Tea rooms I have known

I read something recently which began by complaining about the current conditions at a tea-room in Edensor (near Chatsworth House in Derbyshire), which was apparently enforcing the Covid regulations in a draconian manner.  I haven't been to this place so I don't know whether or not it's true. However, the comment then spiralled into what I can only say struck me as being a hysterical rant about how the government is planning on changing our DNA or something via mandatory flu vaccinations - I couldn't really follow the argument, as I was too busy staring open-mouthed at the computer screen unable to process the nonsense I was reading.  

I bet every pandemic, war and other state of national emergency has made a proportion of every population give in to their paranoid delusions, borne of fear and anger, so I'm not blaming these people.  However, it's a pity that the internet gives them such an opportunity to pass on their often ill-informed views, thereby infecting others. 

Anyway, I'm not here to argue with such conspiracy theorists.  There might be some truth in what they say - I've noticed that their rants do often tend to begin with some truthful observation, anyway.  In this case, it was the fact that some places of business are taking their Covid precautions a bit too far and rendering what should be a pleasurable experience into quite the opposite.  I noticed this soon after lockdown ended and tearooms and restaurants opened up again. There was certainly a perfectly understandable over-response by some places. And circumstances like we're currently experiencing tend to bring out the jobsworth in many people, sadly.  

And it is sad, because tea rooms and restaurants which do make their customers feel unwelcome, which tell people off for not wearing masks or not queuing in a socially-distanced way, are going to lose custom and go out of business.  Which would mean that jobs will be lost, and favourite places will vanish.

But this sort of behaviour hasn't been my experience, except perhaps right at the start of the new precautionary regulations. I have been in several teashops and restaurants since lockdown ended and I have found them generally to be handling things well, particularly since they got over the initial shock and calmed down:

The Station Tearoom in Hassop, Derbyshire - we visited here soon after lockdown ended and it was our first foray into a tea room since back in February.  It was a bit weird, admittedly. Most people were sitting outside though you could go inside, which we did as it looked like rain. It was freezing inside however, much colder than outside. It was as if they had actually turned the temperature down in order to freeze the coronavirus out of us. We had to give our name and telephone number to the girl in the kiosk-type place, the first time we'd ever done this, and it did feel intrusive that first time (though it has become the new normal now), before we went inside, and we had to order our food there. The food, which was ironically the best we'd ever eaten there (it is a place we have visited a lot over the past few years), was delivered to our table by a waitress.  Inside, there were only a couple of other tables being used and all the decorations had been removed - combined with the sub-arctic temperature, and the high prices, it was a rather bleak experience, I have to admit.  But this was soon after lockdown ended and it might have improved by now.  Hope so, as we used to love it here.

https://www.hassopstation.co.uk/

Wentworth Garden Centre, Wentworth, South Yorkshire - This is our local Garden Centre, and during lockdown they had built a new restaurant to add to their already massive and relatively new tearoom and their outdoor cafe. Did someone say that such businesses were on their knees? Well, this place isn't. I think it must be run by the Devil himself because I have known it all my life and it just gets better and bigger and more successful all the time. Yes, there have been very short queues on our visits since lockdown and you have to leave your name and telephone number at the door. Yes, there is a bottle of hand-sanitizer in the entrance to the lovely new Bothy restaurant, but no one forces people to use it. Yes, the staff on the door wear visors, but waiting staff inside don't wear masks or visors. Yes, there is one way in and another out, but this actually helps the flow of traffic.  The food is exactly the same as it was, the prices possibly slightly higher than they were, the staff as pleasant as always, and though the tables are pushed further apart, there is a lot of space so it is unlikely you'll not get a table.

http://www.wentworthgardencentre.co.uk/

Rob Royd farm shop and restaurant, Worsborough, Barnsley - another of our pre-lockdown favourites. You have to wear face masks in the farm shop, though the staff don't, and I haven't worn one on either of our recent visits as I have just been walking through to the cafe. No one has challenged me.  You don't have to wear a mask in the cafe and neither do the staff.  Tables are set a good distance apart but don't look much different to previously. Food is the same (though they did seem to have run out of quite a lot on our last visit). It isn't cheap but it never has been. The staff are friendly and service not much slower than previously.  The staff in the farm shop are even friendlier and the butcher's counter has some excellent meat. 

https://www.robroydfarmshop.co.uk/

Waggon and Horses, Oxspring, Barnsley - This is a pub-restaurant where we have eaten for years. The tables are spaced out more than they were and each has its own bottle of hand-sanitiser.  Staff don't wear masks, but clean the tables and chairs between each service.  The place's usual warm atmosphere is still there - service was slow, but it often is, and they had a lot of new staff (something I've noticed everywhere). The food was the same as it always was, prices much the same.

http://thewaggon-oxspring.co.uk/

Beatson House restaurant, Cawthorne, Barnsley - Another of our favourites, this is our restaurant of choice for mine or my partner's birthday.  The staff were extremely pleasant. They have a new system where you enter at the front and leave at the back.  The menu is reduced and written on boards on the wall so you don't have to handle a physical menu (though they are available if you want them).  Tables are set far apart. The food was still as great as ever, service a bit slower - the poor staff have a steep staircase up which to carry the ubiquitous massive heavy white plates that seem to be a feature of all restaurants these days (when they aren't serving food on slates, wooden boards, raffia place mats or bits of driftwood - one good outcome of the Covid crisis is the way restaurants have dropped this nonsense as it is unhygienic).  We had a lovely evening here.

https://www.beatsonhouse.co.uk/

Cintra's Cafe, Hathersage, Derbyshire - garden seating, well-spaced tables with umbrellas, each table and its chairs sanitised between services. Staff wear masks or visors. Food average, but pleasant. Friendly. One-way system for entering and exiting, but no barking at customers or frog-marching them to their table. Don't know what they'll do now the cooler weather is here, however.

https://www.cintrastearooms.co.uk/

The Cheshire Cheese, Hope, near Castleton, Derbyshire - long wait at door to be shown a table though place was virtually empty.  Very young staff who were jolly and cheerful and friendly but incredibly slow - I mean, slow like a glacier!  They also got one of our orders wrong. Food was fine and well-priced, and pub is one of those picturesque country places that are difficult to dislike. 

http://thecheshirecheeseinn.co.uk/

Eve Kitchen, Doughnut shop on Sharrow Vale Road, Sheffield - you can't go into the cafe any more (or you couldn't when we went) so you buy the doughnuts from a kiosk in the wall, but they taste as fantastic as ever. Quite literally the best doughnuts I've ever eaten. My partner doesn't like doughnuts much but even he loves the ones they make here. Definitely not for people on a diet. Since I learned my blood sugar was a tad high and I had to cut down on such things as doughnuts, I have dreams about the one filled with chocolate and peanut butter ganache. 

http://www.evekitchen.co.uk/handmade-doughnuts/

The Hoof and Hide Cafe, Yummy Yorkshire Ice-cream, Denby Dale, Kirklees - despite the lockdown in Kirklees, the place has been heaving as always on our two recent visits. It is quite expensive but it always was. They have temporarily changed the ice-cream parlour so it now part of the cafe in order to space the tables out better.  There was quite a long queue and we had to wait a while, but this place is always busy when we've been.  They are using a separate outbuilding to sell their fab ice-creams, and serving their usual cafe menu in the main building. Staff wiped down tables and chairs between services. The food varies in quality, and isn't cheap, but at its best it is pretty damn good. Friendly staff and they are trying to keep it friendly and welcoming while also keeping people safe.

https://www.yummyyorkshire.co.uk/

Poem published today on Foxglove Journal

Check out my poem on:

https://foxglovejournal.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/as-she-waits-for-news-of-her-son-louise-wilford/

What I've learned recently: The journey can be better than the destination!

 

The perils of leaving home

I have a confession.  Once, during a more stringent phase of the lockdown, we pushed the rules to breaking point.  Remember when we were allowed to drive for longer journeys to get exercise, as long as the journeys weren't longer than the exercise?  Well, we drove the half-hour journey from our house up into the hills above Ringinglow in Derbyshire.  I had been coping with lockdown well, but I have a history of anxiety and I was beginning to get a little edgy and feeling that the black dog was lurking at the end of the garden path, so P thought that getting a change of scenery would help calm me down.

We took some sandwiches and a flask because the rules at that time said you could stop for food while exercising.  But in fact, we parked the car in a layby and just ate our food.  We thought we might take a walk afterwards, but I have been having problems with my back and I knew I couldn't actually go hiking for miles over the hills.  There was only one other car anywhere in sight, parked like us in a layby. It contained an Asian couple with three young kids in the back, and it was several hundred feet away from us.

There were cyclists going past, and, as everyone knows, cyclists - at least when they're wearing lycra and pedalling up hills - always have the apparently godgiven right to be as self-righteous as they choose.  One bloke rode past our car and started yelling abuse at us.  He was also gesturing with his hands as if to say 'Unbelievable!  Do these people not realise they are endangering both themselves and others?' (but with more expletives).  I wished I had had the forethought to bring a pop-up sign saying 'Do you realise that frothing at the mouth while riding a bike without a mask and yelling abuse at harmless strangers is much more likely to spread the virus than eating a sandwich inside your own car with the windows wound up?'.  He then moved on to vent his ire on the family in the other car, which incensed me even more than his yelling at us as I kept thinking how scared the children, who were very young, must have been.

Shaken up by this incident we decided to return home without having a walk.  As we drove down the hill we were passed by a police van, presumably heading off to set the dogs on the other car...

I can understand the argument that using our car increases the risk of a breakdown or accident which would be a drain on the NHS and put Green Flag workers in unnecessary risk of infection, but our car is regularly serviced, reliable, had new tyres and a full tank of petrol, and we are careful drivers, There were few cars on the roads anyway.  And there was no way we were otherwise spreading the virus.  We had been in self isolation about five weeks by then.  I can also appreciate that if beauty spots were filled up with visitors, social distancing would be difficult, and that rules are meant to be obeyed. But we hadn't broken any rules except that we didn't do the exercise we intended to do, and that was because of the abusive cyclist.

While my natural instincts are always to break rules, I am also sensible enough to want to be a good citizen during a pandemic.  We had gone out to the hills in order to try to head off a simmering mental health issue, but in fact the abusive cyclist made me feel like I never wanted to leave the house again.  I have always disliked the smugness of the lycra brigade.  I have no problem with people riding bikes in their normal clothing for fun or to get to work. I even think that cycling is a good way to get fit and save the planet. I don't even mind actual athletes who are training for events.  I would never want to prevent any cyclist from cycling round the British countryside and on the British streets (as long as they follow the rules of the road which they often don't).  But I have known many incredibly sanctimonious men (they are usually men) who think that owning an expensive bike and wearing a skintight yellow jumpsuit and a pointy helmet entitles them to feel superior to everyone else.  Apparently, they are single-handedly saving the planet and still have time to yell abuse at young children and middle aged couples.  I know that this ghastly cretin who screamed at us up on the hills almost certainly spent time that evening tweeting about how 'fucking unbelievable it is that there were TWO cars parked on the hill with their occupants eating sandwiches!'.  But we weren't breaking the rules at that time, and we certainly weren't spreading coronavirus. Whereas he was riding round, sweating profusely, spitting and coughing as he screeched, spreading his bodily fluids over the innocent countryside, while dressed in an outfit that made him look like a banana.  I think that should be against the rules, myself.

The only thing worse than a Covidiot is a self-righteous, judgemental tit on a bike.

Anyway, to move onto a funnier subject, you should have seen me walking through the woods near my house last week.  As I mentioned above, I've been having a problem with my back, but I didn't realise how bad it was until I was in the middle of the wood.  The forest near our house climbs up a steepish hill, and going down this hill seemed to trigger my back pain, which shot up from an Ibuprofen-dampened three to an excruciating ten.  There was nowhere to sit, except large rocks and fallen trees. I was shuffling along so slowly that I was being outpaced by a bright green caterpillar on the path beside me.  We were quite a distance from the road, and I was beginning to panic because I was in such pain I felt I might not make it down the hill.  With P's assistance, and after a ludicrously long time, I did make it to the Heritage Centre car park where I half collapsed on a low wall while P jogged home to get the car.

As I sat there, feeling pointless, several very elderly men with their equally elderly dogs, an old woman with a walking stick, a young woman in flipflops and with her ankle bandaged, and a toddler on a scooter, passed me, heading cheerfully home as if taking a walk in the wood was the easiest thing in in the world.  Self-satisfied gits.

Writing Cue...

Look very closely at something.

I mean, REALLY close, so you can see the grain, the pores, the stains, and the flaws.

What you look at is up to you.  It might be your garden fence, a piece of flaking plaster, a leaf, your own hand, an emery board, a lump of cheese....whatever takes your fancy.

The trick is to look close and for a long time.  Let your mind begin to see the shapes and textures and colours as abstract things, then maybe as concrete things - the way a cloud can suddenly look like a dog carrying a stick, once you're in the right frame of mind.  Let your mind wander but remain tethered to the object you're examining.  

Write a poem.  Whatever comes into your head.  It might be several different poems. It might end up miles from where it began. It might shoot off in different directions.  Just let your imagination go.

What I've been reading...

Crow Investigations series by Sarah Painter


I first came across this series when the first book, The Night Raven,  was recommended to me on my Kindle. I liked the title so I downloaded it, but I had a strange reluctance to actually read it.  I did read the first page and it didn't really grab me, and at the time I had lots of other things I had to read so it remained unread on my Kindle for a long time.  Then, one evening, I suddenly decided to give it a serious try, and I'm glad I did as I found myself quickly immersed in the world Painter creates.  I read the second and third book in the series straight after each other, and I have pre-ordered the fourth one. They are pictured in order below:


           


The novels have some similarities to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series in that they are set in an alternative but recognisable contemporary London, feature a detective (this time a woman, Lydia Crow, who is a private investigator), and involve magic and the supernatural.  I always like books set in London, a city I love, particularly when the writer clearly knows the place very well.  Aaronovitch's London is probably more vivid than Painter's version, but the Crow Investigations series definitely captures the place, 

Her imaginative twist on the urban detective genre is to have her protagonist, Lydia Crow, a member of the powerful Crow family, based in Camberwell.  Painter's London is divided between four magical families, The Crows (led by the formidable Uncle Charlie), The Foxes (led by Tristan Fox, whose son, Paul, used to be Lydia's secret squeeze), The Silvers (led by Alejandro Silver, whose barrister daughter is seriously upset by one of Lydia's investigations) and The Pearls.  So far, we haven't learnt much about the Pearls except that they are excellent salespeople - I assume we will learn more in Book Four.  Each family has particular magical gifts, though I think that the silver tongues of the Silvers are probably a bit close to the persuasive skills of the Pearls, though we will see how this plays out.  The Foxes are, like their namesake, cunning, independent, secretive, dangerous, and have a potent physical and sexual charm.  The Crows are historically the most powerful family, though the powers of all the families have been waning in recent decades.

In the first book, Lydia searches for her cousin Maddy who turns out (spoiler alert) to be not only more powerful than Lydia expected but also psychotic.  The second novel focuses on the Silvers and their involvement in several murders. The third begins with Lydia's discovery of the body of a member of the Fox clan in an unused underground station.  Each novel bleeds into the next, though they just about manage to remain self-contained stories.  

A real strength of the series is Painter's ability to create tension.  The scene near the beginning of the first book where Lydia is almost thrown off her rooftop balcony is terrifying and beautifully paced, for instance.  Lydia is an interesting, feisty heroine.  Brought up in the suburbs outside the main influence of her peculiar extended family, she is at first unaware of her own magical potential, thinking her only power is to recognise whether another person is a member of one of the four magical families.  However, we see her discovering new skills as the narrative progresses, and her courage is inspiring.  Her relationship with the good-looking Police Detective, Fleet, is also well-portrayed (though I found it odd that there seemed to be no reference to the fact he is black until halfway through book three - was his ethnicity an afterthought or a deliberate obfuscation?).  Uncle Charlie is a particularly vivid character, and Painter creates an atmosphere of mystery, conflict and suspense - one puzzle is solved only to introduce another, one problem sorted only to lead to a further complication.  The mystery of Lydia's ghost assistant's back-story is an excellent hook, though I'm ready for an explanation now.

Painter writes confidently and well, and is in control of her material.  There is sufficient originality to keep the reader interested, though I did feel that some of the plot climaxes were a little underwhelming.  Part of this is that investigations are sometimes puzzled out by reverting to Fleet using his police contacts or by other people telling Lydia things - I have felt that, despite my being fully engaged in earlier parts of each novel, the resolutions of the mysteries have pushed me as the reader away from the centre of the action.  This is mainly because Painter sticks to what can realistically be achieved by a PI, only using Lydia's magical abilities occasionally. As the books progress, this improves - in Book Three there is a good sequence where Lydia makes use of her friendly ghost to solve one mystery.  It would be satisfying to big up more of the minor characters, particularly Angel, the woman who runs Uncle Charlie's cafe below Lydia's flat,  

Overall, however, this is a readable and entertaining new series that I would definitely recommend. 

You can find Sarah Painter at: 

                            https://www.sarah-painter.com/     

RATING:

Crow Investigations series

****

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

Writing Prompt

Write a story or poem set in a supermarket.

RECIPE: Easy Meat and Potato pie

Easy Meat and Potato Pie



Ingredients:

one pack of chopped up stewing steak
one large carrot, peeled and diced
one large onion, peeled and sliced
one small stick of lettuce, washed and finely diced
one large potato, peeled and diced (larger chunks than other veg)
one knorr rich beef stock pot (or equivalent stock cube)
a glass of red wine (plus another to keep you company while you cook)
a generous spoonful of redcurrant jelly (optional)
a pinch of herb salt
pepper
a few shakes of smoked paprika if you fancy it
squirt of brown sauce
olive oil
cornflour
bay leaf
ready-made frozen shortcrust pastry, defrosted
egg yolk for painting on top of pastry

Method:

1. Brown the meat in a casserole dish suitable for using on hob. Set meat aside.
2. Fry veg in olive oil in casserole dish until beginning to soften.  Return meat to casserole dish and stir to mix stuff together.
3. Add stock pot, herb salt, jelly, paprika, brown sauce, a generous dessertspoon of cornflour, and stir well. Add wine. Stir well.
4. Barely cover with hot water from kettle. Add a bayleaf. Cover and cook in oven on a low heat (160 on a fan oven) for about an hour, until meat is tender. The gravy should have thickened. If not, mix some more cornflour with cold water and add a little to the stew after it has cooled slightly, stirring well.
5. Set aside until cold. Then tip into a pie dish.
6. Roll out pastry.  Cover top of pie, paint with egg yolk and cut two or three inch-long air vents in top.  Cook in oven at 180 (fan oven) until pastry is cooked.

Alternatives:

• use different vegetables.
• use different flavourings - different spices, herbs, chilli, garlic, tomato puree
• use rough puff pastry

What I've learned recently: We can't all be natural blondes...

But I could be a natural grey...

My father is a natural blonde, and my mother is a natural brunette.  My maternal grandmother and most of her children (except my mum who took after her father) were natural redheads.  In a properly organised universe, I’d’ve inherited one of these distinctive hair colours, wouldn’t I? But, no –  after a few years of baby blonde hair, I eased into my teenage years with hair that, at best, during hot summers, was honey-blonde, and at worst (ie, most of the time) was what could diplomatically be termed ‘mousey’.

But I did get the sort of skin that so often accompanies ginger hair: vampire-pale, mole-speckled, bursts into flame at the first hint of sunshine.  So that’s ok. Thank you, Universe.

Anyway, at seventeen, I decided that dying my hair tart-blonde would be a good move.  My dad always said blondes have more fun (and he should know, as he ran off with our teenage babysitter when I was seven), so I figured I was ready to embrace the high life.  I chose the palest permanent blonde colour available, and remained that colour for years, not counting the periods when I added orange and back combed it into a monstrous frizz. [I was always drawn to punk rock].

                                           

Having blonde hair really did change my life. I got a lot more attention from men, for one thing, which was a surprise to me as nothing else about my appearance had changed.  Except that I maybe used an excessive amount of slap – looking back, it was possibly my resemblance to a 1950s streetwalker that got me all the masculine attention. What is it about blonde hair that taps into so many men’s libidos?  Beats me. It did cause me a problem when I first fell properly in love, however, aged 23 (I’ve always been a bit slow), as I allowed the object of my affection to believe my blonde hair was natural.  I actually couldn’t believe he truly thought it was real. I mean, my eyebrows are brown (if you know what I mean). And I’m not from Sweden, or one of the Midwich cuckoos.  But he believed I was a natural blonde and I let him continue to do so because I couldn’t bear the thought of disabusing him of this idea which had clearly become part of what he loved about me. When he did work it out, we were more or less finished anyway, but it didn’t help.

Anyway, in my thirties, I started going for darker, more natural-looking blondes, and then I spent many years with my hair coloured in various shades of ginger, which actually suited me better than any other colour.  The problem with ginger hair colours is that they fade more quickly than other colours, the lovely vibrant orange shades turning…well, mousey.  So I eventually moved onto shades of what were called ‘light brown’ but always look quite dark to me. I try to use reddish browns, and sometimes I just go for the full-on ginger look despite the inevitable disappointment that a fortnight of hair-washing will bring.

                                         

So, why am I going on about hair colours?  Well, the thing is, I haven’t coloured my hair for about two months now, and the natural colour is beginning to show through. And, shock horror, quite a lot of it seems to be grey! It’s still dark at the roots, but there are definite silvery streaks at the front and sides.  Now, I have no problem with being grey.  My partner’s hair went grey-white in his thirties and he later grew a beard so he looks like Captain Birdseye these days.  We never have a problem choosing someone to be Father Christmas. I have a friend who is my age and naturally grey, and she is gorgeous and looks younger than me.  But most of my friends dye their hair.  My mum dyes her hair. My colleagues dye their hair.  It’s a class and geographical thing, I think.  I am from northern working-class stock – council house, comprehensive, FE college – and women like me, in my generation, dye their hair.  They just do.  I rarely wear make-up these days and I have been the recipient of disapproval from my peers and elders because of it.  Anyone would think I’d started wearing sackcloth and jesus sandals! I have several much more middle-class friends from an older generation in London and they have all grown old gracefully and sport lovely grey and white hair. But no one has seen my natural hair colour, including myself, since I was seventeen.

I mean, it's not as if showing my true colour would transform me into a prune-faced, squinting granny with no teeth, complaining about how much better things were in the old days, is it?  Not immediately, anyway. I'd have to put some work in.

                                           

So, I’m thinking – Lockdown has already made me cut my hair into the worst bob the world has ever seen, so why not take the opportunity to grow the colour out altogether?  I could at least see how grey I actually am (before I quickly get the Clairol out, sobbing hysterically). 

But now, just to spite me, The Clown Prince has decided to send us all back to work in a few weeks, hasn’t he? 

Listen up, Boris, two months isn’t enough time to grow out several inches of hair, and I can’t go back to work piebald, can I? Have some compassion for your citizens, man…

Writing Prompt:

Write a story or poem inspired by a famous painting.

What I've learned this week: The Importance Of Keeping Fit...

The Importance Of Keeping Fit! 

As we have all been told, it is important to exercise while on lockdown in order to keep yourself fit and healthy.  The problem is that I didn’t do much exercise before lockdown.  In fact, my life wasn’t really all that different before lockdown to now, except that I went to coffee shops and ate less.

In the first week of lockdown, I started doing online yoga again for the first time in months. I also did the ‘soothing stretching exercises’ recommended by a video I found on Amazon Prime, aimed at ‘those with chronic pain caused by conditions such as fibromyalgia’.  These exercises appeared very gentle but the instructor was secretly an evil witch – I woke up the following morning feeling like I’d been wrung out by a beefy Victorian washerwoman. That instructor clearly had a short, fat poppet with badly cut hair and glasses in her back pocket.  Twenty minutes of these so-called ‘soothing stretches’ managed to inflame my entire body (and not in a good way). I spent the following three or four days hobbling round like a professional hypochondriac, convinced I’d got Covid-19 as every part of my body hurt.

However, a fortnight later, I started going for walks.  Counter-intuitive as it might seem, spending all my daylight hours, and quite a few night-time ones too, typing at a laptop tends to make me a tad stiff. Who knew?  Mother Nature was also being either exceptionally kind to the poor creatures confined to their houses and gardens, or exceptionally cruel, depending on your perspective. The weather was gorgeous.  My husband had been taking daily walks down to the local park and reservoir since lockdown began, adopting sensible social distancing measures of course.  So I decided to accompany him.

About ten minutes into every walk, my back started hurting.  I was sure I’d seen one of those van Tulleken twin doctors proving that exercise could cure chronic pain better than pills, and that was on TV so it must be true.  Therefore, I knew I only had to persevere and the pain would ease up.  

It didn’t. It got worse. So I came up with a genius idea: I would take the painkillers an hour before I went on the walk, giving them time to start working, and that would keep the worst of the pains at bay during the walk. If I did this for a week or so, I figured that my body’s natural alignment and muscle strength would return and I could stop taking the pills. 

After one week, I went for a walk without a paracetamol or ibuprofen crutch, and guess what?  My back ache returned with a vengeance!  Traipsing downhill through the wood near our house, I felt as if a goblin was walking behind me and hammering on the muscles below my waist with a lump hammer.

                                             

Well, it just hasn’t had enough time to work yet, I thought.  

A week later, I was mentally refreshed – the bluebells and wild garlic in the woods really are stunning, and the reservoir is a thing of true beauty under a bright blue spring sky, and the people who were keeping a safe distance away from us were all friendly and cheerful.  Who’d’ve thought a pandemic could be so pleasant?  So I stopped taking the painkillers again.

Rumpel-lumphammer was back, this time adding extra resonance by gently plucking my sciatic nerve with a pair of pliers.  As I lumbered down the hill, tripping over tree roots and cursing the van Tulleken twins ('Damn the van Tullekjen twins, however east-on-the-eye they might be! Call themselves doctors? They're nothing but bloody charlatans! And I bet this tree trunk is covered with coronavirus!), my knees made a sound like an old grandfather clock winding down.

So, here's what I achieved by two weeks of exercise:  

• hay fever due to the bluebells and wild garlic 
• a limp worthy of the hero of a 1940s romance 
• I’d ingested more painkillers than I would normally take in six months.  

So now I’m back to a ten minute limp down the canal path when no one is about, and fifteen minutes a day of ‘Yoga For extremely-unfit-middle-aged-beginners-with-fibromyalgia-and-the-kind-of -bodies-that-just-won’t-do-what-they’re-told  With Adriene’. Adriene is a woman whose video-ed yogic-contortions have impressed me in the past, though I am a long, long way from emulating them. She’s an American and talks too much which often makes me very tense with irritation (which is the opposite of what yoga should achieve), but I’ve learned to distract myself by counting the number of clichés she can pack into one yogic position (I counted twenty-eight this morning).

                                                      

Don’t get the wrong idea. I do sometimes move away from the laptop.  I have a frequent compulsion to bake cakes and talk to my little nephew by Google Hangouts, and I am teaching a couple of private tutees by Skype (yes, I am now able to use ‘multiple’ online video calling apps), and there is housework (which P is doing most of at present because I am in such pain – when I iron, I have to prop myself up against the table and take a ten minute breather between each item). 

And there is of course the ten hours of procrastination I have to fit in each day.

Well, someone has to do it!

Self-Isolation Recipes: Lime and Coconut drizzle cake

Lime and coconut drizzle cake

        

Ingredients
4oz/100g self raising flour, sieved
4oz/100g caster sugar
4oz/100g softened butter or spread (I used Flora)
2 eggs
zest of one lime stirred into flour
a handful of dessicated coconut 
For drizzle:
two limes (but one would do), juice squeezed into a cup
roughly same volume of caster sugar (or icing sugar) as lime juice
a few dessertspoons of canned coconut milk


Method
1. Grease a loaf tin and line base with baking parchment
2. Beat sugar and butter together until light and pale
3. Add eggs and beat into sugar mix
4. Fold in flour and lime zest
5. If you are using an electric mixer, you could probably just throw all ingredients into bowl and 'whazz it up', as Jamie Oliver would say.
6. Stir in the dessicated coconut, if using. I planned to use this, but discovered that my dessicated coconut was more than a year past it's use-by date, so I decided against it!
7. Bake in a moderate oven (mine is a fan oven and I put it on 180 degrees) for around twenty minutes, or until a skewer stuck in its middle comes out clean.
8. While it is baking, heat up the lime juice and around the same volume of sugar in a pan until sugar melts. Add the coconut milk. Stir well. Make sure it is hot before drizzling. If you want to test the syrup to see whether it is sweet enough, take a small teaspoon of it and let it cool on the spoon before tasting, to avoid burning your mouth.
9. While cake is still warm, tip it out of loaf tin, prick top all over with a fork, and spoon the lime and coconut syrup over the cake, letting it soak in.  Use up all the syrup.
10. Once cool, sprinkle with icing sugar if you want to.

What I've been reading this week: Haven Wakes by Fi Phillips

Haven Wakes by Fi Phillips


I first became aware of this novel, which is aimed at the 11+ audience and published by Burning Chair Publishing, when Fiona mentioned it on the Open University's Write Club Facebook page. I downloaded it onto my kindle partly out of a sense of writerly solidarity - I like to support new authors - but also because I too am writing a fantasy novel aimed at the same age-group.  I didn't even find time to read it until recently but I wish I'd started sooner as it turns out to be a lively, entertaining, imaginative read.


                                                   



The novel is set in a future version of our world, and begins excitingly with a mysterious shadow creature being chased and almost caught by two thugs and their mean, magical master, Kendra, who is searching for something.  As the narrative progresses, we discover that the magician is being employed by an even scarier magician, Winters, who is involved in the murder of the CEO of Haven Industries.  The murdered man's nephew, Steve Haven, is left at an unpleasant boarding school while his mother goes off to search for his missing father.  While his parents are gone, Steve is caught up in an increasingly mysterious and exciting adventure involving a magical place, Darkacre, attached to his own world but unseen by most 'workadays'.  He meets numerous fascinating and often frightening characters and learns things about his parents and his world.

The novel is the first in a proposed series, and it certainly caught my attention and sucked me into the narrative quickly.  Fi's style is fast-paced, compelling and readable - there are very occasional minor 'glitches' (too many characters are described as 'bone-thin', for instance), but only the sorts of things that people like myself, currently studying creative writing and engaged in a great deal of beta-reading, would notice.  The plot is original and there are some brilliant moments - I loved the fire imp, and Hartley was a wonderful character. There is genuine suspense and the action sequences are well-paced and well-controlled. Dialogue is plausible and helps to develop characters and move the plot along.  I haven't read the whole novel yet, but so far it has gripped me completely and I want to read on. I would have loved it when I was twelve or thirteen, and I am definitely enjoying it even now at my advanced age.

I hope Fi does write the sequels and I think this is a series that ought to find a loyal readership as I think it would appeal to any young reader who likes adventure, fantasy and intrigue, well-drawn characters and imaginative ideas.


You can find Fi at http://fiphillipswriter.com/

RATING:
Haven Wakes

**** 

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

Writing Prompt

Look in your fridge or fruit bowl or food cupboard.

Find ONE interesting item.

It might be a bit of cheese with a mouldy rind, or a single squashed grape, or a bowl of leftover mashed potato, or a whole perfect melon, or a slab of steak, or a jar of homemade jam.

Anything.  In any condition.

It just has to be one single item.

Jot down everything this item makes you think of - memories, associations, connotations, the obvious and less obvious.  Let your thoughts fly free.

Then write a poem or a story inspired by something in your notes.

What I've learned about writing this week: Self-isolation is just another way to procrastinate

Writers are famous for procrastination.  When we claim we have 'Writer's Block', we are just attempting to glue a fancy label on what is basically an unwillingness to just get on with it.  As every writer knows, deep down in their hearts, the only way to overcome 'Writer's Block' is to write.  To write anything. To write gibberish. To warm up the brain and wait it to find the right gear.
          People who don't write often think writing is easy.  After all, it's sit-down, indoor work. Most writers work at home, close to the TV, close to the fridge and the toaster, close to their beds...!  And it is certainly true that it is a much pleasanter way to pass your time - for those who enjoy it, at least - than emptying bins, serving in a cafe, laying bricks on a building site, filing, or sitting in a boring meeting.  [Though, to be fair, most writers earn so little that they often have 'day jobs' anyway - and then there are children to look after, caring duties, housework, dogs to walk, meals to plan, errands to run, etc].


                                                      



          Having said that, many people would consider the idea of sitting at a keyboard (or with a pen in your hand) for hours at a time to be tantamount to torture.  My niece would feel she was receiving cruel and unusual punishment if she was told she had to write a story.  Most of the teenagers I teach clearly consider any sort of writing, including 'creative writing', along with any sort of reading, to be a form of child abuse. I once left a good job so I could focus on my writing for a year, and I remember a colleague asking what I was going to do. When I told her, she looked horrified and said 'Oh, I couldn't stand that, just sitting around all day at a computer. It would drive me bonkers!'.  It's horses for courses.
          Which reminds me of something P once told me. He's a keen chess-player and he used to belong to a local chess club. A fellow member once told him that, while he was playing a game, an elderly man observing them shook his head, pursed his lips and said:  'Oh, I couldn't be doing with sitting there like that, for hours on end. My mind's too active for that game!'
          Even though you can sit in the warm and not get rained on, writing is mostly hard work.  It's surprisingly physically-demanding - typing for hours, particularly when you're not a touch typist, can be very draining.  And concentrating for long periods of time is exhausting.  I know this sounds absurd, but it is an act that is mostly wearying and unsatisfying, but there are moments of glorious bliss that make it worthwhile.
          Nevertheless, the proximity of the biscuit tin and the kettle, the ease with which you can make yourself a quick slice of cheese on toast or watch an episode of Futurama, does make it difficult to focus.  The lengths writers will go to avoid writing should give you an insight into how difficult it can be.  When the lockdown began, I think that most of my writing friends and acquaintances were, like many people, shell-shocked and in a state of low-grade anxiety that sapped their ability to work on creative projects.  But this has worn off for many of us now, as we adjust to the 'new world'.  Yet, while some people are now using their extra time to dive into their ongoing novels or write some poetry or keep a proper diary which they'll eventually turn into a fabulous piece of CNF (Creative Non Fiction), I'm still distracting myself with other things.
          Any other thing, in fact.
          I have no shortage of things I should be writing.  A coursework deadline is fast approaching and I have several half-written stories that I need to finish and select from.  I'm also supposedly doing the Write Club's monthly writing challenge, but I only managed a rubbish poem for February and a very short story for March.  I have piles of reading to do for the course as well as preparing for the 15,000 word End-of-Module piece due in October.  But do I do these things?  No.
          I began my attempt to focus by trying to catch up on all the posts on the Masters course online forum.  People had posted work needing feedback, or completed activities from the course material requiring contributions to discussions, and I thought it would be a good idea to work through the forty-odd unread posts on my screen and respond to as many as I could.  This was fine except that naturally I kept being sidetracked into non-writing-related conversations, mostly about Covid-19 and self-isolation.  And that's before I took a look at the MA course Facebook page, or the Open University's Write Club Facebook page, or the Write Club Forums where there were pieces of work requiring feedback.  For someone who doesn't think of herself as being social-media-savvy, I sure do seem to spend a lot of time on it!
        I've also been spending large chunks of every day texting, emailing, phoning and even video-calling friends and family, much more than I ever do normally. As you know, I'd never video-called anyone before lockdown!  People must be sick of talking to me.
          Anyone who has read this blog over the past few weeks will have an inkling of the other things I've been doing - inventing ways of using up leftover food, making children's toys out of toilet roll inner tubes, sorting the various documents on my various USB drives into folders (takes longer than you'd think), doing 'play' archery and wakeboarding on the Wii machine, preparing the lessons for my private tutees (whom I am teaching by Skype) in unnecessary detail, inventing new household chores and then beating myself up psychologically if I don't complete them, watching TV, looking at things unrelated to my writing on the internet (for instance, I spent an hour earlier working out the chronological order of the Roman Emperors for no good reason at all).  And writing this blog is a major procrastination activity.
          Twenty years ago, I began making a hand-stitched patchwork quilt.  I don't know how to make a patchwork quilt. No one has ever taught me, I've never read a book or watched a programme on it, and I don't have a sewing machine. I have no idea what possessed me. But nevertheless I began making this quilt.  After a few weeks, I got fed up and put it away for several years.  Since then, it's been dragged out of the cupboard once or twice over the years for a few weeks' sewing until I get sick of it again.  Guess what I've started doing this week?

                          

So, I might end up failing my Masters course but I will have a patchwork quilt made out of bits of old shirts, so that's ok...

What I'm reading now: Alice Munro

Alice Munro Dear Life

In an effort to focus my reading on the Masters course I am doing, I have started to read this collection of Alice Munro's short stories, and though I'm only halfway through, I felt I had to write about it here.  Munro is a Canadian author who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013, and she is generally considered to be one of the finest writers of short stories in her generation.  Dear Life was published by Vintage in 2013, though several stories in it were first published elsewhere.

                        

                        

I had never read any Alice Munro stories before I began Dear Life, though she had been recommended to me as a brilliant short story writer several times.  What I have discovered is that I wish I'd started sooner. There must be something in Canada's atmosphere that produces terrific women writers: Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, etc.  She reminds me a little of Carol Shields and Anne Tyler in her style, though she has her own distinctive way of writing.
          What struck me immediately was how 'old-fashioned' her writing is. She breaks many of the 'rules' we have been advised to follow on the Masters course.  For one thing, many of her stories are characterised by having omniscient narrators who have an overview of events, but who don't take it upon themselves to comment too much on what is happening.  There is a certain psychic distance established between reader and characters that might be off-putting in a lesser writer.  She does a great deal of telling, whole pages passing by with barely any showing, but her telling is so astute and sensitive that it just doesn't matter. It didn't matter to me, anyway.  When she does use dialogue, it is spot-on; when she tells us what characters are thinking, she tells us just enough.  There is a lot left out of her stories; they are pared down to their essentials and nothing much happens in terms of 'plot'. They focus on the epiphanic moment, and are informed by the narrator's awareness of time passing, time wasting, time running out -  the limited nature of human existence.  
         This all sounds deep and therefore potentially dull, but I haven't found the stories I have read so far to be at all dull.  They have been quiet, thoughtful and psychologically insightful.  The characters, particularly the women, are vividly drawn, each an individual, and she doesn't try to tell us everything about them. She has the courage to step back and tell us just the things we need to know, leaving the epiphany to resonate with us long after the story ends.  These aren't flashy tales; there has been so far no twist-in-the-tail, no whizz-bang experimentation with tenses, viewpoints, peculiar imagery or unconventional forms.  The stories do jump between viewpoints sometimes, often briefly. 'To Reach Japan', for instance, appears to be from the pov of the husband Peter at the beginning, and it slips into the child Katy's pov at the end, but the majority of the story is told from Greta's viewpoint. 'Amundsen' is told in the first person, but somehow even this narrator seems omniscient, like someone recalling a past event from a position of superior knowledge and experience.  But despite the potentially distancing effect of this narrative voice, Munro's characters leap off the page. Even minor characters are utterly believable, their dialogue accurate and convincing, their behaviour plausible and acutely drawn.
      If you like fast-moving plots with lots happening, you probably won't like these stories.  They eschew the supernatural and fantastical (as far as I can tell so far!), and focus on small stories that could happen in the real world we all recognise.  There is a powerful sense of place in them too - most of them set in and around Ontario in Canada. They are simultaneously universal and particular.  There is a vein of quiet humour running through some of them, and an occasional hint of satire, but they don't provoke belly-laughs.  There is a poignancy about many of them, though they make you think about life rather than becoming depressed about life.  If I could write a story half as good as Alice Munro's, I would consider myself to have achieved something worthwhile, whatever mark it was awarded by my tutors on the Masters course.

RATING:
Dear Life 

***** 

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way