Lucie Bennett : Tangerine Pants

Of course it's too hot, we are British for goodness sake! We don't do "heatwaves." The last heatwave we had was 1976, and have we ever forgotten it? Of course we haven't. We are British, we live and breathe weather.

So coming in from work, hot and tired and generally hungry (who eats when it's over 34c?) comply with the following upon arrival at home;

1. Take off drawers and throw into washing machine
2. Take fresh drawers out of fridge (I know, its appalling isn't it, but we dreamed this up at work this afternoon at 33c), and put on
3. Oh man, that feels so good....
4. Oh man, that still feels so good...

Tired of Derbyshire

Late home from work. Tired. Smile with love and delight when arrive at garden gate. Walk through house, meet and talk with people. See neighbour walking past east windows with shotguns over shoulder. Trot to window and chat. He looks tired too. Assess bruises on right shoulder, the result of badly held shotgun whilst standing in ditch shooting pigeons. Agree later date to meet for second shooting lesson - furred game. Fecking rabbits.

From Pablo to Triniti

Out of lemon flowers loosed on the moonlight,
love's lashed and insatiable essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow emerges,
the lemons move down from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbours are big with it-bazaars for the light and the barbarous gold.
We open the halves of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids brims into the starry divisions :
creation's original juices, irreducible, changeless, alive:
so the freshness lives on in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon the knife leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye that open acidulous glass to the light;
topazes riding the droplets,
altars, aromatic facades.
So, while the hand holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world on a trencher,
the gold of the universe wells to your touch:
a cup yellow with miracles,
a breast and a nipple perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.



The water’s wide, I can’t get over,
And nor do I have wings to fly,
Give me a boat that will carry two,
And both shall row, my love and I.
There is a ship that sails the sea,
She’s loaded deep, as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I’m in,
I’ll know not if I sink or swim.

How much is a teaspoon, anyway......

I love physics chat. No, I mean I really love this chat room, and God bless Yahoo for getting it up and running over half a decade ago. Some chums I made there are still alive and well and chatting, how cool is that? Some months ago my beloved first-born was struggling with a particularly nasty bit of homework. "Wait a min," I said, let me ask Spider. Flip onto the chat room, respectfully ask, "hello lovely roomies, may I ask a Q?" and two seconds later come back to said beloved first-born with the answer, straight from the horse's mouth. Or a research scientist at NASA.

A teaspoon is the spoon you more often than not use to stir the milk into your cup of tea or coffee. "A level teaspoon" is that teaspoon, heaped with something, usually baking powder or spices, then levelled flat with the back of a table knife. "A rounded teaspoon" is the same implement, but with the same amount of foodstuff in the bowl of the spoon as above the spoon's bowl. "A heaped teaspoon" is the amount of foodstuff you would routinely take from the food container, not levelled or measured, but mearely lifted from the container on the spoon.

In the absence of a teaspoon, it is any amount of foodstuff you can hold in the dip of your clenched fist between your curled up thumb and first finger. Make a clenched fist and hold it as if you are ready to punch the lights out of a right old gobshite. Think about it lovely readers, this works...

A tablespoon is any spoon that you place upon your dining table and use to spoon food to and from, in and onto, plates and platters. If you use a big spoon, then its a big spoon. If you use a smallish spoon, then its a smallish spoon. It is not a soup spoon, and never confuse the two. Nor is it a serving spoon.

There are a number of "baking spoon sets" (for want of a better description,) on the market. All are crap. Do not be deceived by such monstrosities. That they are offered in tin rather than plastic does not make them acceptable. Learn to trust and then rely on your family's spoons and measurements. This way happiness lies.

Lists, lists and again I say lists

I love coming home from the seaside to my garden, and there are few more delightful tasks than the eager stroll around the garden checking each little horticultural miracle. The size of the annuals thrown in any old way and thriving, the forgotten gloves and Felcos discovered under the bench by the hedge, the roses, the soft fruit, apple trees and herbs, all calling, "Welcome back!" and, "How was your holiday?" and "Look what we've been doing whilst you were away!"

And then I strolled into the vegetable garden. Pumpkins looking quite respectable, plenty of greenery and a respectable number of fat yellow flowers unfurling for the bees; sweet corn waist high; three netted tunnels of fat, outrageous brassicas; four long rows of field tomatoes each plant interplanted with its garlic bedfellow; wigwams of beans.... er, where are the beans? I've got 8 wigwams and two long rows of beans. The bloody rabbits had eated the lot. Feckers. That's the third set of beans I've set out, two lots of plants and finally good old fashioned beans dropped into a hole made with a finger dibbed into the soil up to the knuckle. Every bloody one chewed by those fur-coat-good-for-nothings.

Here's the obituary:

Fagiolo rampicante -
Borlotto lamon
Santa Anna
and some glossy black beans, white beans and brown speckled beans saved from last year

Fagiolo nano -
Slenderette
Borlotti
Canadian Wonder as these resemble kidney beans

Rabbit with tomatoes & balsamic vinegar

First shoot, skin and gut your rabbit. You must gut them pretty much immediately, so do that in the field, (or, as in the case in hand, in the garden...) Cut each rabbit into pieces and shake into a plastic bag of seasoned flour. Brown rapidly in a pan and transfer to your baking dish. Cover with the following sauce and cook uncovered for 40 minutes at 180'C basting midway with an extra 3 or 4 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar.

Sauté a large chopped onion with 3 or 4 cloves of finely chopped garlic in olive oil until transparent but not browned. Add 5 or 6 chopped tomatoes, season with salt and black pepper, handful of finely chopped rosemary, half a teaspoon tumeric, and one teaspoon of lightly toasted fennel seeds. Stir in 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar and simmer until sauce is thick and reduced. Pour over rabbit, and enjoy your french beans via the rabbit. Feckers.

So very far from home

There is something magical about the shrinking of the globe brought about by global warming. I mean by cheap flights in Europe. Hop on a plane in the English Midlands, hop off at Rennes, and a short zip up the N137 and you are there, in heaven. Cora, á St Jouan-des-Guérets.

Having stocked up on French basics; bread, blue President butter, two kilos of fat juicy crevettes, strawberry tarts, and not forgetting a couple of boxes of Nescafe pur arabica espresso coffee sticks; and called into the restaurant there for lunch, it's a short drive to our house beside the sea.

Long, long days of books, painting, music, maps and walking, laughter, cooking, shopping, driving barely any distance, tequila sunrises and Gordon's sunsets (giggling here), visiting each churchyard and church and war memorial between here and there, watching France win their way all the way to the final; and finally shoulders emerge from ears, foreheads unwrinkle and smiling becomes a permanent fixture. And no bloody gardening. Well, almost no gardening. Walking towards a particularly beautiful cemetery I pulled up a handful of oak seedlings from last autumn's acorns that had settled and sprouted into the approaching gravel paths.

There is something so good and right and proper about the decision by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to plant the headstone borders and surrounding gardens with trees and plants that create a clear attachment between the gardens and landscapes at home, and the foreign fields where the soldiers lie. And for those farm hands and country boys of the Sherwood Foresters Regiment who died so far from home, the familiar trees and hedgerows of home were brought to them. The cooling summer canopy of broad leafed trees of the English Midlands. I potted up the seedlings immediately after arriving home.


http://www.cwgc.org/content.asp?menuid=2&id=2&menuname=What%20We%20Do&menu=main

French rain, July 2006

Beautiful St Malo, my heart belongs to you