What Are You A Voice For?

Sunday 6th February

Day 291

Snowdrops in someone’s front garden, two nodding clumps, stop us in our tracks. My first sighting this year. We are walking to the park with dear friends and their little dog. Walking off the brunch we have just eaten, sitting around our table, still sprinkled with tiny gold stars from last night.

Earlier this morning I made cornmeal muffins to lay the ghost of the last batch which were dry and crumbly. These were moist - a different recipe - savoury and sweet, studded with chunks of white Cheshire cheese and red pepper and onion. They were good companions to scrambled eggs, crisp saute potatoes and a sloppy relish of mushroom, tomato and spinach. And gallons of Earl Grey tea. But sadly no room for croissant and marmalade.

As we walk and talk, I tell my friend about a recent phone conversation with my niece, my writer niece, who inspired me to start this blog. Ten months ago. My friend asks me,

‘What are you a voice for in your writing?’

I’m wondering about it - in my writing but also in my life. Which may be the same thing. My heart on the page.

Precious Seeds

Saturday 5th February

Day 290

A high wind rackets around the garden this morning. While my husband tackles the green jungle of cuttings in the middle of the lawn, I don rubber gloves and scrub the kitchen skirting boards with Jif and and an old toothbrush. Dear friends are coming to supper. I’m adhering to an ancient Chinese proverb along the lines of -

‘If you want a clean house, invite guests’.

Much spring cleaning and cooking later, they arrive at our front door, laden with a bounty of gifts, including iced Champagne and a packet of rare Rhodochiton seeds to share. Rhodichiton is a glorious climber dripping with purple bell shaped flowers in the summer. We linger on at the table, long after our we finish our plates of upside down pear tart and Seville orange ice cream, talking and talking. Watering the precious seeds of our lives while the candles burn low.

Blow Dry

Friday 4th February

Day 289

I don’t want to use the car unless I have to. No war on, but ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ seems a good question now in the light of new budgeting. So I walk into town and feel rain brooding in the wind. It bruises my face, tears at the buttons of my coat and gusts up dead leaves and litter, thrusting them against my legs. It’s a relief to arrive in the scented stillness of the hairdresser’s. Leaning my head back into the basin, I close my eyes and as the young girl behind me streams hot water through my hair, I feel the jangling tension slowly subsiding inside my body.

I find myself chattering to my hairdresser, thinking of things to say, when I’d rather be quiet. I ask her not to cut too much off.

When I open the front door I’m greeted by the smell of this morning’s cooking - fried onions and sweet peppers. I run upstairs to say hello to my husband. He swivels round in his office chair and looks at my haircut.

‘You don’t look any different, ‘ he says. It’s a good job he doesn’t know what it cost then.

Thursday's Moments

Thursday 3rd February

Day 288

Finding the first purple sprouting broccoli in the farmers’ market this morning - pert leaves springy as jumping beans.

Coffee in a cafe, exchanging memories of 1966 with a dear friend, leaving our African homes for a different life in the coolness of the northern hemisphere.

Lunch with my husband - stretching the left over mushroom risotto with Calvo Nero cabbage, parmesan shavings and peas - a pale creamy sea swirled with weed.

Flicking through a new cookery book - Jamie’s Thirty Minute Meals - while I test and test again my Seville orange marmalade, seething on the stove, trying to capture setting point on the icy saucer .It eludes me for a long ninety minutes.

Standing on the stairs, holding my husband’s misery at arm’s length with briskness and suggestions. Wishing his fear didn’t remind me of mine, a barb in my heart. Wishing I could be kinder - to him and to me.

Tonight the healing company of a circle of dear friends, the haunting notes of sitar and clear Indian voice. And afterwards when the music stops, squidgey chocolate fudge cake and laughing together in smaller circles.

Shapeshifter Sister

Wednesday 2nd February

Day 287

My sister is here to de-clutter me. To help me sift through bulging hanging files, the toppling mountain of my in-tray and the jumbles in my drawers. To throw away the things I keep because I can’t decide what to do with them, which take up space not only in my cupboards but in my mind. Of course I could tackle these tasks myself - and sometimes I do - but something beautiful happens when my sister brings her gift of order and clarity - her gentle wise-womanness - to my chaos. She applies William Morris’s secret of - ‘Love it, use it or get rid of it’. And holds the black bin liner open for me.

So I always feel better after her visit: shape-shifted.

Marmalade Joy

Tuesday 1st February

Day 286

Last night, over bowls of wild mushroom risotto, my wise and dear nephew reminded me to find a joyful moment in every day.

Early this morning, while he scraped the bottom of a jar of strawberry jam for his toast, I began my annual marmalade journey. It felt more like a pilgrimage - my companions twelve bitter oranges from sun baked Andalucia, two kilos of soft brown sugar from the islands of spice and human ordeals. And alongside them, memories of my aunty, her husband and her son who all died in recent marmalade winters, the snow still on the ground.

I love the alchemical steps - scooping out and sieving the gloopy, pip-studded flesh from the halved orange shells which I simmered for three hours yesterday, stacking and slicing them into long uneven strips, and stirring it all - gloop and peel - into the boiling cauldron of sugary amber liquid on the stove. Then a sweet sharp aroma pervades the kitchen like a siren spell. Witchlike, I hover with an icy cold saucer, dip my teaspoon through the steam, and snatch up samples, drops of dark coppery gold cooling on white china, waiting for that magical setting point, the crinkle on the surface of the skin.

Then it’s ready. I pour chunky ladlefuls into waiting hot glass jars - mostly recycled Bon Maman - protected with a jam collar so it doesn’t matter how clumsy I am - no drips down the sides. Each one sealed with the kiss of a waxed paper disc, and the stamp of a red checked lid. Ten pots of joy to share.

Long Grass

Monday 31st January

Day 285

I push open the door very gently in case my father is still asleep in his chair.

‘I’ve just woken up,’ he says.

‘How are you?’ I ask.

‘Well, I’m dogged by that things-left-undone feeling,’ he says.

He’s fretting about a long form he thinks he has to fill in to apply for a Blue Badge. So that we can park in the disability space when we take him to the hospital. He’s forgotten that my sister has already completed the form. But I recognise that feeling - guilt, procrastination, more guilt. I reassure him there is plenty of time.

‘But you know me,’ he says,’ I don’t like to let the grass grow under my feet.’

Which is why, among other things, he has many book titles to his name, and another with his editor. I notice how I'm still wandering through the long grasses of my own meadow.