Pearly Soup

Tuesday 7th September

Day 139

The radio says it was this day in 1940 that the Blitzkreig started on London.

I think of how we use the word blitz now in recipes - as in ‘blitz the bread in the food processor till it turns into fine breadcrumbs.‘ A purposeful attack on a loaf - no death involved.

I insert myself in the kitchen early this morning, conjuring up autumn soup - before the paint invasion. I chop the first leeks from the market and our potatoes and carrots, add soaked pearl barley and leave it to simmer a long time. When we eat it for supper tonight in deep white bowls, it’s more like a creamy thick stew, peppery savoury and comforting.

I wonder what we’ll have for supper this time next month when we’ll be in a street in New York, the night before my birthday. When I wont’ be writing this blog any more.

Paint and Rainbows

Monday 6th September

Day 138

The aroma of fresh basil leaves pounded in a mortar with garlic and sweet pinenuts......the perfume of apple and banana cake seeping out of the oven...... I cook deliberately to mask the smell of silicone sealant and polyfiller and undercoat paint, thick in the air of the house.

All day the doors stay closed against slashing rain and wind, trapping chemicals in the fabric of the walls. I feel cut off from the lifeline of my kitchen while a man on a ladder shaves dust into the fruit bowl.

And then this evening, turning the pages of a photograph album, we glance out of the window and catch sight of a rainbow fragment - half a faintly coloured arch disappearing into hurrying clouds. A bite of sun, a mouthful of blue sky and then it’s gone - eaten up by vapour, painted back into mist. But like fragrant cake, its fragile visit will linger in my memory much longer than the smell of emulsion.

Apple Harvest

Sunday 5th September

Day 137

My husband is perched high up in the apple tree. You wouldn’t know he was there - the leaves and branches camouflage him so well. Except every now and again you’ll hear a shout followed immediately by a thud and a splat as another apple whizzes past his nose and lands on the grass. These are the ones that escape - they are usually bad anyway. He has a Marks and Spencer carrier bag attached to his belt and as he picks, it bulges out with the weight of his cargo.

When it’s full he climbs back down the ladder and brings it over to me. I’m crouched on the lawn surrounded by an array of large boxes - sorting the apples by size and colour and ripeness - small green ones, medium redish ones, big scarlet ones and a lot of stung and bruised ones. The bags and bags keep on arriving till I run out of boxes and I feel like that little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam wall. Luckily we have a shed which can hold this waterfall of apples thundering down from our tree.

The invasion of green tomatoes and plums last month feels like a mere shower compared to this fruit ocean today. I just have to remember that they are the best apples in all the world for making tart tatin - my husband’s favourite dessert.

Welcome home

Saturday 4th September

Day 136

Defrosting the freezer, de-cluttering the jam cupboard, tidying my sock drawer - random acts of cleaning before I meet my husband at the airport tonight. Opening up a space in my head, and in my recent rhythm for the return of his lovely, big warmth.

And probably several new clay models too, the sun and his happiness kneaded into them.

Late Lunch Poems

Friday 3rd September

Day 135

With my husband absent, I notice I live in another rhythm - moving to the beat of being temporarily single - with a pussy cat and friends. I’ve been going to bed very late. Today I had lunch at 5 pm.

After my sojourn in the crowded town - hairdresser, Truprint, library, cashpoint machine, Waterstone’s - I walk home, my stomach growling with hunger. I pile my plate with yesterday’s salad and the cold borlotti beans which are even more garlicky and unctious and earthy on the third day. And a fat cheese straw from Sainsbury’s. I carry this late lunch outside. The sun is still hot on the patio table, the rest of the garden in deep shade.

I open my new book - called “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes - Selected Poems by Billy Collins. My niece, a poet herself, reminded me in her daily Haiku gem that I’ve been meaning to read his poetry. Ever since June, when our little writing group in France sat on squashy sofas one evening after supper, and read him aloud to each other and we laughed till the tears ran.

Now I am careful not to let the oily dressing on my rocket leaves flip onto the pristine paper while I eat and read. Sometimes his words make me want to cry. And sometimes I laugh out loud, alone in our evening garden, the giant poplar tree above me about to throw its long shadow across the page.

Badgered Sweetcorn

Thursday 2nd September

Day 134

At 8.30 this morning, on my way to the farmer’s market, I pass pavements of children in school uniform - grey and purple. Some of them look too small, too vulnerable, to be in the lions’ den of a classroom. The misty coolness of September haunts the air, like a beckoning ghost, even though the sun is warming up a blue sky. I never wanted to go back to school, always mourned the loss of the holidays, the end of summer and happiness.

I buy four sweetcorn cobs at my favourite vegetable stall. They look like tight rows of squeaky yellow pearls, nestling in their papery green coats, sprouting hairy tassels. I hope they will make up for the ones at the allotment. The ones the badgers destroyed. They raided in the night - thieves with claws and teeth stronger than a man’s - knocked down the stately canes, ripped off the new, nearly ripe cobs, peeled back their protection and chewed each one, leaving the bed trampled, corn spattered, broken.

“How is it at the allotment?” asks my husband on the phone from France.

“Oh, it’s been very hot here”, I say. “I’ve been watering the tomatoes in the greenhouse.”

I don’t want to tell him about the loss of the sweetcorn that he’s been nurturing all these months. I don’t want to spoil his happiness. Not yet anyway - even though it feels like I’m lying.

Borlotti Beans

Wednesday 1st September

Day 133

All day I have been in the company of dear, dear women.

I sort my linen cupboard with my sister. We fold sheets - the big ones that you need two people for - to stretch between you like a swinging sail, to pull tight and snap in half and half again and offer the ends up to make a hanging square. We remember the times our mother was standing at the other end of the sail.

At lunch we are three around the table - in the centre sits a bowl of borlotti beans - our first picking. They lose their speckled pink coats in cooking, look a bit pale and dull beige. But if you dress them while they are still steaming hot in a good few glugs of fruity olive oil, plenty of crushed garlic and sea salt and stir in ripe chopped tomatoes and flat leaf parsley - they are meltingly delicious. We laugh a lot and later no-one minds that the plum cake isn’t quite cooked in the middle.

Tonight we are a different three in the dark of the cinema, squealing out loud in the scary bits, giggling in the street on the way home. Nudged together like round, soft borlotti beans.