I am sitting in my kitchen window, the one that faces the road, on a big fat chair I bought in a hurry when we moved into this house. I don’t like it and feel cross with myself for buying it, it but it’s quite comfortable. I’ve pulled the blinds all the way up and opened the windows to let in the sunshine and warm air. It’s not a busy road so although there is sometimes a bit of traffic noise there mostly isn’t. On the other side of the kitchen, where the door is open to the outside deck, which gets no sun this time of year tragically, I can hear little birds singing. The rooks have all gone wherever it is the rooks go in the day time so small birds can be heard. I expect they are working on their flight plan for this evening’s sunset display wherever they are - it seems to get more involved and intricate every night.
There are butterflies out there too, bees and lots of wasps. There are also flies which seem to emerge as a cloud to rest on a chosen spot, like the sunny wall of our cabin, or a huge bush at the bottom of the garden. I don’t like the flies.
I mention all this because, well, weather. I didn’t quite manage to get all my summer clothes out for summer because, well, we all know about last (or is it still this?) summer. But I have managed to put away all the ones I did get out, and pull out any jumpers that had made it into the so called autumn/winter box. Because, well, autumn. It arrived. So now I am sitting in a sun drenched corner of a room looking at boxes of summer and winter clothes and feeling very unsure about everything.
I am aware this topic has been talked to death, wrung out, spun out, speculated on, blethered about in coffee shops all over the land until we are all ready to punch the next person who mentions it (I do not advocate violence in any form obv) in the face. As the crises caused by climate change creep into Northern Europe I wonder if now the governments and corporations, joined at the hips as they are, will possibly, maybe JUST STOP OIL (yes, yes I know we can’t just stop it over night and none of us are saints and oh ffs, and you may not agree with all they do and neither do I but at least they are doing SOMEthing) and invest in the planet and it’s people in a real and impactful way (yes, yes, I know pigs might fly etc).
When I was young, I mean mid teens, I didn’t think about any of this but it was in the zeitgeist even then. My family had de-camped to Scotland to go back to the land, in the 1970s way of things, and one of my brothers was particularly interested in CND. I even went on an anti nuclear march with him once. I thought it would be more fun that it was.
I was attending boarding school at the time, the stark, clashing contrast between my two worlds not being lost on me. One of our extra curricular ‘musts' was public speaking, on a topic of our own choice. So I chose to talk about CND. My brother helped me write it but he is a big thinker type and I didn’t really understand it or what point I was meant to be making, I just knew I should make one and knew for sure no one else would pick this subject. Anyone who has ever heard me speaking in public, and nothing has changed since school days, will know how that went. That was the extent of my sticking my head above the parapet at that time - a mulish decision really, kicking against the establishment in a very half hearted way.
Things like that were not really discussed at my school. It was very old fashioned and as far as ‘they’ were concerned life would go on as it always had, with the Dunkirk spirit only rising in us gals should we ever come across a war or a bad flower arrangement.
Sister Angela was one of my tutors (did I mention it was Catholic convent?). I liked her. She was tall and lanky with NHS glasses. She had a good sense of humour. When I was in sixth form she would sometimes have a few of us into her room for cups of cocoa and a chat. I imagine that that sentence might inspire lurid curiosity in the reader as to what might be coming next, what was hidden beneath this innocent ploy to lure young girls to her room? Nothing at all. It was exactly what it appeared to be, a comforting, calorific hot drink, discussions about things (but not CND) with peers and an encouraging and interested adult.
Sometimes I think that was the last bastion of innocence, that school, my generation there. The standard of education was low, as confirmed by Christiane Amanpour on Desert Island Discs, because we were still all seen as the next tranche of wives-to-be of the up and coming Catholic leaders (Rees Mogg? I can’t even…), preferably from Ampleforth but Eton would do at a pinch.
For innocence read a kind of blindness. Perhaps some of the nuns were already questioning this so called natural order of things (two of them ran away together, with the school dogs, so I’m guessing they had definitely questioned it) as the nature of being a nun involved reflection and thinking (or should anyway), but the trickle down hadn’t reached the lay teaching staff who plodded trying hard to make us a little more acceptable to possible suitors, just clever enough to hold a conversation and arrange a dinner party or a scarf. I of course was totally oblivious to this or any other wider thoughts on my future life. I knew the marriage to a good Catholic politician or banker was not on the cards, I wasn’t their type. I was a “nice girl” despite my “bohemian background” as Iggy (Sister Ignatius) muttered as she waddled up the big corridor that smelled of beeswax. Iggy was about three feet tall, almost as wide and taught geography. Not to me, obviously, as I was in the dunce’s class for that due to total lack of interest in the subject. Flap flap went her sandals as she raced up and down the corridor for who knew why except her.
That those shiny suitors were not my type either hadn’t occurred to me, I was too busy trying to become a slightly wacky version of all my school peers. I didn’t have to try that hard because by their standards I was off the charts wacky already due to just being me, being poor (by comparison to most other pupils) and having my bonkers family. I hid a lot of my family life as it was just too weird to try and to explain, and in reality I would quite like to have shrugged it off altogether and assume a new, more traditional ‘weetabix family’ (mother-father-son-daughter-house-in-burbs etc), as it was once described by a visiting Ampleforth boy on one of those school exchanges that in retrospect seemed to be a sort of trial marriage mart. He was called Charlie and I quite fancied him and his slightly superior, sneery view of the weetabix family despite my desire to have one of my own. That or large mansion, labradors and lots of tweed. My previous life in Yorkshire, where my father taught at that very same Ampleforth school, now seems the very model, if not quite the weetabix model, of a ‘normal’ family life, which on closer inspection of course it was not, at all. But then, what is normal? If you know then do tell.
Recipe tangent.
Here I am going to vere off on to my favourite subject of food. Last night I made cauliflower cheese ‘lite’. Being me cooking it of course it wasn’t very ‘lite’, but instead of a thick cheesy, super calorie laden sauce I roasted the cauliflower, including leaves, with a little olive oil, turmeric and garlic. Then I dolloped a few spoons of cream cheese onto it, grated cheddar over the top with some breadcrumbs and baked it a bit more ‘til bubbling and golden. I overcooked it slightly so if you do this take it out from first roasting while still very al dente. No photos because we ate it while watching Only Murders in the Building (HIGHLY recommend). It was truly delicious, chewy in the right places, creamy and flavourful. Ate it with green beans from a friend’s garden.
End
So, I am going to go and stock up on some vitamin D now, but before I go I want to give it up for one of my oldest and bestest chums, Maire ‘Moy’ McHugh who is about to be 60. More on her another day, oh the tales we could tell, but suffice to say Happy Birthday most darling girl!
NOTE
Both schools mentioned above have now become co-ed which I think is probably a very good thing, especially for the boy’s school. Whatever you think about fee paying schools they are not going away any time soon. For the record I am in favour of the VAT that will be added to the fees soon, and I think they should not have charitable status unless they are actually doing charitable work, and they should share their resources with all other schools local to them by law.
This post reads like the start of a novel … go on Liz! ❤️
So much in here to like, sorry I didn't get it either, would love to have shared... "...large mansion, labradors and lots of tweed.", I can only lay claim to 2 tweed jackets 🙄