Living Growing Colours

12 April 2013 

I’m making tomorrow’s lunch and tonight’s supper at the same time. The kitchen is flooded with evening sunlight - so everything looks bright and dusty. I notice  smears and finger marks on all the windows and the cooker and cabinet doors. I cant remember the last time we had sun in the house. Or when I last cleaned it properly.

But what matters isn’t my grubby kitchen but the colour of my glossy red pepper and chilli sauce which is deep paprika red and which shimmers in the light and makes me think of hot African deserts and ochre face paint on wild dancing tribespeople. I’m keeping this sauce for tomorrow’s Brazilnut Roast when my family come to lunch but I think it would team up well for another occasion with my Oaty Seedy Bread ( cf Sarah Britton’s Life Changing Loaf) and my green corainder houmous. Red and green and brown  - living, growing colours......

This afternoon my red coated aunty who will be 100 years old soon, and her eldest daughter, came to tea. Yesterday I spent time with my father’s cousin who is 88 and her partner who is 94. They are all bright and spry and funny and alert ..... and also slow and forgetful and hurting beneath the frailness of their skin. They touch me immensely and I wonder what it is that keeps a body going so long...what desire, what spirit it must take to put the first foot out of the warmth of a bed each morning and embrace a new day....