Tags
Food, Fruit, Nonfiction, Stories, Sussex
I started with soft fruits. My first blog post back in the UK was on red gooseberries. Lovely in their brown paper bag from the greengrocer in Seaford (in East Sussex), the man with the curly hair and always a kind word. He is also the butcher. Joe approached him as he was carrying a palette of unskinned rabbits. Are they wild? He asked. ‘Wild?’ he replied. ‘They were furious’. He sold me the red gooseberries and invited me to live in Seaford; ‘seeing as you’re here all the time’. The sea is a big draw. And the wildness all around. It’s hard to know where to start.
There’s the ferry, yellow and bulky like a child’s drawing, on its interminable route to Dieppe. Hard to believe it ever gets there. There’s the sun, the sound of the sea crashing and drawing back in the night, the fishermen’s lights illuminating the black waves. The gulls and their grey babies. Clutches of apples already visible from the train. Bramleys, but still.
People have died. People die! I still find this hard to grasp. Every time I walk past Elm Villas and get a snatch of yellow wall I remember great friends who lived there and who are now both scattered over the cliff tops that just recently were covered in pink thrift. It was the house where I learnt about Jane Grigson and how pudding could be two tubs of ice cream from the Co-op and a cup of mint tea. Now the house belongs to someone else and already the furniture strikes me as ill-advised. Their magic has gone. And their magnificent kitchen table and all their books. But mostly it’s them that I miss.
I don’t actually live here. This is my mum’s place, but it’s where I come when I need it. It’s where lots of serendipitous things have happened. The place is full of rememberers – people remember Dirk Bogarde when he lived here, they remember Winston Churchill’s school days. They know – and I do too – where Grayson Perry lives. There are a lot of closet bohemians, because we are after all within thrashing distance of London. And yet, I think you couldn’t be further away. Particularly when you hear someone pronouncing it Sea-ford. I like the cafes – there are five good ones, all worth going to.
What I have learned, one year on, is that July is curiously the end. Now that I am a gardener in the most rudimentary way I know that this bit of summer is when the inevitable decline into Autumn begins. Things are yellowing now, they bolt and go to seed the minute your back is turned. It is the season of collecting what you’ve grown (and eating other people’s apples) and watering what is still to be harvested – in my case, a profusion of beans and squash. There are apricots from English trees which you must eat immediately, or face comparisons with blissful ones from the Med or California.
One year on: I held a two day old baby, my arms numb from the sheer surprising weight of her, so I laid her on the bed and stared at her twitching mouth. In the corner of the window, in a different house in Seaford, higher up the town, was the sea. The mother, my friend, was the original recipient of that goosegog pudding. Red gooseberries that made their way underneath a terrifyingly ethereal mass of Genoese sponge.
But it all worked out in the end. She’d been born in the corner of the room and, like the party with the pudding and the wild dancing, the place was now, still, full of people, children running in and out, sudden decisions to go to the beach. I was at some point mistaken for the midwife. When the real midwife arrived, I went for the train that took me back to Clapham Junction, not wanting to lose the newborn scent (honey and yeast) and the sight of her perfect Cupid’s bow mouth. So anyway, one year on, see if you can get yourself some red gooseberries. Jane Grigson’s recipe is one I would recommend. And enjoy what’s left of summer.
Happy anniversary. Lovely post; delight to read – thank you!
Thank you for reading 🙂 X
I’m wild about you!
Ha ha xxxx
What a beautiful post and beautiful photography! Happy one year! http://www.ourfoodieappetite.com/east-beach-farmers-market-norfolk-va/
Thank you so much x
Beautiful. Just beautiful. xx
> Warmly, > Jen > Holistic Health Expert, Author & Vitality Coach > The Healthy Plate > Thyroid Loving Care > > The Book: Healing Hashimoto’s Naturally
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Thank you dear Jen. Thinking of you… xxx
Gorgeous Sophie!
I still always avidly enjoy reading all your posts, they feel like pulling a soft blanket round me on the porch swing with a nice cup of tea.
Big love
Hannah
Thank you Hannah…Thinking of you on your porch swing! X
Happy one year! You’ve left me with a feeling of wonderful nostalgia for this place I do not know.
That’s very nice to know – odd how that happens, but very happy it has. Thank you. x
Lovely post.
Thank you Conor. Hope all is well.
Top form, thanks be to goodness. I’m just back from a holiday and feeling great. Lots of blog ideas have arrived (after a couple of months of feeling like I had exhausted the supply).
Best,
C
Beautifully fitting homage to this time of year and the bounty. Lovely surprise to see you and your allotment haul. Autumn will truly be upon us when I see you after our hols. xMT
So glad you got to see my miniature harvest, MT, and lovely to have bumped into you. Looking forward to our Autumn meeting xx
A touching and sweet post. Happy Anniversary
Thank you Gerlinde, and for stopping by. Sophie
Very, very nice writing and the first pictures that I’ve seen, over the last 15 years, of England that have been able to rekindle in me good memories…very beautifully seen images.:)
That’s lovely of you to say and makes me very happy. There’s something about the sea and those white cliffs that makes it a very English scene. Thank you for the lovely comment. Sophie
Still haven’t managed to eat such beautiful fresh cake as I did when guests of yours in LA. Maybe it was the fresh home made joy rather than the over sweet bought American cake but it was a real warm welcome for us.
Enjoy the rest of the summer – I think of you when driving through Hampton!
Love to you both x
How lovely to hear from you…You were both such fun and lovely guests, and a part of what we both miss about living there. Please keep in touch! Sophie xx
Another beautiful post from you! Thank you!
Thanks Mimi for checking in. X
How beautifully you can paint a picture, Sophie x
Thank you…would be lovely to see you soon xx
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