Hannah Fielding's Blog, page 159

Spring, timelessness, romance

Daffodils, tulips, bluebells; dozy bees and cheery thrushes; the drone of a lawnmower, the scent of the new grass; the bluest sky, the sun on your face . . . spring has arrived!

For me, spring is the most energising season. There’s renewed vigour, more power in a daydream, the sense that warm months, laden with potential, stretch ahead. The clouds are innocent and fluffy, not ominous and weighty (in fact, I heard on the news that last week for an entire day there was not a single cloud in the sky over the UK; a true marvel!).

What better time for romance?

This recent balmy warmth has called to mind an ee cummings poem:

there are so many tictoc

clocks everywhere telling people

what toctic time it is for

tictic instance five toc minutes toc

past six tic



Spring is not regulated and does

not get out of order nor do

its hands a little jerking move

over numbers slowly



we do not

wind it up it has no weights

springs wheels inside of

its slender self no indeed dear

nothing of the kind.



(So,when kiss Spring comes

we’ll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss

lips because tic clocks toc don’t make

a toctic difference

to kisskiss you and to 

kiss me)

For me, cummings encapsulates what’s so magical about this first glimpse of spring – there is a timelessness, a slowing of the fast pace of life, a quietening of the ticking clock. Spring is joyous, powerful, colourful, cheering. And the result is renewed passion: a lingering kiss in a flowery garden; a meeting of the lips where the world slips away and all that remains is love and passion and nature. On a warm spring day, as cummings says, ‘Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.’

An Easter recipe: Chocolate meringues with strawberries and cream

It’s Easter, so of course I’ve chocolate on my mind. Easter means different things to different people – a symbolic time of new birth; a cause for religious praise; the heart of spring. And then, of course, there’s the Easter egg.

All the chocolate around at Easter time can get a bit much, so today I’m offering a recipe that allows you to enjoy a light taste of chocolate alongside that British classic: strawberries and cream. It’s the perfect aphrodisiac recipe for a bank holiday weekend. I hope you enjoy it.

Ingredients:

Punnet of fresh strawberries

Carton of single cream

Egg whites from 4 medium-sized eggs

225g caster sugar

25g cocoa powder – I like to use Green and Blacks organic

A small milk chocolate bar, grated (or crumble a Cadbury’s flake)

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 1 or 140 degrees C.

Prepare two baking sheets lined with greaseproof paper.
In a clean bowl, use an electric whisk on the egg whites until they’re stiff and form peaks when you pull out the whisk.
Add a quarter of the sugar, and whisk.
Continue to add the sugar, gradually, until the mixture is glossy, smooth and stiff.
Sieve the cocoa powder over the mixture, and whisk again.
Fold in the grated or crumbled chocolate gently.
Spoon dollops onto the baking sheets – I usually do 12 to 16, but you may do larger ones or smaller if you prefer.
Bake in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes until they’re solid on the outside but a little gooey still inside (if you prefer a more solid meringue, try them after an hour).
Serve in glass dishes with washed and hulled strawberries and cream, to taste.

Variations: Break up the meringues and create an Eton Mess kind of dessert, mixing up the strawberries and meringue pieces with thick cream or ice cream. Or chop up the strawberries and add to whisked double cream and use as a filler between sandwiched meringues.

Live on doubts?

One of French author Francois de la Rochefoucauld’s most famous maxims is on the subject of jealousy. ‘Live on doubts,’ he advises; ‘it becomes madness or stops entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.’

Francois de la Rochefoucauld is advocating an ostrich-with-its-head-in-the-sand approach to doubts about a lover. Don’t risk challenging your lover, or doing your own detective work to uncover the truth – because while you may discover your doubts were unfounded, the contrary may occur:  you’ll know that your lover has betrayed you.

In my novel Burning Embers, Coral suspects that Rafe is a womaniser and that he is seeing other women; namely, her stepmother, Cybil, and a dancer at Rafe’s nightclub, Morgana. Coral does not have conclusive proof of the fact, but the more she falls in love with Rafe, the more she is plagued by doubts – for what young girl wants to give her heart to a man who can never give his wholly in return?

At some point Coral must face a difficult choice: live on doubts, or determine the truth and face the consequences of that truth, whatever they may be.

Another of de la Rochefoucauld’s maxims is this: ‘In jealousy there is more self-love than love.’ Coral’s jealousy, then, is evidence of her sense of self-worth: she believes she is worth more than a man who would betray her and expect her to share him.

Ultimately, if she is to be true to herself, Coral must give this jealousy space inside, take it seriously and act upon it. As the Spanish say, Vivir con miedo es como vivir a medias(A life lived in fear is a life half-lived). She must find the courage to move past her doubts, into a place of authenticity and knowledge.