Chutney Night

7th September 2011 Wednesday

I break a recent habit of catapulting myself headlong into my morning and instead I sit back to back with my husband on the carpet in our bedroom, and we breathe together - just for a little while. And I feel supported and not crushed. So my day starts from a softer, calmer place.

This afternoon, in Sidmouth Garden Cente restaurant I join the residents of my father’s Abbeyfield home. They are having a cream tea outing. I sit next to an amazing old man who is a hundred and one years old. He plays scrabble with my father every Thursday afternoon and says he nearly always wins. He left school at fourteen and has never been beyond the Isle of Wight. I remind him of one of his daughters who is a retired dentist. But he doesn’t say how we are similar. He is lucid and bright and charming.

Tonight when it’s already late - the washing machine is still churning, the hessian bags on the kitchen floor are still full of Sainsbury’s shopping, my emails are unopened, the lunch soup bowls are unwashed and supper is unthought of - I start chopping a mountain of pale, hard green tomatoes. My husband takes on the peeling of the apples and the slicing of the chillis and the crushing of the garlic. I weigh out the sugar and the sultanas, the onions and the coriander seeds. They aren’t in the recipe but I throw in big handfuls of frozen redcurrants. And soon the house smells sweet and sharp - two cauldrons of bubbling chutney on the stove

Catapulting me into Christmas.