Knocking Out The Bubbles

16th April 2013

I’m picking off the best leaves from a clump of perpetual spinach at the allotment. It’s a soft, warm spring afternoon. My husband is watching me.

‘Why don’t you do some weeding? I say.

‘No, I don’t feel like it,’ he says.

I put the spinach down and walk past the beds of sprouting garlic towards the shed. It’s my version of taking 3 breaths before I open my mouth. But it doesn’t really work and my resentment bubbles away like fermenting yeast in a ball of dough.

Later, after some sister listening on the phone, I realise that my husband is just speaking for me, saying what I want to say and can’t. In my obsessive, driven, must-do world there is no room for not feeling like it - you have to do it anyway.

So I take a leaf out of his book, put an Oaty Seedy Loaf to bake in the oven, and with the sun shining outside, the daisies mulitplying in the lawn, my emails unread and unanswered I watch blue-eyed Paul Hollywood, in his crisp blue striped shirt, making all versions of soda bread, crumpets and gingerbread  -  mixing and kneading the dough.

Knocking out the bubbles, letting in the air.

(No blog tomorrow - going away with my husband for a night and a day to a lovely country hotel - an unspent 25th wedding anniversary gift from my dear family...)