Lots of things in life are inconvenient. I moved my kettle recently to the other side of the kitchen from its place just below the cupboard where all the teas and all the cups are which was the most sensible and convenient place to have it. This convenient place also happened to direct the steam from the kettle straight on to an electric socket, so the choice was made between the possibility of blowing all the circuits or walking five or six steps across the room with the cup and tea bag to where the kettle now sits. I hear you asking, in annoyed way, why on earth I didn’t just turn the kettle round; because as a right handed person it was not convenient to have it pointing the other way.
The jams and other toast type condiments now sit next to the kettle, and the toaster, which used to be where the kettle is now, is now on the other side of the room, next to the bread bin, which also used to be where the kettle is now. So making toast is also a matter of walking about holding plates, gathering knives, shimmying across to get butter and marmite. None of this is convenient.
Coffee is not quite such a big issue as the coffee pot is stove top one and the movement involved is the perfect triangle from cupboard to counter to sink to cooker. This is a very good thing as I drink coffee in the morning and while I can juggle tea bags and plates with the best of them, I dislike to do this first thing.
I move things in my house continually. My husband either doesn’t notice or has become inured, except when things like major chairs have been removed, but I mostly leave his stuff alone anyway because, you know, a man needs some security in life and knowing where a major chair is helps with that.
This need to move things is because I am sure that there is a perfect way for everything to be, if I could but find it. In the case of the kettle of course it was pragmatism, but it then opened the door for the toaster move and who knows what will come next.
I seem to be so preoccupied with this quest for perfection in the minutiae of life that many other, much more important things bypass me. It’s as though if I could find the precisely right place to put the pans then everything else would fall into place; I would reach my ideal weight, I would be a better parent, my skin would miraculously return to the beautiful smoothness of my twenties, wars around the world would end, my mother would not be dead, the cats would stop shedding hair bloody everywhere and I would discover the cure for arthritis. I know, of course, that this is nonsense. I actually quite like the wrinkles on my skin although I’d be happy to lose what appears to be an encroaching wattle.
Why am I writing this? It was set off by the mild irritation of not finding the kettle in the place it had been for the last year. Plus growing mulishness about some aspects of my mother’s funeral that I don’t like. As number nine in the birth line up, number eleven in the parented by my mother line up, I am used to having to have a piddle and stamp about things I don’t like in order to get noticed, which I did in a family email - to my sibling’s credit most ignored me, t’was ever thus. My younger sister was born six years after me so I had reigned as Elizabeth Sarah Rachel Spoilt Brat Haughton for some time before she stole my thunder. And she didn’t really steal my thunder, because she couldn’t talk for one, but also because she was so beguiling and adorable that she became my favourite doll.
As a family we were never children all together, really. There is 18 years between my younger sister and older sister, also the eldest sibling. By the time I was aware of anything my older sister was at boarding school. My older brothers were mysterious creatures, mostly there to serve - read me stories, get me dressed, carry me. My nearest brother was my best buddy and worst enemy. We were an evil team when pitted against our next brother up and he was my nemesis when pitted against me, especially with his best friend who lived a few doors down.
But one thing we all had in common, including our foster siblings who arrived to live with us when I was six, was our parents, who, in the modern parlance, parented us to the best of their somewhat flawed abilities. My mother’s skill to absolutely ignore screams, wails and even tugs on her clothing was Olympic level. If she was writing - and she was always writing, one leg tucked under her on the sofa, pad of foolscap on her lap, biro speeding across the page - nothing got through, except on occasion blood or vomit.
All parents are flawed, there is absolutely no such thing as perfect mother or father (you can quote me on that), but if love is at the core of the family then all else will, with luck and fair wind, work out ok. I think we all turned out ok. We all had from an early age an awareness of the ecology of this fragile planet, a love of nature, food, hospitality, the value of family, friends and experience over the value of material things (for some of us, ahem, this took a while to embed) and an understanding of where it is safe to place a kettle.
My niggles on the funeral arrangements are nothing in the great scheme of things. It will be epic, and I use that word purposefully as it will be ‘grand in scale’, it could not be otherwise. There will be a party, at Mum’s request. All the other stuff around it that is bothering me will pale to unimportance because she will be celebrated and mourned as she should be, as a whole, complex and fascinating person, a wonderful and imperfect parent, a deeply committed and loyal friend, wife and partner. My buddy brother will toll the bell as we leave the church, and that is most fitting.
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
John Donne
And I am the only person who really cares where the kettle is situated.
Bonus piece because it’s nearly the weekend.
Here are some tomatoes on toast. Imagine the number of steps involved to put this together.
I sprinkled the tomatoes with bladderwrack seaweed powder which smells horrid but tastes like the sea in a delicious way. It’s meant to help ease inflammation. I can’t say it has but I will persevere for bit longer. I ate it in the sunshine, sitting on the slate step outside our cabin (which you can rent if you like, it’s really nice, ask anyone), accompanied by a lovely cup of coffee. When I forget to try and make everything perfect quite often perfection just arrives.
Have a wonderful bank holiday weekend - may the sun be with you.
I some times struggle to find the toaster, and the chairs, and the gaffer's tape, believe it or not. But never the beauty, the joy and the surprise I have living with the writer of the above. She must have inherited some of that from the lovely woman in the picture. Someone I was privileged to call mother (in law).
Ohhh Liz, another gem from your pen, with your heart directing. And like Russell says, a good sprinkling of Rosemary's gift for writing, but rather more relatable. ❤️🫂