Eating up leftovers

It’s confession time.  I enjoy having people over, cooking for them…but sometimes I secretly think that the best bit about parties is eating up the leftovers afterwards.

The fact that this comes shortly before going away for Christmas means that there are all sorts of plans for how to use things up in a pleasing manner.  It must rank reasonably high in my subconscious, as that was what I woke up thinking about, while trying hard to wake up enough to get up and see if I had remembered the contents of the fridge accurately…

Part of the thing with parties that makes this satisfying is where you have a party with different people bringing different things.  Leftovers – with unplanned ingredients!  It’s fairly close to Ready Steady Cook, but without the inconvenience of a studio audience.

To be honest, what was also exciting was seeing how well all the different things went together last night.  Nibbles, mini things on french bread, a big vat of soup…I mention this as I am reminded of a similar party a few years ago where we decided we would all bring Christmas things from different countries – or at any rate, a dish relating to a particular country.

The only difficulty was that we had all thought about dishes containing potato, or so it seemed by what was produced.  For one guest, fairly heavily pregnant at the time, this meant effectively eating a five course meal where every course included potato.  Not great if you are working on a smaller stomach, and having difficulty digesting things…

But the second joy of leftovers is the potential to do things you might not normally do, such have coffee and cake for breakfast.  (To be honest, cake for breakfast is such an exciting prospect that it’s just as well I don’t do this too often.)

You can equally have things that you might normally eat – such as soup at lunchtime – but with someone else’s take on what that should be.  (Three cheers for spiced parsnip soup, by the way.)

So hurrah for parties.  And leftovers.  In this day and age, in the West, we have lost the significance of feasting, because we are unused to the alternative – or unwilling to go there.  We have to get our joy of providence through other means.  Leftovers might just be it.

A formal feeling

Just written another post about how to prepare for Christmas.  Grant you, it won’t get the turkey bought, or the crackers pulled.  But here’s another option.

Back in my teens, I came across a book called “A Formal Feeling“, by the American author Zibby Oneal.  The book tells the story of Anne, coming home for Christmas from boarding school.  The home she comes to is not quite home – her mother is dead, and a new stepmother is there.  Traditions have changed.

Anne struggles with the changes, not just in the home, but in her father and brother, who seem happy with the new arrangements.  Slowly, Anne starts to remember that not every Christmas was perfect…

For some reason, perhaps because of the way the book builds up the details of Christmas – choosing the tree, singing carols in the choir, making the adjustment from being at school to being at home all day – it became part of my preparation for Christmas for many years.  Somewhat like an advent calendar, I would read a chapter a day, building up the picture of Christmas, building up the picture of Anne, and her mother.

This year, I’m starting late.  17th already.  But having lost five different people this year, friends and family, somehow I hope I can use reading this book to reflect on those I want to remember.  In some cases, there are shared memories of Christmases, and times after Christmas and into New Year, together.  In others, I don’t know how they spent their time.

Christmas is a time of repetition.  We start a way of doing things, and soon build up our own traditions, that are almost easier to keep than to question.  But Christmas soon turns to New Year, and new beginnings, even if we don’t want the resolutions that might go with them.

Somehow, I trust that reading this book will help me remember the repetitions, and look for new beginnings too.  And, like Anne, that it will help me tease out what I think I remember, and what else was part of those relationships.

Perhaps, one of the best presents is being able to accept life as we and others have lived it, good and bad, cut short or lived longer.  The title of the book comes from an Emily Dickinson poem, which ends:

“This is the Hour of Lead-

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the snow-

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go-“

Crisp and even

Frost has stolen over even this mild coastal area of Edinburgh.  Yesterday and today, the garden has been covered – and stayed covered nearly all day.  The top of the shed was two tone at lunchtime, with one half normal colour, the other half still frosted over.

For those trying to get some sense that Christmas is nearly here, this and the warm coloured light are a reminder that it’s December, at least.  Heading off to the shops today, part of an oratorio came back to me that I must have sung over twenty years ago, our first Christmas concert when our school choir had just formed, and we were getting used to proper four part singing.

“Hodie Christus natus est…Hodie salvator apparuit…” Kindly, the school laid on Latin too, at least while I was there, which helped me understand what I was singing.  Today Christ is born, today the saviour appears…

Even though it’s not ‘today’, the opening song wouldn’t leave me while I was walking up, and back to the shops.  Which is what it’s for, really – it’s the processional at the start and end of the piece.

As we get older, trying to find Christmas can get harder.  We expect it to appear in our homes, our spirits.  Some fortunate friends seem to retain the excitement, year after year.

The first year I was experiencing Christmas as a Christian, aged 19, I got some of that back.  I was singing carols, not just because it was the time of year to sing them, but because I was excited about what they were telling me.

Perhaps today, for me at least, I need the processional to walk Christmas back into my life, my home.  Going to Dan’s church in London, predominantly Afro-Caribbean, you sing the same song again and again until you are ‘walking’ in the truth of it.  It becomes part of you.

So, today, I process out of the house with the news of Christmas, and process back home, bringing it back in with me.

Hopefully it will stay too.  Like the best of guests at Christmas, there’s nothing like having someone who you want to be there.  Even a brief visit fills up your heart again.

Over the water yet?

Another Christmas party today, combined with a house warming do.  Our friends Alison and David have recently moved to Dunfermline, and had a general open house party.

So far, so good.  We drank the mulled wine, admired the large greenhouse, views of the golf course behind, and tried to stop their (currently) youngest from eating the entire contents of the coffee table.  (Actually, if he ate the lot, that would be worrying, given the toys stored in the boxes that are part of the table.  Anyway, you get the picture.)

In good pedestrian mode, we got there by public transport, and trecked up through town from the train station.  Dunfermline needs to market its ownership of a Primark to inhabitants of Edinburgh.

Why go to Glasgow, and pay lots more on the train, when you can go to Dunfermline?  And, indeed, continue your shopping in Peacocks next door?  (Peacocks is particularly favoured by 9 year old girls who have an eye for current fashion trends, but I’m pretty sure it would say its appeal is wider than that.)

Heading back, all going fine, until we hear that points failure a couple of stops up the line mean that trains are all quite delayed.  The nice station guard arranges taxis, and by the time we are at the head of the queue, they are running them all the way through to Edinburgh.

However, this move, while generous, means that all but two of Dunfermline’s taxi fleet has been pressed into service to get people back over to Edinburgh.  On a Saturday night in December (a rather chilly one by that time), this would probably not be popular among other evening party goers.

On our way over to Edinburgh, the lady on the taxi radio service was heard to enquire who was ‘back over the water yet?’  Clearly we will have to learn the lingo for further visits.  But it was quite a reminder that it is quite a journey between the two toons, and that we have two mighty bridges that allow us to take these things for granted.

On the train over the rail bridge, it is rather ominous looking at the girders, some showing paint, and some clearly showing rust that bit more.  Hopefully they’ll hold out a bit longer, even for the sake of keeping up auld aquaintances.

Nothing to say, but it’s OK

I sat down last night, and had nothing to say.  Not often that happens…

The phrase reminded me of a Beatles line “Nothing to say //  but it’s OK” – we happened to be listening to the track last night.    In some ways, it’s quite nice to think that there’s lots of times when others are stumped for words too.  It’s quite reassuring, not to have to fire on all cylinders all the time.

This song, “Good Morning”, is part of the album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  2007 saw the 40th anniversary of that ‘radically different’ album.  Beatles tracks are so well known, and, like the best songs, continue to speak to us.  But what struck me last night was how some of it is also now dated – not just language, but concepts too.

“Good morning” has a line “It’s time for tea and meet the wife”.  How many people would now refer to the ‘wife’, let alone have the mechanism of bringing someone home to meet her?  And is she at home now, in any case, to be met?

Another of the lines refers to a “bit of skirt”.  There’s no lack of put down terms for women nowadays, despite women’s lib – rap music has added its own collection in recent years.  But in the days of women, and, increasingly, men, being more varied in what they wear, and when, this phrase seems to belong to a rather different world.

It’s funny – the 60s is billed as this time of great sexual liberation, and the Beatles were seen as part of that whole scene.  It’s interesting then to catch a more conservative tone in this, their great experimental album.

The song that struck me the most, for attitudes that have almost vanished, is “When I’m 64”.  For starters, increased life expectancy, and expectations of an active life for much longer, mean that the age of 64 has less impact than it did at the time of writing.

The throw away line about grandchildren’s names has a different ring – “Vera, Chuck and Dave”, where one of our main politicians likes to be known as Dave, and Vera is sure to be recycled as a name, along with Agnes, Ruby, and various others.  (Chuck…?  Perhaps its time has not yet come as a name.)

But just before this line, there’s another that speaks of an era that has almost gone.  Renting “a cottage on the Isle of Wight” may have gone out with the era of cheap flights, though with eco tourism on the up, it’ll maybe gain favour again.

But the truly telling part is “We will scrimp and save.”  Governments have enough difficulty encouraging people to save, let alone to scrimp…and other experts still will tell you that we have to keep spending in order to keep the economy afloat.

Scrimping.  Maybe, like make do and mend, it’ll come back in the eco backlash.  Maybe we will long for simpler times.  But I do think that our collective spirits have moved a long long way away from scrimping.  We are too used to getting our own way, having it now, and having it bigger and better.

Maybe Dave (Cameron) will save us from ourselves, but perhaps we have to look to Chuck and Vera to help us sort ourselves out.