whipped cream & duffel bags

My mother refused to buy cans of whipped cream. She wasn't worried about whippits. I was a little sheltered for that sort of thing. I was also only about 9 years old. The thought of using whipped cream to get a buzz other than a sugar rush was alien. Besides, I was hyper enough. No, her rationale was that she could whip better cream than came from a can. She was right. What she didn't realise was that cans of whipped cream were fun. Junk food and a toy, all in one. That was the killer for me, that was why I complained, why I folded my arms in 9-year-old indignation.

My mother refused to fold to my indignation. Much like the cereal wars, this was a battle never to be won. All was not lost though. Instead of buying me cans of whipped cream she taught me to make my own. It wasn't hard. Good double cream or whipping cream, sugar, a big bowl and a whisk. Playing with a whisk beat fiddling with a can any day. In retrospect, it was the first food I ever really made. Frozen pizzas in the toaster oven and milk over cereal didn't really count. Too much sugar and it was inedible, too little and it was sickly. Over-whipping lead to a churned, butter-like mass. Over-whipping happened a lot. I loved making it. I didn't need to be hungry, or even wanting dessert. It didn't matter. It was mine - if it came out right, it was because of me, if it was ruined, well, that was my fault too.

Cooking the other night I pondered my whipped cream days. The gravy bubbled and reduced (a touch more stock and a hefty splash of red wine for good measure). The smell of caramelised onions and roast tomatoes with garlic permeated the kitchen.

I've not made whipped cream in years. I've not thought about it in years either. Its resurfacing is a bit of a mystery. There's no terrible whipped cream tragedy that blocked it from my consciousness. It's just one of those things that lies buried in the bottom of an old duffel bag. I was just rummaging through some old memories and out it popped.

Speaking of old duffel bags (this is a link), I have one that sits in a corner between my standing wardrobe and the door to my room. It's old military issue - army or marines - a sort of desert tan canvas. At one point it fit in everything I could possibly need for a summer. At the time, I think it could fit me in it as well. I was twelve. Somewhere along the way it went missing, transferred from London to Florida. Later on, years later, I found it again and brought it back to the UK. An old address is stenciled onto its canvas. It's beaten and battered but still strong. I found myself rummaging through it for a jumper yesterday.

Summer's retreated. It's time to empty the duffel of my jumpers, scarves and gloves and fill it again with shorts, flip-flops and linen shirts. Stew on the stove, simmering for hours on end - pots of tea brewed strong and my woolen hats pulled snug over my ears.

The cold's come back. Proper cold, the sort that defies the sun, that joins with the damp to chill the bones.

Indian Summer

I'll take any summer I can get. My shorts and flip-flops have not been retired yet. Jumpers hang around the waist. My sunglasses are fixed to my face and I eat ice cream every day. Beer tastes better, earned by merely enduring the warmth of the sun.

The joy of falling asleep on top of the covers and waking up without a chill.

The light fades a bit earlier though, and the sun's lazier in the morning. Indian summers tend to be short, but I'll take what I can get.

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Some new pics up here and here. Weddings and wanderings from a brilliant weekend.

lost day?

Yesterday was a bad morning. I woke up at 9 and simply wasn't ready for the day. I threw on my groovy bathrobe and wandered into the sitting room. Yellow walls and glorious morning sunshine seared my retinas. Flatmates shuffled around, fuzzy headed. I drank a pint of water and mumbled something at them. It was probably 'morning'. It wasn't 'good morning.' I'm pretty sure of that. I sent some fuzzy-headed, hungover, non-sequitur text messages and bed claimed me back.

It kept me until 12. I decided against a run. I thought I felt better. I wandered around, aimlessly, until I found the pub and hungover flatmates. We decided on beer and food that was terrible for us. I bought flour and yeast but didn't bake.

I reread the last few chapters of the Monty Python autobiography because I didn't remember reading them the night before.

I didn't do much, really, and I enjoyed every moment.

first loaf

Everything worked.
Flour, water, yeast and a touch of salt - that's all it took.
A bit of kneading followed. Then a rest.
It rose.
I was convinced of disaster but it rose.
Then a bit more kneading, a bit more flour.
And it rose again.
It was ready.
Into a very hot oven and it baked.

And it tasted wonderful. Beyond a shadow of a doubt the greatest bread ever baked.

But I might be biased.

acres

Most of my life I've had single beds. There have been breaks in this. My old Belfry had a peculiar 1 2/3 size bed. My mother sewed special sheets for it. It was an antique and, according to family legend, a rather famous relative slept there.

Well, as famous as my relatives get.

But for the most part, in Boston, London, St Andrews and Linlithgow, it's been single beds. The odd occasion where I've had a queen or even a double have been met with glee. I spread myself out as much as possible, usually waking up diagonally buried under a pile of pillows, searching for the ends of the bed with both finger and toe tips.

My new bed is a super king size. It's really two singles put together, but with some clever engineering, you'd never know. It's enormous. I get lost on it. And I'm not small. I woke up perpendicular at one point.

I didn't sleep well though. Acres of bed space and little comfort. It wasn't the mattress, or the pillows. The sheets are nice - Egyptian cotton. No - it was seeing just how little of the bed included me.

It was lonely, and I was small.

too fast.

There ought to be a law.

It should state:

If you are still rollerblading, hillwalking, skydiving and drinking cask strength whisky into your late seventies, then you're moving too fast to get caught by cancer.

Sadly, legislation, should it come, would be too late.

update

So the new home feels like home, and not necessarily new. But that's good. The air's fresh with a sharp tang of salt, there's always a breeze and glorious sunshine battles with torrential rainfall.

There are lots of people though. Tourists mill about, vacantly, asking for directions while holding unopen maps in their tanned, chubby hands. Families wander with brightly clothed children yelling and pointing with glee at nothing in particular.

It's summer, finally. Not sure for how long though.

je suis returné, plus ça change and many other French sayings...

I no longer have a Belfry, or even a treehouse.

Instead I have the sea again, and that settles all doubts.

St Andrews hasn't changed much.

I think I have. A little.

The view from my window.

evening beer

The mid-evening sun lends its warmth still and I squint down the lane. It’s empty. The fields shine green and gold. The one on the left is vibrant. You can almost hear the veg growing. The air hums – everything’s alive. The farm’s on the left. I wander into the steadings, jingling the coins in my pocket. One of the pigs wanders by the barn door, wondering if I have any food. She’s a Tamworth. I say hi and walk over to the brew house. There’s a hint of malt in the air, amidst that cool, damp stone scent. The 80 /- barrel’s tapped. I drop £4 into the cigar box on the worktop and fill the pitchers. The sun still lights the steadings as I walk out, two pitchers in hand. The lane’s still quiet, the fields still alive.

It strikes me, walking back to the cottage, that this is a stolen moment. Taken from a time of gaslight and horse-drawn carriages; some rural ideal, that maybe never existed in reality, but that people remark on whimsically regardless.

But it’s here, and it’s now, and damn the beer tastes good.

I’m leaving soon. I’m going to miss it.

along came a...

It's been 4 months since I started rewriting chapter 6. Quite a lot has happened in those 4 months.

I've had my first spider bite.

Say what you will about spiders, but in terms of telling tales, having a spider bite is far cooler than a mosquito bite. You never mention mosquito bites. They're boring and annoying. You scratch them when you think no one's looking, hoping no one gets the wrong idea.

With a spider bite, you let folks know. You hope they wince with arachnophobic distaste. You scratch freely and mumble about bastard spiders. Then, when you've been doing this for over a week, you realise something that should have been obvious from the beginning:

Spider bites fucking suck.

They itch more than mosquito bites, they hurt more than mosquito bites and they take ages to heal.

Not as long as chapter 6 is taking to rewrite however. It's irksome and lingering. In the midst of it all sorts of things continue in whirlwind fashion whilst this one chapter floats in limbo, half reformed. It nags me. Moments of relaxation abruptly halted by stabbing anxiety about chapter 6.

So fuck it. I'm going to leave it. It's not ready to be rewritten. I'm taking it off the schedule. It will not plague me any more. I'm moving house, sorting out new jobs and generally there's a whole lot of new shit happening.

So I'm starting a new book. This one's been rolling in my head for just under three years now. I'm hoping to have submission chapters ready by the end of the summer (not that summer's actually begun yet). Like much else that's going on in my life, this is pretty exciting. I figure if I shop two sets of submission chapters I'm twice as likely to get picked up.

So that's a two-in-a-million chance then...