogue like it’s not a script.

I bluetoothed Scarborough Fair and kept chopping. The searing strings chased the ethereal voices around the kitchen, bouncing off the walls. The 1960s were so long ago that when someone asked if Sergio Mendes was still alive I said he’d have to be about 120 if he were.

No. Sergio Mendes is 82. He must have been about 12 when was in his prime. OK, slight exaggeration. 

The parsley went into a bowl containing four eggs beaten with half a cup of shaved Parmesan cheese, a heavy shower of freshly cracked pepper and a small tub of cream.

I mixed the parsley through and poured the mixture over a cooked pack of spiral pasta already in a casserole and topped with five rashers of short bacon, diced and sautéed in a pan with a chopped garlic clove, olive oil and a splash of white wine.

The sauce sank through the pasta, depositing its green-flecked decoration on top. I added some more cream sprinkled more cheese - grated cheddar/mozzarella/Parmesan mix - over the top and covered it tightly with foil.

Half an hour on 180. 

We’d moved on to The Look of Love and The Fool on the Hill, both better than the originals.