All in the name of research

I have just made a triumphant carrot cake.  I am terribly pleased with myself.  The actual cake itself is moist and grainy and full of flavour, and the icing is sweet and sharp and tangy all at the same time.  It’s sitting downstairs in pride of place in the middle of the table, begging to be eaten.  I have had the tiniest slice, just to test it, and am saving the next one for my valedictory, ‘the children have finally gone to bed,’ cup of coffee to be savoured whilst watching ‘House’, and thanking the stars that I don’t have Lupus and my spleen on back to front.

One of the best things about this cake is that nobody in our family likes it except me, so I get to eat it all. What a shame. Cue evil cake genius laugh: ‘Mwahahahahhhhhcrrrhhhh,’ that last bit being me choking on the crumbs.  Actually the children will try anything as long as I tell them it’s cake (especially when it actually is cake), so they did make a valiant effort, but gave up after about half a slice.  I did get fulsome praise for it though.  They don’t like to knock my efforts when I make cake in case the well dries up.

The only time we have been in accord as  a family over cake related disasters was the time I tried to make courgette cake.  It was horrible. Really horrible.  You think, given that carrot cake should be horrible and isn’t, that courgette cake might work the same way, but it didn’t.  Although to be fair, it was my first go.  A professional courgette cake maker might have made something wondrous.  I don’t know. I’m not going to try again and I’ve never met a professional courgette cake maker.

This carrot cake recipe was from a book I’m reviewing, Tamasin Day Lewis’ ‘Supper for a Song.‘  I thought it was hardly fair to review a cook book without giving some of the recipes a whirl. It would be rude wouldn’t it? Especially when there are some very treaty type recipes to delight a girl’s heart.  I confess to being a teeny bit disappointed by Nigella’s recipe for carrot cup cakes in How to be a Domestic Goddess.  They’re a little bit too healthy tasting (i.e. you can actually taste the carrot), so I have been thinking for a while I ought to branch out into other recipes.  This was the perfect opportunity, despite the fact that I felt guilty making it. 

I generally defer to Nigella in all matters cake related, but every now and again I experience a small hiccup.  I cannot get her chocolate brownie recipe to work for me, and no matter how hard I try (and I did try hard.  To the extent of going out and buying a proper brownie pan in the correct measurements), it always fails to cook properly in the middle.  I had to defect to Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries to find a brownie recipe that works perfectly for me, and now it looks like I will be referring to Tamasin in all matters carrot cake related.  Although I shall not be making them very often, a) for the sake of my waistline and b) because grating carrots must be one of the most ball breakingly boring jobs in the history of kitchens.  I would even prefer to peel potatoes.

Nigella may speak to me again if I tell you that I am still in love with her recipe for Autumnal Birthday Cake, which is basically the most heavenly sponge which you make with about four gallons of maple syrup, and which when iced with the spectacular soft meringue style icing, which also involves another gallon of syrup, comes in at 9000 calories a slice.  Even Jason for whom the thought of defecting from the standard Victoria sponge with jam and cream is tantamount to heresy, was won over by this cake.

I did make something else from Tamasin’s book.  Jason loves old fashioned puddings with jam in.  Jam roly poly, steamed jam sponge etc.  There was a recipe called: ‘General Satisfaction’ which involved jam and custard spread over sponge fingers and topped with meringue that you ate piping hot, straight from the oven.  I thought it would be a triumph.  I especially liked the name. 

Nobody liked it, except my dad, who popped round to help us out with some errands and went home with a giant home cooked pudding as his reward.  In our house it is being renamed ‘Quite dissatisfied really.’  Although I never thought I would like it.  I am not a fan of old fashioned, suety type puds with jam.  I get horrible flash backs to the time Mickey Daley was sick in the dining hall at primary school and the custard welded the jug to the plate it was being carried in on.  Not exactly ‘Nam’ but nobody can blame me for that, I was too young. And in a different country.  We all have our own traumas to deal with in life.

Tomorrow I must endeavour to try some of the savoury things.  I’m not sure what though.  My family are such picky buggers I keep flicking through the pages thinking, ‘I could make that if only I took out x, y and z,’ and then thinking: ‘well, what’s the bloody point of that then?’  I may have to make things that only I like (again) and just accept that half a stone in weight is an acceptable gain over a weekend if one is doing research.

I am a martyr to my reviewing.  Remind me never to say yes to the book on how to build your own ornamental pagoda out of cream crackers.

Hopeful

After the monumental effort that was the needless reworking of one of the finest plays of the English language, plus being in the throes of another sleepover as I type I feel that brevity is the soul of wit.  For once.

Here is the news:

• Jason is still in agony. His eyes are mercifully on the mend. His neck doesn’t seem to be. He is short tempered, short of sleep and short on speech.
• Tallulah woke up with both eyes gummed together. She spent the day with me.
• Oscar was fine and went to nursery to participate in a Halloween party in which he yet again refused to get dressed up. I am unsure whether this is a sign of insecurity about his self image, or such a strong sense of self image he can’t imagine wanting to be anyone else. I hope it’s that.
• Matilda went to Brownies. There were no contretemps. It was the least stressful Brownies she has attended for aeons.  This is bound to mean trouble ahead.
• I am tired, stressed, and have belly ache.  The belly ache will be fine by tomorrow.  I will probably still be tired and stressed. I am glad I decided not to be a nurse when I grow up. It is rubbish.

I remain however, somewhat hopeful.

On which note, here is today’s poem.  It is by another lovely poet, one whose earlier work I prefer to his later stuff and who, when I was a teenager I considered one of the greatest ever poets, along with Sylvia Plath (au naturellement. I was a teenager for God’s sake).  I am now not sure about the claim to greatness.  But this remains one of the loveliest poems I have ever heard, and for me, a curiously upbeat choice.

The chap’s name is Brian Patten. He is mostly known now for his collections of work for children, but he still writes and performs for adults and there are still moments of wonder.

Hopeful

Alone, tired, exhausted even

by what had not yet happened,

passing a cemetery on the outskirts of London I saw

an angel dip its hand into a grave

and pull out a fistful of cherry-blossom

Twelfth Night by Katyboo

Twelfth Night is a Shakespearean comedy.  Yes, that does mean dancing.  There are no specific instructions on when dances should be inserted, but as the whole play is crammed to the rafters with music (it being the food of love and all), you could throw some shapes anywhere you desire really.  It is only a matter of time before someone sets it in a dance studio with Madonna-esque crotch splitting leotards, coffee coloured pop socks and boom boxes the size of Suffolk.  I expect I will be away for that performance.  Katyboo is unwell.  Coffee coloured pop socks always have that effect on me I’m afraid.

 

It is also one of those comedies where there are hilarious japes concerning cross dressing and twins.  In Tudor times a health warning was issued on all the flyers: ‘Groundlings may wish to purchase a ftoute corfette for the prevention of sydes being fplitte due to the frenzy of comedy ensuing from men in frockes pretending to be men in britches and maidens in breeches pretending to be young sirrahs. ‘Swounds’ sayeth Master Shakespeare himself; ‘I chortled so immoderately I filled my codpiece with widdle. Even though I do saye so myfelfe.’ Etc.

 

The action goes down in the ancient kingdom of Illyria, which is apparently somewhere classical in the Balkans.  A watertight, get out of jail free country which nobody now or then has ever heard of, ensuring in the time honoured Shakespearean fashion that he is able to get away with blue murder: ‘Oh! Fancy not knowing that everyone wears their pants on their head in Illyria.  Where did you go to school again?’ (you stupid, bloody peasant).

 

Illyria is ancient Balkan for; ‘land of love sick nincompoops’ and is run by the particularly Fotherington Thomas-esque, Count Orsino.  Orsino is madly in love with the Lady Olivia who lives just up the road, which is handy because not only is he love sick, he is also a lazy arse who spends his days lounging about on cushions, plucking flowers, listening to plangent whale music and getting his minions to do everything including eating his tea.  He can’t possibly eat it himself, he is wasting away for the love of a good woman. Yeah, right.

 

He has been in love with Olivia since they were three, and he put a beetle down her vest in nursery school as a gesture of his undying love, affection and total and everlasting misunderstanding of the ways of women everywhere.  She has been out of love with him since roughly the same time, and has had a paranoia verging on the hysterical about beetles ever since.  She refuses to have anything to do with men with facial hair because they might be a haven for beetles.  When that nice man from the gas board came round to look at the lagging on the boiler she stabbed him with a hat pin and then fainted, all because of an unfortunate looking goatee.  It’s making her life a misery and she cannot forgive Orsino, who of course, has forgotten all about it and cannot see what all the fuss is about.  But then he wasn’t the one who had to switch to electric storage heaters AND do three months community service in the soup kitchen.

 

Orsino thinks that if he couples the persistence of a particularly stupid ox with the romanticism of a teenage girl who has existed solely on a diet of Mills and Boon romances he will win the day.  He spends his days forcing his servants to sing songs of deathless passion like ‘Lady in Red’ and the acapella version of ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You,’ complete with waggling head movements, whilst he weeps gently into vast floral handkerchieves.  Occasionally when it all gets too much he sends one of his servants over to Olivia’s with a random jewel or a painting of himself sitting pensively in the moonlight, and a proposal of marriage.  All of which are hurled back over the garden fence along with the odd bucket of snails and some dried cat pooh.  All is not well in the garden of lurve.

 

Things are not much better over at the coastline of despair.  We arrive for a day of donkey rides and green fly in our candy floss to find that there has been an almighty storm which has blown the Mr. Whippy van right out to sea and left a few mouldering spars from a particularly splendid wreck where the winkle stall used to be.  Attached to one of the spars is a young noblewoman called Viola.  She has just been fished out of the drink by a friendly sea captain with a shrimping net. 

 

She is not happy.  Not only have most of her clothes washed off in the melee, but the luggage she is washed up with appears to be that of her twin brother, Sebastian, who is a) colourblind and b) a man.  On top of that Sebastian himself has not been washed up, and just when you could do with some comforting carbohydrates to get you through a particularly trying afternoon you realize that the man with the 99’s is on the horizon, going under for the third time to the strangled sounds of Greensleeves as played through a sieve at high speed.

 

Thankfully Viola is not weedy, although she is wet.  She has had a crappy day, and after vowing never to go on a Club Med cruise again, she decides that the only way she’s going to get a decent cup of tea and a bun round here is to shift for herself.  The only way she can think of to do this is to dress in Sebastian’s clothes, pass herself off as a bloke and get a job with Orsino.  Not everyone’s first choice for a plan of action admittedly, but then the only decision she’s had to make so far in her young life was which cake to eat first.

 

She has always hated the name Viola, as would any self-respecting maiden who was named after a short, squat stringed instrument, and is gagging at the bit to try out a new name.  She plumps for Cesario, which is not much better but at least it’s not named after something in an orchestra, and given that she’s just coughed up half a ton of sea water and is currently struggling into a pair of lime green breeches in a howling gale, on a beach with only a hand towel to hide her modesty, it’s not half bad.  She draws herself a beard with a pen she found in the top pocket of Sebastian’s mustard and puce nylon anorak, and tootles off to Orsino’s, practicing a deep brown voice.

 

Orsino, who knows nothing about girls whatsoever and suspects nothing, despite the bosom and the fact that her goatee comes off every time she touches her face, hires her immediately.  He/she’s got a lovely singing voice and Orsino is impressed by the brave choice of anorak. Clearly not a youth to be trifled with.

 

Orsino tests this bravery by sending Cesario to plight his troth to Olivia on Orsino’s behalf.  He conveniently forgets to tell him/her that Olivia not only hates beards, but actually did bodily harm on the last beardy to pass through her gates.  He also omits the small matter of the fact that Olivia is actually in mourning for both her brother and her father who have recently died, and that even if she didn’t hate beards, men in anoraks and Orsino, she probably wouldn’t be up to skipping gaily through the daffodils singing songs of love anyway.  Nothing stands in the way of Orsino’s stalking by proxy.  He waves Cesario off and settles down to cutting out another picture of Olivia (with the eyes scored in red) for his secret room, singing the Carpenter’s, ‘Close to You,’ under his breath.

 

Cesario/Viola doesn’t want to go anyway because the lack of buns and the tightness of her breeches have combined to upset her mind into a flurry of passion for Orsino.  She is able to overlook his sloth, stupidity, terrible taste in music and the fact that he is about to get a restraining order through the post from Olivia in favour of the fact that he has an enormous cod piece and is the first person to offer her a decent brew in about a week.  Any port in a storm.

 

It takes her about a week to get to Olivia’s, most of which time she spends skulking in the hedge, sulking about the unfairness of being washed up on the beach with only some dubious y-fronts and a Bic razor.

 

In the meantime Olivia isn’t exactly having the time of her life.  Her mourning clothes are itchy, she’s just read in the Illyrian Herald that beards are making a comeback in men’s fashion, her fool has gone AWOL and her disgusting uncle, Sir Toby Belch, who came to stay two years ago for a weekend and is still here, has now invited his feckless and stupid friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek round to play for a month or two at her expense.  She has been trying to ignore the fact that Sir Andrew has been trying to play footsie with her under the table for a while now, but things came to a head last night when he accidentally tried to slip his tongue in her mouth.  She blames Sir Toby.  Mind you, she has nobody but herself to blame for Sir Toby.  Surely the name Belch was enough to put most right minded people off at the beginning.

 

To make matters worse she has the most prudish and sullen manservant in the history of ever, who is so disapproving of everyone and everything, even to look at him gives her a headache.  She inherited him with the house, and despite the fact that he is terribly efficient, he is quite wearing.  Her only comfort is that Mr. Kipling’s French Fancies were on offer at Costcutter and her servant Maria has just arrived back with a wheelbarrow stacked to the sky.  She falls on them like a ravening wolf, although the cake crumbs in her ruff aren’t helping with the itching.  Still, it’s a small price to pay.

 

It is at the point where she has decided to see if she can fit a yellow one, a pink one and a chocolate one into her mouth in one go that her puritanical man servant, the aptly named Malvolio, glides disapprovingly into view and announces that Cesario/Viola wants to see her and will not be sent away with a flea in his ear like all the other suitors.  He is so shocked by the sight of his fair mistress with what looks like a pastel coloured tree stump wedged sideways into her gob that he completely forgets to warn her about the oncoming beard situation. 

In a moment of sugar induced weakness Olivia indicates to Malvolio that she will see Cesario/Viola.  It sounds something like this: ‘mffmmmmsprrrtttthmmminnnokkkkkkkchrrrrk’.  There’s no arguing with that really and Cesario/Viola is swept into her crumby presence.

 

A lot of things happen at once.  Cesario/Viola notices the French Fancies and begins to salivate.  She still hasn’t had a decent bun since being shipwrecked.  This means she has not noticed that Olivia is behaving rather oddly.  Olivia on the other hand, has noticed the beard and begins to panic. A French Fancy slips sideways down her gullet.  The collapse of her hostess amid a welter of crumbs making a noise like a pelican swallowing a shark alerts Cesario/Viola that there is an issue.  Cesario/Viola, much as she secretly would like Olivia to choke to death on a cupcake realises that it’s not going to do her any favours with Orsino either in terms of keeping a job, or in presenting herself as a favourable alternative.  The tragic death of Olivia would only mean that he would be creating pastry based shrines and appalling love songs unto death and all hope would be lost. 

Cesario/Viola pegs it over to Olivia, and does the Heimlich manoeuvre.  The French Fancy dislodges itself from Olivia’s windpipe and catches sir Toby Belch who just happens to be passing through on his way to the cellars in the eye.  It is at this point in the action that Olivia falls helplessly in love with Cesario/Viola despite the beard, thanks to the fact that a) he has saved her life, b) he smells nice (unlike any other men she has met recently), c) his beard appears to be coming off all over her vest, and d) he has just inadvertently given Sir Toby a black eye. 

Inspired by the passion of the moment and the proximity of a young man’s bosom, which surely should have given the game away, she tries to stick her crumby tongue down Cesario/Viola’s throat.  Cesario/Viola removes herself with an alacrity practiced previously only by mountain goats and babies being approached by bearded aunties.  In the hopes of distracting her attention she shouts: ‘Look! A giant engagement ring from Orsino!’ and flees the scene.  Olivia collapses in a welter of pastry and pink icing.  She is undone.

 

Olivia starts scheming ways in which to entice Cesario/Viola back to her lair for fun, frolics and cakes. Cesario/Viola buries her head in her hands and wishes she had never decided to don the loose y-fronts of manhood in the first place.  It is all going horribly wrong.

 

Over in sub plot land things are unravelling nicely.  Malvolio is wandering around with a mouth like a cat’s bum getting on everyone’s nerves. He has burned Feste’s favourite pointy jester shoes, had the locks on the cellar door replaced and put Maria on a disciplinary for overindulging her mistress’s love of Mr. Kipling’s products, almost leading to an untimely death.  The only person who isn’t out to get him is Sir Andrew, and that’s because Sir Andrew is always about three script pages behind everyone else.

 

Maria comes up with a cunning plan.  She is, as well as being a purloiner of dessert based wonders, an excellent forger and all round wheeze meister.  She decides to write a love letter in Olivia’s hand writing to Malvolio and drop it in his path accidentally on purpose.  Malvolio who is as nosey as he is officious, will not be able to resist reading it, and will be lured into a ridiculous pantomime of love sick behaviour which will hopefully lead to his eventual sacking and/or beheading, whichever comes first.  The others give Maria the Top Bird of the century award and send her off for a pint of ink and a yard of vellum.

 

All goes according to plan.  Malvolio pounces on the letter and manages to persuade himself that Olivia is not only swoonsomely in love with his bony self, but that she would love nothing better than to see him prancing about being rude to everyone whilst clad in lurid yellow stockings with black garters.  Which he promptly does.  Olivia, obsessed by luring Cesario/Viola into her bed at the earliest opportunity, has no time for such nonsense and instructs Sir Toby to stick Malvolio in the house dungeon and call a priest, because he is clearly possessed, insane or both.

 

In the meantime, back at the beach of doom, we bump into Cesario/Viola’s brother Sebastian, who it turns out was not dead at all, merely resting.  Viola got washed up in Illyria.  He got washed up in Torquay.  He’s spent two weeks using all his pennies on What the Butler Saw and now he’s run out of spending money he’s hitch hiking home via Illyria with a besotted old sea salt, Antonio, who is rather hoping that if he’s nice to Sebastian and shares all his sandwiches with him, that he might succumb to a life of homosexuality and piratical nefariousness and settle down with him, happily ever after.  Sebastian, as clueless as all the other men in the play, thinks he has just found a lovely friend with a personal space problem, and has absolutely no inkling that if he doesn’t watch his step it’s rum, sodomy and the lash for him. Hey hey.

 

Antonio is getting a bit twitchy.  Illyria does not hold fond memories for him. It holds memories of Orsino brandishing a sharp sword and threatening to have his guts for garters if he sets foot on his soil again.  Antonio is only here because Sebastian stroked his beard absentmindedly just as they were crossing the border and he got a bit carried away.  He decides to hide in the most notorious tavern in Illyria and hope that nobody notices him blending in with the rest of the criminal element.  He tries to persuade Sebastian to come on the grounds that it will be a bit like participating in celebrity adrenaline junkie but with a real risk of death.  Sebastian is not sold on the idea.  He wants to buy Kiss Me Quick hats and have his photo taken with a monkey wearing a bolero jacket. 

 

Antonio is a total soft touch and coughs up all his money in exchange for a pat on the cheek and rushes off to make like a tree.  Sebastian frolics round Illyria spending money like water and standing out like a sore thumb.

 

Back at the ranch, Sir Andrew is annoyed that Olivia is spending all her time licking pictures of Cesario/Viola.  He thinks he’s in with a chance if only this pesky upstart with the strangely runny beard can be removed.  He challenges him to a duel.  Cesario/Viola is terrified.  The most physical he/she has ever got was wrestling with a particularly recalcitrant hamster when it got stuck behind the arras last Christmas.

 

During the initial fracas Sir Andrew comes to the startling revelation that he’s a lover not a fighter, and the worrying thing is that he’s not a particularly good lover, which means he’s an absolutely abominable fighter.  He and Cesario/Viola spend quite a lot of time running away from each other.  During one of these whoops there goes my duelling sword type moments, Sir Andrew happens to bump into Sebastian instead, who gives him a bit of a thrashing.  Things are not going well.

 

Shortly thereafter Olivia also bumps into Sebastian, then she bumps on him, then she rubs herself all over him.  He is naturally quite delighted at the forward nature of the women of Illyria and compares them favourably with the staid and repressed maidens of Torquay, where he vows never to holiday again.  Olivia bundles him off to church where they are married within the hour.  She scoots off home with the promise of slipping into something more comfortable and leaves him waiting around gormlessly.

 

Cesario/Viola is now totally hacked off with being a man.  He/she spends her whole life being chased by women who can’t keep their pants on and insist on showing inappropriate amounts of bosom at every opportunity.  Random aristocrats seem intent on running him/her through with a sword for no good reason, and Orsino is such a dimwit that no amount of homoerotic sub text has got it into his thick skull that if he undid his/her doublet, he would get his Christmas and birthday present all rolled into one and Olivia would be a dim and distant memory.  Plus he/she’s beginning to be allergic to his/her own beard, and it’s all a bit much.

 

At the point where he/she is sitting on a rock indulging in a gigantic temper tantrum of epic proportions, Sir Andrew turns up intending to have one last go at skewering his love rival.  Antonio, who happens to be on his way to the nefarious tavern sees his potential lover at the point of death and steps in.  At this point the gigantically muscled rozzers step in and whizz him off for an appointment with Doctor Death.  Antonio pleads with his beloved Sebastian to save him.  As it is in fact Cesario/Viola she/he just thinks he is bonkers and does sweet F.A.  Antonio is heart broken and is dragged off whimpering about love being dead and how all men called Sebastian should be called Sebastiard.

 

It finally dawns on Viola that if she is dressed as her brother and someone thinks that she is called Sebastian, then her brother might actually have just been in Torquay and not in fact in Davy Jones’ locker.  She is a bit slow on the uptake, due to being chased around by desperate housewives and lunatic blue bloods all day.  Not her fault.

 

Olivia is back at home planning what negligee to wear for her night of nuptial passion with the young and lusty Cesario/Viola/Sebastian. This makes her less than attentive to the fact that Malvolio has now been locked up and poked with sticks by Feste, Sir Toby and Maria for the past three days and the joke is now beginning to wear a little thin.  Malvolio writes a strongly worded letter in his cell.  That’ll teach them.

 

Orsino has now sung every single love song in the entire history of ever, and has finally been tempted away from the harpsichord by a truly shocking rendition of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On.’  All his menservants have been driven away by the incessant warbling and there is nobody left to bring Olivia to their senses.  He decides that if you want a job doing properly you have to do it yourself and gets off his backside and trips over to Olivia’s house to give her a piece of his mind, which will hopefully lead to giving her a piece of his trousers.

 

In a spooky twist of fate, everyone in the entire play turns up at Olivia’s house at exactly the same time (possibly a trick achieved with magnets, or trails of cake).  Olivia jumps on Cesario/Viola and licks his face passionately.  This annoys Orsino quite a bit, but not as much as it annoys Antonio.  Finally everyone realises that there are two Cesario/Viola/Sebastian’s in the room and quelling the odd cry of ‘burn the witch’, all is sorted out in record time.  Orsino agrees to accept Viola as his booby prize as long as she promises never to be called Cesario and get some cream for that nasty rash on her chin.  Sebastian licks Olivia’s face and she swoons with delight.  Antonio cries like a girl and goes home empty handed, but Olivia kindly gives him her wedding bouquet.  Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

 

Malvolio is finally let out of his cell looking as mad as a wet hen and pointing the puritanical finger of shame.  He wears his face like a smacked bottom look and Antonio is at least glad that he won’t be sharing a bed with that.  Maria and Sir Toby confess that they have snuck off and gotten married, which is a bit of a bolt from the blue for everyone, including Sir Toby and Maria, who suspect that Malvolio may have drugged the porridge.  Sir Andrew goes home alone, but given the cross dressing, homosexually titillating, class barrier mixing mess he’s just witnessed he’s quite relieved.

 

Feste sings a jolly song about how miserable everyone will be when they realise what a jolly fine hash they’ve made of marrying each other, and they all hunker down at Olivia’s for a belated wedding breakfast of French Fancy surprise. The surprise being that Olivia hasn’t guzzled all the French Fancies before now.

 

Fin

Poetree on a Thursday

I know I have been uber blogging lady today, but with me it’s either feast or famine.

Tallulah has just woken up with a gummy eye. Jason is steaming his head because his eyes are stuck shut and I have stomach cramps and suspiciously itchy eyes myself, despite spending the last forty eight hours being Mrs. hygiene lady.

It is at times like these when we must turn to the great poets.  Unfortunately, my choice today did not write a poem called: ‘Bloody, Bastard, Conjuctivitis,’ but he did write one about his mother dying (not of conjunctivitis), and it brings a tear to our sticky, collective eye.

This one is by Seamus Heaney and surprisingly contains no hint of bog, although the ubiquitous potato does make an appearance.  It is from a series of sonnets called Clearances.  And despite my jesting, it is rather gorgeous in a sad, snifflesome kind of way:

From Clearances:

 

III

 

 

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

 

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives-

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Food Glorious Food, or Just Sandwiches Thanks?

The children are on a campaign.

The powers that be have recently introduced a new menu to those denizens of the school who are currently forced by their ‘evil’ (for this read: Katy and Jason) parents to have hot dinners as opposed to tepid sandwiches sweating in a tupperware box with a picture of Sportacus laminated on the side.

The new menu, according to our offspring, is evil incarnate.  It contains such devilish food as brussel sprouts, slugs, lentils, the horned toenails of the seventeen legged snorgle beast and captured essence of old men’s farts. Nobody in their right mind would want to eat it.  Nobody in their wrong mind would be very keen.

They are desperate to switch to sandwiches.  So desperate that they have been lobbying for about three weeks incessantly. 

They come home with eyes full of woe, moaning that they had to eat mince or gammon, or eyebrows on toast.  They clearly don’t, because as soon as they get home, they fall on any food stuff that is left in their path like the ravening hoardes of beelzebub and pester me constantly about when dinner will be ready.

Every time they ask if they can switch to sandwiches I either say ‘no’, and walk away, or tell them to ask their father.  You see,  I am not entirely anti sandwiches.  I have vile memories of our frankly woeful school dinners at primary school.  I remember eating reconstituted mashed potato which tasted a lot like ground down chipboard mixed with fish glue, and being forced to eat rice pudding to the point where I was actually physically sick.  For which I then got punished for making a mess. 

I know Jamie Oliver has done wonders for school dinners and that turkey twizzlers are now a thing of the past, but it still remains depressingly true that prisoners in Britain’s gulags get more spent on their dinners per head than school children and hospital patients combined. I cannot believe that the dinners are that good. 

On the other hand, Jason is quite rightly, fed up of our daughters’ namby pamby attitude to foods that are not coated in bread crumbs, white, or potato based.  They are better than they used to be, but gourmet food tasters they are not.  He has decreed that if they have sandwiches their repertoire will be even more limited and that they may well die of scurvy before they reach puberty.  He thinks that the range of hot dinners will force them to try new things or starve.

This of course has been disproved by the fact that generally if all the potato wedges and garlic bread is gone they just starve and then fill up when they get home on frubes, bananas and crisps if I give in to their whining.

Last week he tried a new tack.  He said that if each of them could come up with a list of twenty five different packed lunch options that they would eat, he would consider allowing them to switch to sandwiches.  They have risen to the challenge with alarming gusto, which makes me think that they are probably right about the choice of hot dinners.  I certainly wouldn’t have been delighted by gammon and pineapple at the age of eight, or thirty seven for that matter.  I wonder if the new range is from the ‘Perfect Hostess of the Seventies’ cookbook? If so, I’d like to be there on the day they have prawn cocktail, but you can keep the melon balls and deep fried Brie thanks.

Tallulah polished off her menu in about half an hour.  It is entirely incomprehensible except for the words ‘dry pasta.’  Why she thinks that she would be delighted to eat this at lunch time I am not sure.  I am sure that she would not be delighted to eat it at home.  Still, points for novelty I think.

Tilly has only just finished writing her list, and has raided the entirety of my two groaning shelves of cookbooks.  I have yet to read what she has written, but I feel that it will probably be alarming and unlikely to fit in a snap lid plastic container safely.  She has culinary delusions of grandeur brought about by watching too many reruns of Masterchef.  Oh yes, she talks the talk.  She just does not eat the eat.

Tallulah is now fixating on getting her five a day.  This is interesting coming from a girl who loathes all fruit to the point where she will eat a banana, but only at gunpoint.  She also hates all vegetables except carrots and peas and again, only eats them under protest.  I nominate her for the child most likely to die of scurvy first.

She has designed a poster to try and boost her flagging morale and remind herself to eat fruit and vegetables.  I present it for your delight and delectation:

I like the fact that you might not be sure that you have one pea inside you.  Still, it’s easy to mislay the pesky little buggers I suppose.

I might get it transferred onto a t-shirt for her for Christmas, then she can remind herself as she’s actually eating the peas.

Gnometastic

It is officially Autumn.

I know this, not because the clocks have gone back, or the driveway is chock a block with leaves, or the fact that we are experiencing ‘seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness,’ or because I have carved eight pumpkins in the last fortnight. No.

It is because it is time for the gnomes to hibernate.

Yep. You heard it here first gnome fans.

I am such an earth mother, friend to fauns and satyrs, rescuer of martyred hedgehogs and believer in fairies that I just know these things.

Or it could be that I have children who are obsessed by gnomes and IT IS ALL MY MOTHER’S FAULT.

She never gave a stuff about gnomes when I was a child.  Our garden was a gnome free zone.  A gnome wilderness if you will.  We never even had cement models of household pets, or a water feature.  Mostly we had a lot of pea canes, until I burned them all in my pyromaniac phase.  Maybe that is why we had no gnomes.  Fear of incendiary gnomes.

Whatever the reason, she has more than made up for it in recent years.

Two years ago she suddenly started buying gnomes, out of the blue. 

Then she started hiding them in the garden.

The children found them, and she told them that she had not bought them, but that the gnomes had clearly moved in because her garden was so nice.

It is a nice garden by the way.  Although whether it is truly a gnome enticing garden it is difficult to say.  Not that there would be any room for real gnomes now, thanks to all the other gnomes that have taken up residence.  And the cement dog with three paws that mysteriously found its way there from Jason’s mother’s garden when we were clearing out.  And the giant, carved wooden eagles that my grandmother used to have on her landing because they were a present from a deranged, wood carving friend, and which were too disturbing to have in a room proper, because their nasty, pecky, eyes used to follow you around and scare the living crap out of you.  They are called Sissy and Leerer by the way.  Leerer because she ‘leers’ at you, and Sissy because she is Leerer’s sister. Obviously.

In the beginning, there were three gnomes.

Which was very convenient, because there were three, gnomeless children.  Not that they were aware at  that point that their lives had been sadly lacking in gnomes and that the world would be a happier place with gnomes than without.  It just goes to show that ignorance is indeed bliss.

The children were insanely delighted with their three gnomes, and immediately named them.  I cannot tell you their names because a) I am a bad mother and b) their names change on a regular basis.  I expect Oscar’s is called Frederick, because everything he owns is now called Frederick, much like everything being called Jamefriend previousl to that.

The epic saga of the gnomes has grown and grown as the months have gone by, as have the number of gnomes.

We go to my mother’s house and the children rush out before doing anything else, just to check on the gnomes.

Quite often the gnomes will have mysteriously moved position.  Completely of their own accord, naturally.

There are now large gnomes, teeny weeny gnomes and even a sad, stray gnome that nobody else wanted.  His name, according to my mother is ‘Nobby’.  All his paint is flaking off.  He is the gnome equivalent of the three legged dog on Pet Rescue, the one with halitosis and a squint, but which is somehow rendered so loveable via the power of television, that some crazed dog lover takes it upon himself to give the dog a home.  That’s Nobby.

Matilda in particular is fanatical about the gnomes.  She makes them houses, and tents and takes them on trips.  Last year she decided that like hedgehogs, they hibernated.  She made them the traditional gnome hibernation box and hunkered them down for the winter.  She plastered the outside of the box with fiercely spelled messages indicating trouble on a gigantic scale if the gnomes were disturbed before spring.  The other children, much to my amazement, were cowed into obedience and never once opened the box to even so much as peek at the gnomes until Matilda officially announced their spring rejuvenation.

Last Sunday was hibernation day again.  The box had to be bigger this year, due to the increase in gnome numbers, and preparations were much  more elaborate.  Jason spent a fascinated half an hour with his cup of tea on the verandah listening to her giving the gnomes their instructions for successful overwintering.  She stands no gnome related nonsense that girl.

She then spent the next hour making gnome survival food which included something disgusting with windfall apples and plums and a disturbing soup with Honesty seeds and dried beans from the vegetable patch.  She chopped and stirred and scooped and had a wonderful time making the most repugnant mess, which she then posted into the box along with Nobby et al.  I am glad she will be the one to do the official opening in the spring.  I dread to think what it will all look like.

So, if you have gnomes I pray to God that they are safely tucked up in their hibernation boxes.  Otherwise there will be frostbitten gnome corpses littering your shrubbery come Christmas, and you will only have yourselves to blame.  If you are unsure of what to do, send me an e-mail with your address and I will get Matilda to write you out a gnome survival checklist.

Yesterday I found her on Google trying to check if there was a gnome language she could learn.  Apparently she feels it will be easier if she communicates in their language. They are a bit reserved in English.

The Patient is Doing Better…

The invalid is making slow progress today.  He can see more, although given the current jumble sale like nature of the house, this many not be such a good thing.  He has also managed to sleep more, thanks to the restorative powers of cocodamil.  He is still wincing a lot, but he is not as grey looking.  This is good.  Oscar’s eyes were better today and he trundled off to nursery quite cheerfully.  Tallulah’s eye was worse and she woke up looking like a deranged but sticky pirate.  I kept her out of school and she spent the morning with her father squinting at Jet Li films while I went for my driving lesson.  I’m sure Jet Li films are not the thing for six year old girls, but they were happy, so who am I to argue?  I wished I could have stayed at home watching Jet Li films too, and I am not a fan at all, so there you go.

I am feeling better because a) I didn’t have an essay looming over me, b) I have eaten a lot of chocolate, c) my friend paid me for some marketing advice in cheese and beetroot sandwiches which is an acceptable form of currency when you have forgotten to take the bread out of the freezer and there is nothing for lunch, and d) I woke up this morning for the first time in four days without a crushing, sinus related headache.  That’s bound to make a girl feel more cheery.

And, because my friend agreed to alter her schedule and come over this afternoon so I could help her it means I get to go out and play with my mum and dad tomorrow instead of working.  Huzzah!

Right. Proper blog post to follow. Just wanted to update you on the plague house.

 

Poetry Wednesday

I am in a poetic mood this week. I don’t know what has overtaken me. Perhaps it is the melancholy of watching another year turning and the leaves falling that has made me come over all Keatsian.  Perhaps it is the fact that poems are good to read when you feel that you should be writing an essay and you can’t quite get around to it, but can’t justify cracking open a novel instead.  Perhaps it is the fact that reading a poem takes up infinitely less time when you’re constantly being interrupted by weeping eyes, weeping husbands and general stickiness.

I just don’t know, and frankly I don’t really care.  I don’t think you should have to invent an excuse for enjoying a good pome or two, tiddly pom. 

Anyway, I thought I’d make it a daily feature until I get bored, probably tomorrow then.  So, enjoy it while it’s hot. Or something.

Sharon, one of my trusty commenters (? Not sure if this is the right word. I wanted to say commentators, but that makes it sound like something at a football match, and that would never do), mentioned Roger McGough as being an all round top bloke and poetry geezer.  She is of course completely correct in her estimation and it is Mr. McGough who I credit with imbuing me with a love of poetry in the first place.  I have had the very enormous privilege of seeing him perform and like John Hegley he is excellent on stage, and see him if you can.  If not, he has many, many fine volumes of poetry available and all of them are worth a read, or two, or three.

 His is one of the first poems I ever learned for pleasure rather than for the purposes of hurling essays at an unwilling examiner.

Here it is:

Cousin Nell

Cousin Nell

married a frogman

in the hope

that one day

he would turn into

a handsome prince.

 

Instead he turned into

a sewage pipe

near Gravesend

and was never seen again.

 

and it so happens that Wednesday night is two for one on poetry, because I couldn’t leave you thinking he only does funny. Oh no, he does achingly sad too:

Cinders

 

After the pantomime, carrying you back to the car

On the coldest night of the year

My coat, black leather, cracking in the wind.

 

Through the darkness we are guided by a star

It is the one the Good Fairy gave you

You clutch it tightly, your magic wand.

 

And I clutch you tightly for fear you blow away

For fear you grow up too soon and – suddenly,

I almost slip, so take it steady down the hill.

 

Hunched against the wind and hobbling

I could be mistaken for your grandfather

And sensing this, I hold you tighter still.

 

Knowing that I will never see you dressed for the Ball

Be on hand to warn you against Prince Charmings

And the happy ever afters of pantomime.

 

On reaching the car I put you into the baby seat

And fumble with straps I have yet to master

Thinking, if only there were more time. More time.

 

You are crying now. Where is your wand?

Oh no. I can’t face going back for it

Let some kid find it in tomorrow’s snow.

 

Waiting in the wings, the witching hour.

Already the car is changing. Smells sweet

Of ripening seed. We must go. Must go.

 

 

I am a husk darlings, a husk

Creatively I am spent my darlings.

I have spent hours fussing and tweaking and clucking about my essay.  An essay about fairy tales, which only me and four of my closest confidantes and a professor will ever read, and which is not going to add a single crumb of wisdom to the sum of world knowledge.  Nevertheless, it is done, finished and handed in, and by my standards, rather shiny indeed. I have, possibly for the first time in the history of my personal essay odyssey, actually adhered to all the notes that I was given and answered the question.  Madness, sheer madness. I am worried that the anarchic, devil may care part of me may be too tired to play any more and that I will turn into a conformist.

Then I think about the fact that I stole a pair of shorts from the lost property box yesterday, and think that probably I may live to fight another day.

It has been a busy few days internets. It really has.

Whilst I have been pondering the deep sexual and literary symbolism of wolves, my husband has been incapacitated by his neck seizing solidly.  He went to the osteopath’s yesterday in a taxi. Yes! you heard. A taxi.  The floosy was mortified.  His neck hurt so much he could not drive.  Alack the day.

The osteopath confirmed it was yet another ripple effect from the accident, and he spent three hours treating him very, very gently because poor Jason practically wept every time he touched him. 

He hardly slept last night, and was much worse this morning, so I sent him packing to the hospital in another taxi.  He was there for hours, in the good old British tradition of eternal queues.  The doctors thought he might have fractured a vertebrae and sent him for tons of x-rays.  Luckily it wasn’t that serious, so the diagnosis has been altered to either a crushed or spasming disc. Not really much better, and he is still in agony. 

They have sent him home with good drugs, exercises he has to do every two hours, instructions for regular ice packs and an outpatient appointment for physio.

I am thinking of purloining the good drugs for myself. I don’t see why he should get all the perks.  I might pretend I tripped over the mounting pile of laundry and have twisted my ankle.  It’s a thought.

Yes. I was right. The rebel in me still thrives.

Every day that passes I thank the lord that we did not settle the insurance claim for the whiplash immediately like the insurance company wanted.  Jason is paid by the day and as a contractor does not get sick pay or indeed any kind of pay for time off.  His company are being very understanding and have told him to take as much time as he needs, but he would push himself back to work sooner if he didn’t feel he could make a claim for the days he has lost.

On top of the neck issue, he has raging conjunctivitis and can hardly see.  Oscar and Tallulah also have a mild case.  Sigh! In between writing my essay I have been stripping beds, washing towels, wiping gunky eyes (which is only marginally less disgusting than wiping gunky bottoms), shouting constantly about washing hands and poking eyes and melting the washing machine through overuse.  If Oscar and Tallulah are worse tomorrow then it means no nursery and no school.  Bumhole.  Thank god I had today.  Someone up there is really looking over me and clearly wants me to do well in the field of children’s literature.  I’m not arguing.

Oscar keeps sidling up to me and whispering: ‘I poked my eye while you weren’t looking.’  I admire his tenaciousness but am getting to the stage where I am considering bandaging his arms to his side.  That’ll learn him.

In between turning the house into a cross between Casualty and Madame Wong’s Chinese Laundry, I have taken the children to their friend’s house for tea, been to the chemist, the library and the supermarket, then the supermarket again.  I would have gone to the chemist again only it was shut.  And I went to the Chinese takeaway, because by the time I’d done all the other things I realised I had forgotten to eat anything other than a Crunchie and a packet of crisps and I was beginning to feel a bit faint.

I have decided that as a reward for getting my essay in, I am taking two days off to read a book I have chosen rather than a book I am going to study or review.  If I read fast I might even get in two of the damn things.  I am about to retreat to the safety of the bath with the latest Terry Pratchett and a large mug of tea.  What decadence.

Another poetic interlude

I am feeling much calmer today.  Partly this is due to the fact that I haven’t had to drive anywhere, partly due to the fact that I have found some shorts in the lost property box that I have dictatorially decided are Tallulah’s, and partly because it is now half past ten at night and I have half an essay finished, which is good. Jason has also very kindly suggested I put Oscar in nursery tomorrow and write the other half during the day when I am not paralysed with tiredness.  I have gratefully taken him up on the offer and I am feeling considerably less pressured.  I am also clearer on what the shape of the second half of the essay will be, which is encouraging.

It’s probably going to look a bit like a rabbit, sitting on a fence, looking slightly offended.

Or something.

At least it has a shape.  Shape is good.

I also, I think, have got my head around the referencing, which as I suspected was more to do with my state of mind and the lateness of the hour than anything too traumatic.  It may still be wrong, but it looks o.k. and with Andrea and Mrs. Jones as my wingmen I feel that the referencing may well turn out to be the star turn of the whole essay.  In fact I may not bother to do anything else but reference lots of other people who have all said it better than me, and go home for a lie down and a bun.

I have tons of things to tell you, none of which are in the slightest bit important or interesting, but which I have been noting down and thinking; ‘Oooh!’ and ‘Aaah!’ Unfortunately they will all have to wait until tomorrow, or even the next day, depending on the essay.  I need to go and reread bits of the very excellent ‘Bloody Chamber’ by Angela Carter, and think about Freud, which is not so excellent but a bit necessary.  Just think; ‘holes and ladders, trains and tunnels, cocaine and hysteria.’

I shall return with a clearer head and more entertainment.  In the meantime I thought I’d leave you with another favourite poem.  It isn’t funny, but it is lush and gorgeous and about as exciting as poetry gets (for me, anyway).  It is by Ted Hughes.  It’s probably about Yorkshire, but whenever I read it, it takes me back to when I lived in Wales.  It’s called ‘Wind’.  No sniggering at the back please.

 

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.