My Lost Valentine

The Birthday cake that didn't need rescuing after all -  Carrot and Walnut and Coconut  - not dry or raw in the middle - studded with juicy golden sultanas ( that I brought back from Portugal) and layered up with orange zested cream cheese frosting - glad I put it in a bigger tin  - even though it took ages to cook.

Thank you Delia Smith and Yottam Ottolenghi  - you don't know it, but the combination of your two Carrot Cake recipes that I fiddled around with, was a great hit with the birthday party guests.

It was a full moon last night. Last full moon was on Valentine's night. ( What's Valentine? asks my husband?) We were in New Zealand and this was the view we had from the restaurant over looking Lake Tekapo with the sun going down .....

and the moon rising. My husband wants to leave after our meal but I want to stay and have a dessert even though it's getting chilly. I like watching the couples having their photos taken with the moon in the background and the children running around and the band playing in the bar next door. So I order a creme brulee with a sour berry compote on the side -  which isn't delicious and doesn't fill the hollow hunger for my lost Valentine.

Three brown envelopes arrive in the post this morning bringing out my nervous dread......although I do hear my sister's voice in my head Don't panic yet. The first is from the DWP ( work and pensions). My fear is that letter will be calling my husband to have another medical and to be reassessed for his benefit....or that he'll lose it and we'll have to go to tribunal again. It isn't that. His benefit has actually gone up by £2 a week because of changes in the system....

The second envelope is from the DVLA. My fear is that my husband will be re-assessed for his driving licence and they won't re-new it. The letter says they are looking into the medical evidence and it could take 12 weeks. I think this means he will have to take a test and he probably won't pass.

The third envelope contains his re-newed licence for another year. Which is a huge relief and makes me  wonder if the people at the DVLA ever talk to each other.

Our lives would change dramatically if my husband couldn't drive any more - a lot of his independence would go..... I'm so grateful for this extension .....but I know we'd still find a way to be when it does happen....there is always a way through....through the fear to the other side..... if you expect miracles.....

Put It In A Bigger Tin

  

This afternoon we walk in the misty gardens at the National Trust's Knights Hayes Court. My husband mostly looks up to the sky and marvels at the height of the trees -  still winter skeletal. I mostly look down at the bare earth and wonder at the brightness and perfection of small flowers pushing their way to the light.

The wind is sharp and cold and the mist is turning to drizzle  - our excuse to have tea in the cafe. We share a slice of Carrot and Pumpkin Seed Cake topped with a thick layer of white frosting. It's crumbly and moist and orange flecked with carrot and apricots. To drown out the noise of two tiny crying babies I think about the birthday cake I made this morning cooling on a rack in the kitchen at home.....and the drama I had about taking it out of the oven after 5 minutes and transferring the sticky mixture to another cake tin because I had doubled the recipe but didn't put it in a bigger tin...even though all my experience and instincts said put it in a bigger tin.

I won't know till I cut it tomorrow if it's tender, moist and crumbly or raw in the middle and dry on the outside. My instinct  - and the evidence of the skewer I stuck in the middle before I took it out of the oven - says it's the former. But it seems I don't always trust my instincts.....although I usually know how to rectify culinary mistakes... a covering of white frosting often works....

Half In and Half Out

Garden primroses.

Solitary daffodil.

Crocuses -  tender as skin.

Wild violet - I think.

Wild stitchwort? Belinda would know - check out her lovely wild flower blog at Belinda Whitworth - Her Outdoors.

Market Narcissi -  heavenly perfume -  loud enough to drown out shouting....

Today's bunch of spring

Willow buds ( possibly) in the park.

I'm sitting in the open doorway -  half in and half out of the kitchen - my feet on the warm patio step - the sun on my face. A bee is hovering and humming over the mauve flowers of the trailing rosemary bush - the one our pussycat used to snooze under. Behind me on the table is a mixed bunch of daffodils and narcissi  which I bought in the market this morning - I can smell their deep perfume - almost like tropical frangipani. The shouting voices of the neighbours' children, playing with a ball, are drowning out the bee.

I'm taking a break from cleaning our spare room, including the shower, and making up the bed for my big sister who is coming to stay at the weekend.  The sun on the garden is such an invitation to stop and  gaze at the early tender signs of spring - even though there's only one solitary daffodil bud waving like  a curled flag from a pot. Usually I wouldn't linger when I'm in my 'I have to GET ON mode'  but something keeps me there - half in and half out of the doorway.

I'm thinking about yesterday's blog ....about what happened to our old life and how do I do this new one....and then I realise with a sort of drawing back a veil moment that there isn't an old or a new life. The past really is over and I only made up some fantasy future anyway about how I imagined it would be....and it hurts and hurts if I spend too much time there. But what I do have is my life now - uncertain, messy, scary, sad and also full of love and gentleness and support and possibility.

So instead of being half in and half out of my life I could embrace it all, just the way it is today - give all of it house room - like in  Rumi's The Guest House.... I could take my husband's hand and let the perfume of the narcissi drown out the shouting in my head.

THE  GUEST  HOUSE
	This being human is a guest house.
	Every morning a new arrival.
	A joy, a depression, a meanness,
	some momentary awareness comes
	as an unexpected visitor.
	Welcome and entertain them all!
	Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
	who violently sweep your house
	empty of its furniture,
	still, treat each guest honorably.
	He may be clearing you out
	for some new delight.
	The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
	meet them at the door laughing,
	and invite them in.
	Be grateful for whatever comes,
	because each has been sent
	as a guide from beyond.

New Zealand/Old Zealand

Crocuses opening in River Valley Park in Exeter,

and snoozing Mallards on the river bank.

Field mushrooms

 fried in coconut oil and garlic for tonight's supper 

with a mustardy Chermoula dressing.

 I think it's warm enough to hang out the washing today - six of my husband's jumpers on the line -  but they are still damp at 6pm.

The nice man at the Genius Bar in the Apple Centre says my 6 year old laptop is now classed as vintage.....so I'm thinking about a new one.....and all that learning I will have to do.....and how much I like this old one.....and how I don't like change....which is the signature of my life now however much I resist it.

The way I'm resisting at the moment is to make us huge nutritious suppers .....and later I prowl through  the kitchen cupboards looking for something to fill up my imaginary hunger....dried apricots and cashew nuts don't really work but I used up the dark chocolate bars last week making a cake.

My husband sleeps a lot today after his Museum visit with the nice people at Innovations in Dementia.  He doesn't go to his ceramics class and as he has a cold I'm not sure he tasted much of tonight's supper anyway. I bought the mushrooms in the farmers' market  - not a variety I've seen before -  flat as a small hand, gilled and grey/ brown with a fat spongy stalk - chewy and nutty with garlic and spring onions. 

We had them with roasted sweet potatoes, a slab of grilled salmon, white sprouting broccoli and lashings of my version of Chermoula - mostly parsley, garlic, a grassy Spanish olive oil, lemon juice,  crushed toasted cumin and whole grain mustard instead of chilli.

Think I'm just missing New Zealand and being in holiday limbo. One day when we were driving west towards Franz Joseph Glacier my husband said,

This is New Zealand isn't it?

Yes.

Then he says,

I know it's an odd question but was there ever an Old Zealand?

It makes me wonder what ever happened to my old husband and our old life...... and how do you grow into a new territory without the stamina or drive of a pioneer?

Magic and Marmalade

There's a man on a ladder in the bathroom - mending the ceiling light over the basin. It needs a new transformer he says, as the burnt-out one was put in in 2004. He's our lovely local electrician. If you call him he nearly always comes the next day - unless he's on holiday in the Gambia where he was last week. He's old school, polite, shakes your hand when he arrives and leaves. He has a strong Devon accent and says to my husband who is going out for a drive,

Sorry not to talk to thee.

We've known him for ten years now.....my husband doesn't remember his name.....wouldn't recognise him in the street .....doesn't know what he's talking about but thanks him for coming anyway....says how grateful he is. Me too.

While the electrician does his magic with the electrics in the bathroom, I go downstairs and start making marmalade, scooping out the squidgey pulp from the shells of the Seville oranges (which I boiled for 3 hours and which have been sitting in their bitter juices in the fridge for a week, waiting for me to find a  clear stretch of jam making time).

I always use the same recipe, a Frances Bissell one, given to me by a dear friend,written out on pretty note paper, which is a bit sticky and smeary now but I know it by heart. Jane Grigson has a similar recipe in her Fruit Book. You boil the oranges first, so cutting up the skins into shreds is a doddle. The only part which requires stamina and patience is rubbing the soft flesh and pips through a fine sieve into a smooth gloop to add to the bubbling syrup.

It takes me ages - my right hand still sore from pruning all the blackcurrant, redcurrant and gooseberry bushes on the allotment on Sunday - and I can feel that familiar ache in my forefinger - pretty sure it's arthritis. So grateful for my hands though - how lost I'd be without them.

Grateful too for the new bright light in the bathroom.....even though it highlights my random grey hairs and I'm sure I didn't have so many wrinkles before we went to NZ.....  wish I could just slot in a new  younger transformer whenever I feel old and slow and weary like I'm feeling now....

Toast And The End Of The Lilies

French Toast -  brunch on first day in New Zealand at Queen's Wharf in Auckland. ( That's maple syrup in the sugar crusted glass....)

Smoked  Cheddar and Fig chutney roll -  our picnic at Saunton Sands, North Devon, on Saturday

Razor Shell and blinding sun, Saunton Sands

Evening in University Park, Exeter, with my brother last week.

Welcome home gift of  Oriental lilies.

My husband discovered French Toast ( NZ/ US style, with bananas, bacon and maple syrup) on our first hot bright blue morning in Auckland down on the harbourside. He loved every mouthful - doesn't remember eating it before. He ordered it again for lunch the next day in Rotorua when we escaped into a cafe during a huge downpour. I was afraid he would eat nothing else the whole of our trip.

I don't like it myself ( I have an aversion to any kind of soggy bread) but promised I'd make him French Toast when we got home - which I did last night -  my version at least  - I balked at serving the banana skin - sliced and fried the banana instead - in butter. He has asked me to show him how to cook it. I'm resisting that ( afraid that he'll make enough for four people and eat it all ) - trying to impress on him the thing about its fattening potential and the importance of it being an occasional weekend treat.

But I think he only remembers the taste - the sweetness and the comfort of it - and that every day is treat potential and you can never have enough toast.....or jam.

This morning I threw away the last of the beautiful waxy white lilies ( faded now) - a welcome home gift from a dear friend nearly three weeks ago......feeling sad for her and her husband - their little dog, their long life companion, died yesterday......and another dear friend whose young dog was killed today in an accident. The suddenness of it,  the shock of it - unprepared for the silent cavern these beloved non -humans leave in the rooms, in the hearts, they inhabited.

Trusting the Beauty in the Land

I've been to the hairdresser and the chiropodist. 

I've ironed my sarong.

I've bought my husband new sandals.

I've booked the Whale Watching trip in Kaikoura.

The fridge is echoey empty

just some grapes and some greens for tomorrow 

and heels of Parmesan cheese to freeze.

I haven't replied to my emails.

The No Jetlag homeopathic pills haven't arrived in the post.

My friend in New Zealand says it's cold and wet, blowing Arctic winds.

 It was 1degree C last night in the South Island where they live.

But she says bring a hat and suncream as well as a mac

and a spirit of hope.

At least an expectation for 30 degrees C 

which is more normal for February.

I've been advised to pack a large quantity of

patience and humour

to stay present to each ticking moment.

And I'm trusting the beauty in the land and the lakes

will calm my anxious heart.

Last blog for a whole month.....and probably a week or two to get over the jet lag....