Lemonade

Good Friday

I wasn’t planning to but I end up making a fish stock for the prawn risotto   - inspired by Jamie Oliver’s seafood version - for my husband’s birthday lunch tomorrow. I don’t have any of the mussels or scallops or John Dory that he suggests but I do have some smoked haddock and a whole bay tree outside our front door and I throw in the woody stems of the asparagus spears to add a hint of spring. It’s not really fishy enough though.....

It’s traditional to plant your potatoes on Good Friday. My husband plants red onion sets at the allotment instead. I put a volumionous Pavlova into the oven and go out into the weak sunshine to cut, or rather chew up, the long wet grass of our back lawn, snapping off one of the plastic blades in the base of our ineffectual lawn mower. By the time I come inside I can smell the burnt nipple quiffs of the meringue, like hot candy floss, scenting the kitchen. Luckily I can do a cream and strawberry concealing job tomorrow and hope no one will mind.....

When my husband comes home after his long walk with my brother-in-law, we lie on the bed with the light fading outside and we count off the names of our family and friends and see how many my husband can remember. For some reason he finds it easier to recall long or unusual names - like his mother’s middle name, or pairs of names  - as in married people - it confuses him if I refer to them separately.

I notice he often says things are getting worse and worse. Which isn’t how I see it....the worst already happened so now it’s how I can find the good....moment by moment...word by word - choosing love over fear. As a dear friend sometimes reminds me ..

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Or plant onions if you haven’t got potatoes....