Planning the Plot

After having got a lot of frustration off my chest with my last post (although I'm still angry about diet culture, but that's not today's topic), and with still being very much confined to barracks, unable to get to the allotment recently, I've been trying to satisfy my desire to be up there and working on the plot by planning for it instead. 

Sometimes it's hard to believe that I've had it 18 months already. When I first saw it, I realised that I'd basically been let a meadow and told to get on with it. Even a rotavator couldn't cut through the grass. But plots are hard to come by and, after waiting 2 years, there was no way I was going to turn it down. 

A lot of it is still meadow with 6 beds dug into it and the large fruit cage area. N likes the grass and there's no mistaking that it's a haven for insects. Unfortunately it's also a haven for bindweed, which basically uses it as an evil highway as it inches it's way towards the veg. 

Being a bit anti-herbicide (i.e. I've read Silent Spring - no good can come of them), there's nothing for it but a great deal more digging. The top 2 thirds of the plot will be slowly but surely cleared, much as I have been doing with copious use of membrane and spade. Sometimes there is nothing for it but graft. 

I ran wild on the Higgledy Seeds website, ordering masses of cornflowers, nigella, calendula, candytuft, cosmos, chrysanthemums, gypsophilia and sweet peas to create the wildflower/cutting flower area that'll bring all the bees and butterflies to the yard. It was a real boost to the senses to browse that site and if you're thinking of supporting an independent seed merchant, I heartily recommend it. But get in quick. Ben, the owner, recently announced that he's restricting sales this year to keep his vision for the business rather than watch it spiral out of control. A brave decision, I think. 

Speaking of keeping visions, its still important to me to keep the plot as wildlife friendly as possible, so not all the grass will be going. The final third of the plot will become a mini-orchard with apple, plum and cherry trees with enough space for 2 of each. The grass can remain down there, and once I can clear the remainder of the fallen and falling elder, I'll start working on that area, making space for the saplings to go in, as well as creating space for the shed.

Oh yes, this year I am determined to get myself a shed. It feels ridiculous to keep lugging tools up there only to find that I really need something I didn't have enough arms to carry up with me, or driving the car the 2 minutes so I can take up more than 2 tools and a rucksack. Plus, I want somewhere to store a deckchair. What is the point of all this work if you can't sit and stare at it in comfort? 

And as for what will be growing (apart from flowers and trees)? I made the executive decision that there will be NO runner beans this year after 2020's over-beaning. Yellow courgettes, borlotti and black beans, asparagus, raspberries and rhubarb. Rocket and other salad stuffs, big indulgent tomatoes. Leeks, potatoes and onions. Calabrese and purple sprouting broccoli, sprouts and red cabbage. There will only be a couple of small squash as N doesn't like them, so it's silly to grow big varieties just for me. 

I think that might be enough. 

Rather than winging it, I've got myself a special allotment diary and have been putting in seed buying and sowing dates. That should mean that we avoid gluts and I no longer miss prime planting windows for the foods I love. 

Right now, of course, this all feels very far away. The sky is sending down the occasional flurry of snow and when I stand up, I'm reminded of how removed I am from optimal health, let alone physicality. But then I see the delicate green tips of bulbs pushing through the ground and am reminded that all the seasons swing round again and it won't be long before I'm back up there, smelling the earth crumbling between my fingers and watching things turn green in the light. 

December Reading

 Wow, December was a booky month! I honestly didn’t expect to read so much, given my hospital stay and the lack of concentration that always follows an anaesthetic. 

There was a lack of concentration but I channelled that into some children’s books, feeling the urge to spend time with Mole and Ratty (Badger is my absolute favourite character), Sylvia and Bonnie. I also felt it was time to find out what all the fuss was about with the Dark is Rising. If you’ve missed the fuss, this episode of Backlisted should explain it. 

Laurie Lee was a hefty dose of that dangerous thing, nostalgia, Sense and Sensibility a delight, One Good Turn a bit of a slog (why was Jackson such a wuss with bloody awful Julia?) and Allingham is quickly becoming my favourite crime writer. 

It was a joy to find 2 previously unread Pyms in the charity shop. Less Than Angels was excellent but The Sweet Dove Died a bit of a stinker as she’d obviously tried to bring her characters up to date. It didn’t work. Still, I’d rather read a mediocre Pym than a top Rushdie. 

52 Ways... was one of those stocking filler books (given to N by his brother) that actually has a decent point to put across (namely that bad things were done and buried by Britain’s empire) that got lost because the author fell in love with the word bellend, using it multiple times on a page. Listen, I swear like a trooper but it was tiresome even for me. 

But I want to focus on Roxane Gay’s Hunger. Such a powerful book. A meditation on her weight and the horrifying reason behind her rapid increase into obesity. That one act of male violence should derail a person is not a new occurrence. That the long-term, damaging effects should be so eloquently discussed is. 

"And then there was that terrible day in the woods. And I finally did say no. And it did not matter. That's what has scarred me the most. My no did not matter. ... I was marked after that. Men could smell it on me, that I had lost my body, that I wouldn't say no because I knew my no did not matter."

Having spent large chunks of my life as a big woman myself, I know that the journey to becoming big is a long one and often triggered by something else. A deep unhappiness, a traumatic event: something, somehow, has made you so fearful, so sad, that the only respite is food and we kid ourselves with every mouthful that food is our friend and food will keep us safe. 

This doesn't mean we are lazy or stupid or ignorant of good eating. We can make the right food choices, do the exercise, but something will send us into corners where we can't be observed as we eat the very things we've told our children are bad for them. We know it. We know how we look. And we are all too aware of how we are judged for it. 

"I am self-conscious beyond measure. I am intensely and constantly preoccupied with my body in the world because I know what people think and what they see when they look at me. I know I am breaking the unspoken rules of what a woman should look like."

Those unspoken rules! We're never free of them, not even when we lose the weight. It's never enough until it's too much. You can do all the exercise but that will make your thighs fat, not strong, in the eye of the world. You can cut out all the refined sugar but then someone will tell you that it's pointless unless you replace it with kale. Billions of pounds (money not fat) are invested in telling you that no matter what you do, it's wrong and only they have the answer. 

Except they don't have the answer because then how would they make their money? Diet culture is failure culture. If they find a cure, it will wipe them out and no be-yachted chief exec wants that. 

And their "answers" are predicated around the idea of control. Control this amount of bread, this amount of sugar. Eat this many syns, don't eat over that number of points. Make this smoothie, don't eat that solid food.

Diet culture is bullshit culture. 

"...the woman who clearly did not need to be there because she was no more than forty or so pounds overweight, dominated the session, asking intimate, personal questions that broke my heart. As she interrogated the doctors, her husband sat next to her, smirking. It became clear why she was there. It was all about him and how he saw her body."

And it's bullshit culture because it never even touches the root of why we might be overeating. There is not a diet in the world that gets you alone with a therapist, who does not judge, but who simply says "there is nothing wrong with you, nothing can hurt you now. I understand. Tell me." Yes, groups can be supportive but there was no way I am ever going to stand up in a Slimming World "Body Magic" session and tell my truth. 

I have said this time and time again, to doctors who smirk and think I'm being melodramatic, to thin friends who cannot understand because this is an experience they will never have, and to anyone who dares to use the words "fat and lazy" in my hearing: until we treat obesity as an eating disorder, we will never treat it properly. 

But it is easier to treat big people as stupid, as lazy and pathetic, a drain on society and somehow responsible for all it's ills. Big parents are told they are bad parents. Big women are told they are unfeminine. Big men are the butts of all jokes. It is easier to write them off or cut them open and install a gastric band. 

And it breaks my heart to know that. 

"To tell you the story of my body is to tell you about shame - being ashamed of how I look, ashamed of my weakness, the shame of knowing it is in my power to change my body and yet, year after year, not changing it. Or I try, I do. I eat right, I work out. My body becomes smaller and starts to feel more like mine and not a cage of flesh I carry with me. That's when I feel a new kind of panic because I am seen in a different way. ... In such moments, I see myself in the mirror, narrower, more angular. I recognize the me I could have, should have, would have been and want to be. That version of myself is terrifying and maybe even beautiful, so I panic...I stop...I do this until I feel safe again."

Betwixtmas

I’m sure I’m not the person who came up with this term but I can’t remember who did. Whoever they were, full genius marks to them as this is the perfect word to describe this period between the tired damp fag end of this year and the bright shiny start of next. 

Ordinarily, I’d be spending it clearing out cupboards, catching up with friends and family, taking long walks and generally filling my hours with activity. This year, recuperation means I can’t. I’m forbidden to lift anything heavier than a quarter full kettle, banned from all housework and under orders not to get cocky about the speed of recovery. 

Truth be told, this chafes a little bit, until I stretch too far and then the wound site chafes even more than my forced inactivity, and then I give in and have a doze on the sofa. 

Christmas dinner was a triumph, cooked by N - his first ever time of doing so. Yes, it was 2 hours late and we forgot the crackers, but there was no rush. These are the long slow days of not very much at all this year. I'm rarely properly up before 10 and he, with his infinite capacity for sleeping in, can get a good 12 hours before he wakes. 

It made me weep the morning after I'd come home when he appeared at the spare bedroom door (where I'm sleeping currently for maximum comfort) just as I was trying to struggle upright. He'd set his alarm so he could be ready with a cup of tea for me. That is consideration. 

Yesterday we had snow, as did many places. There is still something magical about this white stuff whirling down and covering everything, making it clean and bright. The cats were perplexed by their first encounter with it, although Mabel did decide to enjoy it after her initial jump back in surprise. Today, when more fell, she leapt into the air, batting it with her paws and generally acting like I wish I could have done. 

A friend of ours with a recent negative Covid test came over for a game of Trivial Pursuit, some damson gin and a lot of cheese. It brought a lovely dose of new energy and conversation to the house. Her present to me this year was a handmade apron with a fab print and a Granny Weatherwax hat on the pocket. It may have been the residual anaesthetic, but I was incredibly touched and a little weepy with it. GW is a heroine of mine and the most perfectly realised female character ever written by a man. That she'd remembered that and got it worked into a handmade gift was a truly generous thing. 

Apart from getting weepy over an infinite number of things (Mabel giving me a headbutt, Thor bringing me a gift of wool from my stash, N tweaking my toes as he walks past, the end of Ghosts, episodes of The Repair Shop), what have I been doing with myself?

Reading, making plans for next year, filling notebooks with these plans, making a sourdough starter, watching Christmas films. Chair yoga. Writing. Playing games. 

When I was little, this betwixtmas time would have been spent in much the same way (minus the yoga and sourdough, plus arguing with my sister), with the excitement of New Years Eve growing every day. For NYE was when we were sent off to stay with my maternal grandparents. We'd arrive in the afternoon so we had time for the usual rituals: visiting the tiny graveyard, playing Poohsticks from the bridge over the stream, exploring the small church that we never tired of, feeding the ducks in the farm pond across the road from their house. 

Dinner would be early and we'd be allowed to stay up, trying small nips of things from the leatherette-clad bar in the corner of their living room - advocaat is my Proustian madeleine - watching Clive James being incredibly erudite and witty as the clocks chimed 12 and we chomped a supper of biscuits and cheese. 

The next day would be our second Christmas as they were always elsewhere for the official one. Our parents would arrive, heroically hiding hangovers, a huge joint of beef would be roasted and there would be presents, crackers, squabbling and people trying to politely refuse the homemade wine my Grandad devoted hours to making but that always tasted like vinegar at best. 

I was lucky with my childhood Christmasses and the hardest lesson with growing up is that these can never come again. Both grandparents are dead, to begin with, second Christmas is a distant memory and besides, the wench is middle aged. This does not make me sad or melancholy though: this year, as I turn these memories over, I am just grateful for all the ones I've had and all the ones I hopefully have to come. 

All things considered, I'm having a pretty good end to a year that's been a test for all of us. There was no right or wrong way of passing this test - it is enough to have endured it. I'm impatient for recovery, for the new year, for change, as are so many, but I'll step carefully over 2020, rather than my usual full headlong pelt forwards. And I'll raise a glass to all of it. 

My Week in ... Taste

Gosh this week is a bit frantic. I'm wrapping up last minute jobs at work, wrapping up presents in the evenings and managing to get virtual catch-ups with friends and family in the spare moments. Last night I woke at 3.30am with a jump: I'd been dreaming I'd forgotten about my op until 2 hours after the time it was scheduled. Not happy that my waking anxiety should invade my sleep!

Anyway, onto my week in seven flavours. Only a little more abstemious than I thought it might be, what with the New Regime and all. 

Cashew nuts! All part of the new food regime. Having been strictly an only-peanuts girl, I found them weird at first but now I even like them more than the former. Roasted and salted, of course. Whaddaya think I am, some kind of penitent?

Smoked salmon. I don't buy a lot of it before you go thinking I'm posh or summat. But this time of year is my own personal "salmon season" (me and everyone else in Britain) and I'm thoroughly enjoying the unbeatable taste of smoked salmon folded into gently scrambled free range eggs, the yolks so orange they look like little suns on my plate. 

Coffee. Real coffee. Working from home means I get to make myself a cafetiere of the stuff every morning, so I'm not missing out on the coffee shop right next to my workplace. It's not quite the same, but it's close enough. 

Coriander. Or cilantro if you're American. I love this herb but you have to go carefully with it unless you want a mouthful of something that tastes like antiseptic. This week, I've had it in soup, courgette fritters and in a giant cous-cous (the only cous-cous worth the water used in preparing it) salad. 

Damson gin. Self explanatory surely?

Damson Jelly. I've been adding spoonfuls of this to gravies for the past couple of weeks and it adds a blast of sour fruity goodness to cut through the fat and heavy saltiness of gravy. Amazing. Try it now if you haven't already. 

Rice cakes. Don't. I know. I've actually written the words "rice cakes" on my blog. I'm so ashamed. But not bloated, so there. When the need for a crunchy food that isn't toast (see previous post) or a nut (see above) overwhelms, I "butter" one up and add some humous or goats cheese. No, it is not at all as good as a piece of toast with cheese or jam on it. How could it be? This breaking of old (bad) habits is tough on the tastebuds sometimes, folks. 

Zombie peanuts! Ho ho ho 

Cloud Rambling

A week into my own personal lockdown and I haven’t yet cracked and run amok through the house screaming “will I never see OUTSIDE again?” Which is a bonus.  

As a person who is mostly introverted and who enjoys copious amounts of quiet time on her own, I was always going to be suited to this. I can happily wile away whole days inside, making bits of nonsense, reading, writing, watching, baking (not so much any more - more on that story later), pondering the garden or paint colours for inside, staring into space...

At the weekend I put together a Christmas wreath made from pom-poms and lights. It’s extremely cheerful, extremely gaudy and makes me happy every time I look at it (although I’m kind of wishing I’d cleaned the windows before I hung it). It also meant I could claim my day’s work done and spend the rest of it reading the paper. 

Behold! The Wreath of Gaudiness! 

We’ve played scrabble, watched films, cooked, played with the cats. I’ve bottled my damson gin, jarred my damson jelly and labelled the runner bean chutney for N to deliver while I’m in hospital. 

Last night we watched Batman: the Dark Knight because I am nothing if not behind on my superhero film watching. 3 thoughts have stayed with me: 

1. Bale’s Batman makes me laugh every time he speaks. His voice is so ridiculous! I can’t hear him without imagining him having to break off mid stirring speech to cough and choke. I don’t find him convincing (however he was excellent as Dick Cheney in Vice).

2. Heath Ledger could have been given more airtime. He was astonishing as the Joker and leaving him dangling at the end was a waste.

3. This film does not pass the Bechdel test. Poor Maggie Gyllenhaal portraying the only rounded, fully inhabited female character and she gets killed off? You, Christopher Nolan, did a disservice there, regardless of plot. 

In fact, her character's death made me almost as cross as the Black Widow's did in Avengers: Endgame. Yeah, great, just bring the most interesting character to a stop, why don't you. Leave us with the anodyne Captain America, sure. You didn't just miss a MASSIVE trick there at all. 

Ahem. 

Back to the matter in hand: lockdown. 

There's no doubt that I've been bolstered in mood by a walk my friend and I took the day before I had to sequester away like some medieval nun in a hermitage. We parked up on the side of the Malverns, by Holywell (appropriate, no?), in the mist and murky gloom, and walked up. And up. And up. Admiring the way the muted daylight brought out the russets of the beech leaves, the reds of the berries and the silver of the birches in stark contrast. There was colour everywhere we looked, despite the lack of light. 

And then. Oh friends, then we broke above the cloud into...glorious sunshine! The snaking, ridged spine of the hills leading across the landscape to the almost-touchable Iron Age hill fort was picked out by a sharp light that made the whistling wind feel less bitter. Over to our right, Herefordshire countryside laid itself out, shaking off the damp and glowing greenly. 

To our left, the cloud brushed up against the side of the hills, forming a white carpet so thick and solid looking that we felt we could walk on it. Occasionally bits would be blown up and over the path, momentarily blurring the edges and making me think of moorland mists, the Hound of the Baskervilles and other appropriately Gothic things. 

hill fort in the distance, cloud sneaking over the top of 
the hill to see what was on the other side. 

An hour later, when my thighs gave a wobble at the longest walk I've done in the past 18 months, we headed back down in search of soup, cake and a bookshop. Once I got home, I sat myself down and read HotB, from under a blanket while the mist curled itself against the windows. It was perfect, post-walk, misty day reading. 

And baking? I did promise more on that, didn't I? In truth, I've hesitated to write about this because there is nothing more boring than hearing about other people's diets, but as it's the basis for a big shift in my life, I'm going to. 

Some years ago, I gave up dairy (apart from eggs) in a desperate attempt to bring my eczema under control. And for a time, it worked. Until it didn't and the eczema crept into my scalp, developed on my knees and generally made life itchy and miserable. That alone was enough to make me consider the next step, but when coupled with some other minor, but irritating, health problems, I figured the time had come to bite the (dairy-free) bullet, not to mention my credit card, and book to to see a nutritional therapist. 

I'd not had much luck with doctors, you see. 

Many hours of research later and I finally found a non-woo therapist. And by non-woo, I mean someone who didn't think kale was the answer to everything, who didn't think that fasting would cure my ills or that I should replace my meals with smoothies, who didn't suggest crystals as anything other than something nice to look at, or that I should engage with dream therapy. I wanted someone with a solid grounding in science and a healthy understanding of human nature as well as nutrition. 

Luckily, I found her. Unluckily, the first thing she suggested I quit was gluten. 

Oh bread! Toast in the mornings, sandwiches at lunch, garlic bread with dinner! Naans with curry! Muffins with eggs! Pasta morning noon and night! Cakes, biscuits and other tasty goodnesses! Goodbye to you all, my lifelong delicious friends! Yes, I have been that dramatic; ain't I a peach to live with? In my defence, it is a big step for me: I come from a solid family who's answer to a bad day was crumpets, my favourite part of a roast dinner when growing up was a slice of bread smothered in gravy and my Dad had a second breakfast of lemon curd sandwiches when he was working (he was a landscape gardener, so definitely burned it off throughout the day). 

I could go into the many reasons why this is a recommended first step, but I won't because I don't want to bore you all. Suffice to say, I am no longer eating peanut butter on toast for breakfast and my energy levels have rocketed. Heartburn has disappeared. Bloating is a distant memory. The eczema? It takes 4-6 weeks for the skin to replace itself, so the jury is still out but I feel so much better. Possibly mainly because I'm taking control. And that's got to be worth it. 

I'm still having proper stuffing on Christmas Day though. 

This is likely to be my last lengthy post pre-Christmas. My op is next Tuesday and I imagine I won't be up to anything like this, let alone coherent enough to write it. Thank you all for popping by my tiny corner of the internet, commenting or just reading and moving on. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a very merry new year as we say goodbye to this sod of a year. 

I've not been told I have to give up the damson gin, so I'm not. 

The warning is necessary. 

My Week in...Sounds

Laura Marling on the car stereo. Oh, but she just keeps getting better! I've been listening to her albums in sequence and you can chart her growth and ability throughout the tracks. Just wonderful, thoughtful, unpretentious music. 

My parents laughing over a distanced dinner as we saw each other for the last time this year. 

The sound of my work key turning in the lock for the last time this year. 

The ding-dong of the doorbell as the blessed delivery man brought unto me my replacement phone. See also the happiest of noises the phone makes when I turn it on and end my unplanned digital detox. 

The pingpingping of said phone, reactivated with my sim, bringing up a host of notifications. WhatsApp, in particular, was on fire the week I was without, as our quiz group made arrangements for our festive Murder Mystery evening. 

The sound of the knife cutting through fresh stems of coriander as I make myself a soup for home-based lunches this week, accompanied by the release of that lovely fresh smell. 

The little "stamp" of Mabel's feet on the grass outside as she tries to catch something invisible amongst the blades. She rears up like an arctic fox and then STAMP go her tiny front paws. At least 5 times a night, without fail. And without fail it makes me laugh. 

My grumpy Matroyshka are reluctant to concede to the festive

spirit but they have allowed a string of tiny lights along their section

of the bookcase...

November at the Allotment

It's weird writing about my last 4 weeks at the allotment because, as from today, I won't be up there until mid-January, February if I'm really unlucky. And as for actually being fit enough to achieve anything, well. Let's just say that chair yoga can only do so much for your digging muscles. 

But enough bleak imaginings of the future state of things. I did actually manage to achieve quite a bit in autumn. N treated me to a "swoe" after my allotment neighbour watched me hacking away with my old hoe for 10 minutes before handing me his swoe, saying "please try this, its just painful to watch you". Never underestimate the power of poor hacking when it comes to getting plot pals to lend you effective tools. 

Anyway, can I just say that the swoe is my very very very favourite new tool to play with? A stainless steel, double-edged blade that you slide forward under the weeds, pull back and hey presto, weeds 0: you 100. I LOVE it and it repaid my love by making short work of many weeds, especially in the fruit cage area. 

Which was just in time for the grand erecting of the cage. Accompanied by many a rude word as N wrestled to get the poles in the Y-joiners (Y join? Because this big mallet says so). When I went up the next day to attach the mesh, it was still standing. Thank god, because I can just imagine the furious words that would have been spoken if it hadn't been. 

And there had been plenty enough of that when we were trying to level the ground for the cage to sit on armed with 2 shovels and a spirit level designed more for the hanging of pictures than the levelling of topsoil. As you can see above, I now have a heap of soil I was planning to shift back into the cage to tamp down and plant the raspberries in. Sadly, rain and work have stopped play. It ain't happening now. But I have learned that most things are recoverable or catch-up-able with at some point, so I'm making myself Not Worry about it. 

Besides, it's so wet up on the plot, all I'd end up with is some sad raspberries, a piece of ground that looks like the Somme and an extra 6 inches in height from the mud stuck to the bottom of my boots. Let it go, Collett, let it go. 

Behind the cage you can see the formerly grassy knoll which I'd spent some time clearing and then reinforcing along the path edge in October. The plan is to terrace them eventually but not for a while yet. Rhubarb has arrived and been planted in one of the beds I grew the courgettes in earlier this year. I will not be wanting quite so many in 2021, so the 'barb can have the space instead. 

November was also the month of the Great 'Gras Bed Experiment. As I've already said, somewhere on this blog, I'd spotted asparagus ferns in this space (a great big long bed, practically the width of the plot, about 2/3rds  of the way down) but the whole area was so choked with weeds and grass, I couldn't be sure. Nothing to be done but to put down some membrane and wait. 

It was down for about 8 weeks in total, and the last week of November saw me lifting the cover and starting to fork the earth over. It shifted easily but I soon started uncovering some rather disturbing looking growths, like long brown wizened fingers coming up from under the earth. 

Freaked out yet? I was, slightly, until the penny dropped. Yes, these were asparagus roots! A quick google confirmed it. And the fact that you're not supposed to disturb them. Bugger. I quickly covered the back over and moved delicately over the rest of the bed, managing to clear the dead weeds from the surface of about half of it. Keep your fingers crossed for 'gras please. 

Remarkably, some of the wild flower and anemone seeds I'd planted were still throwing out flowers right up to the end of November. It's extraordinary how mild it's been - there is even the occasional bee, looking bewildered and even more bumbling than usual. 

And that's me done there for the year. I'm trying not to fret about having to leave the plot for so long and, no doubt, after the op, I'll be too busy recovering to worry about it. But I shall miss this place, nonetheless. It has given me such pleasure and solace over lockdown. A place to breathe properly, to get some peace and space. It'll still be there, waiting for me, when I can get to it though. Bindweed and all.