Hot and Bitter

3rd June 2011 - Friday

I am hot as a volcano core all day, swallowing tears. More cards from clients for my husband. One of them makes us both cry. I know their names. My husband says,

I don’t know who they are.

I boil up 2 kilos of sugar and pour it over of thirty pink elderflower heads that I picked last week, along with sliced lemons, their pared zest and a spoon of citric acid - Sophie Grigson’s recipe for Elderflower Cordial. I don’t have that much sugar in the house so I use some jam sugar that I find at the back of the cupboard. But I think I’m going to end up with Elderflower jelly tomorrow.

The last asparagus spears from the allotment - I grill them and we eat them with boiled eggs and bitter lettuce leaves while the sun scorches the garden. My husband says he’ll take me to the dentist as he doesn’t have anything to do. I say lets go for a walk afterwards - but it must be somewhere shady.

We wander round the ancient hill fort at Blackbury Camp where the bluebells are all green budded now and the oak and beech trees tower above us like a cathedral dome. It’s totally deserted and so hot even the birds are silent. It feels like a magical oasis. I lie down on a long flat log in dappled shade and nearly fall asleep. But my husband is restless so we walk away and the gap of our differences widens between us with every step.

Tonight I feel as hot and bitter as the purple mustard leaves he grows on the allotment.