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Semi-derelict

17 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by Sophie James in Garden, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

France, Fruit, Gardens, Nigel Slater, Patience Gray, Pre-Pandemic holidays, Recipes, Stories

She stood on the doorstep with a carton of blackcurrants, the top decorated with the pungent leaves. English but so long in France that she was a bit like Jane Birkin; she had a way of speaking English that sounded translated. She was an illustrator and had bought the house semi-derelict with her French husband and turned this annexe into a one up one down house for paying guests. I found it hard to warm to her, but I recognise it now as jealousy. The garden was ramshackle but loved and beautiful to me for that reason, with ducks and their ducklings skittering about, while various cats lounged on the vegetable beds. He – the husband – was a fanatical gardener and barely spoke. As if it was all too much, or he’d gone feral here, with the woodland at the bottom of the garden and the stream, and the birds he was protecting. Don’t go near that tree, he said, because they’re nesting. He was French and so his insouciance was more acceptable, don’t ask me why. They were both not exactly host material.

Over the years, I have listened to/read the same story told through various lenses, but the words are the same; rambling, derelict, remote, dusty plain, our hideaway, our tumble-down cottage, our house (well, one of our houses), we couldn’t find the front door for the brambles, didn’t even know there was a swimming pool, it wasn’t on the spec, rotting floorboards.

Often they wonder if it is worth it, because of the upkeep. And travel more difficult now. We are so lucky, they always say. And I think, yes you are. To be in France or elsewhere in the seventies or eighties when property was cheap, and you had a few extra bob. Then you held on to it, improved it, gradually the area became more sought after. These accretions are often slow and subtle.

The pioneer spirit looks different now, more calculated, and documented up the wazoo. I wonder if we could ever return to the relative innocence of Patience Gray in Honey from a Weed (‘I was able to light a fire, start the pot with its contents cooking, plunge into the sea at mid-day and by the time I had swum across the bay and back, lunch was ready and the fire a heap of ashes’.) or Elizabeth David brushing the fish with branches of rosemary dipped in olive oil. My own mother bought a three storey house in southern Spain for £2,000, now long gone. All the walls sloped, and swallows nested in the rafters. We had no glass in the windows only shutters. We would get lifts to places in the back of the post mistress’s van or occasionally the back of a tractor. What I remember was how unrelaxing it was. Hard work. We were dusty, tired, often bored, but our skin shone from the olive oil, sunshine and mountain air. Also: the coffee, the tomatoes, the smell of the bakery with its tough brown loaves. The way bits of wall came off on your clothes.

I suppose my mum’s place too was semi-derelict, or as one guest called it – in the days when strangers responded to an ad in Loot and were sent the keys – ‘your hovel’.


The punnet of blackcurrants are swiftly deployed. And I am left with the tale – that they zoned in on this area of unflashy northern France, their demands were few; a bus stop so their daughter could get to school on her own, relative ease of access to a town, a garden to grow vegetables. Then they got to work, quietly and slowly until they built a life.

The blackcurrants are washed and not dealt with in any way, the ‘beard’ still intact. Then they are gently heated on the hob, with the tiniest splash of water along with the sugar. They are cooked when the skins split, and then you eat them like that with ice cream, yoghurt etc. Or once cooked you can push them through a sieve to get a purée. They still retain their tartness, despite sugar, and always arrive in the same way; offered in an old ice cream carton, from a muddy hand, or a repurposed punnet. Some currants will still be attached to the stalks, leaves will be amongst them, the colour reminiscent of beetles. Or ink. Or soot. They are not glossy. I tend to eat them raw as I work my way round the allotment.


Blackcurrant compote (to add to meringue and cream or rice pudding or ice cream). Adapted from Nigel Slater, Tender Volume 2.

300g blackcurrants, 3 tbs caster sugar (or to taste), a shake of water (2 tbs)

Wash blackcurrants, pull from their stalks if necessary, put them in a stainless steel saucepan, with the sugar, water and bring gently to boil. As soon as they start to burst and the juice turns purple, remove from heat and set aside. Leave to cool, then chill.

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The colour mauve

06 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by Sophie James in Garden, Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Allotment, Edible flowers, Food, Gardening, Seasons, Summer, Thoughts

IMG_3193.JPG

Already this is an entirely dated picture. A week in allotment time is six months in normal. The California poppies have collapsed beneath the weight of their stems, the central path has become powdery and yellowed under the harshness of the sun. Bees like mauve. So they are still feasting, swarming over the borage, the geraniums, the sweet peas and the lavender. What’s left, just, are the nasturtiums, redly hot and peppery, calendula, verbena bonariensis (I never got round to finding a replacement for my frostbitten lemon verbena, so I have mint tea instead, a few hairy leaves in some boiled water can be a virtuous start to the day).

The heat requires shade. I am growing, from a root cutting given me by an allotment friend, a grape vine which is still in its curly glossy beginnings. It went into shock at first, a state I know well. But it has recovered. The plan is to train it over a structure and then sit under it with a Pimm’s getting steadily drunk, with ice cubes. See borage flowers below for cucumber notes.

I  still find that the allotment works for me. It doesn’t stop anxiety, over-thinking, self-absorption, worry, but it diverts them into small achievable tasks. And before you know it, you’re semi normal again! You’ve just had a conversation with someone! You strung a sentence together. I find that time passes and at the end I’ve been delivered into my body again, for free. Well, £70 a year is quite reasonable if the brief is: grow vegetables and some fruit and find sanity.

I cycled to the allotment on Friday to pick something for dinner, sorrel, some parsley, a few gooseberries dusty in my hand; whatever looked easy and pickable. It was early evening, a time I find ripe with difficulty (what have I achieved today? Ever? Etc). I met two children on the path, five and a half and seven years old they told me, who came with me to help me pick. The boy was barefoot. I had never met them before but we became instant friends, not sure how this happened but they trooped over to my plot to help me full of chatter and questions. Do you have any pets? The boy asked. No. Not a dog? Not a cat? No. This worried him, I could tell.

IMG_2726

We picked some radishes and marvelled at their perfect spherical shape and hot pink colour. Do you like radishes? No, they both said. Too spicy. But they enjoyed washing them under the tap, revealing their perfect pinkness, glimmers of white beneath,  the pink shorn away by bite marks. Have a nasturtium, I said, and the boy put a petal in his mouth and instantly looked aghast. What were we doing eating flowers? He stood there, face shut in some internal torment of wrongness. I can’t eat this, he said quietly, and spat it out.

He was quickly diverted by the task of separating out equal bouquets of radishes to take back to their mum. I’d forgotten how ferocious this can be, making sure it was ‘fair’. The girl had all the big ones, so a reshuffle was required. As we walked back with our stash, this happened.

Boy to me: What are you going to eat with your vegetables?

Me: I think I might have some fish.

Boy (excited): So you DO have pets?

See what I mean? Diversion. Meeting people. Radishes. Pets. Children. Barefoot. Bike.

And then I felt normal. Happy summer holidays to you all.

image

P.S These are borage flowers. They have the merest hint of cucumber about them. You can add them to salads and ice cubes to put in drinks if you fancy. They lack the kick and personality of nasturtiums but are very pretty.

IMG_2720

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