Reading Week: Being Mortal, Bees, Meadowland and Gods in Ruins

Lady in the Mirror by Harold Dunbar

The In-Charge tells me that I'm not very good at taking time off.
He has always had the knack of pacing himself. He does a job and when he gets tired, he stops and does something else. Later on, he goes back to job A.
How enviable that is.
How sickening.

The thing is, my To Do List is endless, so I throw myself at things like a headless chicken, and if - for any reason - a gap opens up in my schedule, I gleefully try to squash in an extra, unscheduled job. Even then, I often end up feeling as if I've achieved nothing by nightfall.
'Never a moment to lose,' the In-Charge says. 'That's your problem. One of them,' he adds.
I didn't ask what the others were.

However, I've been tired recently.  The sort of tired that a good night's sleep isn't curing. There seems to have been a lot going on this last while, and on top of everything else I pulled a muscle in my right arm in November and it isn't getting better.
So I've taken a week off and spent it reading.
It's been bliss.

Reading Woman with Dog - Birbee

Perhaps it's my Protestant upbringing, but normally I find it impossible to read during daylight hours. Nagging voices in my head taunt me with laziness, list things I ought to be doing, threaten the devil itching to commandeer idle hands. I'd have to be ill in bed to read a book during the day, but - thank heavens - I'm never ill in bed. The trouble is, I'm so tired when I climb in at bedtime that I generally fall asleep after a few pages, so the pile of books beside my bed gets higher and higher. In fact, the In-Charge once asked me if I could please sort them out, as he couldn't vacuum round my side. I blush to confess there were 73 books in tottering stacks, but I have turned over a new leaf since then, and the heap is a good deal more modest.

Angelica, The Artist's Daughter Reading by Vanessa Bell

I started with Atul Gawande's slim volume, Being Mortal, thanks to Isobel who recommended it.

For such a serious book, it was amazingly easy to read, and I would urge everyone to get it.

Gawande, as a doctor, sees more clearly than most that as science has given us unprecedented quantity of life most of us have stopped considering its quality. He shows how easily, without our even realising it, the goal posts keep shifting. I found the book an eye-opener. It reaffirmed many things that I already think, opened my mind to possibilities I hadn't been aware of - especially in how we care for people, and made me realise how important it is that each of us choose how we spend the final stages of this one, special, unrepeatable life that we are given. 

Fairy Tales by Mary L Gow

Then I moved on to The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

It's an older book, that I'd picked off a swap shelf recently. In fact, I nearly put it back, but I'm glad I didn't. I loved it. I loved every bit of it. It's about a 14 year old girl in South Carolina in the mid '60s,  consumed by half memories of her mother who died when she was four, and the problems of living with an angry and unloving father. How she deals with these, with Rosaleen, her 'nanny' and everything else that happens, is recounted with humour, insight and an incredibly sure touch. It was funny, it was sad, it was a glimpse of life in a different place and era. Wonderful. 

I believe it was made into a movie, but I haven't seen it.

  

Painting by John Ennis

I have now moved on to the wonderful Kate Atkinson's most recent book, A God in Ruins. I happened to see it in Waterstones when I was in the UK last week. Oh Waterstones, where art thou? I miss you! Easons just isn't the same, I'm afraid. Anyway, I picked it up automatically - I love Kate Atkinson, but have only this week opened the cover. Imagine then my joy and delight to find that it is a sequel to her wonderful, absorbing, strange but seductive Life After Life which I read at the end of last year. Oh, the joy of being reunited with characters you thought you'd said goodbye to! I am still in the depths of the book, but once again I find myself under Ms Atkinson's spell.

Mrs Graafland-Marres by Robert Archibald Graafland

In between all these delights, I have been dipping in and out of Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field by John Lewis-Stempel. On the face of it, you'd wonder how much one could write about a field, but from the first sentence I was hooked. Ironically, words cannot describe how beautifully this book is written - sometimes Stempel's prose is so aching beautiful that I have to go back and read the page all over again. Aside from that, his one-ness with the field is remarkable, as if it is just an extension of himself. I have been dipping in and out only because I want the book to last for as long as possible. The whole year would be nice - especially as it is written in monthly chapters - but there's no hope of that, I will have gobbled it up all too soon.

 A Favourite Author by Poul Friis Nybo

And, as the icing on the cake, I've been catching up with back issues of The English Garden which is, for my money, the best magazine out there. My mother gave me a subscription for my birthday a year or two ago, and I have enjoyed it so much, I've carried on. I came back from the UK armed with the last two editions and have been reading them - again in small bites - from cover to cover. 

Heaven.

  

 The Reader by Roberto Ploeg

I'm not quite sure how I'll switch out of this mode. It becomes quite moorish after a day or two. Especially when the wind is howling and rain is battering on the windows, as it's doing now.

Christmas and the Mystery of the Missing Spoons

 
We had some friends over for supper on Boxing Day - or Stephen's Day as I always forget to call it.
It was a lovely, informal evening of food and wine and chat.
#2 Son was home for Christmas, and as he is an excellent cook, I was only too delighted to have him help with all the preparations. He made some lovely baby peppers stuffed with a spicy cous-cous, feta, mushroom and spinach concoction; and butternut squash in a creme fraiche and mustard sauce.
Along with roasted sweet potatoes, Christmas gammon and Jamie Oliver's gorgeous rainbow salad, it all went down a treat.
We probably could have stopped there, but there were several puddings too - two of them based around oranges and bitter marmalade.
Yum.

Why are rooms only ever tidy once a year?

I know that many - quite rightly - lament the fact that Christmas has become a meaningless financial blow-out.
It isn't in our house. I don't mean to sound priggish or virtuous, but for one thing we've never had enough money to do that, whether we wanted to or not.
But we do tend to eat a lot. Not caviar and champagne, but a lot, nonetheless.
So I guess Christmas is perhaps as much of a blow-out, just not in financial terms.
But after the rain and the drear and the sheer, utter greyness of the year's last quarter, there is something totally wonderful about sitting around a house full of fairy lights, firelight and Christmas decorations, whilst eating, drinking and laughing with friends and family.

I bit the bullet big time this year. For ages, while the boys were away, either working or simply being too far away to travel home for the season, we didn't have a tree. There didn't seem to be much point, and oddly, in this part of the country where so many seem to grow, it can be hard to find a nice one.
When I was visiting my parents in Suffolk in early December, the lovely, old-fashioned greengrocer opposite their village house had masses of them, clustered outside his shop on little wooden stands. Each one was as gorgeous as the last, and I'd quite happily have brought any of them back with me, except it would have caused a bit of a problem at the airport.
Then, when I got home, I decided we'd just not bother, but after a bit of thought, I realised that actually, despite my years of abstinence, the tree is an integral part of what Christmas is. So I bought an artificial one.
I'm slightly wincing, just confessing to that, but you know what? I think it was a good decision. OK, it took ages to put up (but only because I'd never done it before. And there were no instructions), but it looks good, it gave me a reason to unearth all my favourite decorations, and there's something about a tree glowing in the corner of the room that takes me back to all the Christmases that ever were, and kindles warm memories that I can't even place or name.

The friends who came to visit said they liked it too, and it's still there, reminding me that there are a few days of the season still to go.
A tree isn't our only traditional 'event' - there's the Christmas Jigsaw. The In-Charge rather turned his nose up at my choice of puzzle for this year's festivities. I wasn't really surprised - I chose it because I liked it, not with him in mind this time round. It's a sort of collage of Victorian Christmas designs in cigarette card format.
Lovely.
So after our Boxing Day glut was over, #2 Son and I moved on to conquering the puzzle.We transferred it onto the kitchen table (on it's handy pin-board) and spent a couple of evenings and a rainy day putting it together.
It was a tricky one,as they seem to have introduced some very weird shapes that are, quite frankly, not only meaningless,but which don't actually hold the thing together. What is that about?
Anyway, it looks great, and I'm now postponing the day when it has to be broken up and go back in the box.

My lovely Victorian inspired jigsaw

We went for a walk on our favourite beach as well. The ModelDogs raced and chased and sank into deep pools left by the tide, and were generally thrilled with life. They looked splendid in their special Christmas collars.

SuperModel is still afraid of accidentally dissolving

And we started Christmas, as always, with the service of 9 Lessons and Carols from Kings College, Cambridge. It was rather a bitty affair this year, and not the satisfying fix it usually is for me, as our broadband is so appalling these days that it came and went, went being the more operative of the two.
Fortunately I have a CD of another service, from long ago, so after the official one had fizzled away in a haze of buffering silence, I put that on instead, before we set off for a jolly dinner at a friend's house to welcome Christmas in. During the evening the rain even stopped, the clouds parted, and I went outside and stared at the full moon. I didn't catch a glimpse of Father Christmas speeding through the sky, but it was magical all the same.

Model Dog likes to open her own present all by herself

So it was a very good Christmas, despite missing #1 Son like toothache.
But there still remains a mystery, that several days into the New Year remains unsolved.
All the silver spoons that were used at our Boxing Day party have disappeared without trace.
The In-Charge - apparently - washed them up, dried them and put them on the table in the late hours after our guests had departed.
(So I can't even ponder whether they each left with a spoon in their top pocket or reticule.)
It is a puzzle even more brain-defying than the Victorian cigarette cards, and one that my repeated searches of drawers, dressers, rubbish bags, hidden corners and laundry baskets has failed to solve.
My sister, who also lives in a very old house - as does my mother - swears it is the pixies.
Well, I hope when they've finished staring at their reflections, the pixies will feel moved to return them.
To the right house.

 

The birds had a Christmas present too - a wreath full of goodies

Hag Stones

We went to our favourite beach on Christmas Eve.
It wasn't a particularly nice day. The sun shone in fits and starts, and I think we got rained on and blown at, but it didn't matter.
It was the first time we'd all been together for more years than we could count, and the weather wasn't going to put us off.

Christmas Eve

We collected hag-stones along the way, peeking through them at the charcoal grey skies and tumultuous white foam on the sea. They are magical, hag stones, the 'eyes' in them said to be doorways to other worlds, especially if you look through them in moonlight.
A perfect circular eye encompassing your heart's desire.
When I looked through them, I saw all my family together in one place.


They say that you don't find hag stones, they find you.

I have collected them for years. Perhaps one day I will hang them from the bedpost to ward off nightmares, or string them from the ceiling to protect my animals. Who knows.

On Christmas Eve, my loved ones held firmly together in their ring-eyes, I was happy to thread them onto some pretty ribbon as a memory of our first Christmas together in this house for eight years.
A very special time.

It seems unbelievable, but just a few weeks ago I wondered how I'd ever get the house together for Christmas. Much as I longed to see my boys, I dreaded them coming home and feeling that Christmas wasn't what it used to be. I've not been hugely well this year and as a result, the place has looked more and more like an ill-fated jumble sale as the months have gone by - unloved; stuff everywhere, dust settled in drifts.
The worse it gets, the less you feel able fee to deal with it.
The worse you get, the less you care.

I don't really want to think about it. Mercifully the In-Charge and #2 Son helped pull it together - I'd never have managed it without them. We blitzed everything: threw the vacuum cleaner, a load of dusters and buckets of hot water in, locked the doors and fought it out.
I wasn't the last man standing. The effort nearly wiped me out, but it was worth it. By the time #1 Son arrived the night before Christmas Eve, lights were twinkling, the Christmas tree was glowing in the corner and the house was rich with the scent of venison and spices.

The eve of Christmas Eve

Everything is ready

The stars that #1 Son and I made when he was three were hanging - traditionally - in the hallway, all the most special cards that we've received over the years were brightening the walls on their ribbons, beloved decorations had been taken from their tissue lined boxes and the candles were lit.

We didn't do much. Apart from our walk on the beach, we mostly sat around catching up with each other. We laughed a lot, drank champagne for breakfast, talked about life on the far side of the world and life on the ocean wave. We filled and refilled glasses with red wine, we ate all the delicious treats we associate with Christmas, and couldn't eat some chocolates that were just too beautiful to consume. We opened presents, laughed as Model Dog opened her present and SuperModel's, and flitted in and out of a jigsaw on the table in the corner - another tradition that has lain dormant for years. And then on Boxing Day we welcomed friends for a supper party just as we used to in days gone by.
After so many silent years, the winter song of the house has been renewed.
What a joy.

We lay around

Model Dog opened her present and SuperModel's

Chocolates just too beautiful to eat

Bollinger for breakfast

A suitably themed jigsaw for 2014. The flag was the most difficult bit - maybe we have lived out of the UK too long

Now they have gone back to their own worlds. #1 Son to Edinburgh and Iceland before heading back to the West Indies to meet his boat. #2 Son happily not to the far side of the world this time, just elsewhere in Ireland, where he's planning to stay for awhile.
Standing in Dublin Airport a few days ago, waving goodbye, I thought of the Hag stones, threaded on their scarlet ribbon.
I'm glad the Hag stones found us on Christmas Eve.
They are locked safely in the eyes of the stones, my darling boys.
Whenever I look through, I will see them, spooling out along the paths of their own lives, yet held fast within a circle of warm light that spells Christmas.
You see, they are magical, Hag stones.
As magical as Christmas itself.
As magical as love.




You can read about another Christmas here

And here

Or even here

Food, Glorious Food

A typical sight in France

At a very cosy supper party last night, a friend was telling me that she had just come back from France, and went on to comment on how thin everyone is over there - especially the women.
Didn't I say the very same thing just a few months ago! 

There is nothing thin about me - well, apart from my bank balance that is - but nothing personally thin about me. And nor is there ever likely to be - I have just come in from a damp morning's work in the garden, utterly ravenous, and devoured I don't know how many rice cakes and cheese, closely followed by a large slice of the delicious chocolate cake that my friend Clare kindly sent yesterday.

Much to the In-Charge's disgust, I am very fond of rice cakes - especially with cheese. He often says: 'I don't know why you buy those, I've loads of that stuff in the workshop.' (He is, of course, referring to polystyrene insulation board.) My friend DodoWoman jokes of low-fat yoghurt: 'The more you eat, the thinner you get', and I guess rice cakes fall into the same category.
Although the trials on that one aren't too promising so far, despite forming the basis of my lunch, I haven't noticed any thin-ity creeping in.


Needless to say, it was at the chocolate cake stage that the extreme 'lightness of being' maintained by so many French women returned to my mind.
How is it possible to be thin in France (or anywhere else for that matter)?
Do the French not have eyes? Don't their mouths water? Do their tummies not rumble?
Are they boulangerie-d out, or are they just made of sterner stuff?

How can one resist?

I suppose, on reflection, I don't dive into a cake shop every time I go into my local town, but then (please forgive me, Irish cake shops) - there really is no comparison. NO comparison.

A pâtisserie in Paris

We sat at the high bar-style table in this very shop in Paris and had a quick bite one day. The In-Charge, as is his wont, chose some savoury item, and I ummed and aahhed and aahhed and ummed. The thing is, I tend to choose old favourites over and over again, instead of branching out and trying something new, and I was about to go for a tarte au citron when I surprised myself and - shunning strawberry, almond and chocolate confections - opted for the tarte à l'orange instead.

One mouthful convinced me that I had, in fact, died and gone to heaven. It was 'Tivine' as #1 Son used to say when he was tiny. Totally Tivine. I'd thought it might prove to be slightly artificial in flavour, or too sweet, or too something, but no, it was melting, smooth, tangy perfection. And had that particular pâtisserie been on our daily route, I would have found an excuse to go in every morning.

If I lived in Paris, I would get fatter and fatter no doubt learn to control myself. I would certainly have to plan my routes quite carefully in order to avoid such places of temptation. But that's just the problem - they are around every corner. Even the least promising of of streets will throw a chocolatier or boulangerie at you out of the blue.

Patrick Roger's wondrous chocolates

Innocently walking round the corner from Saint-Michel towards Odéon, we stumbled upon Patrick Roger, chocolatier extraordinaire, and stood staring, spellbound through the window. Or at least, I did. How could chocolates possibly be so beautiful? How could you bring yourself to eat them? I would just want to collect them - a different one each week, to keep in a gorgeous glass jar on the dresser.
I did - and do - wonder what they taste like. They look like splendiferous king-of-the-castle gobstoppers. Either that or Murano glass marbles. Alas, we didn't go in, so I shall never know.

Not everyone would find such things a temptation, I know.
My friends Sarah and DodoWoman don't have sweet teeth. But they are just as easily waylaid by other delights. They would, no doubt, have found their feet automatically turning left outside our apartment door every day, to visit the huitre-stall just a few feet round the corner. If there were just huitre-stalls everywhere, I would be mince, très mince indeed.

And I know for a fact that when Sarah or DodoWoman are in Paris, Italy, New York or even St George's Market in Belfast, just the sight of all this glory is enough to cartwheel both their brains and tastebuds through a kaleidoscope of cookery books, and they can't wait to rush home with newly-bought treasures and start cooking.

Glorious tomatoes

Every vegetable under the sun

More huitres - and allied fishy things

Charcuterie

For me, the orgasmic delight isn't in the thought of mouth-watering dishes to come, as it is for them. It's in the colour-fest here and now. I can't get enough of looking, and could happily walk around all day, just absorbing the complete palette such an array provides, the light, the shadows, the shapes, the contrasts. The food itself could be flowers, or yarn, or bolts of material - if the rainbow colour effect was there, I'd be perfectly happy. Take these, for example. They fulfil all my colour-desires, but arouse no hunger whatsoever, so I'm obviously not past redemption.

Meringues as only the French could make them

I suppose part of it is that, much as I like eating, I don't particularly enjoy cooking. Perhaps the deciding factor on whether I see food as actual feast or visual feast is when it's already done for you - no cooking required. And while I have lots of sweet teeth, I have a good few savoury ones as well. These, lovely as they are to behold, I - like Sarah and DodoWoman, would also stop and buy.

A rhapsody of olives

 Instant food.

And these.
In fact, I might linger in the vicinity of this stall until I'd finished eating my purchase, so that I could get some more. They are my absolute favourites.

 And these I would buy because they combine both kinds of feasting in one fell swoop.

But then it's back to the boulangerie stuff. More instant food?

I don't know what it is about bread. Perhaps it has something to do with being one of life's staples, but it's hard to walk past a shop full of fresh bread without diving in, even if you don't need any. It's about more than need, it's about comfort and stability and well being, about sharing with friends and family, about hospitality and food on the table. And of course 'bread' is a generic concept, embracing all other food.

And once you're inside the baker's shop, well there you are, back at square one.

I'm afraid thin isn't going to happen any time soon.
How do these French women do it?

(I suppose I could try burning my passport. It would be a start.)

There and Back Again

Yesterday I took a day off.
Leaving the In-Charge and the dogs to looks after each other, I went to Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.
It was lovely.

Our dentist is in Enniskillen, but even that hasn't managed to put me off the pretty little town.
I wasn't visiting the dentist yesterday - just doing odds and ends and taking time out.

I got up early and set out as it was getting light. Stupidly I forgot to take the camera with me, a shame as it turned into the most beautiful day, starting with a pink dawn in a washed, cyan sky still littered with bright stars and half a moon. The mountains, Benwisken, Benbulben, King's Mountains and Knocknarea were a clear cut half circle against the horizon in front of me - a welcome change, as only two days ago, on that same road, they had all been surgically removed by lowering skies and mist.

Here is Knocknarea at dawn on another day. The cairn on the top is affectionately known as Maeve's Lump. It is the fabled site of the ancient Queen of Connacht's grave.

Knocknarea at dawn

As I drove along the road on the hip of the mountains above Glencar Lake, I realised what a mistake it had been to forget the camera. The early sun was warm on the trees that clothe the hillside opposite, and golden on the still, calm lake below. It was quite beautiful, as were the rocks of Hamilton's Leap above me.
They are called Hamilton's Leap because some dastardly Captain or Colonel or some-such, after setting fire to Sligo Town, led his troop in a triumphant charge northwards, but racing through the darkness they came to an ill-fated but well deserved end as they plunged to their deaths over the sheer, cliff-like rocks.
Or that's the story, anyway.

Hamilton's Leap?

To be strictly honest, I'm not exactly sure which specific bit is Hamilton's Leap, but the heights above Glencar on the Sligo side of the valley lend themselves admirably to the tale.

Benbulben lies opposite Hamilton's Leap, separated by Glencar Lake on the valley floor

In Enniskillen - filled with sunshine and happy people about their Saturday business - I  meandered lazily from one end of the town to the other, starting off by selecting and engraving dog-tags at the wonderful do-it-yourself machine in the pet shop. One for our new canine friend Millie, and one each for Model Dog and the TeenQueenSuperModel who both lost theirs on the same day, although both deny any knowledge of what happened. Job done, I carried on - trawling through the numerous charity shops for interesting second-hand books to add to my bed-side pile; buying some cut-price wool for my knitting basket, bumping into two friends from Sligo; snapping up rose food and slug pellets at a third of the price I'd pay south of the border, and stocking up on cartons of long-life goats milk for the cats and custard tarts and crumpets for the In-Charge - all items unavailable at home.

I also succumbed to these.

Remember them?
I haven't seen any for an age.


Unfortunately I ate rather a lot of them on the two-hour drive home, which just goes to show: nostalgia is fattening.

Later on we went to our friend DodoWoman for a DoDelightful supper party, taking with us Millie's Mother, of Talentui fame. It was DoDelicious and a lovely way to end a happy day.