Why I swim

31 Friday Dec 2021

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When I am in the sea I am a mystery to myself. I have no idea how I got here, or why or what I am doing. I am only swimming and I am amazed – Wendell Steavenson

Mothecombe beach, in Devon: I am with Wendy from Ivybridge and we are riding the waves. She is tethered to an orange float. She has come with her winter friends, who she meets to swim with three times a week. Everything I say, she replies, ‘ditto’.

Me: ‘This really helped me during lockdown, you know, mentally’. Wendy: Ditto. Me: ‘It’s completely changed the way I view winter’. Wendy: Ditto. Me: ‘I actually say it’s not cold enough now!’ Wendy: Ditto.

I need some winter friends to swim with. As it is, I go on my own and look out for fellow swimmers. Sometimes it is one word that gets exchanged, like ‘gorgeous’. When I get out of the sea at Mothecombe, there is a lady, 50s, slim, attractive, with a slim, sandy-haired lurcher. They both enter the water, she in a pretty swimming costume, the dog as is. They both swim, deal with the waves. Afterwards, the lurcher dries himself on the sand and the lady dries her face with something un-towel-like. They look very happy.

Sometimes, if I can’t get to the sea, I will cycle to the river, to Hampton Court, or to Teddington Lock near to where I live, and I will ease myself in. A shingle beach, the water sometimes surprisingly clear. Brown water, brown leaves, a strange silence out in the middle, a murmur of cars. I get out, get back on my bike and cycle home, enjoying the sensation of my body slowly warming through my clothes. Someone will take a photo of me and shout some encouragement. A woman the other day bowed, as if I was royal.

Brackish: river water that tastes of salt, water that runs to the sea. I sometimes swim in the Cuckmere Meanders in East Sussex if I go there and the sea is too rough but I need my fix.

The writer Tom Cox said that calling swimming outdoors ‘wild swimming’ is like saying mowing the lawn is ‘wild hoovering’. You are outside doing a thing, like walking, running, swimming. You are in the fresh air. Why is this wild? Perhaps it’s feral. Feral swimming doesn’t quite have the same ring, but it makes more sense: we have all been caged these past two years. Our behaviour has become unnatural to us, and the need for an outlet more urgent. I found swimming jolted me back into the now and the cold is helpful. Swimming outside under sky with so much space, it is freeing, and it is, mainly, free.

When I can’t get to the sea, I also go to a nearby lake. There it starts to feel a bit like sport, and I need to wear a wrist band and a brightly coloured swimming hat. It has a municipal feel, there are buoys which I am encouraged to follow, a course I am encouraged to finish. The water is viscous, cold like a texture, and because they use vegetable dye to control the algae, it is luminous blue, like swimming in a lagoon. I try not to feel pushed to achieve anything but it is harder here and the cold – the intensity of it – feels like the main draw. It’s easy to get sucked into the idea of cold as prestige. The fact I know, as if it’s helpful, that it is 5.1C.

My mum still swims in the sea, at 86, most of the year. I will always take the sea over every other body of water and will always take her stretch of sea, even though there are many other stretches of sea to be had round her way. I don’t want to know the temperature of it, I know it will be cold and that’s enough. I love the moment of being out of my depth, suddenly, when the shelf gives way and I have to fend for myself. I love the salt, the view.

Why do I swim? Because, to paraphrase Linda Ronstadt, I can’t stand not to.

This is purely subjective, but I think women tend to be hardier swimmers, doing it year-round and not in wetsuits. Women who are slightly older, autumnal. They write about it differently too. Wendell Steavenson wrote about cold water swimming here in the Guardian, to help with heartbreak (‘The next day I did it again. And again. I swam every day for three weeks. For some reason, it is almost impossible to cry in the sea’). Samantha Harvey wrote about swimming and insomnia in The Shapeless Unease. (See below). There is no competition, just wonder. It’s all sensation and ritual. Susannah Constantine another outdoor swimmer, suggests a beverage of Yorkshire tea, hot milk and tons of honey to warm up after. But just to balance things, Tom Cox writes brilliantly and beautifully about swimming, both in pools/lidos and in the sea in his book about keeping a notebook, called Notebook. He’s a man. I’ve added a bit of his writing down below.

With the swimming, I’d keep it minimal, it’s like making marmalade – you don’t need special kit, but neoprene socks and gloves are very handy in the winter. A float, perhaps. I do get my kit off once I’m in, by the way. Just a thought. Not in the Thames though. Too many plastic bags and bicycles.

I was reading Notebook by Tom Cox on the Overground and liked the colour of the seat so I included it.

Aftermath

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe, Uncategorized

≈ 16 Comments

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Childhood, Christmas, Recipes, Stories, Vegetables, Winter

There was a man I recently talked to who said he always steamed his vegetables; this made me feel sad. I have a steamer and it is currently doing time on the top of my fridge, covered in a suspicion of ancient cobwebs. I come from a long line of Midlands folk who would not know what to do with a vegetable steamer, who rarely drank water (‘water is for washing’) and who needed proper animal fat for a day to pass without incident.

My grandpa had red hands, almost purple in hue, small and puffy and strangely delicate with ridged fingernails. He would wash my own small hands in the sink finger by finger as if whittling wood. He began many of his sentences with the word ‘why…’, which was in his lexicon the beginnings of an answer he was formulating. He was a timber merchant and had brylcreamed hair and resented the amount of trifle I ate and was constantly wiping my fingerprints off the glass doors. But of course I loved him and was in awe of the way he polished my shoes.

I remember the pristine plastic bag he would give me at Christmas, long like a sleeve. Inside was a Bunty comic – he was obviously ‘advised’ – and something to do with stationary and pencils. The smell of newness. I have always loved the smell of Christmas, the colours, the citrus, the nuts, the dome of disgraced pudding. However much you feel the bubbling up of resentment somewhere in your being (inevitable) it is hard to quash the feelings of excitement, of occasion, it’s always hard to sleep on Christmas eve. Presents, gold wrapping, a basted bird, the morning walk in frost, the sudden intimacies with strangers.

I have little recollection of what I ate with my grandparents at Christmas, except there was always trifle at some point and I remember the pudding on the day, hot and cascading with complicated fruit and brandy butter which I ate by the spoonful followed later by a spell of biliousness in the back of granny’s car. Breakfast would contain dry Alpen mixed to a rough cement with single cream (top of the milk).

Now the trees are on their lopsided uppers, kicked to the kerb, empty of trinkets. The only red thing left is a poinsettia, the oranges the only thing orange. It is over! It is not even the beginning of the end. It’s a whole new year. There is nothing tenuous about it. We must begin anew. My granny eventually turned her back on butter, switching to Flora margarine – something to do with Terry Wogan’s influence. But I can’t – butter is balm, particularly now in January, when darkness falls at four and the cold works its way pincer-like through all my layers. Fat makes you feel better. Well, me.

Here is a recipe for buttered carrots to which you can add the following: more butter. And a knife point of paprika, thyme, garlic or bay leaves. Adding some sweet potato can also be lovely; it will disintegrate within minutes though. I should say that I always add garlic to this. It is delicious alongside hummus or mixed with a bit of yoghurt or feta. It becomes a soup with ease, simply add water or stock. Meat stock can give it an intensity you should be prepared for.

005

Buttered carrots

A bag of carrots, preferably organic (my bag says 650g)

Generous knob of good quality butter, min 25g (I use President)

Garlic, 3-4 cloves or more, bashed and chopped

Thyme sprigs (optional)

Melt the butter in the saucepan with the garlic and the (diagonally if you like) sliced carrots and coat well, add thyme or another herb here if using and a pinch of salt, then add sufficient water to cover the lot and bubble away until this has reduced to a stickiness. The moment it is ready is entirely a personal preference – I like my carrots almost burnt as it seems to bring out a corresponding sweetness, but Jane Grigson says the point of readiness is when the liquid is ‘reduced to a shiny, colourless glaze’. If you would like to make this into a soup then I would add more water and/or stock at this stage, bring it up to a boil and then blitz.

Spiced prunes

23 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 6 Comments

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Christmas, Elizabeth David, Food, Ingredients, Italy, Pudding, Recipes, Spices, Winter

This is not so much a recipe as a throwing together of ingredients and leaving them to do their work for a day or so on their own. I know that Christmas day is upon us and this dish can work both as a side with meat, as a compote for cheese, as a pudding and as a sweetmeat with coffee, which is handy. I’m not suggesting that this is all you have, but it frees you up to enjoy the festivities.

We found Yuzu lemons outside a sushi restaurant, where the tree was shedding its fruit. “They smell like aftershave,” said Joe, meaning in a good way. They do have an intensely aromatic zing. Almost but not quite overpowering. And contrary to reports, they gave up quite a bit of juice. This recipe, by Elizabeth David, asks for whole spices where possible. There is no added sugar, the prune having quite a bit of its own, and it’s rich enough without needing any accompaniment, though I have a penchant (as you’ve probably noticed) for crème fraîche.

Yuzu lemon

I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to get to Elizabeth David because she was the first food writer I ever read with any real attention. And she is forever associated in my mind with Italy where I first learned to cook. Her book on Italian food was the only one I brought with me to Venice, where I lived and worked for a count and countess, and it proved useful because the dishes I needed to make were rarely complicated. It was always more an assembly of ingredients, and as such utterly exposing in the way that all very simple dishes are. Tomatoes sliced with some ripped mozzarella and some shredded (never cut) basil. Lemon chicken. Asiago and a ripe pear, sliced and eaten off the knife like a circus trick. Peaches, prosciutto, ice cream, a slug of espresso.

Everything was singular. The smell of one thing, its perfume, its downy skin, the rind of this or that cheese. Men carved away at artichokes on the quayside until all that was left was the furry heart. They floated them in buckets of acidulated water and Donatella taught me what to do when I got them home.

Donatella was the housekeeper, though she was also the unofficial stewer and broth maker. She was the one who made stock with a carcass, a few whole carrots, some bay leaves and an onion. She told me how to make sugo for pasta. She was small and round and young, and I think secretly wanted to learn English. Sometimes as we bent over the pots and pans I would translate for her and she would find it very funny. I was 19 and she couldn’t have been much older but she was married with kids. Eventually, she left me to my own devices. I had a small but effective repertoire by the time I left, but I never made pudding. Nobody made pudding, from what I could gather. Ice cream was eaten in the street, and anything sweet was bought in and consumed at breakfast.

I think Donatella would have approved of this dish. When I threw in the bay leaves and lemon rind I thought of her. It takes a certain amount of confidence to leave things be and she was nothing if not self-possessed. I think that’s what I learnt most from her – that the best cooks do less. I hope she would be proud.

Blades of mace

Blades of mace sounds like a song by Motorhead. Actually, it’s the lacy covering of the nutmeg, technically speaking the dried aril. It can be used interchangeably with freshly grated nutmeg, added to clear soups and sauces as well as cakes and bread, though it is subtler and more delicate. It is marketed in pieces called blades and has a lovely orange hue reminiscent of saffron. This recipe asks for two blades, but be as free as you dare.

Ceylon cinnamon

These quills of Ceylon cinnamon are quite different to the tougher Cassia bark we are all used to. They are crumbly and parchment-like and break apart like decaying cigars. They smell noticeably of lemon, are subtler than your average and are very different to the spicy, dry ‘hit’ of cinnamon powder. The only drawback is the bits of wood get everywhere and you end up spitting them out in a rather uncouth way.

Spiced prunes with lemon and bay

Adapted from Elizabeth David’s Christmas, edited by Jill Norman

500g/1lb large prunes (preferably unpitted)

2 5cm/2ins pieces of cinnamon

2 level teaspoons of coriander seeds

2 blades of mace

4 whole cloves

Rind of one lemon (and add the peeled lemon too)

2-3 torn bay leaves

Put the prunes, spices, bay leaves and lemon in a bowl or earthenware casserole dish. Just cover them with cold water. Leave overnight. The next day, cook the prunes in an uncovered casserole in a low oven, or in a pan over a very low direct heat until swollen but not mushy. About half the cooking water will have evaporated. Take out the fruit and remove the stones. Heat up the remaining juice with all the spices, until it is syrupy. Pour it through a strainer over the prunes. Eat cold.

Noticing Pecans

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 6 Comments

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Homesickness, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Nuts, Recipes, Stories, Winter

There is an expression: You are here. This is now. Useful when you’re telling stories to contemplate this from time to time. It is easy to look back, to dip into a time removed. But right at this moment I’m sitting in LA. It is early morning. Outside it is dark and rain has fallen and continues to fall, soaking our cushions on the garden sofa we found in the road by Lake Hollywood.

There is a ring of mushrooms that has sprung up outside our window. It is a dark morning without the fog and cold breath of an English winter, but still, it’s recognisably the cold months here. The darkness feels slippery. There are long, wet days that close around 4pm. It is dank and faintly claustrophobic to be inside so much. The windows don’t blow and rattle like they do when there are gales in England. The windows here are doors and they stand firm. Still, listening to the rain at night is comforting, slightly numbing.

And then I went out. To the farmers’ market, where I found pecans. I took some photos – actually I pointed my camera, snapped and moved on. I kept coming back though. Once to ask how to crack the shell (put two in your hand and squeeze), the second time to ask where the nuts came from (Fresno), and then he saw me coming again and he wasn’t sure how to react. Yes, they’re peaking now – the next few weeks are their time.

When I got home I couldn’t believe how truly beautiful they were. I loved the way they rattled in their netting and the surprisingly friable nature of the shell. Simple pressure splits the skin. These are fresh, ‘wet’ pecans and they have a sweetness to them missing in walnuts. My first crunch – creamy and dry, faintly tannic – and I thought of maple syrup.

Fall in Los Angeles

Edmund de Waal talks in his book The Hare with Amber Eyes about the ‘default vagueness’ of melancholy and the ‘smothering lack of focus’ it can engender. We have our stories. Sometimes we forget to go out and make new ones. I have been missing England and the toing and froing of recent months has only added to this sense of dislocation and nostalgia. I have been keening. Now it’s time to be here. Because when I am no longer in this place, I will miss it.

So to pecans. I don’t want to mask their flavour and unique texture. I want to keep them simple and fairly whole. These toasted pecans go well with all manner of things. Here a pear, and though Ruth Watson decries the Conference as having ‘as much taste as a policeman in a string vest,’ I rather like the blandness and graininess. A nice ripe juicy pear anyway is a good thing. Take what you can get. Of course, sometimes it must be ice cream and nothing else. A ball of vanilla, a warm clutch of toasted pecans, a thin moat of maple syrup and I’m anyone’s.

Sweet and salty pecans and a ripe pear

David Lebovitz, The Sweet Life in Paris

Deborah Madison, Seasonal Fruit Desserts

Serves 2

1 cup (170g) shelled pecans

1 tbs (15g) butter

1 tbs dark brown sugar

A good pinch of flaky sea salt (fleur de sel) or smoked sea salt

A good pinch of freshly ground black pepper

A finely chopped sprig of rosemary (optional)

Maple syrup (optional)

2 ripe pears

Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and roast in a 300F (180C) oven for about 5 minutes to ‘tickle out’ their flavour. Try to avoid colouring them too much. Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat, add the rosemary (if using) and then the warmed pecans. Sprinkle the brown sugar over them, and stir until the sugar has melted. Remove from the heat, then sprinkle with the salt and a fresh grind of pepper. Let cool to harden. Tap the pecans gently with a rolling pin to break them up or leave them whole.

Peel, quarter and core the pears. Slice them and serve with the pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup if you have some. And if you have some ice cream, go for it.

Things that go well with pecans: vanilla ice cream, maple syrup, bananas, cream, caramel, avocados, blue cheese, apples, pears, dates and beets.