Owning your own orchard (for a week)

Can’t sleep. I’ve passed that point where you might drift off naturally, and am back into the point of brain-whirring.

Time to get up then. To give way to the brain, read a little, write a little, calm the system down. And eat a little, to encourage the body to slow too.

In the past, I would look for milky things to help me sleep. Lately, not so much – but still I need something that will let me type a little, nibble, type a little more.

Right now, it’s the soft fruit season. I’m making the most of it – particularly if supermarkets choose to discount some of their items. (A different supermarket this time.)

I got lucky: a couple of punnets of ripe apricots. A real treat for a country which may produce great berries, but doesn’t really do stone fruit in the same way. (Not in the north, anyway.)

=========

It must be the week for food transporting me to far-off places: not necessarily far in terms of distance, but further off in the distance of memory.

The holiday week where, for a short time, we felt like we owned our own orchard. A lower flat in the city of Carcassonne, in the south of France. Being on the ground floor, we got to use the garden.

Mid to late June. The flat had doors that opened onto the garden. All those dreams of eating in the open air, pushing open shutters and soaking in warmth – finally coming true again, if only for a week.

The garden had fresh cherries and fresh apricots. We couldn’t believe our luck. We couldn’t believe the birds hadn’t already got to the cherries – so we decided to beat them to it.

It’s possibly the first time I remember eating fresh apricots. Don’t get me wrong, dried are good too – the colour, the aroma, the pull of chewiness as you bite in.

Fresh? They’re part-way to peaches, one of my all-time favourites. Others may have problems with ‘furry fruit’. I rather like it – certainly with peaches, and with apricots too.

The skin is thicker on the apricots than on peaches. There’s a little more commitment needed, a little more trust that the experience will be worth it.

======

A few days on from buying them, the supermarket apricots are starting to become soft. (I’ve already tried a few, impatient to see what they’re like: sour. Overly chewy. Not worth it.)

So I sit, and type, and eat my apricots.

I remember warm days, and long evenings, and sitting out in the almost dark, trying not to fight over who would get the last cherries, or apricots, of the day.

Am I tired yet? Maybe. Getting there. But not yet of apricots.

A little evening alchemy

It begins with finding cucumbers on special in the Co-op.
Six cucumbers. Well, five actually, marked down – the sixth is there, and I grab it, whether it’s the same price or not.

A little maths late in the (almost finished) summer term:

  • 3 whole cucumbers +
  • 2 large onions +
  • 1 green pepper (if I remember) +
  • Most of a bottle of vinegar (white, if you can – but half and half with the malt vinegar at the back of the cupboard works just fine too) +
  • Half a bag of brown sugar +
  • Some seeds and spices

= an evening of deep satisfaction.

========

There is something about bread and butter pickles. That’s what they’re called. They have cucumbers, yes, but they’re not the cornichons or even medium-sized ones that come laced with dill and travel memories.

These are big cucumbers, chopped up – and made to taste wonderful. That’s not pride, that’s the recipe, and a certain reverence on my part. It’s also the opinion of two foodie friends who demanded the recipe fairly immediately after sampling them.

So, to get that part in, it’s Rose Elliott’s bread and butter pickles recipe. Mine comes from her book which is part encyclopedia of vegetarian ingredients, part cookbook.

In fact, I might as well jump in and say enthusiastic things about her other books, because I have a couple of them.

They are accessible, straight forward, and inexpensive. And the vegan chocolate cake (in the same book as the pickles) is also really worth your while. Particularly if you want to recreate a Black Forest Gateau now and then.

=======

There is something about cooking when the house is quiet. When you are not rushing to get the meal on the table by the appointed hour.

It’s peaceful. It’s meditative. The chopping that can take so much time at the end of a busy afternoon is now a task for your hands; a way to disconnect your over-active brain.

Three cucumbers. Two onions (with pauses for wiping eyes, and putting the offending bits in the food recycling bin before starting on some more). One green pepper.

Back at the weekend, I started the first batch. Junior Chef joined me, and I finally did the thing I’ve been meaning to do and showed how to do chopping With A Sharp Knife.

And it went well. I was alongside, watching like a hawk, and making sure it was easy stuff to cut, to get used to the feel of the knife. It went just fine – and we sped through our ingredients.

Claudia Roden, in her book of Jewish cooking, writes about the delicacies prepared by Sephardi communities – lots of vegetables, lots of stuffed items.

Part of what has stayed with me is her description of the companionship of women, working together, preparing the feasts to come. Working together takes some of the drudge out of all the chopping for the pickles – and gives me some fun time with Junior Chef.

As with so many things, I rediscover them through the teaching: how cutting with a sharp knife is partly push down, and partly saw, but both made so much easier by the knife being sharp now. We are both excited at the new skill.

===========

Three cucumbers, two onions and one green pepper = five jars of pickles. I look at them. It’s not really enough. Hence my swoop on the cucumbers on offer, and my evening preparations of batch two.

I discover that you can do the pickles in stages – but that it probably isn’t best to do the chopping in the evening and let the veg sit overnight. Unless you like to have the equivalent of a raw onion room spray, that is.

But pickles are easier than jam: you let them go cold before you bottle them. This means you can delay the bottling until the house is quiet again, and you don’t have to worry about Junior Chefs being underfoot before you start heating the jars.

==========

I wore myself out this week. It’s the last week of term. The remaining three cucumbers are waiting for me. It’s OK, though. There’s space now for a further batch, where I keep my jars, because I cleaned them out at the weekend.

I float the suggestion to Junior Chef that we have a lot of jars left, and what about soft fruit picking? And maybe some jam making?

The preserving bug is definitely back.

Living dangerously

Call it the hot and sticky weather (unusual for Scotland). Call it the approach of 40. Call it the congruence of thoughts and various blog posts.

Whatever I call it, it feels like a call, of sorts, to shake a few things up. Try some new things. Live dangerously, even – or dangerously for me.

What does that mean? Dangerous might mean stepping into unfamiliar territory, even territory that I’ve purposely avoided for most of my life. Like drawing.

Like a lot of people, I tended to expect that drawing is just something that you’re good at. Or not. I was in the ‘not’ group from a fairly early age.

Thankfully I found words instead of pictures – and those did me well for a long time. They still work well now, in fact. But all of a sudden, I seem to be coming across encouragements to draw.

At first, I thought they might be for Junior Player – some things to try out over the summer. Then I read a blog post talking about kids learning to draw for themselves. Interesting.

Shortly after that, I found some ‘how to draw’ books in my favourite second-hand book shop. I decided to buy them. (They didn’t have to be for me, right?)

In the meantime, I read another post about a family all drawing together for a month. But somehow, a day or two before, I announced the drawing project to Junior Player – and found myself saying that it was for both of us.

Committed now. Deep breath.

I like learning new things. They have tended to be things that fit with what I can already do. They might add a bit of challenge, but they often come back to some form of book learning, and writing.

I can’t get away with writing if I’m meant to be drawing. The best I can do to sidle round it is to draw – and write about it afterwards.

At the same time, the second article reminded me of what I’d been reading about for writing skills – and what I’d set in motion when I started off the ‘write a post a day for a month‘ endeavour.

It isn’t necessarily about being good. Having it all sussed in advance. It is about turning up, trying, maybe mixing things up a bit when the first rush of inspiration or intention is used up.

Will I put up my pictures to go with posts? Dunno. Maybe. I am meaning to do photos to go with posts – maybe it’s a nudge in that direction.

But I started to realise that it’s part of a wider pattern of trying new things at the moment. Some of them are a bit tricky, but manageable (first go at making sushi? I’ll tell you about that another time).

Others are emerging, little by little. Changes in what I want to eat. There may also be more.

So I’ve given myself a new blog category to go with it: challenge. It won’t be a series for a month. (Trust me, I don’t need to introduce that many challenges at one time.)

Drawing will certainly be a challenge for me, but I’ll give it a go. And that’s probably enough for now. To turn up, to give it a go, whether it’s scary or not.

Removing the fourth wall (or talking directly about the writing)

In the theatre, they talk about the fourth wall – the side of the ‘box’ where the audience sits. To remove the fourth wall is to acknowledge the audience, to talk to them directly, as well as to perform the story.

That’s where I’m at right now. I wasn’t particularly planing to. But it’s the post that’s been growing in my head over the last few days.

When we read, for the most part, we find out about the subject matter, rather than the writers – unless it’s autobiographical.

Even then, it’s still about the story – less about the mechanics of writing, editing, deciding what goes in and what doesn’t.

Blogging changes that. Firstly, so many blogs are autobiographical, one way or another. Some are deliberately so: a family memoir, a form of regular journal.

But even the blogs that are about a subject are often linked to the person’s own story. They write because of what has changed in their life, what has made a difference, what they’ve learned.

Sometimes, that change is hard-won – or not chosen. But the response: that’s the choice, where the hard learning and (sometimes) tears go on. Those fuel the writing.

They make it honest. They make it relevant. And from time to time, the writer might also remind you of where they’ve come from, where the story started, so that you can appreciate the journey too.

Talking directly about the writing is something different. It starts with listening to what other writers have to say about their process. Why they write what they do. How they go about writing, particularly if they’ve committed to doing it regularly.

Writing on a blog takes you a step further. It gives you the choice to talk to the readers about those decisions. If you want to.

I don’t know that I want to, in some ways. It feels like seeing how the conjurer does the trick; like showing all your working in maths to say how you got to that point.

We are used to showing the final product – ta dah! We tend not to want to show the process; the mistakes; the second-guessing that happens before the words take form.

But actually, doing so is to be honest. If great writers needed structure, needed edits, needed to abandon certain story arcs or leave others dormant, why shouldn’t I expect something of that too?

We are still hooked on the notion of inspiration coming down out of the clouds – words pouring straight onto the page. It would be lovely. And sometimes, it even feels a bit like that, rushing to keep up with the ideas as they emerge. (On the good days.)

But part of what makes them great is craft. Is experience, borne of many hours of reading, and writing.

It’s knowing which idea to go with, and which to leave. It’s knowing when something is really current, really what you want to say – or when it’s not.

Hanging onto the fact that I am a writing-type person, at least, I want to acknowledge the struggle to write – as well as the desire to write – and the quest to find the right form. The right subjects.

I’ll put the wall back in soon enough. (It can feel a bit draughty without it.)

But perhaps just as it leaves me space to acknowledge what is happening in the writing, there might also be space for some characters to enter the box. Some sense of story, and, perhaps, direction.

Take 2.5: gearing up

Writing when I wanted to. Writing because I wanted to. Now it’s time to go a stage further.

I was all set to have take one, take two, take three – but I realised I’m in an in-between stage here. So take 2.5 – half-way to something new, but not there yet.

—

When you just write, in some ways it’s easier to focus on your own voice, your own take on things. That was my experience in take one: it was for an audience, yes, but I was pleasing myself to a large extent.

Whether I wrote five posts on one day – or none for six months.

Whether I wrote about things that were current – or just about what was on my mind at the time.

Reading other people’s blogs can give you confidence – I’m not alone in this writing game. It can also knock your confidence if you start to compare yourself. To second guess what you should be writing about.

I’ve tried not to let that get in the way – it’s still generally what I want to be writing about. But (and here’s the thing), blogging is not just about writing: it’s also about being read.

If I want to write, just for me, I can. And I did, particularly during my teens. A little of it came to light, if there was a writing competition, say, but much of the time it was for me. I wasn’t expecting to let anyone else read it.

—

The moment you press Publish, a few things happen.

One, in my case, is that you then start to edit again, on the basis of how the post looks on screen. Those short paragraphs are for a reason.

But more than that…you are putting out a little flag saying ‘Readers wanted’. You might even be so bold as to say ‘Stop by – I’ve got something that’s worth your while to read.’

One difference is that I also learned a bit about blogs along the way – not just from personal reading, but from the ‘day job’ of copy writing for web.

Some of the blogs that are seen to do ‘well’ are ones where someone becomes an expert in their field – and people want what they have to offer.

That’s good. It’s great to find what you are looking for – especially if you can’t as easily nip into a bookshop and buy a book on that area. (Specialist diets would be one of those areas, although there’s clearly more publishing in those areas too.)

—

How do you become an expert? Part of me knows the answer: slowly. One post at at time. But it’s still daunting to move towards that, even in a little way.

Luckily,  I’ve come across the right posts at the right time, as it were. (That’s where the time reading has been going.)

Brainpickings has some brilliant ones on how writers see themselves, and how many writers/artists/creatives deal with the balance between feeling the pressure to produce, and turning up anyway.

Project-Based Homeschooling has a section for adults, encouraging creativity and showing you how to get there.

I’m still working my way through all the suggestions, but they are very practical: including how to use the snatches of time you have, rather than worry that you’re not getting the longer chunks of time that you think you need to produce something.

I’ve bitten the bullet, and started looking at some ebooks about blogging. To help me think through the options a bit more, and decide what I want this space to be about.

And finally, I’ve signed up for an e-course with a creativity focus. Partly out of curiosity (there’s a lot of e-courses out there, as you discover when you spend time on other people’s blogs).

But it’s also part of that commitment to writing – and hopefully learning some tricks to support that.

Take three is around the corner. Somewhere. Perhaps even not that far away.