Saturday 27 May 2017

A Valediction

Dear Reader,


                                                                                      Passion


After all the horror of this week I thought a small piece from Francis Kilvert's diary for Thursday, 28th May, l874, might lift the spirits.

"At the dairy is was butter morning and Fair Rosamund was making up the sweet rolls of rich golden butter.  Mrs. Knight says the butter is so golden at this time of year because the cows eat the buttercups.  The reason why the whey is so sweet and wholesome in May and June is because the grass is so full of flowers and young sweet herbs.  When I go to the Common Farm to drink whey I think of my grandmother, my mother's mother, Thermuthis Ashe, then a fair beautiful young girl, and how she used to come across the meadows from the Manor house to this very dairy, and drink whey here every morning during the sweet May Month."

Whey is the liquid remaining after the milk has been curdled and strained. Throughout history it was a popular drink in inns and coffee houses.  When Joseph Pratley was at Daventry Academy (1752-55) he recorded that on the morning of Wednesday, May 22nd, 1754, he "went with a large company to drink whey".  This might have been "wine whey" which was popular then.  Dairy whey remaining from homemade cheese making has many uses.  It is a flour conditioner and can be substituted for skimmed milk in most baked recipes that require milk such as bread, pancakes or muffins.

And we all know the nursery rhyme by Dr Thomas Muffet (1553-1604) written for his stepdaughter:
                                                   
                                                       Little Miss Muffet
                                                       Sat on a tuffit
                                                       Eating her curds and whey ......
                                                       Along came a spider
                                                       Who sat down beside her
                                                       And frightened Miss Muffet away


This was first printed in the "Songs for the Nursery" collection published in 1805.  And no wonder Miss Muffet ran away; it probably wasn't the spider that frightened her, but the thought of having to eat curds and whey for breakfast.

                                                                       *

A Valediction

To innocence
to childhood
to youth
to skipping about
to making daisy chains
to looking into the mirror
seeing someone pretty
to wearing gypsy clothes
feeling exotic in them
to flirting and being flirted with
to kissing someone new
drowning in that indescribable
feeling of lust and love
to smoking king size cigarettes
to being passionate about something
daydreaming about a bright future
to changing the world
making poverty unknown
the poor rich

But knowing now the truth
about old age being shite
hello to fudge and ice cold gins
small pleasures and quieter things
                                                                     
                                                                         *

With best wishes, Patricia

Sunday 21 May 2017

Goats


 Dear Reader,



                                                                               Wild mountain goats in Andalucia.

In the 1960s I went to stay with an artist friend who had an "estancia" in Andalucia, southern Spain, enfolded in the mountains above Algerceras.  It was a beautiful white house surrounded by bougainvillaeas, tropical trees and plants.  Apparently, it had originally been the hideaway of a smuggler and had been known as "The Smuggler's Retreat", but when I knew it it was called The Seraphine.  The thing I remember most about The Seraphine was the swallows.  Each year swallows nested in the drawing room above the fireplace on the mantelpiece, flying in through the open windows.  The male swallow sat watching, sitting on the lamp by the sofa as they swooped around the room, and you had to be careful of your drink and your head as they did so.  Behind the house were mountain paths supposedly made by the smuggler, but when I went there the paths were well trodden by goats which had large silver bells round their necks, chiming away, and looked after by a shepherd.

The wild mountain goats frequently found in herds across the mountains of Andalucia are Spanish Ibex.  The males are generally shades of brown around the body with black markings on the chest, flanks and legs, while the females are paler.  The adult males are approximately double the size of the females, but colour and size vary, depending on their whereabouts within the peninsula.  These wild herds spend their days moving gradually across the mountainside browsing on oaks, as well as grasses and flowering non-woody plants.  Both sexes have horns, those of the males larger than the females - as we might have guessed!

                                                                          *

Goats

The goats pick their way up
the steep mountain path
nibbling and bleating, tails wagging
silver bells chiming as they stop
to graze, skip and jump upwards.

White mignonettes, freesias, lavender bushes
grow in abundance along the well-worn track,
and small taranaki flowers nestle
in the undergrowth.
Overhead a black kite cries
circles and swoops
and the pungent smell of goats
fills the warm lavender air.

I see the shepherd boy
swarthy, brown and handsome
sitting on a stone, playing a flute.
He watches his precious goats
with a sharp and knowing eye.

As I pass him I smile.  He waves.
I dance a step to his music
and with light heart follow the goats,
on my own journey upwards.

                                                                             *

With best wishes, Patricia

Saturday 13 May 2017

Viking Footprints

Dear Reader,



                                                                                         Viking Boats

Isn't it strange what fear can do to us?  In our small and pretty garden the pigeons make themselves very at home, thumping heavily onto the flower beds, breaking the plants, pecking greedily at the newly sown grass, and having their bathtime in the water bowl I had bought for the smaller birds to drink out of.  As you have probably gathered, I am not fond of pigeons, so when a friend told me of a large plastic owl for sale that frightened pigeons when placed in a garden, I happily bought one.  The owl is large and stands in the garden looking very fierce, and there is not a pigeon in sight.  But the person whom it really frightens is me.  Every morning, having forgotten that it is there, I see it and my heart starts to overbeat and my hands to sweat.  As soon as I remember what it really is I revert to normal breathing, and my panic is over.

A Professor Steve Peters wrote an interesting book called "The Chimp Paradox", which explains that we have two brains, one the frontal (Human) and the other the limbic (Chimp). The human brain is the one that is rational, reasonable and practical, whilst the Chimp brain runs on emotions.  In fact,  the Chimp is there to protect us from any dangers we might come across, to put us on our guard.

But for some people the Chimp can overdo it, see dangers when they are minimal, and panic us when there is no need.  Unfortunately, I am one of those people and, at the moment, am trying to control the Chimp with positive thoughts.  It seems to be working well,  but if I did see a Viking on a lonely beach I would probably have the fright of my life, regardless. 

                                                                        *

Viking Footsteps

There it is: a windswept empty beach,
great fields of white sand dressed
in drift wood, seaweed, plastic bottles,
flotsam, pebbles, shells, stones, and kelp skeins.
It stretches away to the horizon.

Seagulls, gannets, terns, twist and fly,
make their repetitive cries, peck in the ground.
Small pools of seawater form
as the tide goes out, sea creatures swimming there.

But is that a long boat, red sails fluttering, I see?
And are those uncovered Viking footsteps in the sand?
And do I smell spitted meat, mead and honey
drifting past me on the salt-scented air?

The sand dunes hug their secrets silently,
letting the quiet southerly wind
rustle through the marram grasses.
I ask them, do Viking voices whisper on that wind,
sometimes, on an icy night under a starlit sky?

                                                                           *

With best wishes, Patricia  

PS.  A little more news on the seagull front.  Apparently in Aldburgh, Suffolk, it has been an offence to feed the birds for several years.  Here, if caught, feeding the gulls could cost you thousands of pounds.   But don't worry - I will keep you posted on this matter.                                                          

Sunday 7 May 2017

Fudge and Food for Thought

Dear Reader,


                                                                                           Fudge


I have always had problems with keeping slim.  Since I was a teenager I have battled with this difficulty, but unfortunately I haven't really won the war.  It seems enormously unfair to me that some people can eat a gigantic amount of food,  chomp their way through large meals three times a day, and not put on a pound.  Whereas I only have to eat apples, lunch of lettuce and tomatoes, and a small supper and am plump, if not fat.  And now, at the time of life I have reached, I think it will always be so.  God knows what I would have weighed if I had lived in Tudor times.

A lavish festive meal prepared for Henry, Duke of Richmond (1519-1536), the illegitimate son of Henry VIII, would have consisted of something like this: a first course of pottages, boiled meat, beef and mutton, four green geese, three roast capons, a quarter of veal, and custard; then a second course of half a lamb, six rabbits, fourteen pigeons, one wildfowl, a tart and trenchers.  Apparently trenchers were flat, three-day old loaves of bread used as plates, and when the feast was over these plates were given to the poor.  Four gallons of ale, two pitchers of wine, and a selection of fruit were also on offer.  Even had I been poor, just eating a trencher would have done for my trying to keep slim.

                                                                               *

Fudge and Food for Thought

In the night, captive,
I think of all the fudge I ate,
all the feelings of guilt I had
in my teens, my middle age, my old age,
all the sadness at my weakness
my inability to resist temptation.

Tossing uneasily in my bed
I think: would I be more comely
if I had resisted,
more desirable, prettier, more amusing,
would I have had a happier life
without fudge in it?

I mean isn't fudge made largely
of butter, sugar, all things not allowed?
Not prescribed by those in the know,
the dreary food police who warn us
every day about something
we must not do, or eat, or say?

At dawn, I think what the hell.
Now in my seventies, does it matter
what I ate to make me fatter?
Because now I am where I want to be
plump, happy, peaceful, and guilt-free.

                                                                                *

With best wishes, Patricia