Borlotti Beans

Wednesday 1st September

Day 133

All day I have been in the company of dear, dear women.

I sort my linen cupboard with my sister. We fold sheets - the big ones that you need two people for - to stretch between you like a swinging sail, to pull tight and snap in half and half again and offer the ends up to make a hanging square. We remember the times our mother was standing at the other end of the sail.

At lunch we are three around the table - in the centre sits a bowl of borlotti beans - our first picking. They lose their speckled pink coats in cooking, look a bit pale and dull beige. But if you dress them while they are still steaming hot in a good few glugs of fruity olive oil, plenty of crushed garlic and sea salt and stir in ripe chopped tomatoes and flat leaf parsley - they are meltingly delicious. We laugh a lot and later no-one minds that the plum cake isn’t quite cooked in the middle.

Tonight we are a different three in the dark of the cinema, squealing out loud in the scary bits, giggling in the street on the way home. Nudged together like round, soft borlotti beans.