Fantasy online dinners

I’ve come to realise that the way to get people’s attention online (or at least on Facebook) is to write about food.  Mention your latest eating experience – or even, your anticipation of that – and you get lots of virtual joining in.

Is it the dark days of recession affecting us?  We know that in times of economic difficulty, food sales still do well, if not better, as a cheering up device.  Is it the onset of winter, hopeful that if we anticipate food, we will feel warmer, or at least better about the nights drawing in?

Maybe it’s more of the thirties malaise.  We start to realise that we may not climb the corporate ladder the way we might have thought (most corporate ladders looking pretty rickety, at this point in time); we will not now wow the world with our looks or various other talents if we haven’t done so already.  (I’m still holding out for a late-onset writing career – that area does seem to reward late bloomers.)

What’s left? Family, friends, TV…and of course food, which we can always anticipate, because of our need to refuel fairly often.  (I’m not limiting life to these alone, honest. But they do all allow quite a lot of ‘me too!’, which is perhaps part of why online stuff is popular.)

So what foods are most likely to make you ‘write in’ in agreement?  So far, risotto, peanut butter, classy macaroons and hot dogs, judging by recent comments on my Facebook wall and others.

It could be the start of a whole new ‘what’s your favourite food?’ discussion.  I would also like to suggest a ‘guess how much I paid at the Co-op for…?‘ game, which allows a spot of ethical consumerism to combine with (nearly) freegan activity, and some public endorsement of thrift…

I’m actually finding it hard to come down to a favourite food, but my inner five year old is still convinced that sausages, baked beans and chips are a good place to start.  How about you?

In the wars

Yesterday I did some half-hearted moaning about life in one’s thirties; today there’s another phenomenon that seems to creep up with age.

It’s well known (or well alleged) that women end up becoming like their mothers; I think the process is accelerated if you become a mum yourself.  Facing tiredness or shock, whatever the cause, the brain seems to think the easiest option is to revert to saying what you heard when you were growing up.

Earlier on in the summer, I managed to cut one knee quite badly.  Between shock, disbelief, and a fair amount of pain, it became difficult to say what I had hurt where.

But one thing I knew: I was ‘in the wars’, a family phrase which I hadn’t heard or used for some time, but that dropped back into my mind when trying to work out what had happened.

Sure enough, when I phoned my mum on our return, the first thing she said was, “Oh dear, have you been in the wars?”  I didn’t know whether to feel comforted by the reference, or confused about being returned to an 8-year old state (or equivalent), where mums need a good stock in trade of phrases to say when something goes wrong.

(This was probably better than her asking if I had ‘happened’ my knee – another phrase based on my brother saying that he had ‘happened his finger’, which then became used for other situations of minor injuries.)

The funny thing was, commenting to Dan that I was ‘in the wars’ made me look at the phrase at face value.  In comparison with soldiers coming into the line of fire, in Iraq or Afghanistan, an accident at home hardly counts.  And yet, in a child’s eyes, a big fall or something else upsetting needs a suitably big statement to go with it.

So, feel free to use it for your own mishaps.  Or send in your own equivalents.  Life has its tumbles, and if language has its comforts, one of them is having a good set of sayings to get you through a situation and back to some sense of continuity.

Hitting people and running away

It’s not something I want to promote about myself.  But a little bit of virtual aggro, via the Heroes application on Facebook, does seem to help when winding down for the day.  (I can at this point blame Mr W, who invited me to try this application.  It all started with fast cars, too.  It’s a slippery slope.)

Something funny seems to happen in your thirties, when it comes to letting go of what’s happening in the day.  There’s not much of the day left to disconnect from, by the time you get home.   How do you do it, without taking the evening over it?

Not being much of a drinker, alcohol got left out of the picture as a way to unwind, for a long time, but I think it’s trying to make more of an appearance on my weekends.

That sense of ‘phew, got to the end of the week’ seems to need more celebration as I go on.  (Food is clearly enough of a companion to my days, as you already know, so it’s not necessarily helping me hit the ‘stop’ button in the same way.) Let’s say I appreciate the treat when it comes.

Gardening started trying to enter the race this year.  And yes, coming home from work, and saying hello to the plants (watering them too, on occasion) was a good option.  But now it’s wet, or cold, or both, and the garden is back into that phase of being left to its own survival mechanisms for the next few months.

There is blog writing – though perhaps I need a new injection of ideas.  Perhaps time to start listening into other people’s mobile phone conversations a bit more.  (As if.  I could probably write a new radio show a week on what I ‘overhead’ (without trying) on the bus each day.)

And for points of trying to make mind and body agree to slow down in the adrenaline rush, there can be su doku.  A nice long bath is a winner in this department.

Recently, I have been feeling more and more that my earlier ambitions to make a difference in the world, to contribute, are getting worn away in the need to keep up – and then recover afterwards – day by day.  No claims of special workplace trauma – we all have it, in fairly intense ways for many.

Is the solution to find a ‘quicker’ way to unwind, so that I can make the most of time outside of work?  I’m coming to the conclusion that letting go of one set of lists at work, only to pick up another at home, doesn’t seem that attractive.

Probably the thing that cheers me up, and therefore helps me let go of work, is finding out how other people are doing.  Ergo Facebook in general.  I might even finally put up some photos of my own, given how much I like seeing other people’s.

Perhaps it comes down to holding on, rather than just letting go – holding on to what is important to you, day by day.  And on that note, I’m off to hug the hugsband.

Food miles?

Off to Peebles last weekend to see my parents – and go to part of Peebles’ second ever autumn food fair.  Not quite the highlight of the social calendar that the spring book fair is, but a good enough excuse to go and support a local event.

What I hadn’t quite bargained on was that there would be quite so much emphasis on meat. Fair enough in some ways, given that there’s farms around, proper butchers and the like.  But if you were a veggie and/or had problems seeing meat, you would probably have had to avert your eyes for about a third of the stands…

Other friends have done the farm shop thing, and shared out half animals, that kind of thing.  I must admit I thought it would hard to fit e.g. half a lamb in a freezer – and which end would you get?  But then we saw what that looked like, which was certainly a lot of meat.

We’re even thinking about splitting a half lamb order with my parents to make it a bit more affordable (at least, spending money on meat rather than a second freezer).  Except I have to eat some more brambles first.  Or maybe make rather a lot of risotto to clear out some stock.  Etc.

It’s all nice and green and Guardian reading of me to want to get local produce – which I do.  And help farms in Scotland keep going – which I do.  But then I see the prices of the food  and baulk a bit.  Even the veg boxes are more than I’m prepared to spend, it seems, which is a shame for one who really likes fruit and veg.

So, as ever, we bought little things – though this does allow me to plug the Chocolate Tree, based (I think) in Gifford, East Lothian. Not only do they do the dark chocolate with interesting flavours thang, they also do a proper Nutella alternative.  They even boast that you’ll never go back to Nutella after you’ve tried it.

Now the difficulty is whether to open the jar – and fulfil their promise – or inflict that on someone else by passing it on as a present…Food for thought, one way or another, if not as much food for the plate.

 

Black gold

Sometimes it seems I’m at my happiest when heading from A to B, with space to think up titles for blog posts, or the like.  After much deliberation for this one, I settled on black gold.

Would it be a hard-hitting commentary on oil over-dependence?  Not really.  An oblique Asterix book reference? Closer territory, though as I recall, that was about oil too.  What is far more important to the world economy at the moment, is free stuff. And the black gold of the article is all about the joy of brambling.

Had a half day off, after my time on the exhibition stand, and by five o’clock or so on Friday, decided that a good use of time would be to head off to the cycle path, not far from our flat, and pick some brambles.  Usually we’re off doing this earlier in September, but one way or another (ie rain), bramble plans had been delayed.

Life along the cycle path is quite pleasant.  Cyclists were heading home from work, or on early weekend excursions.  One chap stopped me to ask where my rucksack came from – this turned out to be a lament on the fact that he couldn’t replace his current one with a similar kind, and hoped that mine (which looked like his) might be a new one.  There were a few dogs to say hello to, but mainly there was the fun of filling tubs with brambles.

When I was little, brambles tended to get used up in crumbles.  Any juice left over from stewing the fruit would be kept as a sauce to pour over ice cream – this was known as ‘blood’.  Very satisfying when you’re 8, and the attraction of it still remains.

Equally, I had a birthday book, and on the page opposite the start of September (and my granny’s birthday) was a picture of the Flopsy Bunnies out picking brambles.  (I think Beatrix Potter called them blackberries, but obviously you can’t be good at everything.)

Being a bit of an afficionado of autumn, the conjuncture of all these things on adjoining pages seemed to suggest the essential importance of brambles.

I’m sure that if I kept brambling enough, I would be able to come up with some kind of complicated metaphor for what it teaches you about life, given the twin perils of nettles and bramble thorns that you have to overcome.

It is true that the fattest brambles seem to grow behind nettles.  Equally, turning slightly around from where you’ve been picking shows further drifts of fruit that you didn’t spot first time.

Like many things in life, the ultimate bramble patch is the one just further along the path from where you are…where all fruit will be large, juicy and easy to pick without getting skewered by the nettles again.

But perhaps another, deeper appeal of all this is filling one’s storehouse with good things – and only for the cost of looking, and a few stings.  Some entertainment comes without batteries, and some food is not vacuum packed within an inch of its life.

For both these things, and for switching off most of your brain for an hour or so, three cheers.  Next stop, elderberries – perhaps in a couple of weeks or so.