The Last Post....

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I seem to have run out of steam.

I guess that means that Confessions has run its course. 

Inspired by the lively interest and debate this blog has previously met, I am gestating something a little more serious and a little less personal.

We may meet again.

xxx 

You're Never Alone With A Head Full Of Relatives....

You might think after umpteen years of investigating my internal world, I would be adept at managing the ancestral voices in my head. You would be wrong.

Rooting through the fridge today, I came across a paper bag of slimy mushrooms, the unsuspecting victims of my current domestic lethargy. I was just about to put them in the compost pile when I heard my long-deceased grandma’s voice in my head.

“Eeh bah gum!” she said. “Dost tha ‘ave money to burn?” (She really, really did used to say “eeh bah gum!”, arms thrust under her ample bosom and mouth set firmly, waiting for a suitable reply.)

I don’t have money to burn, nor do I have a mint in the garage or a money tree in the garden.

Chop onion and garlic very finely and sweat in a generous knob of butter.

My son is very fond of home made mushroom soup. I took him to a friend’s for lunch when he was three. “Mushroom soup? “ she asked.

“Mmmm, my favourite” he replied.

She placed a bowl in front of him and he took a taste.

“Is this from a can?” he asked innocently, “because mummy makes her own, and I really only like it home-made.”

“You,” she responded to me, accusingly, “are making a rod for your own back.”

I fear she was right.

Sort through bag of mushrooms, composting the worst and peeling and finely chopping the rest. 20 minutes. Pour large glass of gin and tonic.

My grandma was born in 1912, leaving school at the age of 14 to work in the Yorkshire cotton mills. Life was hard, and food was not for throwing away, even if it was growing its own life forms. She married young and had children straight away, family planning in those days consisting mostly of crossing fingers – and legs – and slapping the husband hard when he came home from the pub. She had an amazing capacity for conjuring up a family meal out of bugger all, and although it was comprised mostly of flour, lard, water and those bits of the animal that the posh folk wouldn’t eat, I remember her as a wonderful cook. I developed a fondness for stodgy dumplings and neck end of lamb as a small child, although I would caffle at the sheeps’ brains, pigs’ trotters and tripe that she would serve up for my granddad.

Sweat mushrooms for as long as it takes to get rid of the slime. About another 20 minutes. Pour another large glass of gin and tonic.

The Mother has the same skill, and would produce daily meals for our family of seven from a bag of flour, a block of lard, a couple of bendy carrots and whatever the butcher was throwing out. The Mother retains her fondness for lard, and will buy some in especially when Sister #2 visits from Italy.

“I’ve bought you some lard!” she announces, the minute my sister arrives on her annual visit.

“Fabulous” responds Sister, “because Italian extra virgin olive oil really is so disappointing when you have been brought up on beef dripping.”

Stir in a suitable amount of flour, and cook it out for at least 3 minutes, stirring continuously.

The Sister leaves after a month, half a stone heavier and about to birth a 9lb meat and potato pie.

Add enough vegetable stock until desired consistency is achieved. Thicken slowly…remember just in time that under no circumstance must it boil. Approximately 3 minutes.

I have successfully abandoned my maternal line’s attachment to carbohydrates and cheap cuts of meat. I still can’t throw food away though.

Add some black pepper, a handful of finely chopped flat leaf parsley and a dash of single cream. Ready to serve.

So I appear to have spent the best part of an hour making a single bowl of mushroom soup. One, measly, single bowl of soup. Granted, I have simultaneously marinated a chicken in garlic, lemon, coriander and chilli and prepared some vegetables for roasting, but nonetheless the voices in my head have convinced me that an hour’s worth of soup-making is morally superior to composting a bag of slimy mushrooms.

If someone could persuade me that feeding my son slimy mushrooms is damaging to his health, I would be most grateful.

Short Hair Days...

On the coldest day of the year so far I find myself with the shortest haircut I have had since I was in my early 20s. I have been going to the same hairdresser for four years and have had broadly the same haircut in all that time. Short, but never too short. I like my hairdresser. She knows my profession and we have wordlessly developed a LETS scheme: she tells me her problems and I get a wet cut for a fiver, which is ridiculously cheap even by arse-end-of-Yorkshire standards. I visited yesterday. She launched into a long and complex tale involving her frail, elderly mother, a curling rug, A&E, the officious Duty Social Worker and the Kafkaesque hoops one must jump through in order to qualify for a modicum of social care. I was in my ex-trouble-making-social-worker element. I gave her a lengthy piece of advice on how to ensure that her mother gets some actual support, which involved citing the National Assistance Act (1948), the Disabled Person’s Act (1980) and the Carers (Recognition and Services) Act (1995): advice designed to make any social work team leader sigh in despair that here is someone who appears to know that she might actually be entitled to something.

This was swiftly followed by “D, what the hell are you doing to my hair?”

“Oh,” she said, “you don’t normally have it that short do you?”

I don’t. I haven’t worn my hair this short since I was a radical young thing in the early 90s, wearing old-style DMs, charity shop clothes and with cheekbones to die for.

I left feeling that I had held up my side of the bargain rather better than usual, but that she had left me looking like a tired extra from Bad Girls. I went to bed feeling very grumpy indeed.

This morning, however, I have had a wave of nostalgia for my Short Hair Days. I had my first short haircut at university, where I hung around with the Women’s Group (or Wimmin’s Group, as we preferred. Oh, Lordy!) The Women’s Group consisted largely of women with names like sheepdogs (Rax, Joo, Kez etc) who looked like they had been sheep-sheared by the farmer. We thought we were sooo cool. I quickly took to cutting my hair myself, and thought I looked quite the radical. The Mother despaired. Job well done, then.

I moved to Stoke Newington after I graduated, way before Stokey had been gentrified and when the Vortex Jazz Bar was the best night out in London. I worked in Camden and would catch the North London Line to Camden Rd: on a haircut day I would queue with the boys at the little Turkish barbers and get a short back and sides for £2.50. I have always been fond of a cheap haircut. A slick of brylcreem and then the bus up Camden Rd to work. Matt Lucas was often on the same bus, and I vaguely recognised him from the TV. He always sat in the disabled seats at the front and would look embarrassed if anyone smiled at him. He looked shy. I liked him for it. My boyfriend at the time had long hair and looked like Feargal Sharkey. We looked quite the couple.

I looked like a boy for years, and I liked my androgyny. But now I am a middle-aged women, a stone heavier and with more than a smattering of grey (which, in a man would look ‘distinguished’ but in a woman looks like she can’t be bothered to dye it. The Wimmin’s Group failed in that respect.) I have wrinkles, which I really can’t call laughter lines because I just don’t laugh that much. I am not sure if women my age can really carry off the Very Short Hair look. I think it makes me look hard, not sexily androgynous. So I will grow it out to its normal level of shortness. But I would like to thank D for the memories.