13th July 2011 Wednesday
I shouldn’t have gone to the allotment this evening feeling as I did - tearful and cross. It’s usually the place where we can be happy together.
I cut little gem lettuces, strip off the the outer leaves and leave them on the ground. And forget to put them inside the compost bin. My husband says I’m always doing that and he has to clear up after me. I pick the last of the broad beans and leave the old and diseased ones on their stems. My husband wants to use them all. We argue about it. Our separate griefs disguised in opinions about vegetables. He’s feeling displaced, kicked out, his career in shards. I’m feeling inexplicably sad, inconsolable - tired of explaining everything - like who is David Beckham and what is mandarin when it’s not a fruit - and it's not his fault.
I leave him watering the tomatoes and call round to our neighbour with a bunch of sweet peas and lavender to say thank you for looking after the pussy cat while we have been away for two days. Maybe the production of Macbeth we saw in Stratford last night has unsettled me - the beauty of the poetry lost to me in so much blood and madness, power lust and graphic killing of children on stage.
Tonight, while my husband re-plants his squash seeds which didn’t germinate I make a salad from our allotment pickings - lettuce and pak choi, sugar snap peas, a young stripey courgette, blanched broad bean, parsley and the gift of a cucumber from my sister’s garden.
The sun pours into the kitchen while I chop and toss and I think about my great nephew who I saw today snuggled in the arms of one grandma while his other grandma played with his minature feet. And how his blue blue eyes locked on hers and how his little turned up smile, when it finally came, was like an answered prayer, lighting up the room.
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