My Week in ... Sounds

The bells chiming out the hour from the rather handsome church round the corner from our house. I find myself feeling cheated when the number of chimes is less than 7. 

Our formerly indoor cat making his strange cackling meow at the massive pigeons on the fence, as though he knows he should make a noise but can’t decide what it should be. 

Birdsong at the allotment, with a bass line of bees.  

The chatter and clink of cups at the first coffee shop I’ve visited since February. 

My own voice on a recording made for work. Do I sound like that? I had no idea. I certainly sound posher than I really am. 

Bacon sizzling in the pan with onions and mushrooms. 

My chair at the café. It was you’llery comfortable. 

All the Small Things #5

The boyfriend and I have somewhat different sleeping patterns. I am the proverbial up-with-the-lark, waking between 5 and 6 in the morning, brain whirring, eager to see what the day holds, sleepy and muddled by 10pm, longing for my bed. 

He’s the opposite, one of those fabled night owls who would sleep till 11 in the morning, revelling in bed while the world cracks on outside, still wide awake at 1 in the morning, listening to the city’s night sounds. 

This could have caused problems but since the creation of my retreat (aka the spare room), it doesn’t. I creep out of bed, make myself tea, greet the cat and come back up into the retreat to read and gently ease myself into the day. 

At weekends, I treat myself to breakfast in bed, nothing too fancy or messy. Today there’s sourdough bread, honey and cherries from the farm shop, peanut butter (my food addiction and strictly limited so I don’t end up having to be craned out of the house) and a nectarine because it had hit that sweet ripe spot overnight. A copy of Bloom to browse through because recently I’ve lost concentration for books. 

It’s been a tough week for many reasons, so I’m resetting this weekend. No Twitter, no news, limited online time. And lots of good food. 

My week in ...

New series (possibly) of posts where I remind myself  of things experienced during the week via my senses. This week, smell. 

Smell is a rather unpleasant word, isn't it? But somehow fragrance, perfume, odour don't seem to fit, and I just don't like the word 'scent'. 

Never mind, I'll think on, in the meantime, here's my week in assorted smells (really going to think on that word): 

Sheets, freshly washed and in from drying outside, on the bed. 

Rain hitting hot pavements. 

Just-turned soil. 

Wild oregano on the allotment, full of flowers and bees. 

My cat's fur, warm from a day's sunbathing. 

A sandwich of fresh bread stuffed with rocket and halloumi. 

Beeswax polish on my favourite piece of furniture. 

gate image above from a recent neighbourhood explore. I love this so much; it speaks of safety and home and humour. Also, that green. 

All The Small Things #4

When my sister and I were little, we spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents in their village house. Mornings were a time for second breakfasts, feeding the birds, making spice potions, exploring the gardens and farm over the road.  

Afternoons were for a trip to the little church where our parents were married, to the cemetery and then back where we were allowed to bother my grandad as he pottered around, seemingly bad tempered and impatient but never scarily so. 

By late afternoon, we'd retreat to their living room and watch cartoons or whatever Western he'd recorded to watch. At some point, the sweet tin would be opened. 

Ah, the sweet tin. I can see it now and recall exactly where it was kept in the 1950s sideboard. Once a week it was topped up with a giant bag of pick and mix from Woolworths. Every time, I looked for the chewy toffee sweets. Inside, it smelled of sherbet, chocolate and sugar. It was the tin of dreams and I wanted one when I was old enough. 

I don't have a sweet tin now I'm a grown up. I may be in my 40s but my self control around sweets is practically zero. For that reason, I hardly ever buy them either. But every now and then I succumb, this week to the incomparable mint chocolates from Hotel Chocolat. Promising myself, as always, that I'd have one a day and savour them. 

Reader, I ate them all. And they were good.

 

June at the 'Lottie

Thank goodness for the rain, has been the recent cry around my house as it means we can neither go anywhere and face the crowds of ridiculous people, nor were our watering skills needed at the allotment for so long, my allotment neighbour sent me a message to check I was okay.

Another reason for being thankful is that the ground has finally softened enough for me to begin digging over the space where the fruit cage will go. The earth is full of roots - bindweed, bramble, thick tussocky grass - as well as bits of plastic, pottery and interesting stones, which bring a pause in proceedings as I check them out for fossils. No luck so far.

The great runner bean project is now well underway with the beans making their winding way to the top of the poles. Planted between each one is a beetroot. Truly, the boyfriend has an autumn of pickling ahead of him.

The squash and courgette I planted in early May has recovered from the frosts and there are now tiny yellow courgettes on the one below. I won't leave it too long before harvesting them as I prefer my courgettes small and tender, rather than large and tough.

The remaining potato plants are resolutely refusing to put out any flowers, so I'm not sure if they're ready to harvest yet or not. I figure they're not getting into any harm in the ground, so there they stay for the time being.

And the wildflower patch is buzzing with life. Last time I counted 10 bumbles going nuts amongst the purple blooms, wriggling and buzzing like children round a chocolate trifle. This makes me smile. The bottom of the plot does not. There are 2 downed elder trees that I can't chop up and burn as we still have a ban on it at the site, plus they are currently the only thing holding the Japanese knotweed at bay. This is spreading along the canal bank and I know, from my Dad's days as a landscape gardener, it's harder to get rid of than a boring (and toxic) guest at a dinner party. As we don't know when the council will be out to deal with it, I'm not in any rush to clear the area.

At home I have sprout, purple sprouting broccoli and standard broccoli seedlings on the windowsill. They'll be going in the potato plots once that's been cleared and fed. I'm hoping to grow a few parsnips over the winter too, as well as swede. The raspberries will go in the cleared fruit cage area and then I can turn my attention to the potential asparagus bed and orchard area (right where that troublesome knotweed is).

My birthday looms in mid-July like a big looming excuse to treat myself, take some time off and generally have a reason for eating all the things I like. I've asked for, and been promised by the boyfriend, a small shed for the allotment, so I no longer have to carry every tool up there. A shed! Can't believe I'm so excited by 4 wooden walls, but there we are. I have grown up, it seems, although I also got excited over a new boardgame at the weekend, so not that grown up.

I shall paint it blue with a yellow door, a cupboard inside with a camping stove and a kettle, and a curse on anyone who breaks in and nicks anything.

All the Small Things #3

The minute, the very second, one of my potato plants at the allotment showed a flower on top, I was in there, carefully scraping away with trowel and fingers to reveal these golden wonky orbs of deliciousness. With skins so soft they came away with a gentle rub of the thumb, they tasted earthy and sweet, melting in the mouth with a satisfaction that comes from growing, and eating, your own produce.

By far the best potatoes we'd ever eaten. With butter (or butter substitute in my case - not the same at all) and mint from the garden, a corn on the cob so yellow it was almost indecent and thick slices from a baked ham, accompanied with my Mum's pickle and a glass of white wine.

We talked about how good they were, how the runner beans were doing, our next growing plans.

They were absolutely the best things we've eaten this year. Apart from the one ripe raspberry from the cane in the back garden at home. But I didn't share that.

May Reading

A delayed catch up on what I read during May as it didn't seem right to plunge straight into it. I'm still processing what's happening right now, and that included a lovely, distanced, debate with my Dad yesterday after the toppling of the Colston statue. I think he expected me, as a museum person, to be against it but statues aren't history. 

Statues are what we put up when we think someone has achieved such greatness that they merit our attention. Slave traders do not merit our attention and they sure as hell don't deserve commemoration, no matter how much money they gave to a city. 

Bristol council ignored repeated petitions, letters and peaceful calls for it to be removed, and they ignored them. Which marks them out as moral cowards at the very least. Good riddance to the damn thing. I only wish they'd left it in the water. 

Anyway, books. Books are what I do, and here is what I did. 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce

Letters from a Faint-Hearted Feminist by Jill Tweedie

Visitors Guide to Tudor England (for work) by Suzannah Lipscomb

Count Me In by Christine McDonnell

The Colour Purple by Alice Walker

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald

Sightlines by Kathleen Jamie

A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett

Equal Rites by TP

After reading Lucy Mangan's Bookworm, I was inspired to revisit some childhood favourites and then segued into non-fiction before coming to land on Terry Pratchett. 

I miss him and wonder how the insanity of the recent months would have played out in Discworld, incidentally the only sci-fi/fantasy series I can bear (don't. I've tried. But much like historical fiction, there is something about the way it's written that makes me grit my teeth). And, as I work my way through what copies of the series I have, I wish more than ever that second hand bookshops were open so I could top up my collection. 

After my previous post, I have been thinking even more about what I can do. Bringing out The Color Purple, as much as I love it, for a re-read isn't going to change the world. So I've made myself a pledge. Every month for the next 12 months, I'll be buying a book by a BME author, brand new and not from Amazon. Fiction or non-fiction. 

This month, I'm kicking off with Toni Morrison's last book of essays and meditations, Mouth Full of Blood (actually purchased just before lockdown) and David Olusoga's Black and British: a Forgotten History should be with me by the end of the week. 

It's a small step, and one with results that will probably change the world for only me. But maybe, by starting here, by being able to have the facts to hand the next time I'm in a conversation with family and friends, I'll be able to change their thinking, one sentence at a time.