A familiar face .

Riding in the car , chat and companionable silence . I have a pad and pen on my lap and an old A5 book I am consulting .

Two crows are in conference facing each other on a branch . They nod at one another .

Further down the road two  more crows pace . They look as if their hands are behind their backs and are dressed like old fashioned school masters , but no mortar boards - I looked .

I go back to the hard backed book but ponder the crows conferring and pacing .

I began to put recipes from old books or was given in a hard backed  book when I was 18 . I am now on my 23rd volume .
The early ones have my maiden name on the cover and later ones the married one .

It was an early volume I was consulting in the car .
Oh , all the recipes , menus and ideas for meals I had forgotten !
All the asides that had nothing to do with cookery . I was making notes of things to revisit and cook again .

I confer with the books like a crow and pacing down this road I see some one walking in the opposite direction towards me . As we get closer I can make out her features .
 She is the young woman who wrote these books .

Amongst the pages she confides an occasional sadness or frustration , Mostly though I can see , clear sighted , that this slight figure with her quirky clothes and long blond hair is fearless . Her work is high powered and challenging but she balances that in the kitchen making pies , chutney , marmalade .
I know that sometimes she worries she may loose the oomph or opportunity to be creative in the kitchen .

The crows look beadily at the two of us . I smile at her  .
 Its all I can do ,  for I cannot tell her that she has some great joys to come and just a few things she is better off not knowing about before hand .
I cannot tell her " your hand writing is my hand writing and I made tangerine marmalade the other day .

Two posts for the price of one .

Healing is a strange thing isn't it ?
 I was thinking about that whilst I was reading an essay that Phillip Pullman wrote to accompany , so to speak , an exhibition at the Ashmolean concerning talismans , amulets , charms and other things with and without magical properties . ( The Oxford exhibition was called " spellbound "and ran till the 6th of January ).
He makes the point that though he is a rationalist and a humanist , he , as a fiction writer ( and sensible )likes to pay attention to things that he comes across including the uncanny and  the mysterious . He quotes physicist Niels Bohr who when asked why a horse shoe hung over his laboratory door claimed he did not believe it worked but had been told that it worked whether he believed it or not .
Pullman says that reason is the wrong tool to understand such things because " its like trying to pick up something made of wood by using a magnet ".

I said to myself that I had never happened upon a word that explained what was known by some people but never mentioned , lay beneath the surface or was hidden in plain sight .
There are many hundreds of people who dress up , call themselves foolish names and kid people or frighten them but whats actually real is as  natural as breathing .

Somewhere between the layers of pills , respirators and goverment guide lines ( and these are all useful except perhaps the last ) lies another hidden layer . Yes its common sense and its good luck too but there's something else in the mix . It isn't love ,it isn't relief . It has a distinct sound all of its own  .
Yesterday when we stood , he with his arms about me , looking out at the lights from the far harbour playing on the water I heard it again .


Since the saxophonist came home I have upped the bold flavours we enjoy ( one of the first things he said to the nurse when he regained his senses was " sorry I'm not eating that ").

So a drive to an Indian quarter in outer London .

Again we were the only white faces I saw the whole time we were there .
We went to my favourite samosa shop .Their's are the cheapest but more importantly the best I've ever tasted . They like us there  - last time it was free extra samosas and this time free samples and discounts on the little cubes of sweet meats they sell . I asked what sold best and he smiled and said try this and now try this .
The first was soft and creamy with a huge hit of butterscotch . The other was full of nuts and once you had swallowed it a warming taste of ginger suffused your mouth .

At the Indian supermarket I bought all the usuals from the huge piles laid outside : garlic , ginger , coriander , lemons and some fat , fat tangerines to make marmalade .
 Inside I bought handfuls of various chilli's , big packets of spices it's hard to find elsewhere  , set yoghurt in little sealed buckets with handles and charred flat breads .

Driving away the whole car smelt  of delights to come . You have to know what you are doing of course if you're making your own spice mixes .
Alchemy I suppose of a sort .

Why do we see no white people there ? Is it because we are open to another alchemy apart from cooking .A way of being or thinking maybe .

I think what we felt on the shore line and when we grinned at the lovely tastes in our mouths as we tried the free sweeties in the  Indian shop are growing from the same root .

If true alchemy exists and an older hidden order exists in the air then it's there for the curious , the open minded and those not afraid to love unreservedly never mind the advice of others or experiences of the past suggest we should .

As I write there is a lovely tangerine smell coming out of the pores of my hands .I've  made the tangerine marmalade .All the forms of alchemy eh ?

I shall put my tangerine scented hands to the saxophonists face as I kiss him later on ........... alchemy ........

Seduce me again ...

So the saxophonist went to see the consultant yesterday . We did not talk about it much , when he went out I pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep .

We have been building this new ,  home based , life brick by brick and much of it is very good .The seductive landscape was consigned to the box marked  " happy memories ".

The consultant wrong footed us both . They did tests , scans and in depth questions .
They told him that the only residue from the heart attack and coma are a slight scarring of the heart which will clear in time plus a tendency to misplace the odd word or place name . They told him that he can drive again .

I swore and shook my fist at the new sewing machine , got the hang of it and then made a cover for it and a new tea cosy .
Then I got out the five linen dresses I bought last summer that needed the straps shortened ( I'm shorter than some ) . I have machined them so they swish and don't drag .

So there I will be , swishing out into the seductive landscape again .

I thought I couldn't ask for anymore than the saxophonist back by my side but it seems I got given it anyway .

My spirits soar as I remember the estuaries and seascapes we can inhabit again .

I had seen myself walking slowly , in measured fashion , into the future .

 Fuck it . I'm going to sprint down the beach and then brazenly stop and let the saxophonist catch me .