Leftovers Cake

I don’t often bake these days. Whilst being an enthusiastic supporter and consumer of baked goods, there just isn’t the call for it in our house. N will sometimes make sounds of appreciation over a sticky toffee pudding or a crumble, then put his portion in the fridge and forget about it for 2 months, which is no way to live quite frankly, and should, in all right-minded households, result in some sort of jail sentence. 

The Kid decided some time ago that he’s reached an age where my attempts at birthday cakes are superfluous to his enjoyment of the day. These days he likes his birthdays with a side of beer rather than a cake that resembles the leaning tower of Pisa, if the tower at Pisa had been constructed of sponge, cream and strawberries, or that has a strange blobby space monster blobbing it’s green tentacles all over a wonky moon. And the least said about the doughnut cake the better. 

My Nan used to make wedding cakes of 3, 4 tiers. Fruit cake heavy enough to knock out a burglar, stacked on silver paper covered stands, covered with thick marzipan and icing rigid enough to break a tooth. They would be decorated with flowers she had painstakingly made herself from the same icing, rolling it to a fragile thinness, cutting the circles and strips that would then be rolled, crimped, frilled and pressed into flower shapes to adorn the tops. Further icing swags, curls and dots would decorate the sides and the lack of a steady hand could be hidden with a quick design change or swipe of a damp sponge. 

I still have the blurred photographs she took to remember each creation; the flash is too harsh, the background too dark. I can recall the smell of the cake, the sweet grittiness of the icing. I was mmmph years old before I realised marzipan needn’t taste synthetic. 

She was a bakers daughter, my Nan, and I still have the recipe book she wrote when she joined the bakery at 13. I say “joined”. It was more in the way of the family National Service - the only person who escaped conscription was her brother, the great hope of the family, eventually brought down by gambling and ego.

In this hard backed, faded red exercise book, she wrote down the recipes for Eccles cakes, the coconut macaroons that would eventually become my dad’s favourite. Malt loaf made by painstakingly soaking the fruit in cold tea. Bread off every kind, cottage loaves a speciality. Her unsure, looping hand records how the ingredients are scaled up and up for batch baking, the demand in this Lancashire town never quite satiated. 

So when I bake, I’m small again. My own kitchen recedes and I’m stood on a stool to reach the counter, a riot of 70’s daisies spread over the apron that’s been tied around and around my waist. There is the smell of cold tea, coconut and sugar. I can feel the warmth of her oven and heat her telling me to “sift the flour, really lift it.” 

This recipe isn’t hers but it has her fingerprints all over it. 

Leftovers Cake: 

Ingredients - 1 pot of yogurt about to go off, 1 banana that’s too squishy for eating, zest of one lemon, 1 egg, self-raising flour, vanilla, any berries that need using up, caster sugar. 

1. Blend 1 cup of yogurt with the banana, half a cup of the sugar and the vanilla. Chop and add the berries. 

2. Stir in enough flour (to sift or not to sift, you decide according to time) to make it look like a proper cake batter - I think it took about 2 cups but I was ad libbing, talking to the cats and listening to the radio at the same time, so I can’t quite remember. 

3. Remember the lemon zest, grate it over the bowl, Drop the lemon into the batter, curse, wipe it off, continue grating till done. Stir in. 

4. Line the cake tin of your choice - I used a flapjack tin, about 15 cms wide because I appear to have lost all my roundy tins - with baking paper and tip the mix in. Sprinkle with Demerara sugar. 

5. Bakes for 20 mins in a 180 heat oven that you’ve remembered to preheat. If you haven’t remembered to preheat, do it now and make a cup of tea while you wait. Possibly talk to your partner/child/handy pet at the same time. 

5. Test readiness of cake with a skewer or, in my case, a wooden chop stick. If it comes out clean, cake is done. Allow to cool a little before lifting it out of the tin. Allow to cool completely before removing the paper. 

6. Slice according to portion preference. Eat. 

The Full Duck

As you may remember from some posts ago (helpfully signposted by this 'ere blue linky), I have had eczema for a number of years now. It's appearance was gradual and spasmodic for a long time, lulling me into a false sense of "this is manageable" and "if I just cut out cheese, that will cure it". 

Friends, it has been 7 years. There is only so much Stilton this woman can refuse in her lifetime. 

Over those years, I have run the full gamut of interesting remedies in an attempt to look less like I have some disfiguring, contagious disease. There was the black clove oil that was recommended as a drink or topical application. As a drink it made me boke; as a topical application, it sent me shrieking to the bathroom for the soap. There was the giving up cheese, then all dairy, then bread, then all wheat and gluten, then sugar. My poor family, never knowing what to serve me. I was the worst dinner party guest. 

N gave up cooking altogether because he was afraid of making it worse. And if you're wondering how hard it is to quit sugar, let me tell you: bloody hard. It's in everything. It's even in mayonnaise! And gluten-free gravy granules! By all things good and righteous, when has gravy ever needed sugar??

Then there was that month where I tried the SIBO diet (I'm not linking it because it's EVIL) and spent the final week of it eating crisps every night and weeping on the sofa because it's so sodding restrictive and joyless. The Cambridge diet is a barrel of laughs compared to that thing. 

I tried acupuncture, going to see a very nice woman who held my hand, listened to my woes, told me my adrenal gland was out of whack and then stuck some needles in me. It was very nice, like a therapy session only pointier, and I did enjoy the massage at the end, but it cured nothing. 

There's been over the counter remedies, under the counter remedies and remedies that look like they've been scrapped up from the floor behind the counter. Try this cream! Try these herbs! Try this meditation! When I finally braced the Guardians of the Diary, the Gatekeepers of the Knowledge, i.e. the bulldog-like receptionists at my local surgery, I had a telephone appointment with a doctor who sent me a steroid cream. 

Fine, fine, I'll take the damn steroids. And I dutifully applied it. 

Woke up the next morning and thought, "gosh, the world is very blurry", looked in the mirror and promptly screamed, scattering the cats and setting off car alarms all around the city. I'd woken up with eyes so puffy, I was viewing the world through 2mm slits between my eyelashes. I looked like the Stay Puft marshmallow man in Ghostbusters, but with breasts and towering peri-menopausal rage. 

A panicked call to the Guardians later, I was on the phone to another doctor who laughed, LAUGHED (did I mention the towering peri-menopausal rage?), told me a reaction to the cream was highly unlikely so it was probably hay fever, but he'd send along a prescription for the gentle 'baby' version of the cream. Are you surprised when I say I did not get that prescription filled?

Failed by modern medicine, I went back to the Quacks. I think it's safe to say that, by then (2021), I'd run a marathon of quackery and, because a lot of the this damn stuff was on my arms and face, considered having cards printed saying "this is eczema, not leprosy. You are safe to approach" that I could hand out to people in the street to prevent the screaming whenever the wind blew my fringe off my face. I cut a deeper, thicker fringe. Considered hats.  

Then there was the very nice nutritionist who talked a lot about gut health, made me have expensive blood tests and then got me to buy expensive supplements that made not the blindest bit of difference. 

I chickened out of booking a course of sun beds (another suggested cure, something to do with the UV light), I must confess. I meant to go but was completely intimidated by the people manning them. The mahogany glaze to them. The terrifying fingernails. The, oh my dears, over-emphasised eyebrows that seemed to waggle independently at me, signalling that I was out of my depth. The eyebrows don’t lie.

I have avoided totalling up how much this, this, nonsense has cost me. The endless creams, the dietary alternatives, the appointments with specialists, the supplements, and the end result has been a savings account that echoes and skin that still frightens the horses. 

This year, I said to N, I'm stopping this. I need to take a break from it all. This is more than one woman can manage, and this particular woman has had it up to here with other women in health food shops putting their heads on one side and saying "has madam tried this supplement? It's only £45 and your soul for 2 capsules? You need to take 4 capsules a day in water that's been collected under a full moon from half way up Mount Kilimanjaro - the water is not provided, you'll need to gather that yourself. We have an offer today: buy this and get a life time's worth of anxiety for free!"

Up with this QUACKERY I will no longer put. 

Oh, except for this place, this Chinese herbalists, which has had some great reviews, so I'm going to give it a try. This is my last quack of the duck, if you will. 

And that is how I ended up in a room filled with disturbingly detailed anatomical drawings, listening to some truly dreadful "relaxing" music (the CD gets stuck and judders at the same point every week, and I'm forced to listen to the sound of the recorder ddd-dddd-ddd-ing for 30 seconds until she gets up and thumps the CD player) while a woman sticks pins in me and then trains a heat lamp on particular spots. She asks me nothing about what I eat, is utterly unconcerned with any stresses I may have experienced and makes no attempt to jazz up what she's doing. She flicks the needles in with the casual skill of a professional darts player. 

It is practical and, I cannot tell you, a huge relief. Her whole attitude is one of "yep, seen this before, get up there and let's get on with it."

Then I flip over (I say flip, what I mean is that I roll over with the grace of a beached whale and try not to fall off the table) so she can practise the mysterious art of cupping. No, NOT that sort of cupping - get your minds out of the gutter - but the sort that people like Gwyneth Paltrow used to have done. Did I say I was done with quacks and quackery? It seems I have actually decided to go the Full Duck. 

At the end, she pummels me for 10 seconds in a brief, non-relaxing, massage, charges me an extraordinary amount of money, and sends me away with parcels of tea that look and taste like rotting undergrowth. I swear it is the same smell you notice along the canal in the depths of a damp winter. 

And what's my verdict after 4 weeks of going the Full Duck? 

The eczema on my face and scalp has gone. Completely vanished as if it had never been there in the first place. The stuff on my arms, back and knees is still lingering, reluctant to leave a party no one invited them to, but the areas are reduced, not quite so red and angry. I no longer have to hold my hair in place, like a man with a comb-over in a high wind. People no longer recoil in the street. Small children no longer cry when I look at them. Dogs no longer howl and flee. Birds sing and my life feels less like one angry ball of itch. 

Still angry, but without the itch. Bring out the Stilton. 

June Reading

With hindsight, my June reading should have been a huge clue, to me anyway, as to how I was feeling. But that’s the thing about being in the middle of a fog, you can’t see your way out, let alone stop to think about  what might be causing it. 

To cut a long, twisting, evolving and not particularly jolly story short, I’m currently signed off work for a couple of weeks with stress and anxiety, and I should have seen the signs. But as I wasn’t paying attention to myself, the cause of the fog, I didn’t realise how bad it was until I woke one morning and discovered that I could no longer find my way out of it. 

I will be fine. All the support systems have kicked in, boyfriend and friends that know are hugely supportive, the rest is helping and the fog is lifting. As I look back to June, I can now see how quickly it gathered, and the triggers behind it. That’s the thing about hindsight: it’s always 20:20. 

The clue in my reading is that I completely lost the ability to focus. I started David Olusoga’s book and Toni Morrison’s but couldn’t manage more than a couple of pages at a time. Not because they are badly written, the very opposite. No, my brain was completely overwhelmed and in retreat. 

So it retreated to Discworld. I gulped down all the copies I had on my shelves but I couldn’t tell you what the nuances of plot were. All I knew was that they were safe and comforting and set in a world that worked a damn sight better than the real one. I wanted to pound the streets with Captain Vimes, be taught how to Borrow by Granny Weatherwax, learn the lyrics to The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered with Nanny Ogg and ride Binky with Death. 

I most emphatically did not want to be in reality. Does anyone right now?

The good news is that the fog is beginning to lift. A few days on the sofa and the arrival of our new addition, Mabel (there will be more about her, have no fear) have helped enormously. It's hard to remain wallowing in self-pity when a small furry head is butting against yours and there are 4 tiny paws to play with.

How are we all?

Well my dears, how are we all? It seems I can't move at the moment for news of the virus, advice on how to avoid the virus or tips on how to spend my time during the virus. To paraphrase Hermione, "fear of the virus increases fear of everyone who wants to see me self-improve during the lockdown". 

Toadflax. Only found out this week what it is. Pretty ain't it? Just sitting there

on the wall like it owns the place.  

As a natural introvert, this is pretty much my idea of bliss: enforced staying in, no contact except with those I love. I'm happy to wake up at my usual time and, in lieu of my 20 minute walk to work, read for a bit longer. Or start work earlier, so I can knock off similarly and then spend the extra time at the allotment. 

So far I have:

• read an inordinate amount of crime fiction, because I find this soothing
• planted 4 rows of potatoes at the allotment
• sowed many seeds at home, which I regularly stand over, raising my hands, saying "grow my pretties, GROW"
• made cinnamon buns and focaccia
• chatted to family via video call
• invented quizzes to keep people I work with occupied with my nonsense even when I'm not physically there
• weeded the front garden
• started learning Spanish (once started, long abandoned)
• bent myself to a benevolent yoga goddess and practised most days (even if only for 20 mins at a time)
• eaten too much chocolate, crisps and bread but I don't care
• cycled near-empty streets

Rosemary at the allotment. The bees are loving it. 

This really is a time for finding pleasure in the small things and that's always been my forte. I get an intense pleasure from things like clean sheets, cow parsley on the tow path, the smell of bread, proper coffee, cutting my own fringe (been doing it for years now), lying in a patch of sun with a book, listening to the cat purr, watching the crochet blanket grow under my fingers. 

I have so far resisted the temptation to make my own sourdough starter, but that is surely only a matter of days away. And to be fair, sourdough is my favourite type of bread, after soft white sesame seed rolls, which have a long held treasured taste memory for me (my Nan used to toast them and serve them with real butter and marmalade. Eating them now, I'm 8 years old again, swinging my legs at her kitchen table, eager to get out across to the farm opposite for a good long explore).

Picked up a pen and started drawing again - with mixed results. Some of those birds

are quite disturbing. Slow growth of the crochet blanket. 

Podcasts rumble on in the background, under the clatter of my fingers on the laptop keyboard as I work from home. Shedunnit, Backlisted and In Our Time. 

Ah work. I am lucky in that I've not been laid off, my job isn't zero hours and I'm not front-line in the care sector or NHS. That said, it has felt harder than usual. My head hurts by the end of the day and my back is stiff. I've decorated my little "office" and filled it with plants, but still there is something lacking. People. I miss the volunteers and my colleagues, all of whom are now furloughed. There is a sense that I'm what the museum is relying on to see it through, and the responsibility is a little overwhelming. It's also slightly lonely.   

My office. Succulents, flowers from the canal path, 

some research and tea, old tin pen pot resisting attempts 

to make me use a proper pen pot

And I miss my son. He not long moved into his own place and was loving working with adults who have mental and physical disabilities. Yes, he is in the front-line of the care sector, but is treating it all with his usual sanguinity (is that a word? I say yes, spell check says no) and messages all end with his standard "lol" that makes me want to slap a thesaurus in front of him. I find I am better if I don't think about it and just check in with him every couple of days. 

"How are you doing kid x"

"Yeah, good thanks lol"

See what I mean?

So far, I have not:

• started a podcast
• repainted the house
• started a couch to 5k
• become an influencer
• mastered the art of cordon bleu cookery ("sandwich for dinner okay, yeah?" "yeah")
• put all my "content" online - mainly because I have no content
• started any of those challenging books people say are good for lockdown situations. James Joyce, I'm looking at you
• written a blog post about all the things people should be doing or how they could improve themselves during this time.

Life is weird, do what makes you feel good. And you don't need me to tell you what that is. 

Robin with a beak full of flies, sitting cheekily close 

when I took a break

The Good News Roundup

Well, this was going to be a Good News roundup but then events overtook me and, instead of being able to trawl the internet for happy stories, I've been distracted by setting up an office at home, managing the volunteers I work with, trying to keep the museum I work in feeling alive and relevant to a (now totally) digital audience etc etc etc. So. Not much time for trawling. 

The middle section of the elder by the canal side of the allotment fell down.

On the plus side, this gives us a nice handy bench for those important coffee and progress chats.  

I'm deliberately keeping away from the media - we don't watch a news program and I only read the Guardian once a day, just to try and keep some sanity and a sense of proportion. It's so easy to get carried away, hitting refresh, getting into arguments online, checking your temperature in the manner of a fragile Victorian heroine (back of hand against the brow, a weary sigh etc) and fretting that every little niggle in the throat is the start of IT. I'm keeping my anxiety levels low by keeping my exposure to hysterical media low. 

Mind you, we'd have to check for fungi before sitting. I don't imagine these black frilly types, 

nice as they look, would leave your jeans in a good state. 

I'm also not pushing myself to feel like I have to have written a novel, learned to draw like Michelangelo, inspired a whole new internet trend, become super-yoga bendy, repainted the whole house, sculpted the new centrepiece for the Venice Biennale etc etc etc. It is okay not to have done any of those things. It is okay to have managed just one blog post (here it is!), a couple of hours at the allotment and the occasional bike ride. 

Providing I get through this with an intact relationship, my family and my own sanity, I will be happy. It is nice not to feel so tired after work that I don't want to cook. It is nice to cycle through almost deserted streets (although when this is all done, I'm having a word with the damn saddle manufacturer). It is nice to do a spot of yoga now and then. It is nice to dig and chat on the allotment at the end of the day. It is nice to plant seeds. It is nice to plan our Paris-Bordeaux trip for next year. It is nice to have more time to read in bed in the morning. 

I will take your nice and raise you. 

See, holiday planning for next year. Paris to Bordeaux by train, baby. 

These are posted to the wall in front of my temporary desk and bringing

some sanity. Plus hope. Hope is good. 

Just two links to good news this week, because I'm finding that focusing my mental energy on farming and ecology is more of a help than focusing it on the lack of flour in my local shop.

Ecology is a feminist issue. Why taking a feminine approach to the current world crisis may be the approach that stops our house from burning.

Urban areas can be farms too! I love the idea that once bleak and divided places can be made communal, productive and a force for good. 

Keep yourselves well and sane. Remember to get dressed properly, eat what you feel like, move around a little. Remember to be kind. 

Taking Steps

I think, right now, it is okay to feel overwhelmed. To feel like the skies are always dark, the work always repetitive and the hugs not always forthcoming. To feel like there are so many problems you don't know where to start (and that's before you even get to the big world stuff). To feel like there are so many things to learn about that there is not enough time in the world. To feel like you are shouldering so many burdens you may break. To feel that you are always the one dishing out the support, love and affection, whilst always being at the end of everyone else's queue for the same.

It is quite alright to think, to know, that you cannot face going out, staying out, partying out because all that really appeals is solitude and time to think. It is alright to, when faced with this time to think, decide not to but merely watch re-runs or read whilst in your pyjamas. It is alright to eat the same thing on repeat, to not feel like cooking, to allow the craving to take over.

It is perfectly fine to hibernate, hunker down, bunker up, shut down. The world will still turn even if you don't make that dinner engagement. Oxygen will still be generated even if you don't see that must-see film. Humanity will continue to bimble and bicker outside your door even if you don't go to that pub.

It is okay to feel all this because you're human. And because it's still only fecking February, how are we not in March yet, dear god will this winter never end and if I have to close the door behind someone ONE MORE TIME, I may take it off the hinges and batter them with it while screaming "close the door!" over and over again.

And breeeeeathe.

So, what to do? Lie back and allow it to overwhelm, weeping into a giant bag of left-over Christmas crisps and a plateful of the Christmas cake that no one can really bring themselves to eat but needs must when the mood is this dire? Rage rage against the dying of the light, the leaving open of the doors or the endless rain? Grit your teeth and soldier silently on, mounting fury at the continued ignoring of your own needs making your eyes go flinty and mean, causing yet more crows feet? Add crows feet to the list of things to worry about?

No. 

Take the bath. Read the escapist book (I've been inhaling Barbara Pym and Muriel Spark like crack...do people inhale crack?). Buy the good bread, cheese and chocolate. Ask for, nay demand, the hug from those you love. Book the massage. Park the car in a country road and stand in a field for 5 minutes. Smell the baby's head. Light the candle. Buy the daffodils. Get out of the car and look at the snowdrops. Give a quid to the homeless guy. Give all your quids and a cup of coffee. Hold a perfectly smooth egg for 30 seconds and then make yourself the butteriest scrambled egg for breakfast. Make time for breakfast. Swim. Stare at the stars. Tick off the days. Know that it gets better. 

Buy an automatic closer for the goddam door.