Monday 31st May - Bank Holiday

Day 42

This evening the allotment gave us the last of the asparagus and the first rose. A single dark red one on a flimsy stem, perfectly whorled petals, scented deep and rich like long memory.

I remembered a loaf of bread baked with wild garlic in the freezer when we were on our walk this afternoon along wide avenues fringed with huge beech trees and the strong flavour of wild garlic below them. And the idea for supper came to me.

We sat down late with the light fading - our plates laden with fat and thin, short and long asparagus spears, curled up pink prawns, squeezed with lemon, flecked with parsley, a pool of mustard seed speckled mayonnaise, wilted neroli cabbage leaves and at the last minute, a bright yolked poached egg. On our side plates lay the fat slices of double garlic bread, crusty outside, damp and buttery inside.

A bunch of purple sage flowers, three lupins and an armful of mauve flax flowers, furled like prawns - more allotment gifts - added their perfume to our night kitchen. We lingered at the table not wanting it to end - this Monday which all along has felt like Sunday.

Sunday 30th May

Day 41

This afternoon while my husband was building a cling film house for his tomatoes I was a garden artist - both of us digging in the sun a little distance apart. I took my palette of rainbow plants - scarlet and burnt orange, rape yellow and magenta, velvet violet and moon silver - and splashed them onto the green canvas of our city garden. Sometimes I felt my mother beside me, our hands in the earth. She taught me how to make flower pictures in pots.

Ever since the apple blossom fell and turned brown I’ve been impatient for colour in the garden. But yesterday when my second sister came with a bouquet of parsley and young kale, she stood at the window and said,

“ But look at all the wonderful different greens.”

Which I hadn’t noticed in my longing for red.

Before lunch when we sat in our magic circle of women, my first sister said,

“ You can always choose to see the glass half full or half empty.”

The same glass - my choice. Today my glass overflowed and watered my heart.

And now my lovely man is on his way back with pizza.

Saturday 27th May

Day 40

Today we bought a red car with low mileage and a big boot. Good for taking stuff to the dump and the allotment. But not good for people with long legs in the back. When we took it for a test drive the salesman sat in the back - with his short legs - and told us about the ‘toys’ - the extras we don’t need. Like a sunglasses case fixed above the driver’s door. He said it has a ‘low talk’ for a diesel car.

Cars with toys that talk. I love the colour though - flame red. Like my shoes.

We celebrated with an spontaneous lunch at our favourite cafe where I never tire of the marriage of rolled thin short crust pastry and cheddar cheese. Cut with salad leaves and a sharp dressing.

On and off splattery rain put paid to my planting plans and I put a pan of floury potatoes into the oven to roast and made a mustardy lemon and parsley mayonnaise. And a vase of honey suckle flowers - rose pink claw trumpets tinged with gold, blessed with rain drops - to welcome my beloved family to the supper table.

Friday 28th May

Day 39

When I come to fill the patio pots with the bedding plants I bought on Wednesday, at the time I’d set aside for it, the sky is nearly black and the wind makes me hug my arms. So I hesitate, check the red geraniums and yellow daises and pink verbena all jostled together in a cardboard box are still damp, and decide another day would be better.

Now I wish I’d seized the moment, defied the rain on the wind and my tiredness. I notice how prickly everything is - like an inside out hedgehog - when I’m putting something off. Planting or writing.

Tonight though I did discover what’s the softest thing in the whole world. It was when I cupped the top of a baby’s head in my palm and couldn’t find words for it.

Thursday May 27th

Day 38

The grassy green brilliance of gremolata - a big bunch of parsley, the zest of a lemon, fat cloves of garlic all whizzed up into a slippery sauce with glugs of olive oil - rescued our chick pea, carrot and quinoa lunch. Which was tasty enough but as dull looking as the sky today.

Fresh vegetables in the market this morning were sparse. You can tell we are in ‘the hungry gap’ - that space in spring when stored carrots are woody, leeks have bolted, potatoes are sprouting and cabbages run to flower. Everyone is waiting for the first broad beans which herald the true beginning of summer with all its bright coloured sweetness in the fields. Which end up as joy on our plates.

Tonight we were a bunch of lovely women swapping clothes laid out on a big sun streamed bed. Filling the gaps in our wardrobes. Someone’s rejects - our new broad beans.

Wednesday 26th May

Day 37

I’ve just returned from a long walk in heaven with my friend and her little dog. We were enfolded in a pulsing green world, a magical forest of giant trees, ramrod into the sky, sheltering acres of pale bluebells beneath them. We followed a wide red earth path lined with a bridal froth of wild garlic stars. We passed an ancient mossy wall and opened a gate onto a meadow sprayed with buttercups, closing their heads like sea anemones in the fading light. And then stopped to breathe in the view - squares of brown and green fields, cows like a string of chestnuts, heads down, gliding across them. And us talking, talking all the way.

Now the smell of mushrooms frying in garlic is enticing me downstairs. Another kind of heaven.

Tuesday May 25th

Day 36

I’ve been cooking vegetarian food for my father today. To supplement his diet at the residential home where vegetarianism is a bit of a mystery. Luckily it’s the water I swim in - what to do with meat is my dry land.

I didn’t know till I emptied the fridge of all veggies and started chopping, what dishes I would make him. They just had to be sloppy (easy to freeze) and full of flavour. And have coconut and cheese somewhere - as these are two of his favourite ingredients.

By noon I had two pans bubbling on the stove. One yellow - mild curried lentils, chunky with carrots and potatoes, swirled with pureed spinach, glossy with creamed coconut. The other red - a herby tomato sauce packed with long white canellini beans, butternut squash, leeks and swiss chard. This one became a crumble with a topping of rye breadcrumbs and grated cheddar.

Later I decanted them into little plastic tubs and glass ramekins - one size portions to be popped into the freezer at the home. For a day when vegetarian inspiration runs dry.

As a surprise I also baked him a batch of coconut macaroons. Squidgey sweet in the middle, toasted prickly on the outside. I call them coconut kisses. When I opened the tin and showed him his face lit up.

“ Just like my mother used to make,” he said.

I hope they were. She was a very good cook.

Monday 26th May

Day 35

When I open the back door tonight, to let our pussy cat out, the almond perfume of white clematis on the fence surges through me like liquid honey. I’d like to drink it forever under this warm moon filled sky. The heat has sucked me dry today. That, and pointless poisonous thoughts.

Sunday 23rd May

Day 24

I have breakfast in bed alone as my husband travels north on a train. A trio of sliced fruits on a white plate - straw blonde pear, red purple plum and marigold orange persimmon. The pear verges on too ripe, the plum is just this side of sour and the persimmon is perfect - sweet, soft. It is also my favourite - a porthole to that December week I spend with my sisters in Portugal every year. And this year the excitement of meeting a new friend there who we found from a message in a bottle - another story.

Nearly all day I read Stephen King’s book “On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft” and I’m enthralled, transported. Although I’d never read a horror story he has magic to say about how to write.My knees get sunburnt and I eat my salad turning the pages. I drop a lemon- oily rocket leaf on the paper and imagine what it would be like to be a novelist.

Much later, when the air is cooler I walk down to the allotment. Again and again I carry two heavy watering cans from the tank at the side of the path to the raised beds where rows of broccoli and bean seedlings, lettuces and strawberries are wilting. I promised my husband I’d keep them alive today. Coming home, flip flops muddy, I think about what it would be like to live alone - not just for one summer Sunday - but every day just me. I think how brave my friends are who manage this task - more of a craft really.

Saturday 22nd May

Day 33

5 am. Hoarse shouting ripping the hush of early light. And my sleep. Something happening in the street, beyond the tall arches of the buddleia obscuring the view from our bedroom window. On and on, a young woman’s voice beating against the door. Locked out by her father. When I hear him and his harshness, I call the police. They say they are on their way already.

The bellow of these voices follows me around all afternoon as I mow the lawn, drench parched roses and wash aphids off the helibore, while the sun blazes overhead. I want it to scorch the slapping words out of my head.

When the students start their party two doors away I sink into the loudness of their music, their rowdy boisterous noise. The smoke of charred meat billows over the fence scenting my clean towels on the line. Just today I love the healing lightness of their laughter.

Still, I’m glad we’re going out to supper with dear friends - away from all this barrage for a while. I expect it won’t be over when we come back though, however late.

Friday 21st May

Day 32

All day the sun has throbbed in a high blue sky. All day my head has felt like the sun.

Tonight only the thought of slabs of golden red sweet potatoes, blackened and sticky, gets me off the bed and into the kitchen, still hot from the embers of the day.

Thursday 20th May

Day 31

At 5 0‘clock this evening the pussy cat jumps into the bath and laps at the dribbling water from the tap.He hasn’t had a drink for 48 hours since his anesthetic. Or eaten more than a teaspoon of yogurt. All day I’ve been as jittery as a relay runner waiting for the baton. What will I do if he doesn’t take any sustenance?

Now as the kitchen fills with the vanilla scent of birthday cake in the oven, my appetite returns as he crunches on his dry biscuits. Even with the sore gap in his mouth where his canine used to be. Today I learnt that you can take a pussy cat to water but you can't make him drink. Until he's ready.

Wednesday May 19th

Day 30

Ladle soupy chickpea aubergine curry and coconut dhal straight out of the saucepan onto a mound of sticky brown rice. Spoon raggedy cut spring greens from the steamer and scatter toasted cashew nuts on top. Splat a dollop of oily lime pickle on the side. Carry your plate to the table where a candle burns and a posy of white lilac blossom drops its almond scent into the kitchen. This last is a gift from a dear friend sharing our supper tonight. A lovely recipe to soothe pussy cat worry, heart ache and broken down cars.

By the time we get to the ice-cream - (poach husband’s pink rhubarb with excessive sugar and shavings of orange zest, allow to cool, then swirl into a duvet of whipped cream) - the evening is softer, lighter, lifted.

Tuesday May 18th

Day 29

I bought red shoes today. More of a ripe strawberry than a tomato red.

They are sensible shoes, flat soled for walking on pavements or in the rain.

I don’t wear much red so they won’t go with anything. They will clash - I hope.

They have to be wide fitting for my wide feet. And they are very comfortable. They have lines of stitching along the sides curving up over the toes. So not completely plain.

I’ve always envied people with dainty feet who can wear elegant strappy sandals, high heels, patent leather boots - even for a night.

But now the red on my feet can remind my heart that sensible has its place but wild is where I’m heading.

Monday 17th May

Day 28

Tiredness like a throbbing creature has inhabited me all day.

I was stodgy slow in our early morning walk in the green and white park. Even though it was bursting with spring and blackbird chatter and sunshine at last.

Breakfast coffee helped for a while. We sat at the round table in the corner of our favourite cafe and ate scrambled eggs and melting buttered toast. It’s the only place I know that serves homemade marmalade. Today’s jar was a deep honey amber colour, runny as syrup, tangy sweet. With a long spoon on the saucer. I hugged the memory of my own stash of marmalade in the kitchen cupboard at home. Still plenty for Sundays and more to give away.

For a second, at the hairdresser’s, while she shampooed my head, I dipped into a well of eyes closed blackness and forgot where I was.

Late avocado lunch in the sun, I watched the pussy cat stretch out on the grass, daisies tickling his nose. I longed to join him there and to be a pussy cat for the afternoon with nothing to do except sleep till it’s time for supper. And no washing up afterwards.

Luckily the washing up is done now and I can hear the bath running. And I think that was my husband calling me upstairs.

Sunday 16th May

Day 27

It was the journey of the soup and not the flavour of it that mattered today. Although it was the star of the table.

350 grams is a lot of nettles. Especially as each little leaf is as light as a tickle. So you need at least 2 weighing bowls full. But if there are enough of you, and you have wellingtons and yellow latex gloves and a mission in your belly, it can be an adventure.

There were 7 of us this morning - my intrepid family - a procession in cagoules the colour of the sea and the sky. We climbed up through a haze of bluebells, past pheasant runs, down grassy banks of primroses and deep into the wild green wood. Where we found a waving lake of nettles, peaceful under the beech trees. And there we foraged for our lunch, like bees, choosing the best tender tips.

We carried our clear plastic bags back through the fields and kept to the hedge line while 5 dun coloured bulls puffed up in a ruckus and their cows yowled out - a sound to tear your heart. A sound lodged in my mind now - along with with the nettles.

In the kitchen we tipped them into the pot on the stove with the stock and potatoes, black pepper and yogurt. And blended them into a pale grassy green soup with only the hint of their recent wildness. More of a soup to soothe - a subtle balm for the soul - a collective soup - my family's soup. And no one round the table mentioned the stings on our fingers.

Saturday 15th May

Day 26

Talking about writing this evening in my sister’s kitchen with my poet niece is like popping bottle after bottle of champagne and swimming in the bubbles. Knowing the cellar will still be full tomorrow.

Friday May 14th

Day 25

Some moments from today before midnight comes.

I cancel my yoga class to make space for cleaning and practise vigorous warrior poses with the floor mop.

I stand on the bottom stair to give my husband a hug. Sometimes he needs me to be taller than him to contain big sadness.

I gulp my leek and potato soup at lunchtime - monosyllabic, tense and rushed.

At the supermarket I buy yellow tulips and Gruyere cheese and unripe, out of season mangos for my father.

At the clinic he sits in a raised chair like a king and a trainee nurse in a red uniform pricks his finger. He warns her his blood is resistant and even when she squeezes not a drop appears. It takes two of them in the end.

When the doorbell rings, as the light is leaving the sky, my sweet niece and her man stand on the doorstep full of smiles and long journey stiffness and a London life left behind.

I spread waves of Dijon mustard over the rolled out oblong of pastry and sprinkle it with thick shavings of Gruyere. Together we lay the bright green blanched asparagus spears in lines down the middle. My husband picked them this afternoon,all different lengths and thickness - all hard and tender in one stem.

While the tart puffs up in the oven, we drink Gin and Tonic and talk the talk of a new government till the aroma of bubbling parmesan seduces us to the table.

Thursday May 13th

Day 24

The market felt very precious this morning with the sun filtering between the green and white striped stalls. I feel so blessed to have it on my doorstep.

I know the faces of these stall holders, like I know my hands. And they know me - the ones I visit regularly anyway. My first port of call is always the organic vegetables. Today I filled my recycled bag from a French supermarket with floppy elephant ears of spring greens, bronze tipped lettuces, the last cuttings of purple sprouting broccoli, a dozen pullet eggs, 2 slippery trout from a mill stream, a soft round loaf speckled green with wild garlic.

It takes a bit longer shopping like this - all the chat over the laden tables.

At a new stall, a replica of a French village patisserie, I avoid the elaborate confections glazed with cream and chocolate and clusters of redcurrants, and plump for 2 almond tarts instead. One with half an apricot, one with half a pear nesting in the centre. It is a day for morning tea treats at home with my man - for no reason. Maybe to reminisce about our holidays in France. The young man behind the glass counter says he made them this morning. And the croissants. He tells me he trained with a patissier in Brittany. I buy 6 croissants for my young visitors’ breakfast this weekend.

“Warm them in the oven first,” he says. I guess he thinks I wouldn’t know that. But then he is new in my market place - he doesn’t know me yet. It depends how buttery the pastry is.

Wednesday 12th May

Day 23

Bluebell Day

We sit in the car, my father and I, balancing plastic plates on our laps. Two thermos cups of leek and potato soup create little streaks of steam on the windscreen. Our picnic is round corn cake sandwiches - mashed up smoked mackerel and lemony avocado. A box of salad bits rests lopsidedly against the gear stick. By my feet is a foil parcel of Mejoul dates and flapjacks. Our view is a steep bank of bluebells and a sandy path disappearing over a mound into a clearing ringed by huge trees. It’s so still and cool - it feels like an open air cathedral for birds.

Later we walk slowly into this magic circle where the bluebells stretch in wide silken scarves under the new, new leaves of beech and oak. It looks like some of the low sweeping branches are bowing in homage to this surprise gift below them. When the sun comes out briefly they shine like a one colour indigo rainbow.

We are here in honour of a moment in our parents’ lives that occurred in another bluebell wood in another place 70 years ago. With a chaffinch and an oak tree too. Only they know the secret of what happened then but we know it changed everything. Started something. And so a family history is born which curls like smoke into the next generation rekindling memory whenever bluebells are mentioned.

I felt my mother was walking with us today, deep in the bluebells. She would have laughed too when we lost the hat. I stop to take photos, drop my father’s herringbone cloth cap from under my arm. We retrace our steps, searching on the path. And give up.

“I never liked that hat anyway”, he says. “Lets leave it here. For Ma.”

But in the car park someone has picked up his hat and left it on a post by the entrance.

He puts it in his pocket.

“ You don’t have to wear it,” I say. “Just because you found it.”

And I don’t think he will. Ma wouldn’t have liked it either.

Tuesday 11th May

Day 22

In Marks and Spencer’s changing room this morning the smell of BO was so bad I had to hold my breath. I even thought it might be me. None of the tops fitted anyway. I felt the wrong shape today.

The leek and potato soup sitting on the hob smells a bit like BO too. It sometimes happens if you don’t sweat the onions first. Maybe that’s where the phrase comes from.

This blog has been on my mind all day. My friend asked me where is it going? And now I’m wondering.

Looking back on the 21 days, I’m stirring some questions in my writing cauldron.

*Who/ what is the invading tom cat in my life?

*If I was our pussy cat what am I demanding?

• What do I need to prune in my life?
• 
  
• And what could sprout that I was afraid might be dead?

I like it that I don’t know the answers - yet - but I think adjectives - too many of them - might be one of the ingredients.

Yesterday's splash of summer ran away again today.

Monday 10th May,

Day 21

While I’m driving my husband to the station at 7.30 am summer slips quietly and unexpectedly into the morning. Like a torch out of yesterday’s gloom.

I immerse myself in the garden. I hear lawn mowers humming in every direction. In the front garden I prune a viburnum, plant a helibore, pull up a bramble, weed everything. At the back I move pots of de-headed tulips, plant some stocks, leave swathes of chopped up daisies on the lawn. From under the brim of my straw hat, bought on the Greek island where we honeymooned, I notice the oregano is spreading like a springy yellow green carpet in the corner of a bed. In a violet blue glazed pot an oak seedling has grown two wiggly edged leaves.It was a gift from my nephew’s wedding and I thought it had died.

Geranium mallow leaves wilt in the sun and apple blossom drifts down onto mangled daisies.

When I come inside for my solitary lunch I know the tom cat is back. I smell his telltale calling card - this time on the wall by the patio doors. And on the curtain. Right by where we eat. We have been keeping him locked out at night. But summer heat means open doors and for him it’s open house. Our pussy cat continues his snooze on the bed upstairs, oblivious. I don’t know how to protect him now.

Dark clouds smother the sun so I bring in the washing and start chopping leeks and red peppers for a dear friend who is coming to supper. I want to ginger up the remains of Saturday’s Thai fish curry. And mask the smell of bleach on the walls.

Day 21 - my last day. But I’m excited by this new groove I’m making and I don’t want to stop now. So I’m laying track for another 21 days. And then maybe I’ll discover where this journey is taking me. An untried recipe so far. Monday 10th May,

Day 21

While I’m driving my husband to the station at 7.30 am summer slips quietly and unexpectedly into the morning. Like a torch out of yesterday’s gloom.

I immerse myself in the garden. I hear lawn mowers humming in every direction. In the front garden I prune a viburnum, plant a helibore, pull up a bramble, weed everything. At the back I move pots of de-headed tulips, plant some stocks, leave swathes of chopped up daisies on the lawn. From under the brim of my straw hat, bought on the Greek island where we honeymooned, I notice the oregano is spreading like a springy yellow green carpet in the corner of a bed. In a violet blue glazed pot an oak seedling has grown two wiggly edged leaves.It was a gift from my nephew’s wedding and I thought it had died.

Geranium mallow leaves wilt in the sun and apple blossom drifts down onto mangled daisies.

When I come inside for my solitary lunch I know the tom cat is back. I smell his telltale calling card - this time on the wall by the patio doors. And on the curtain. Right by where we eat. We have been keeping him locked out at night. But summer heat means open doors and for him it’s open house. Our pussy cat continues his snooze on the bed upstairs, oblivious. I don’t know how to protect him now.

Dark clouds smother the sun so I bring in the washing and start chopping leeks and red peppers for a dear friend who is coming to supper. I want to ginger up the remains of Saturday’s Thai fish curry. And mask the smell of bleach on the walls.

Day 21 - my last day. But I’m excited by this new groove I’m making and I don’t want to stop now. So I’m laying track for another 21 days. And then maybe I’ll discover where this journey is taking me. An untried recipe so far.

Sunday 8th May

Day 20

Early Sunday morning, when it would be nice to snuggle a bit longer in bed, I carry a mug of hot lemon juice down to the bottom of the garden, where my lovely husband is sitting at our old picnic table. He’s painting one of his clay models, the colour of flesh. He bends close in with the brush poised, intent. I love it that he’s living his art like this - even before breakfast.

I love the stillness of the garden - only blackbirds calling - no shouting children’s voices - its usual backdrop. Returning to the house, I notice the tangle of wirey dead looking stems of a perennial creeper, clawing the empty sky above the fence. I see this climbing vine all the time through the patio doors when I sit at the kitchen table. I’ve been worried about it. Did I prune it too hard last winter? Did I kill it?

It’s my favourite, the white flowering version of a Solarnum Crispum from the Deadly Nightshade family. It sulked for several years when we first planted it, while its sister scrambled over the opposite fence and into next door’s garden, producing clusters of tiny pale blue flowers. Then, in the summer that my mother died, it took flight, and with some wild happiness flowed through the ivy cladding in long twining waves, flinging out sprays of starry white blooms. On and on into November.

In late September, the night before my beautiful niece got married, I cut a bouquet of these flowers, delicate as jasmine, and placed them on the mantlepiece in the pink room where she would sleep next to her sweet bridesmaid sister. I left them there for a long time even after they had dropped their petals on the carpet - like confetti.

I took the secateurs to the Solarnum this afternoon, and snipped at the straggling woody stems, searching for signs of life. I found them, hidden in the ivy, a few sprouting leaves at the base of the most dead looking sticks. Shining lime green growth. I’m so happy I didn’t kill it after all.

Saturday 7th May

Day 19

I need spicing up. I feel as dull as the day - overcast, cold, windy. There are four long fillets of haddock in the fridge. They are asking to be fried in hot spitting fat - to turn translucent inside a crisp jacket of breadcrumbs - to be squeezed with lemon and to be accompanied by peas and creamy mashed potatoes. Traditional, delicious English fare.

But I don’t fry fish any more. It seems sacrilegious to cut into the wholeness of the fillets. But I do anyway, first paring off the silver black skin and plucking out fine curved bones with eyebrow tweezers. Then I scissor them into large irregular pieces. They smell of the sea. Later, just before we eat, I will slide them into the green broth which is bubbling on the hob now - scenting the kitchen with top notes of lemongrass and chilli.

I feel so lucky to have the option of these fragrant Thai flavours - coconut and coriander, basil, lime and ginger. And for the sweet cinnamon and cardamon in the pilau rice which will be a soft sponge for this soupy fish curry. They expand my kitchen horizon with their exotic warmth and rich deep perfumes. And somehow are perfect for a supper with my lovely sister and brother in law on a cool spring evening in Devon before the treat of cinema.

While I spice it up in the kitchen, my sweet man wrestles with pea sticks and a drill under threatening skies at the allotment. And husbands delicate seedlings in the green house, waiting for the promise of summer. He’ll be home soon with leeks and spinach - to add to the pot.

Friday 7th May

Day 18

In the night the daisies in the lawn mushroomed into a speckled rash; dense under the apple tree umbrella, filtering between the few bluebells, circling the dandelions. In a race to grow taller than the longest blades of grass. I’m glad it’s too wet to mow the lawn; let the white riot continue till the sunshine returns. Today the fairy fists of apple blossom blend into a pale rain washed sky.

It’s cold in the kitchen even though the boiler is humming in the corner. A burning lemongrass candle on the table next to my computer makes it feel warmer. Left over lunch on the hob - a skillet of gingery quinoa pilaf still bright with bits of red pepper, discs of leek, slivers of mushroom, coins of carrot, silk strands of spinach. On the counter - a small bowl of pan roasted cashew nuts - too easy to filch on my way to the kettle.

I’ve always loved Friday evenings. Working or not, plans or no plans. An end and a beginning all rolled into a present. Like a sunrise and a sunset can be the same blazing orange streaking a bruised sky. I don’t think it’s too early for a glass of red wine.

Thursday 6th May

Day 17

This afternoon, while the rain dripped off the apple blossom, I made a cake for a sad friend. A tender yellow lemon polenta cake. Under the pink and white tree sparrows hopped in grass brushed with tiny fallen petals and resident daisies.

Earlier we strolled to the polling station under the arch of a silver lined umbrella. I pencilled 2 crosses against 2 names in the classroom of a primary school. The faces behind the desks were shining with welcome. And hope. Although this is not where I look for it.

I know cakes can’t heal but sometimes the love folded into them can.

I notice my jeans are extra tight today. Possibly too much cake.

Wednesday 5th May

Day 16

I think I’m cooking myself. It’s this writing thing. I’m in a huge cauldron, simmering or boiling or spitting fat - all these bits of me swirling in the broth. But I don’t know what flavour I am yet.

The end of my 21 days is creeping up and I feel in a panic. I didn’t crack it yet, didn’t break the habit of not trusting my writing. Natalie Goldberg, in her glorious book “Writing Down The Bones”, says “Don’t think too much, enter the heat of the words, the sounds, the colour sensations...”

I always knew cooking and writing were the same - apply heat to raw ingredients - onions or adjectives - and it changes everything.

It’s upset the apple cart at home, me hotting up on the page. It means sometimes supper is late, a floor unswept, an email unanswered, a bath gone cold, a husband waiting in bed.

And I don’t want to stop till I’m a bit more cooked. I want to play with the temperature. And then I want to see what I conjure for dessert.

Tuesday 4th May

Day 15

When I’m this tired and it’s this late it’s best for me to write about food. Which is easy as I have been in London with a dear friend. The icy north wind threw us into the shelter of the Royal Festival Hall for coffee and muffins. Swept us into a cosy Turkish restaurant for an aubergine, artichoke, tomato and dill lunch. Buffeted us across the Millenium Bridge and deposited us back at the Queen Elizabeth for tea and a sticky pecan nut tart.

But not to forget the dessert at lunch - it sits between us on the yellow tablecloth like a hot pastry envelope. The letter folded inside is a crumbly pistachio paste perfumed with rose water. Drizzled over the top is a shiny brown syrup - sharp and sweet pomegranate molasses. We mop this up this dark pool with little squares of the pastry and share the luxury of being together across a table instead of on the end of a phone.

On the train home I catch glimpses of rape fields - their brightness darkening to mustard as the light slowly leaves the sky and the hedges turn black.

Monday 3rd May Bank Holiday

Day 14

Walking by the canal we stop and watch a family of swans in the reeds of the far bank. The mother continuously dips her neck deep into the water. The babies, 7 of them - fluffy grey pompoms - bustle around her, light as meringues. The father hovers a little distance away, keeping his wings up and curved behind him. His attention is gluelike.

On the way back we see him again, alone this time. He’s zig zagging round an upturned white canoe. A wet-suited man, treading water, is trying to drag it to the bank. A woman is clambering out, hair dripping, shivering.

“We’ve been tipped out by that swan,” she says. As if she can’t believe it.

I’d love to have witnessed it - that display of raw protective instinct.

In the next curve of the canal we catch sight of the mother swan nestled on a platform of straw. Her babies are tucked in close, out of the wind, heads down, knowing daddy is on patrol.

Sunday May 2nd

Day 13

In the end it wasn’t the sweetcorn fritters, gold bright with chips of red chilli and splashed with coriander leaf, that made the difference. It was the conversation; swinging four ways between us; tossing kernels of truth, buried in love, onto the table. Sometimes we made alchemy from them, sometimes we spat them out. All of it feeding me, mending me.

Afterwards, my love and I, we carried these raw rough gems to the moorland where the wind was crashing like waves in the pine trees and the gorse blazed in sun storms. And I saw how hope blossoms in me when I open to the tender gift of friendship.

Saturday 1st May

Day 12

Today is the day to slip under the wire of routine. To be cherished with a pot of Earl Grey tea in bed. To let the croissant flakes scatter on the sheets. To lick fingers sticky with apricot jam. To let morning drift into afternoon as sunlight behind bamboo blinds disappears and rain prickles the windows. We face each other propped up by pillows talking, laughing, re-connecting with no appointments calling us away.

When our talk turns sombre he escapes to the allotment with two trays of tomatillo seedings with tender leaves and straggling stems, longing for a transplant into deeper soil. I linger on in the bonus of bed in the afternoon, the pussy cat languorous on my stretched out legs. I write, searching for fertile ground.

Much later we drive towards the sea past the exuberant froth of pink and white cherry blossom and bright fans of dense gorse, luminous against a charcoal washed sky. Taking a diversion we park outside a country church and follow a muddy footpath lined with nettles and cuckoo pint, cow parsley and bluebells. The rain stays away and the sun is more like the moon behind silvery clouds.

On the way home I think about supper and the pillow comfort of mashed potatoes which will cut the smoky oiliness of the salmon fillets waiting for us in our new fridge.