(A slight in-joke. If you live around here, one thing you know about lambs is that they are Not Silent: just not.)
Meanwhile, various bastings of the pork with its supremely gross-looking sauce ensue. The lamb has had a little while to marinate and now gets seriously stuck all over with a really sharp small knife. Thick slivers of garlic get stuck in each slit, and then sprigs of rosemary in about half the slits, until the lamb looks like an all-foodie re-enactment of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen.
Squeak now reappears with the mouse (now mercifully gone to whatever award awaits badly used mice) and starts meowing in a way meant to convince me that he caught it and should therefore be rewarded. Unfortunately, since I saw Beemer come through the gate with the mouse in the first place, this excuse doesn’t wash. He gets no reward. He sits around and complains loudly anyway.
Around this point Peter surfaces and starts dealing with the garnish and sauce for the lamb — with much zesting of lemons — and after that, with the carrots. He suddenly decides against the Moroccan salad treatment and decides to just steam them as a normal side dish. Oh, well, whatever.
(2 PM follows. Wow, where has the time gone?…)
