Parachutes, pumpkins, Leonardo…

I was going to write about parachutes today. Did you know that it’s the 216^th anniversary of the first recorded parachute jump? I’m sure that there will have been jumps prior to this, but these others go unrecorded; perhaps the jumpers didn’t live to record them. Damn Leonardo da Vinci with his parachute designs. It’s thanks to him that I’ve always regretted not signing up for that charity jump when I had the chance. Yes, his fault, not mine. Sometimes I wish he had just stuck to painting plain, sallow, enigmatic ladies who seem to be sitting on a feather.

I also considered posting on pumpkins. Well, I bought my Halloween pumpkin at the weekend. Yes, just the one, anything more would be too showy. I didn’t carve one last year and received a complaint from one trick-or-treater who said that she’d been looking forward to seeing my pumpkin in the porch and felt cheated. The last one I made was a Dali cat, the year previous the Ju-Ju Jesus Peanut (all hail the Holy Peanut). God knows what I’m going to carve this year, but it better be good. I don’t want any more complaints from eight year old pumpkin art critics.

Anyway between parachutes, pumpkins and a glass or two of red wine, I Googled ‘Leonardo da Vinci pumpkin’ and to my surprise up came ‘DaVinci Pumpkin Pie Sauce – Gourmet’. So not just any old pumpkin pie sauce; Da Vinci and gourmet no less! I’d never heard of it, but apparently it’s a blend of pumpkin, cinnamon, allspice and ginger and tastes just like pumpkin pie which, like my parachuting non-opportunity, I’ve never experienced.

Bloody Leonardo da Vinci. As if anatomy, painting, philosophy, arms design and engineering weren’t enough.

He really was into everything wasn’t he? Parachute pie anyone?