The Secret Garden

Culinary creativity

Little by little I am getting my spark back. It started as a trickle, then a pop and fizz, and now I occasionally have moments when I actually feel like myself. I do not kid myself that these are real just yet - I'm still heavily medicated. And we take our pleasures where we find them, and I celebrate days when the muse strikes and I can feel some juice in the marrow of my bones.

One of the unexpected benefits of having my cranium all to myself again is that I have become quite a focussed cook. Somehow I seem to have reached critical mass with my knowledge, experience, materials to hand, and focus, and meal after meal is slotting into place. If last year I was tottering along with my stabilisers on and ocasionally falling off and scraping my knee, this year I am freewheeling downhill with the wind behind me and enough speed to make it up the coming slope. It feels lovely. A welcome surprise (and precious few of those have I seen this year).

I've been dipping my fingers into so many pies that I almost don't know where to start. I suppose I could list a whole load of links to the Wikki pages of the things I have made, and that would take time and probably be a little impersonal and dull, so instead... cue photo-montage!

Homegrown carrots and wet garlic

More of that lovely garlic

A close up of my gloriously knobbly homegrown sweeties

 

Homemade spaghetti - not bad for a first attempt if I do say so myself!

And my piece-de-resistance - my very own butter mountain

Almost a kilo of fresh butter made with my own fair hands. Utterly delicious smeared on my own warm scones with homemade apple and blackberry jam (neither of which hung around long enough to be photographed).

I'm salivating as I type this! Now why wasn't I born in a bucolic country farmhouse in about 1880?

It's that MOst hairy time of the year

A single bloom

As the wind whips the rain against the glass and the leaves swirl and tumble to the ground in fiery, brittle heaps my thoughts turn inward. The difference is that introspection is natural at this time of year - it is allowed. As I huddle on the sofa, sipping hot buttered rum by candlelight I can truly revel in my hermitage. This is my time of the year, and in spite of everything, I love it.

I have been "putting things up" (a wonderful, Deep South expression) with a sense of vigour and purpose. I have made jams, cordials, fruits preserved in rum, curd cheeses and dense, rich fruit cake. My cupboard shelves are groaning under the weight of jewel-bright jars of preserves and I have finally paid a carpenter to come and create a larder-cupboard under my worktop. He ripped out the old boiler and has replaced it with shelves. the doors are still bolted, and I have a pleasing sense of security that my precious wares are under lock and satisfyingly weighty key. Chateleine, chateleine.

More prosaically I learn that what comes naturally to me is now fashionable. The larder is making a comeback, and people are rediscovering the joys of preserving foods for the winter. About bloody time! I'm pleased, and even a little smug, although ultimately all it means for me is that I can now find jars and old time equipment more easily, and the books that I buy and cherish may be recent reprints rather than osbcure, older tomes.

This is how life ought to be. It feels like a change for the better, even if my own personal tragedy means that I am not living this life quite how I wish. It is unutterably sad that I am doing all of this alone. I share my discoveries and small victories with my friends and I count myself blessed, but the fact remains that I come home to an empty house and I drink, and eat, alone.

My house is finally becoming a home - in a way that it never was previously. Sarah and I have fallen into a comfortable and easy routine, and I feel comfortable enough to express myself unguardedly and to display my natural thoughtfulness and generosity. How much easier and rewarding it is to do that now! I have remembered how to live. And yet, we are not really close. We are not intimate - and nor should we be - and that is what is lacking in my life. It feels a little like a worn and comfortable marriage of the sort that inevitably, one partner wakes up from and claws to get out of.

What I seek is that intimacy. I seek excitement, companionship and comfort. I want a kindred, a man who sees me, and values me, and with whom I can rebuild a life. Today I count myself a widow, because I found that man and he died. The quiet moments in my life are tinged with grief, because somewhere in the dark recesses of my heart I am living this life with him. My soul mate. And yet he does not exist. He never existed. I came close - exquisitely and excruciatingly close - but no cigar. 

And so I sit in candlelight, drinking hot buttered rum and I contemplate. I smile a secret smile to myself, because he will come. And when he does, I will be there waiting, inviting him in. Come and join me in this rich and beautiful life, I will say, come and live a life of joy with me, and he will. He will.