food

FOOD - my word for 2017. Happy New Year x

year word

Realising that I'd been working too hard in 2014 I gave 2015 the word FUN, and lived with that in mind during the year. In 2016 my word was SHARE, as I'd recognised a trait of self sabotage in negative self talk, gaging myself in expressing thoughts and ideas. So, in 2016, whenever I had an idea, wrote something, had a response to someone, positive or challenging, I shared it! Praising and naming qualities admired in others, calling others out if their behaviours were destructive in any way. Professionally, the result is 30 posts on this blog, 30 news updates on my website, a successful application for a residency, exhibiting in four exhibitions and developing a new body of work.

Emotionally, in telling my truth I've not allowed assumptions to be made. It was uncomfortable at times and in this discomfort was a new experience, of pushing against a boundary, of misbehaving and not being the good girl. Some friends have drawn closer, others become distant.

December was a relief, as I'd begun to tire of speaking my truth and will relish not telling. Not telling will feel different, it will be my choice if I allow assumptions to be made or allow the emotional intimacy of sharing my inner life, this is me - who are you?

hitch

My flat on Leytonstone High Road is steps away from the birthplace of Alfred Hitchcock. He is celebrated locally with a collection of fantastic mosaics along the walkways to Leytonstone Underground station. These mosaics are marvellous, clever in their depiction of characters and places, skilled in design and use of colour. This morning, the view from my flat was blurred with fog, edges softened, timeless, by the time I'd walked to the station this had cleared to become a dull December day. 

This work is called The Hitchcock Gallery, opened May 3rd, 2001. The gallery celebrates the life and work of the great film-maker Alfred Hitchcock, born in Leytonstone on 13th August 1899. The mosaics were made at The Greenwich Mural Workshop.

 Young Alfred by his father's shop

Number 17

 The Pleasure Garden

 Hitchcock the Director

 Strangers on a Train

 Psycho

 Vertigo

 Suspicion

 The Skin Game

  North by Northwest

 The Birds

 Saboteur

 To Catch a Thief

 Hitchcock with Dietrich

 Rear Window

 Rebecca

The Wrong Man

manor park cemetery

On a misty December day my sister and I found our Uncle Andrew's grave in Manor Park Cemetery. 20 years had passed since we last visited, his gravestone now grey with age and lichen, listing to the left on soil that had shifted over the decades. We plan to return in the spring to plant something bright and green for Alfons Dabrowski. 

sloe gin

A year ago I posted about making sloe gin & whisky using sloes gathered by my sister's house in Aylesbury. Well, last Saturday we opened the gin & it was wonderful! Waiting a year was worth it! 

The whisky has yet to be opened...

Ingredients:
500g ripe sloes
250g golden caster sugar
1 litre bottle of gin

Method:
1. Rinse & pick over the sloes, pat dry. Using a stainless-steel fork or cocktail stick, *prick the sloes & tip into a 2-litre Kilner jar, or divide between 2 smaller jars. (*You can also freeze the sloes after rinsing, this splits the skin, so no need to prick each sloe).

2. Add sugar & gin, seal the top. Shake well. Give the jar a good shake everyday for a week, then put in a cool, dark place & leave for 2-3 months.

3. Line a plastic sieve with a square of muslin, set over a bowl & strain the sloe gin through it. Decant into clean, dry bottles, seal & label. The sloe gin is now ready to drink but will improve & mature over time, so if possible make it one year to drink the next.

Ruby red

rose hip syrup

Last month I made my first ever rose hip syrup using hips gathered on Wanstead Flats in September, which I washed and put in the freezer. Hips are a winter food for birds, so I only took what I needed. Here are foraging guidelines from the Woodland Trust.

The syrup is sweet, high in vitamin C, good drizzled on cakes & pancakes, in porridge and lovely with a shot of gin or vodka with ice.

You will need: measuring scale, pan with lid, wooden spoon, ladle, sieve, muslin cloth, bowl, measuring jug, funnel, Kilner bottle(s). 

Weigh your hips. The following recipe used 350g of hips, so alter amounts depending on the weight of your rose hips. 

1. Rinse & cut hips in half, put them in a pan & add half a litre of water.

2. Bring to the boil, simmer for 5 minutes.

3. Ladle/pour liquid & hips into a muslin covered sieve over a bowl. Wrap muslin around the pulp and place something heavy on top. Leave to stand for 1 hour.

4. Return pulp to plan, add another half litre of water & repeat process 2 & 3.

5. Give muslin with pulp inside a good squeeze. Measure rose hip liquid, for each litre add 650g of sugar. I had 600ml of liquid, so used 325g of sugar.

6. Return liquid to a clean pan, add sugar & heat until sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil & spoon off any scum. Boil for 3 minutes then bottle. 

I gave my bottle a rinse in boiling water before adding syrup. As you can see from my final image I filled 1 bottle plus extra in a jam jar. I didn't rinse the jam jar in boiling water and the syrup developed mould - so do rinse!

 Rose hips & water

 First boil

 Liquid after adding sugar

Finished syrup

hook & eye

Unchanged (inside and out) since my first visit in 1990 as a first year student at Derby University. Brings back memories of a 19 year old self. 

rise

Rise to the occasion of your one and only heart.

live wild, be brave

Coast to Coast, 2015

Money is a little tight at the moment BUT when I heard Cheryl Strayed was coming to town I immediately booked a ticket for Live Wild, Be Brave. An Evening with Cheryl Strayed. What struck me was how present she was, how heartfelt, authentic AND laugh out loud hilarious. 

A few days have past since the how to: Academy event and a couple of things have stuck in my mind. Firstly, Cheryl is the first person I've heard voice this: that if you are bought up in a toxic home your safe is outside. You must step over the threshold and search for safety in the world, home is not where your heart can reside. This has resonance for me in my feelings of safety experienced while walking alone in landscape. It's not that fear is absent but that I can handle fear in a way that contains it and close my ears to the cultural messages forbidding women to venture forth alone. Observing others, I see they can't do this, their fear is in control.

Secondly, she spoke about her work on Dear Sugar Radio with Steve Almond, and the thousands of letters they receive. These letters reveal that the unhappiest people are those whom, for whatever reason, project an outer persona at odds with their true inner self. When your outer self is a true reflection of your inner self then you are an authentic person in the world, you can truly meet others without shadow or agenda. This is an ongoing process for me, but I am far down the path.

Thank you Cheryl Strayed.

measure of quality

While walking an easy three mile circular route from my flat this summer I experienced a moment of clarity and heightened awareness of consciousness in THIS body in THIS time, in THIS place. Aware of myself as a wondering measure of quality, flesh and blood responding to the sensory stimulus around me as finely tuned receptor, genderless, without culture.

My surface, registering the gentlest breeze, hairs rising upon some impulse from my sympathetic nervous system, this system operating me from before birth to my death. Eyes that see and make sense, or find sense in the environment, perceiving light, distance, colour with a sensitivity no camera could duplicate. Turning home, facing the setting sun I experienced its blinding rays, a last hurrah as the horizon rose to conceal the light. This haze of golden light felt timeless, I could be anywhere, this could be anytime, I could be anyone.

Footsteps measuring pace, distance, rhythm, stone crunch underfoot, a buzz and chirrup from the long grass, the music of trees and breeze, a rush of urgent whispers. Breath rhythm, inhalation, exhalation, an emotional swell in my chest as I feel, I feel. Mind, self, cognisant, piecing together now and before. A belly full of wonder at this awareness, connection, consciousness - my time on the Earth is now, this is my time. Recognising the gift of this moment, legs that carry me, a bright and curious mind, the preciousness of taking a deep, easy breath. 

heart

gold or hell

Saw six magpies on the Wanstead Flats today, which means gold or hell depending on which rhyme you choose to believe. A flock of magpies is a tiding, a gulp, a murder or a charm apparently. Such poetry.

mile

● The path on which I released a red admiral butterfly caught in the grass. Tattered wings beating against the dirt path, it flew, with grass hanging, fluttering toward the trees.

● Fallen tree trunks surrounded with empty beer cans

● One for sorrow

● Yesterdays litter becoming a marker, a neatly tied black plastic bag of dog shit

● Shit made beautiful with the iridescent backs of bluebottles coveting it 

● Six for gold

● Leaf shimmer and whisper 

● Breath rhythm 

red is the colour

Apache chilli pepper! My plants are heavy with green chilli's and happy in their bedroom window sill spot. This is the first to tun red!

robert

My father, Robert James Logan died on this day in 1990.

ruby

In the summer of 1990 I worked in a nursing home for a couple of months before heading off to university. My father had died in the June and I left home for Derby in September. 

My father spent the last months of his life in hospital, dying on the morning of June 2nd. Watching him slowly fade, gaunt, with bedsores and towards the end his oxygen starved brain leading to confusion, I was a teenager with a larger than most experience of ageing, and a teenager in deep, profound distress. Working in a care home was a strange choice looking back, like prising my eyes open with matchsticks and forcing myself to gaze unblinking at suffering, failing bodies, death. Was I numb? Did I feel some duty? I do not know.

There was a woman in the home who was dreadfully confused, behaving as a toddler. If left on the toilet for too long she would smear herself, her thighs, walking stick with excrement. I remember being on my hands and knees washing her, verbally scolding her. In some part of her brain she knew she had done wrong and whimpered a little. In her room was a black and white photograph taken in the 1930's of a stylish, smiling young woman with beautifully waved dark hair, she had on pencil pleat shorts, gorgeous legs and was perched on the back of a motorbike. Young, at ease, carefree, loved, our reality and the image at odds, and I've never forgotten that moment. She was a girl just like me. 

Just once I went into Rudy's room, the curtains were drawn and in the dim light I could make out a naked figure on the bed, she lay on her back and was so thin, I recall my shock at seeing the outline of her spine through her stomach. The room smelt of urine, and Ruby was conscious, eyes open, uncomfortable, my memories are vague, that we turned her, bed sores being present in many... Outside, I felt a shiver of enjoyment from a staff member who regarded my reaction, probably assuming that was my first encounter with death, having no understanding of my own recent trauma.

Death was in that room, and I hope it came soon. Over the years I've thought about Ruby, never forgetting her name, never seeing her girl self photograph. I also think of the other woman, the one who's name escapes me, but her image does not, the young creature, radiant at the beginning of her womanhood. Its been almost 26 years since these experiences, their families do not know they are with me, that I sing for their bones. 

Around this time I remember sitting at a bus stop, an old woman glancing at me turned to her friend and said loud enough for me to hear, Young people today don't know their born,  depressed, newly bereaved, working in a care home I vowed never to be that unseeing woman. 

an alien thing

I'm always surprised that people have both parents, that people my age have grandparents, or knew them in adulthood. It baffles me, the experience of intergenerations, of a living past. A woman of 49 can still call her father, that this woman could ask for help, be helped. It is the most alien thing to me. 

fleeting nature

Two days ago I walked in the woods and was captivated by the intensity of green. Within a week or two it will subtly fade, but now, in this moment, it's the purest vibration of bright lushness. My heart was happy, and while I wished it would linger, I also realised its rare beauty is in its fleeting nature. Change is the only constant. 

tempo

While walking on Wanstead Flats yesterday I was fascinated by the trees in open ground, could feel their fizzing energy. Tens of thousands of leaf buds on the verge of bursting, nature felt as an elastic band stretched to its limit and about to ping! Trees in the forested areas have pinged into leaf, sheltering each other from the winds that whip around the more exposed and bud filled trees. 

I thought about tempo, and remembered the quote by Ezra Pound, The difference between a gun and a tree is a difference of tempo. The tree explodes every spring.

As I continued to walk I passed a mature horse chestnut and was made tiny by it! Thinking about the best way to describe it, hulking settled into my mind. Questions tumbled - how much do the leaves weight? How much does the tree weigh? How much water is lifted up through the trunk in a day? Transformation, energy, connectedness.

With leaf the trees have become dense, inflated, huge. They stand their ground.

pies

In a well known department store recently, I tried on a pair of jeggings. The word jeggings, while effective at describing a cross between jeans and leggings makes me shudder in its ugliness. Once on they felt a little too snug, did I need the next size up? The staff member in the fitting room was alone so couldn't retrieve the item for me, and I simply couldn't be bothered to remove the jeggings, so lagged in stretchy fabric off I scurried to find a bigger size.

While searching the rails a gentleman approached, one of the shop floor staff, telling me he had an eye for sizes. Upon hearing what I was after, he looked me up and down, gazed momentarily into my eyes and asked in a clipped African accent, Are you planning on eating all the pies? Ha! He did not keep to script, he was being himself, subtly scolding me for thinking I am bigger than I am. He amused me.

He was right, they were too big!

sock it to em!

Finished LATE last night, rainbow feet for spring!

sorrow

My grief floored me. I hung onto everyday life, but just. Getting through each day, holding down my job, reaching out to friends who mostly ignored me and with each return from a dip working out a strategy of how one earth I could cope with the next inevitable one. I wondered about informing my doctor, worried I'd struggle getting on an even keel with the next blow. It was monumentally hard. The experience has left me distant from many friends, the ones who didn't call to see how I was after I'd reached out, the ones I'd wept in front of and who never contacted me the following day, week... Is it because of the stigma of mental illness in one perceived as strong? I still cannot understand it.

My grief was that of a woman who realised she was not going to birth her much longed for children, of a woman who spent monumental amounts of energy on a relationship that wasn't all that and a regretted abortion at 29. Ending up single and childless has been a shock to the system, as if I've woken from a sleep that lasted throughout my 30's and early 40's. The advice below is hard won and personal - it helped me in the darkness, it may help others. 

With gratitude I am out of the worst (for now). I feel less alone and lonely, reconnected with the world, more excepting of the way my life is unfolding. I'm wiser, with a deepened understanding of self, an expansion in my compassion for all and aware of my inner voice, which is a loving and kind presence in my life.

Firstly, invite the depth of your grief to reveal itself:
I realised with dread that I needed to dive into my grief, really FEEL it in the hope that the only way out was through. My experience on The Hoffman Process gave me the tools and knowledge of feeling very deeply and coming through it... So, alone (though my self is a precious and courageous companion), I embarked on this journey.

When in deep grief:
♥︎ Electric blanket. It is horrendous getting into a cold bed alone every night when all you need is a warm hug and presence. I found the warmth from an electric blanket like the warmth from another body, from the space where your lover has just got up to make you a cup of tea. Sinking into a warm bed helped.

♥︎ Pillows! Pillows to surround yourself with, to press into your back, your stomach, to nest into, to hold onto. Recently I've purchased a 'v' shaped pillow and its lovely to wrap myself around.

♥︎  Positive mantras. At the beginning of my grief nights were very hard. The only way to cope was to talk over the negative voices in my head, the replays of 'what if...' replacing them with positive mantras, sometimes repeating them all night. I love and respect myself, I love and forgive myself, all is well, I am safe. I use these still, now they enter my head unbidden.

♥︎ Stones/crystals placed by my bed. I've a thing about stones, collecting them on walks over the years, arranging them along the window sills in my flat. I have neat rows of semi precious stones and crystals too, recently discovering palm stones. I researched their spiritual properties and have red jasper, tigers eye and fluorite within reaching distance of my bed. My head is often buzzing with thoughts and I cannot sleep - I reach for a palm stone and sometimes sleep/sometimes not, but they give me comfort.

♥︎ Allow the tears, feelings to well up and overflow. Let go, you may need to find a therapist to assist and support you in this work. And, it is work.

♥︎ Long baths. Combined with 'allowing', when feeling a lot I would run a warm bath, lay in it and sob, the warmth helped in some way. Soften the light, light candles, be small, sob, sob, sob.

♥︎ Place your hand on your heart and belly and b r e a t h e. This will end, you are working through, life will improve. Its hard to believe but, All Is Well. Your chest area will ache, allow and welcome the ache, remember your heart will open again. Your gut/your belly houses your sense of confidence in the world, you will belong again, you will. 

♥︎ Time limit on wallowing. Look at the pictures of your ex and their child, whatever your trigger is, weep over it, shout, scream, punch cushions... BUT put a date in your diary and then don't look again, allow yourself a month at most - then stop and stick to it. Throw away reminders, rip them up, create a ritual, breathe them out - get rid.

♥︎ Write. Write, write, write... Get your feelings out of your head and onto the page. I find physically writing onto paper most helpful, my scrawl unreadable and it doesn't matter. You need to exit this shit from your head. Keep it to read when you are feeling better, or rip it up, dance on it, burn it, destroy.

♥︎ Exercise. Move, dance, even when you don't feel like it. Negative thoughts are poison, physical expression will process and give action to your internal world - express, stomp, run, swim that fucker out.

♥︎ Find safe others. Your kin are out there, and though painful, by sharing how you feel you will find them. You will also find the friends who you no longer resonate with. This is painful in the midst of grief, BUT it is true. Find the others who can listen, not tell you what to do, compare their own lives... even if you find just one person they are your treasure...

♥︎ Sleep. Nighttime is dark in more ways than one. If you can, sleep much, if you can, think cat and nap nap nap.

♥︎ Food. I lived off pizza and chocolate and am still on a journey of finding my way to healthy eating, this may not be a thing for you but try your best not to do that!

♥︎ Suicide. If you get to the point where you don't want to exist anymore be careful, you know yourself. I got to this place but knew I wouldn't act on it. I did get to a point where I realised, if I get this low again I need help. I wondered about informing my doctor next time, fortunately next time never came. When your mood is not so low write an action plan, who to contact if you feel really bad, keep this information in an accessible and safe place. GET HELP if you are vulnerable. 

When you feel a little better:
♥︎ Flowers. Flowers by your bed, on your desk, you are worth flowers. A bunch of daffodils lift the spirits when you are no longer in the quagmire of deep grief.

♥︎ Open heart. When you feel tightness in your chest think about your heart opening, with all its cracks, scars and wounds your remarkable heart is opening. You are brave.

♥︎ Keep up the exercise. Get strong, build muscle, you are powerful.

Share your understanding with the world, it will connect you to the grieving others, the tribe of open hearted warriors. Good luck sunbeams!

skinned rabbit

As I think about my dad departing this life I wonder upon his description of me on my entry into it...

My dad said I looked like a skinned rabbit when I was born - v e r y long, pink, reminding him of his boyhood past hunting for food. While my mother laboured, dad was in the pub. Mum has no memory of the time of mine or my sisters birth. She was cut, forceps were used, alone and quiet in her labour. 

Me the skinned rabbit
Him the hunter, with trap, with sling shot, with arrow?
Hope for a son
But a daughter, watchful, reflective, brave
LOOK AT THIS, LOOK AT YOU
As sensitive as him, him before

nicotine

My memories of the 1970s are stained with tobacco. The upper deck of buses were for smokers and I remember the fog and stink of smoke, of my travel sickness and puking into see-through plastic bags. At home dad smoked, in no doubt helping along my childhood bronchitis and later, asthma, which has left a weakness in my lungs today.

Dad stuck polystyrene tiles onto the living room ceiling, the only way to conceal the spidery cracks that polyfilla was no match for. These tiles soaked up nicotine, each month deepening in colour, giving the room a sepia and nostalgic feel. When I was old enough and with money from my Saturday job I would buy a tin of white paint and erase the last years worth of roll ups. In that unhomely home I tried my best, did the jobs my parents couldn't see or have the power to do anything about. I made do, mended and now I work to forgive. 

Later, aged 19 I watched dad's health decline and him spend the last three months of his life in hospital. The night before he died, oxygen deprived and confused, I gave him his last sip of water and fed him a grape, my final acts for dad. As I said goodbye I put my face close to his and he looked into my eyes and frowned, as if meeting an acquaintance he couldn't quite place. Walking to the train station that night I prayed he would die, please die. He obliged the following morning, alone. 

Sitting next to his body, my way of saying goodbye was to touch and take the measure of him in a way I couldn't while he breathed. I placed my thumb and forefinger around his thigh and felt the sheet below - he weighed 7 stone at death. Flattening my hands I patted his still warm chest and looked into his eyes which were beginning to discolour. Discovering that it is not possible to close the eyes of the dead I felt cheated by the films I'd seen where so easily, so obligingly the deceased close their eyes. His remained open, him absent, body empty. No faint rise and fall of the chest, so still. Unnerving.

My ritual complete, I turned my head at the sound of an anguished cry of 'Dad!' as my little sister rushed into the hospital ward. It was heartbreaking.

sloe

My heart was full of joy as I strained the sloes after three months of melding with alcohol and brown sugar and bottled my first ever sloe whisky and sloe gin. I LOVE making things. These bottles are now in the cupboard to mature until christmas 2016. The sloes are in the freezer as apparently they can be made into a boozy crumble. Thank you hedgerow. 

1916

My dad was born on the 11th of March 1916. To commemorate this I traveled to Scotland, walked to the cottage he was born in and planted daffodils by the front door. Soft rain fell, garden birds chirruped in the hedgerows and squawked my approach from the treetops. Snowdrops in their prime lit the way, turning my thoughts towards hope and renewal. Standing in the garden of the derelict cottage I felt very at home, though my father left this home in his youth the place echoed him. A shed full of rusting nails, bare gnarly apple trees, a slab path running the length of the cottage. HE was palpable.

I knocked on the door and considered time, of my grandmother Alexina birthing her last born on this day 100 years before, of me peering in the windows, haunting ghosts. Crouching down to dig I found rich dark soil, the sword like spikes of the daffodils pleasingly green against this earth. I left a note written in green ink, knowing it would wash away as rain pattered down, spreading, erasing my heartfelt words. I think of these daffodils now, hoping they bloom brightly, a token of life lived now as I acknowledge my father, my roots.

 Elgin

 Plant associated with Clan Logan - Furze (Gorse)

 Road to Easter Calcots

 Joynters Cottages

 Falkland Islands penny

 Haunting the long dead and gone...

 Geese

Memorial