You can stick your ticket .

Following on from yesterdays rant / opinions aired ...... (thanks for your encouraging comments - what follows is your own fault ) :

What do you think about waiting rooms and queues ?

Yes ! I thought so .

A long wait expected or otherwise is a regular occurrence .Also of course those waiting in the queue will have amongst them people who are an oppression to the spirit .

( How I love those people who bring a paperback and a patient attitude . Those who sit silent apart from the very occasional gentle sigh betokening fellow feeling on your mutual wait . )

Can we also agree on the new mother who apparently is the only person in the world ever to have given birth , breast fed , had the absolute God given right to a 100% attention of every member of the public health profession breathing .
Likewise accompanying grandmother who is hot wired to say loudly that the baby is named for a royal and is therefore regal or named for a long dead antecedent and therefore has gravitas .
Said great grandfather may have been a farm labourer ( and good for him and all others of his ilk ) but the passage of time has allowed grandmother , she thinks , to add a rich , rural , crust to said labourer . Said labourer is now the backbone of Britain , purveyor of sustenance and good rumbustious bucolic joy to the masses . He is the sanitised superior to anything on your family tree or mine . He is "ye olde merry England ".

Ok .... rant over .

Cause ?
The last few health checks for the saxophonist and the saxophonists wife who has been coerced into well women / responsible citizen checks when caught with her guard down waiting for the saxophonist .

Remedy ?
Get through the bloody things and then use common sense and intelligence to swerve all pointless nonsense and thence exercise autonomy . Meaning practice nurses who say you should eat this or exercise that whilst being the size of a barrel . ( I am size 10 to 12 ) .Resist the urge to say " I am fully cognitive of your expertise and agenda and cordially invite you to fuck off " .

So gentle reader thank you for taking a number and sitting it out on a hard seat with the mother/baby/grandmother combo on one side and a man with nasty trousers and a twitch on the other .

Your reward is the writers solemn oath that the next post will be informed by the writer having a good meal in China town and  time in the national gallery .

Options and Fornication .

Adventures by train and country bus have begun . I like very much the freedom of it . I love the improvisation and spontaneity of such journeys . The transience and the unexpected .

Home pleasures satisfy . Reading  , drawing , making things  , walking .

However , somewhat out of character , I have contemplated joining something . To save you the bother of doing the same I'll explain .

Option one : community choir .

"friendship and fun "

Well , they could have had them under the trades description act on that one .

Men with comb overs and women gone prematurely blond caterwauling whilst wearing novelty wigs and hats . Bad enough I know but their rendition of classic soul songs ...

Its quite hard , I imagine , to sing about loss , desire and raunchy sex as if it should be banned .
 They managed it .

I gather they intend to have a " summer buffet " and a glass of wine will be " available to purchase ".
I will either have to drink two litres of rough cider and wear my knickers as an improvised fascinator or stay away .
Stay away I think and of course I advise you to do the same .

Option two : charity shop volunteer .

"community spirit and commitment "

The hearty and the sanctimonious convene ( in this case at least ) to encourage you to form an enclave where men are not needed .

Quiz's , book groups and fun for the ladies .

Now , I have never drunk a bottle of scotch straight down or road tested a selection of sex toys but I wouldn't half like to suggest it to the ladies .

Best I stay away and probably you too ?
Yes I think so .


I said to the saxophonist was I being overly critical or displaying rather telling character traits with my reaction to options one and two ?

He said , firstly , that he would not pay fifteen quid to sit through two hours of the choir giving it what for .
He said , secondly , that my comments on the "options" were a bit naughty .

I said that I thought the "naughty " was what he married me for , along with the great cooking and an enthusiastic aptitude for  explicit detail deleted .

He thought about this for a while and did a slow grin .

Advice then : if you are a person who likes joining things , fill your boots , and if you are not then I'm sure you , like me ,  you will find your own amusements .

The seductive sprout .

It had been a nostalgic conversation  and an exasperated one too .

Why do people eat ready meals ? I had half a one to try and threw the rest in the bin , hungry as I was . It bore no resemblance to proper food . It was frankly nasty .

People will tell you they have no time to cook but they do seem to have time to watch endless television every night . Life style and choice of course .
Which brings me back to nostalgia . It was my cousin I was having the conversation with . We thought fondly of all meals cooked at home and were glad we still did the same .
Then we talked about the first new potatoes , small as marbles coming off the allotment and given a crown of a knob of butter or two and a pinch of salt .

This then led into how peas and runners you harvest yourself taste completely different to any other .

He then sang a hymn of praise to tiny early broad beans and I waxed lyrical about muffling up on Christmas eve to pick small nutty tasting sprouts to roast with bacon or chestnuts .

Our grandfather and father's all had extensive allotments and my cousin still has one . I gave mine up when time got short . I told him how I missed it and that now would be a good time to begin again .

Last Sunday the cousin , the saxophonist and I sat in convivial conversation over a pint . The conversation drifted here and there and in a quiet gap the cousin said he'd spoken to the site manager and it looked like I could have a plot soon . I told him " yes " but I wanted time to mull it over ( I thought this to myself  ).

Yesterday I walked out along the river and thought of my exasperation with people who wanted good food but would not cook it .

I sat in my sequestered nook - a hidden branch of a willow way out along the river . Just me and a few nearby water birds .
Then I grinned to myself and the ducks and coots . I had known it all along , I guess , deep down . You make time for whats important to you .
I knew then I had never really left the allotments of my childhood and later my own . I remembered that I sort of knew anyway it wasn't goodbye - just time out .

There is time now for me to dig and weed and plant . There will be that good tiredness of heavy limbs from productive labour .

And then , and then  there will be baskets of radishes and beetroot , buckets of potatoes and onions , trugs of lettuces and spring onions . I will be weary , muddy and in yet another sense home again .

Surprising myself .

So a new life is beginning to unfold . A stroll to the town to buy ingredients . New books to read . Enticing creative projects . The prospect of adventures by train , coach and country bus .

The ills that beset us have been dealt with pills . More or less pills may or may not follow but that does not matter . What matters is the baking of rock buns ,violets and bluebells in the garden . The thought that the gosgog bush may yield us a crop and the black currant too . Putting on an outfit with a bit of sass .

Springtime you see ( or whatever season is there to be relished ) . A daily round of meals cooked , walks taken , books read . Looking at world class art , Radio Three and Radio Four . A good nib and some nice paper .

A life that is  civilised and largely autonomous . Little treats and happy habits every day .

Constance Gray writes in her famous cookery book " Honey from a weed " : " there was a time when the satisfaction of performing practical tasks was valued as one of the ways to give meaning to our lives ."
She says further " without work the vessel of human life lacks ballast ."

She is not talking about dull drudgery , she means putting real heart into your life . The means at the forefront of her comments is cooking . Of course though there is walking and appreciating each season as it comes . Being creative and enjoying intellectual stimulus of one sort and another are essential too I think .

Mark Boyle talking in his book the " Moneyless Manifesto " says " each of us knows there is a story more sublime , more dignified , more glorious than numbers "

He means values that do not include money .

I am beginning slowly to join the dots in our new life . It's already there in small ways . When somebody does me a good turn I bake them a cake .If I make chutney , marmalade or jam I do it in big quantities . A jar goes to each person who supplied me with jars . I enjoy it and the rest is for swaps or  a thank you of a different sort .

The car was sold yesterday and oddly there is a serenity in that . Now we know where we are ( for six months or a year at least ) . There are different ways of doing things now .

A familiar face : part two . (see previous post first )

So , the doctor said the saxophonist had done so well he did not need so many pills including the ones to prevent seizures . So ,  that was two seizures and two days in hospital . He's home and has been told he cannot drive for a time at least .

I'm calming down and learning to trust that all is well again .

Obviously that means pleasures that don't include a car .

 I thought back to when I was single and using coaches , buses , trains and walking a lot . I went all over the place and didn't trouble about a  car .
 Fewer trips and more adventures .

 I thought about time at the library to browse , time in the charity shops for hunting out the odd gem , striding out along the river and of course there is time to cook in leisured contentment .

So ,  re previous post .
How odd is that . I am not only meeting the person walking down the road towards me , we are fusing into one .
I shall be making pineapple marmalade this week and this time she knows it .

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 ........