Oh, Procrastination. You and I are old friends. Old enough, surely, that we can dispense with the formalities. Can I call you Pro? Go on – just between you and me? I won’t tell anyone. No? OK. Well, anyway, we’ve known each other intimately for the last five years. You were like a second husband during my PhD, and we probably spent more time with each other than I did with Quercus, come to think of it; certainly, we’ve been together quite a lot during my time at my day-job, and you’ve normally been waiting in the wings, proffering a nice cup of tea and whispering about a quiet sit-down, when I’ve got any one of a million things to do. Like, for example, sorting out a nappy wash. Or hanging out the already-washed nappies. Or, say, going to the post office (though when I was supposed to be finishing the bathroom grouting, you did help me out with listing lots of useless PhD-related books which I was never going to read [I would say 'again' there, but quite a few of them never got more than a cursory glance the first time round...], which was so productive of you that I think perhaps it almost doesn’t count…). Ah, happy days. How we laughed. How we … did nothing. Hmmm.

And now, here you are again. You let yourself in, of course. I think you saw that I was tired, and felt that perhaps making an approach now, you might find me at a low ebb, and unable to resist your temptations. And you are tempting. I can’t deny that. Very tempting. I mean, look at you. You’ve got me here now, sitting on the sofa typing, when I should be sorting out the washing, cleaning out the chooks, checking for eggs, and finishing off the knitted vest* which will shortly grace the witchling’s wriggly form. Or, perhaps, working on writing that sodding novel I’ve been thrashing around for so long it’s not even funny. Or, say, coming up with what on earth I’ll write for a post over at the Ecologist next week. (Though part of me wonders if I am quite sane for taking on things like this, when I feel I’ve never time to get everything done. Particularly as I got lots of flak over there recently for my ‘trustafarian’ lifestyle – ha! because I am so rolling in money! ha! – and it’s not like I get paid to do it – I started writing for them because, actually, I genuinely do give a shit about the environment, and about living sustainably, and I’d like to share my enthusiasm if possible.) (See what just happened there? Procrastination mid-post about procrastination.)

I long to take Mon’s line on time. To give time only to those things about which I feel passionate. But it’s really hard to feel passionate about unloading groceries, or hoovering, or cleaning out the stove, and irritatingly this lack of passion doesn’t seem to make such tasks disappear.

So. Procrastination. You and I are going to need to spend some time apart. I need to spend more time doing the things I’m always whinging about not having time for. You know, the knitting, the painting, the cooking (though have I whinged yet about our sodding cooker only having one of two elements in operation at present? Bastard thing can smell my pain), the starting of a seasonal collection for the witchling (for some reason, my heart revolts at the phrase ‘nature table’, perhaps because I seem to encounter it all over the place and it reads in a sort of hackneyed manner to me now, but that’s by the bye.)

And on that note, I shall go and Do Something now.

(Procrastination takes a seat in the corner, settles himself with a nice magazine, and asks if there’s any Earl Grey while he’s waiting. He doesn’t look defeated. He hasn’t even got the decency to look vaguely ashamed.)

* This pattern, according to SouleMama, comes out at a true 0-3 months size; as the witchling will be nine months old tomorrow (and that’s a whole other post, come to think of it), I’m adapting to the extent that my attempt will be quite a step away from the original. Also, did I mention that I’ve never done buttonholes before, and I’m utterly shit at counting? Meh. Should be fun. When I find myself in the middle of a hideously large ball of knotted wool, I’ll rethink, doubtless.

This evening Quercus and I took what we generally think of as the lazy way out for dinner. It probably says a lot that we’ve realised, due to the innate shittery of our oven, that it’s quicker to cook something from scratch every time than to bung in a (bought) pizza. Thus, our convenience food of choice is perhaps not your average… It’s cous cous. ‘Cause it’s super-quick and dead simple to adapt to the bits and bobs which fall out of the cupboard at you when you least expect it. In this case, it was as follows:

Pretentious lemon, spinach, apricot and sunflower cous-cous 

Ingredients
Shitload of cous-cous;
Knob of butter;
Stockcube (As some of this was destined for the witchling’s lunch tomorrow, I used a low-salt version);
Shitload of spinach;
As many dried apricots, chopped, as you can decently claim to have been ‘only a handful’ (I tend to go for the unsulphured ones as I prefer the almost datey taste);
Lemon, the zest thereof (and I grate these to within an inch of their lives; bugger all that ‘the zest alone; avoid the pith’ – I mean, are you taking the pith or what, I ask? Heh…);
Sprinkling of sunflower seeds.

Then…
Boil the spinach up briefly in as much stock as you think the cous-cous’ll take to do its thing, and chuck in the apricots for a quick soak while you’re at it. Grate the lemon zest into the pan (my advice is to avoid doing this over the pan at a height of about five feet, which is what, thanks the sublime ergonomics of life with a sod-bagging counter-top cooker, I did – it nearly killed my arm, but did I stop? Did I fuck as like – I went on, bloody-mindedly, until the bitter [should that be sour?] end), and poke the resulting goop about a bit before slinging in the cous-cous, butter and sunflower seeds. Stick a lid on the pan and wait for about five minutes, before giving it all a bloody good stir, and scoffing the lot. Preferably with an indecent quantity of black pepper.

 (Quercus says to tell you that he thinks this smells of Jeyes Fluid. Isn’t he lovely? I note that this association did little to stop him eating it like it was his last meal.)

1. The gentle scraping of the witchling’s teeth against a piece of apple as she learns how to bite.

2. The whir-click of the well pump kicking in when the tank gets low, up in the roof.

3. The plolp, plolp, plolp of demijohn traps as fermentation gets underway.

4. The cracking and snapping of newly-chopped kindling as the stove lights.

5. The churning of the washing machine, now filling itself without the need for me to stand over it with a watering can! Ah, the joys of mains water.

6. The crunch of stalk as the witchling and I pick daffodils brave enough to emerge despite a recent cold snap.

7. The quiet bubbling of the kettle on the stove.

8. The rain thrumming against the rooflights in the kitchen.

9. Wixon’s super-loud purr as he gets in the way of my iBook.

10. Quercus’s terribly out-of-tune whistling as he wanders round the kitchen in search of tinned tomatoes.

And you?

Sometimes, I think I am quite alright about it all, really. Well, not alright, exactly, but, you know, adjusted. Or something. I have accepted that it is a fact, and I have accepted that the sun still gets up in the morning, and the weather still changes, and the year still cycles around, and the spring flowers continue to come up as the days lengthen once more and the summer draws closer, even though it seems to me as if there should be some permanent sense of change, some reflection of the fact that you are no longer in this world. And then… then I hear a piece on the radio (today it was Ravel’s ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin’, which you spent so many hours learning when you were preparing for your performing diploma while I was being a teenage delinquent and leaning out of the bathroom window, cigarette in hand) and I’m floored once more by the overwhelming unfairness of it all, an incomprehensible sense of loss, of sorrow, of pity. It’s as if it happened last week, yet at the same time it seems like another lifetime since I saw your face, heard your voice, looked into your eyes. I can’t believe this is really it – you’re never coming back, and, if such things happen, the next time I see you, an entire lifetime – my lifetime – will have passed between us, and I shall, if I avoid joining you in your fate, have become an old woman.

I worry, too, about what may yet happen. Not just for me, though I admit that as I get older, that frightens me more than it once did – I am not a hero, and pain is not something I relish. No: my fear is for my daughter. Will I too do this to her? Will she sit, a twenty-something child, watching her mother die and knowing there is nothing to be done, no way out, despite trying as hard as one possibly could? And will she talk to her daughter, telling her of the things that we did together when she was little, when I was alive, before that daughter was even thought of? Will that be my end? I know that part of your anguish as you realised what was coming was the horrible sense of déjà-vu – your mother, when you were fifteen and she was thirty-nine. I have had the tests that made sense. I carry neither BRCA1 nor 2. Yet the geneticists tell me that new genes may still be discovered. Where does that leave me? Will these breasts, which now nourish my daughter, comforting her when she is ill or unhappy or just lonely, be the thing which carries me off this mortal coil, dividing us for who knows how long? Will cancer ever just fuck the hell off, and will it do so without having taken me out in the process?

It’s been a long day, and I miss you. And, too, I miss my father. Sometimes I feel so very grown-up, and it’s not altogether a good thing.

(This post brought to you courtesy of an exceptionally maudlin moment which will pass shortly, no doubt; I don’t normally give in to this sort of feeling, but some days, it just gets me while I’m not looking, if you see what I mean.)

When I was pregnant with the witchling, I read lots of stuff about the use of aromatherapy in labour, and during pregnancy in general, and, as I have quite a stash of oils from my time working in Star Child and for the Inner Pyramid, I ended up using a couple of the suggested blends regularly. I don’t know quite how it happened, but somehow, my collection of oils extends to three drawers, and warranted A – Z organisation about three years ago. It’s quite shifty-making, and would be more-so if it weren’t for the fact that I got enormous employee/friend discount on the prices, making valerian oil quite doable, really. Anyway, one blend has really stayed with me, and I now use it as scent most days. The irony is, of course, that during my labour, I got as far as having some oilburners going, with clary sage and another pregnancy blend, but the visions I had of relaxing massages helping me through the early-stage contractions? Total bollocks. I couldn’t have cared less about massage – I was more interested in breathing and lusting after cheese sandwiches. Anyway, I just thought I’d post the recipe I used, in part so that, when my current bottle runs out (though some days I wonder if it ever will, given that I’ve been using the same batch since February of last year), I can make some more up and thus avoid the witchling thinking I’ve been changed for Another Mama Who Looks Similar But Is Not Her One (I encountered this suspicion from her the last time I wore a different scent; hopefully it’s not permanent!).

Everyday Blend

About 200ml of base oil (I used sweet almond)
15 drops of geranium
10 drops of rose
3 drops of neroli
5 drops of vanilla
5 of lemon
3 of clary sage
3 of lavender
1 of nutmeg

Stick the lot in a bottle, preferably a dark one, and shake to blend them all together. I wear it on my wrists and neck most days, and it lasts and lasts, quite unlike ‘normal’ scent. (I reckon you’d get a very similar effect with just lavender, rose and geranium, incidentally, if you’re capable of more restraint than I am.)

About a week ago, I came across Organix apple and plum cereal bars for small people; they are sort of like flapjacky things, but without sugar, or at least without sugar as sugar, if that makes sense. The sweetness comes from raisins and fruit concentrate. Anyhoo, the witchling nibbled one down quite cheerily and I realised that if she were to continue nibbling at that rate, we would soon need a second mortgage. So, I fiddled aboot a bit this weekend and came up with the following:

Flapjacky Whatsits
Get mits on:
A large handful of sultanas
A large splash of fruit juice concentrate (we had some of this one in; the large splash was probably about, say, ten tablespoons’ worth)
Probably about 5 oz of oats
Probably about 2 oz plain wholemeal flour
A grabbing of dessicated coconut (and by grabbing, I mean a fistful, I suppose)
A splash of sunflower oil (say, five tablespoons’ worth)

Then…
Blend the sultanas together with the juice concentrate and the oil, then whack the other stuff in and mix it all together into a reasonably flapjack-like consistency; I threw in a bit more oil and a few more oats here and there, just to get it to the right whatsit. Then stick it in some sort of tray (I used a rather odd little muffin tray thing that I found in the back of the cupboard, looking rather forlorn), and bake the bugger for about twenty minutes at 180°c. I was very surprised by how well the first attempt turned out; definitely means I won’t buy the Organix ones again, as lovely though they are, they’re also £2.65 or something similarly hideous.

Somehow this week has been quite busy; I’ve been drafting two articles for this and that, and sorting out things like applications to go part-time (Quercus), as well as going in to work for half a day, which felt very strange after so long away, and not entirely good, predictably. I don’t really want to go back; people keep telling me that I’ll enjoy the adult company (they’ve obviously never worked in an IT-related job…) and it’ll do me good – I remain unconvinced thus far. We’ll see, I guess. It’s a necessary evil given the £6000-odd I’d have to repay in maternity money otherwise, but it didn’t make it any easier to leave the witchling, even though it was Quercus who was looking after her.

Right – must go and rootle pizza out of the oven; tonight: sweetcorn, mushroom, pepperoni, various bits and bobs of cheese, and the essential ingredient – sunflower seeds.

- Bought new car. New car needs clutch doing, but got £400 off agreed price (which was bloody good anyway), so am OK with that, not least as I think it’s going to be A LONG TIME before it really needs doing. New car has blinds in back, so witchling much less cross as no longer poked in eye by sun. Also has CD changer, and climate control. Oh, and Xenon headlights. Feel like am driving limo (though bet bits of trim don’t fall off limos quite so easily).

- Car seat arrived for the witchling. Is good. And blue.

- Few dodgy nights with the witchling lately. This morning she woke at 5.20 and that was it, basically, for sleep. She’s still waking on average twice a night, which is fine, but twice a night plus a hideously early start is a bit ghastly. Still not up for leaving her to cry, though, and just hoping is passing phase caused in part by…

- Bastard nappy rash which just won’t fuck off. The witchling is in cloth nappies, and we change her frequently; we also use camomile tea and a drop or two of oil (sometimes olive, sometimes sweet almond, sometimes lavender) in her wipe water (we use washable wipes) as well as calendula cream. Normally this has meant she didn’t really get a rash at all, but lately we just can’t get rid of it – she got sore when teething and now we’re plastering the poor child with Kamillosan, a camomile-based ointment, Sudocreme, castor oil and zinc cream, and, for two applications at the doctor’s insistence, an anti-fungal cream which made things MUCH worse, so much so that it’s taken about a week to get back to ‘just’ nappy rash. Am not sure where to go from here, really – don’t want to take her back to the GP as frankly don’t think he knows which end to blow down, but poor bot is very red still. Suggestions gratefully received, though as waiting until nine months before offering egg-including food, think will hold off on egg white solution have heard of, just in case. Would be just our luck that she’d be allergic to it.

- Sad that things with my father aren’t changing. Really sad, if honest. Talked for fifteen minutes on phone last night, and he didn’t even ask how the witchling was. He just isn’t interested. Saddens me very much, and don’t seem to be able to simply put it to one side and move on, which is what I’d hoped to learn to do. Learning curve = clearly too steep for me. Shows no sign of wanting to see her or, really, me, though quite happy to pick brains re techy challenges of ISP woes and whatnot. Couldn’t even remember how old the witchling is. Know is pointless and awful thing to think, but just sometimes can’t help reflecting how different things would be if it my mother had been the one to survive. Just. So. Sick of hearing about how marvellous his new wife is, and how clever/resourceful/hard-working/ingenious she is, and isn’t it all just so incredible and haven’t they got a lot on their plates, and aren’t they busy/clever/hard-up/artistic/musical/diverse. Know is childish/pathetic/ridiculous to feel this, but just can’t help it. Also, sick of jibes about my mother, particularly when taking place in front of new wife, and, worse still, step-children.

- Going to write an article for Juno Magazine. Very excited about it.

- Quercus applying to work part-time so we can look after the witchling without using a nursery. Worked out will be £20 worse off a month than if we were getting tax credits towards childcare, so fuck it – is much our preference anyway, and would do Quercus world of good to get out of work environment full-time. Have I ever mentioned that Quercus would like to be a composer? Well, he would. And he should. One of his pieces is being performed by one of the orchestras he plays with in the not-too-distant future; will be v. g. for him as reminds him that house and work and whatnot Is Not Be-All And End-All. Maybe once extension hell over, Quercus could write when the witchling naps, or something. Is nice idea. Like that. (Of course, then will write own bestseller novel and never have to work again. Would like that too. V. nice idea. Have lots of ideas, and 20,000 words of novel written during PhD, but thus far bugger-all else; really must change that.)

I am feeling a little paranoid – well, it may not be paranoia – that one of our Araucanas isn’t all she he it should be. Thing is, I am sure that Nightshade is a lady. She is often seen in the laying box, so unless she is preternaturally devious, we are assuming that she is responsible for the near-daily blue egg which appears in said box. She is also the more accepted of the pair; she will peck about amongst the other hens quite cheerfully, with little trouble, while Cobweb tends to hang back, lone-ranger-style. We have yet to have a day with two blue eggs (which would presumably settle it once and for all; I realise that I have no basis for this assumption, but both Quercus and I are under the impression that hens lay once a day, and once only – do correct me if we are wrong), and I’m starting to wonder about Cobweb… Could he she it be a female impersonator, I ask? As far as I can tell, they look the same, with the only easy difference being that Cobweb has pale yellow legs while Nightshade has darker, almost black legs. They don’t seem to have different combs, though, and there are no obvious spurs going on. Am I paranoid?

Also, I found a rather mangled egg in the henhouse today. It hadn’t had a proper shell, but rather a sort of papery-feeling effort which clearly didn’t protect it during the laying process; there was yolk to indicate it had been an egg, but that was about it. We haven’t been giving the hens much in the way of grit lately, I realise, largely because they are out all day with access to lots of gritty ground, and partly, if I’m honest, because the bag of sodding grit is behind an equally sodding piece of plasterboard. Thing is, though, none of the other eggs have been in any way unusual, and the hens have the same diet. So, does one simply get one-off odd ones from time to time, or is this something we should investigate further?

A few posts back, I mentioned the witchling’s sticky glee at discovering the world’s most staining substance – tomato, bean, and coconut soup – and Doc Witch asked about the recipe. So, with apologies for the delay, here it is. I tend to improvise the basic recipe, using whatever happens to be in the cupboard. So far, pretty much any variety of bean has worked well, and you can use fresh tomatoes if you happen to have some, though I would actually bother, for once, to take the skins off.

Tomato, bean and coconut soup
Get…
Two large onions;
A good handful of garlic cloves;
One or two tins of peeled plum tomatoes, depending on numbers and greed (needless to say, I used two);
As many beans as you think appropriate (I’ve used mung, azuki, black-eyed, haricot, and kidney);
A large spronkle of herbs;
A stockcube;
Either a tin of coconut milk (if you’re feeling in need of super-coconut vibes), or one of those natty blocks of coconut available in sachets (you’d be surprised how coconutty one of those little fellows can make a soup seem);
A pinch of saffron.

Then…
Chop and fry the onions and garlic in a sploosh of olive oil. Depart with cup of coffee for ‘quick sit-down’. Return, ten minutes later. Retrieve near-incinerated onions. Inspect. Decide passable if covered rapidly with other substances. Sling in tomatoes, beans and herbs. (If using tinned beans, stick the water in too; ditto tinned tomatoes.) Poke about suspiciously, wondering if burnt bits of onions will ever give in and sink to bottom. Speculate about nature of base of pan, never known for its non-stickyness anyway. Bung in stockcube, noting that brown bits can be attributed to its presence. Let unholy mixture simmer for about twenty minutes, before whacking in the coconut milk (or the rehydrated block). As saffron is stupidly expensive, reduce giant fistful retrieved from little pot to mere whisper, and chuck that in too. Poke about a bit more, and let the whole thing cook for another ten minutes or so. Add water if too sticky, or boil the buggery out of it if too wet. Take off heat, stick in blender (arming oneself with protective clothing; for some reason, this blighter stains like no-one’s business), and blend to heart’s content. Stick in bowl. Scoff.

A while before I mentioned this one, I asked for questions in the comments box, and then very rudely didn’t answer those of you dedicated enough to ask one. Sorry about that. I am rude and thoughtless; what can I say? But one of the questions is apt here – about cooking on woodstoves. The way it works for us is that our stove is lit pretty much all the time in the winter, as it’s our only source of heat, and we try to cook bits and bobs on it whenever possible because hey, it’s free, and it’s deeply and sickeningly green to do so. Largely, I use either the fantastic Picquot Ware kettle (which came to us from Quercus’s mother when she disposed of her heavenly red Aga) for boiling water, which it does in about three minutes flat when the stove is burning well, or the Le Creuset casseroles we were given when we got married (the brightness of the colours! the orange! the red!), as both have thick-ish bases and are pretty bomb-proof. Really, you need pans that are heavy and very flat on the bottom, or the heat is localised to the bits in proper contact. Anyway, we just whack things like casseroles on one side of the top of the stove, make sure it’s not about to achieve thermal lift-off anytime soon (like, we keep it to, say, 250°F; I’m giving it in Fahrenheit because I can’t remember the centigrade off the top of my head – we have a stove thermometer which indicates safe burning temperatures, i.e. not too chimney-fire-alert hot, and not too creosote-anyone?-cold, and I tend to look at that without checking the temperature in centigrade because the print on that side is smaller and I am lazy), and away you go. It’s best for things which take a long time, like, for example, meat which is tough as old bones unless cooked ALL DAY, or for things which take a while to dry out; a couple of Chrimblys ago, we had a good time drying orange slices over it, for example, though equally we have managed to cook bacon, sausages, and various other unlikely things over it, just by keeping a close eye on the progress. So there you go. One question answered.

Oh, and while I’m on a ‘I never do things I should do’ kick, AGES back, several people left me lovely comments offering me lovely award thingies for being generally lovely. That was lovely of you, if you are still reading, and I didn’t mean to completely overlook them – it’s just that my time in t’inter these days is greatly lower than it once was, and I forget quite frequently to do things I’ve been meaning to do for ages. I’m afraid that most things like memes, awardy-whatsits, and, you know, keeping my head together go by the wayside. I shall make an effort to be better in future. I promise. Honest. No, really.

It is Monday night, and outside there is snow falling across the fields of Devon, and quiet lies on the land like the softest of feather quilts. All around, people are sitting down to eat dinner, or watch a film on the television, or perhaps just chatting about their days while swigging down a quick sherry…

… Clearly, then, if you live in the Earthenhouse, this is the ideal time to find oneself dressed only in a sweater and tights while hanging off a ladder, at the top of one’s largest kitchen wall (a dizzy height of some thirteen height, for the pedants amongst you), wielding a water-spraying thingy.* How did I find myself in this situation, I ask. Well, it went something like this: sell house rather unexpectedly; look at houses covering half of Devon and requiring the donation of several large organs in lieu of payment; realise at least ninety per cent of said houses are insane in more than one way; decide that one aspect of house-move can be insane, but only one; purchase small cob cottage with thatched roof as ‘project’ house, and dig in for the long haul. Thus you find me, folks, surrounded by listed building applications, rootling about for such arcane objects as distempers, and generally attempting to transform what my mother-in-law described as a ‘dank little hovel’ into some semblance of the gorgeous, eco-friendly little dwelling that Quercus and I saw when we came to look at Earthenhouse way back in August of 2005.

This weekend, Quercus has been engaged in the slightly mammoth task of hurling half a ton of lime at the kitchen wall. This is one of many steps needed to sort out the persistent damp problem from which Earthenhouse suffers; cloaked in cement-based render and plastic paint for at least twenty years, the cob walls beneath are unable to breath, and have thus gone on strike – the wallpaper is the only thing holding the internal plaster in place, and most of the ceilings are headed south before too much longer, and let us move swiftly past discussion of the, er, interesting decorative effects created by mould which grows not on, but through the walls. During the replacing of the single storey lean-to which housed the kitchen and bathroom, one of the cob walls has been made an internal wall where previously a good portion of it was outside; this seemed a good time to hack off the evil render of woe and replace it with an alternative coat of goody-two-shoes lime. The harling coat, for such is the proper name for the whole chuck-it-at-the-wall-to-give-a-good-key-for-the-pretty-coat, is now done, and we’re spraying it to prevent it drying out too quickly (it’s surprising how warm the new extension is – as yet it’s completely unheated, but the heat provided by the woodburner, twenty-five feet sideways in the sitting room, seems adequate thus far, despite the current cold weather) as lime likes a slow relaxation, unlike its cement relations. Hopefully, the next couple of weeks will see us get a decent coat of lime on top, something which makes the cob look more like a wall and less like the bottom of a cow’s trough, though I will be genuinely sorry to cover it in many ways – it is a constant reminder of Devon, of the earth from which this house is built, taken from the land on which it stands. I’d quite like, were it not for the need to for the cob to breath, to fix a sheet of glass to the wall, letting you see the bare bones of this house while avoiding the constant dust caused by an unrendered cob wall. I shall settle, however, for the lime – which is a joy to work with (once you’ve got past being picky about things like, you know, retaining fingerprints and top layers of skin), and all the more to me, a would-be potter, as it’s very like working with clay – and a coat of the deeply posh Farrow & Ball distemper, preferably in a dandy shade of red.

But that’s for another day.

For now, it’s cob, lime, cob, water, cob, water, lime, and, oh, a little more lime.

Suits me.

* The tights and sweater combination isn’t strictly necessary, but somehow even I baulked at the idea of climbing up a lime-encrusted ladder while wearing a long corduroy skirt.