Robin McKinley's Blog, page 67

Happy Valentine’s Day

 

I think it is weird to have Valentine’s Day during Lent.  I know there is some kind of history to St Valentine—starting with the fact that there are several of them—and St Valentine’s day as February 14th is based on when some unfortunate St Valentine was martyred, possibly in one of those exceptionally creative ways that the killers of future saints seem to go in for, and which is why I’d just as rather not look it up.  But romantic soppiness for Valentine’s Day started with Chaucer, right?  That’s a long time ago—and well before that Henry fellow came along and invented the Anglicans who maybe don’t take Lent quite so hard—I don’t see Henry fasting, do you?  And maybe Valentine’s Day doesn’t usually come during Lent.  Still.  Weird.*

Fortunately I’m not giving up flowers or presents from my husband, so the posy by my plate today was totally welcome.

Abigailmm

But I want to see Sid’s reaction to the HOUSE! Maybe skip a detail on two – it’s been so l-o-o-o-ng since Kes and Hayley were at Rose Manor. Pretty please?

It doesn’t work that way.  While I love watching you forumites guess and debate, in the first place I’m ten or fifteen eps ahead of what I’m posting and in the second place The Story Is The Story even when I’m presenting it in this nonstandard way.  I can’t go back and jigger with the pacing before I hand it in to my editor, you know?  And as a reader I’ve always liked the details so it’s not surprising that as a writer I tend to put ’em in.  Some of my single-mindedness is no doubt natural perversity, but it’s also the only way I’ve ever been able to write anything—by listening to the Story and shutting everything else out.  These people who send out their first or second drafts for feedback. . . . Shudder.  Obviously it works for them.  I’d rather retrain as a telephone lineperson.  And I’m afraid of heights.

Mockorange

Oooh! Are those runes on the collar I wonder?

I think it is safe to say they are not a company logo.  Poor Kes’ problem is that she hasn’t yet realised—despite Mr Melmoth, Watermelon Shoulders, and burgundy velvet—that she’s in a fantasy novel.

And apparently Kes’ mother had one or two good points, at least when it came to looking after dogs. 

Yes.  I’d love to meet Kes’ mum—er, mom—myself.  I have no idea if she’s as dire as Kes makes her out to be.  Kes is understandably peeved at her reaction to Kes’ divorce, but I don’t think she’d have dragged her daughter to all those dog shows if the daughter really really didn’t want to go.  And she did send her to horse camp.  Which is expensive, and there wasn’t a lot of money around.

Boddhi_d

beneath the exterior of screaming skulls there beat the heart of a plastic roller skate

**ROFL**

**snicker**

**giggle uncontrollably**

Oh, thank you, thank you.  It makes my day when someone laughs at my jokes.

Mockorange

I am very intrigued that it’s not quite the same ‘Sid’ on the other side of the ‘whateveritis’. And maybe not quite the same ‘Kes’ either? She clearly has a different wardrobe but I wonder if her physical appearance is the same in both worlds.

I don’t know either.  I assume we’ll find out.  —You can see why I try to keep some eps ahead.  It is VERY UNSETTLING sending stuff out there in public when I don’t know what’s going on or what’s going to happen.  Granted I have more idea than you do—and some stuff to aim at, or maybe I mean a few stepping stones in the quaking bog—but I don’t know nearly enough.

ClaireM2

I do like how Kes seems to freak out so calmly. It’s a skill I could use.

Oh, glory, me too.  (There are a number of ways in which KES is purest, sheerest wish fulfilment.)  Although I think she does the screaming and melting down too.  But there are moments when stunned disbelief is the only possible response.

Catherine

So, Kes is now bleeding through to the other side, instead of the other side bleeding through to her… interesting. I like.

Oh good.

And I am very curious about the Topaz version of Sid.

Yup.  Me too.  See above.

Also, I love that the part that seems to freak her out the most is the wardrobe change.

But . . . but . . . clothing is against your SKIN.  All the rest of it could be a massive hallucination, but if you lift your hand and see and feel somebody else’s clothing . . . the hallucination has just rocketed to a whole new horrifying level.

Abigailmm

Ok, tell me — was that wonderful horse in the story before the ‘Fair Days’ guest post??

Good heavens, of course.  I’ve been horse-mad for fifty-six years (approximately) and have loved the big hairy-footed things from the first time I set eyes on one, which was pretty soon after first exposure.  I’ve even schooled a few.

Katinseattle

“I’m raving,” I said. I let go of the keys in my pocket

Clue?

Not literally.  But . . . um . . . well, it’s not going to surprise you that Rose Manor has, you know, form, in the living-in-a-fantasy-novel situation, is it?

Corellia

We still don’t know why Mr. Wolverine is calling…

Nope.  We don’t.  I have some idea—I know how it begins—but I also have the nervous feeling that this is one of those conversations that isn’t going to go the way I’m expecting it to.

Here’s my guesses: The landlord will turn out to be a smoking hot cool guy (when he finally shows up). His cousin, on the other hand, will probably have something to do with the appearance of Mr. Melmoth.

Well, the cousin and Mr Melmoth are definitely on the same team.  The Bad Guy team.  And there is a smoking hot cool guy somewhere in the vicinity of Mr Demerara, but I’m not sure whether it’s Mr D himself, his son, his valet, his tame magician or his pet shapeshifting Elasmotherium.

EMoon

I don’t like the sound of the landlord’s cousin across the lake with a tick-like nature and a fancy old car…bet he’s a snoop. Maybe Sid will bite him, and something dire will fall out of his pocket and prove he’s a serial killer.

‘Why, that looks like Major Klondike’s Foolhardy Conservationist Medal for rescuing six polar bears and a very confused wombat from that ice floe forty years ago!  He always wore it!  And I haven’t seen him around lately!  And what is that wrapped around it?  Why, that looks like Sallie Mae’s hair ribbon, from when she was prom queen last spring!  And she disappeared right after the prom!’

Kathy_S

Clearly Hayley uses the 4-inch-heels for smashing pigeonholes

Have I ever told you anything about DESTINY?  It is, theoretically, the third in the non-trilogy of vaguely world-linked novels beginning with SUNSHINE.  Which is to say there are vampires (but no Sunshine, and no Con.  Calm down).  Destiny has an interesting pair of insanely high heels which do some pigeonhole smashing.

Shalea

I love that Kes is making connections with people. That’s reassuring, even though I suspect things won’t stay nearly so grounded going forward (I’m talking to you, Watermelon Shoulders and Mr. Melmoth).

Heh.  And this comment was written before the burgundy-lace-and-Topaz scene.  But wouldn’t it be nice if major life changes went more like this, where most of the people you meet are not merely polite and well-disposed but are on your wavelength and have what you need when you need it?  Speaking of wish fulfilment.  Sigh.

sixpence

I am contemplating moving to Maine: should I be taking notes, or checking in to a padded cell?

Both?

Kathy_S

I wish Eats were local!

Well, I do and I don’t.  I have enough trouble with both my waistline and what my stomach is prepared to recognise as food, and I think Eats might just make me cry a lot.

Leeanne

I am sooooo wanting to hear more about Mr. Watermelon Shoulders! My curiosity it all a-dither!

He’s cute.  I’ll tell you that for free.  He’s cuuuuuuuuuute.  Well, I think he’s cute.  He’s a little challenged in the modern world viewpoint area, but you can put up with a few faults for serious cute.

Ravenandrose

Sid! (only blonde) http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/lurcherphotos.htm

. . . and a bloke.  I don’t think Sid is ever going to look this smooth—Saluki fur is very silky, but Deerhound is wiry, and sticks out in all directions, and a cross between the two could be anything—but we aren’t going to know till she gets fed up and clean.  Also an ill- or under-nourished dog’s coat will need to grow out again on good food before you know what it’s going to be.  But this is a very handsome dog and I’d totally invite him in and feed him tuna-fish sandwiches.

Librarykat

Not all divorce lawyers are bad/evil/venal.

Oh, of course not!  Serena had a really bad experience and Kes and Mr Wolverine are never going to be best friends, but I think he’s good at his job.  But Kes has almost no money of her own and doesn’t want to take Gelasio’s, and this attitude frustrates the banana fruitcake out of Mr W.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go sing.  Kes sings.  I don’t yet know how good she is.  It’s a ratbag, trying to move on with your wish fulfilment and having the Story periodically getting in your way and saying no, you don’t have that.  I don’t care what you want.  This is what you have.

* * *

* Note the forum is not barred at the gate against non-Christians.  I know of at least two Buddhists who read this blog and a lot of the important people in my life are Jewish, including both Hannah and Merrilee, my best friend and my agent.  Many ways up the mountain, as I believe I said last September or shortly thereafter, and I arrived (breathless, with dirty knees and messy hair) in the lap of Christianity by a somewhat nonstandard route besides.  I hope anyone who might want to say something from another viewpoint will do so.^

^ The usual Pollyanna caveats apply.

Lent begins

 

librarykat

Lutherans observe Lent, but we don’t require giving up things such as meat, chocolate, caffeine, etc. . . . We have midweek Vespers services starting with Ash Wednesday. . . .  

Sigh.  And I’m sitting here having failed to get to service at St Margaret’s.  It was snowing this morning—snowing and lying.  Hellhounds came home from their hurtle crusted.  It’s been sleeting all afternoon, although in a vague, uncommitted way, and the earlier snow melted—but the roads are all wet and you do kind of assume the temperature is going to drop after sunset.  Since I didn’t go, I’m sure the roads are FINE.  Siiiiiiigh.

I am, as we all know, new.  I could have gone to the Ash Wednesday service at St Radegund’s, which is walking distance—but it’s Not My Church.  It’s fine for drop ins and easier things like carol services or when a friend takes the service, and I may still develop a relationship with it.  But right now I feel all sort of squashy and unsteady about Lent—about beginning the journey to Easter.  I didn’t want to go to somewhere that wasn’t the monks or St Margaret’s.  So I stayed home.

. . . . My Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic friends still give up things; and apparently meatless Fridays are still practiced in many Roman Catholic parishes and families.

It’s what works for you, isn’t it?  There’s a lot of wiggle room beyond the basic love God and behave yourself:  what supports and inspires you to love God and behave yourself?  Although in this nutritional era meatless Fridays sounds like a healthy lifestyle choice, probably buttressed by meatless Mondays and Wednesdays too.

You don’t have to give up anything; we don’t, and my husband is a pastor. We do spend some time in penitent reflection and in prayer, but we’re supposed to do that all the time. . . .

Maybe it also depends on your definition of giving up something.  One of the things I need to keep in front of my eyes is the awareness that part of the draw of the monks for me is the manifested ritual of their lives:  the way they sneeze and cough and their shoes squeak, but they pray (ritually) five times a day and hold Mass every day.  If you stick around after Mass and have a cup of tea with them, they make jokes and argue about politics—but they’re wearing long black monks’ robes.  I’m a disorganized mess—as regular readers know.  There’s a strength and clarity to a good choice of ritual.  Giving something up and taking something on for Lent is a good choice for me—and makes a better space for reflection and prayer.

EMoon

Lent’s a stinker for a lot of people. I’ve always been a bit annoyed by people being prissy about it and what they’re giving up,

This is, I’m afraid, one of the things that put me off Christianity all these years.  Arrogant jerks are always with us, I don’t need to put myself in the way of more of the frellers.

even though Episcopalians do, some of us, keep Lent. (In my home town, and elsewhere, it was joked about as “The Episcopalians are dieting for swimsuit season again…”)

SNORK.  LOVE.

There’s a wrong way and a right way, IMO. The wrong way: I was at a church where the bishop’s annual visit occurred during Lent, and of course there was a meal after the service in the parish hall. The rector introduced his wife, mentioned it was her birthday, and said “Of course, it’s Lent, so she’s not having dessert.” The bishop looked at the rector, the wife, then picked up one of the desserts and put it on the wife’s tray. Nobody said anything else about it. I quietly cheered.

What utter tosh.  Yaay that bishop.  So, this poor woman NEVER GETS TO HAVE HER BIRTHDAY if it’s during Lent?  I know Lent moves around on the calendar, but there must be a wodge in the middle that is always Lent?  So anybody born then just gets ashes and switches and boiled cabbage?!?  UTTER.  TOSH.  ARRRGH.*

I actually think Lent should be optional for new Christians until they get their feet back on the ground and a little headway into the to-do list. You’ve already taken on something big this year…the load’s still unbalanced. Maybe just giving a little more time to the quiet sitting…to listening…to feeling your way into this space you’ve entered. Giving time to mindfulness, to quiet is (to some, and to me) both harder than, and more important than, giving up a food. But in that silence, in that mindfulness to the minutiae of life, something comes at times that’s profoundly helpful.

Well, but where does it say what you’re giving up is supposed to be a food?  Is it?  I thought it was just supposed to be some kind of privation that you’ll take notice of.   I’m not giving up a food.**   There’s not a whole lot I could give up, since my digestion is possessed by demons at best, and while yes, I could try to give up chocolate—and I did consider this—that would feel like punishment and I don’t think Lent is supposed to be about punishment?  Which is not the same thing as penitence.  But forty days in the wilderness does sound like withdrawing from the busy world and listening to the silence.  Which is what my keeping of Lent is aiming for a little of.

I was really dreading and fearing the approach of Lent, not because of what I was going to give up (or take on), but because of what this journey is about and where it’s going.  The price for the happy ending is very, very high.  Engaging with the ritual of Lent is helpful to me.  But ask me next year.

As skating librarian says, whatever floats your boat.

Danceswithpahis

I have sporadically practiced Lent. . . . We always went for either giving something up OR taking some discipline on. I prefer not to go for things like desserts or food . . .  if you have cookies once every few months, for example, are you really giving anything up??

Yes.  I could give up TV.  When’s the last time I had the TV on?  I can’t remember.  We were talking about the drag the material world has on all of us at St Margaret’s a few weeks back, and some of us were talking about our celebrity-obsessed society and that celebrity-watching is a good way to make yourself feel bad.  But I don’t watch reality TV or read HELLO! magazine.  I have other ways to waste time and make myself feel bad.

Last year, for example, one of the things that I gave up was saying unkind things about myself. I went on the philosophy, “Would this make me angry if someone said it about my friend?” If so, I was not allowed to say it about myself. It actually was a useful step in overcoming some of the depression I was wrestling with.

I think this is totally brilliant.  Good for you!  Well done!  Very well done!  I spent some years in (psycho)therapy*** and I remember my shrink saying something similar to our group—yes, I was in scary group therapy too—and also giving us some phrases to be wary of if some person who is mysteriously bad for your morale uses them:  ‘I’m only telling you this for your own good’ for example, or, ‘I’m only telling you this because I love you’.  She also suggested that the next time you field criticism that makes you feel like a stepped-on worm, instead of thinking ‘oh, they’re right, I am a stepped-on worm’, imagine having a giggly coffee morning with your best friend, and then imagine her/him saying whatever it was.  She wouldn’t, would she?  Way too many of us are way too good at putting ourselves down, and instantly believing the bad things other people say about us too.

(I TOTALLY wrote and told my Lent partner that we need to give up licking butter off people for Lent, though.)

Oh good.  I feel this is an important theological point that needs to be more widely recognised.

Jjmcaffey

My current church . . .  – every Thursday in Lent we have Lenten Soup. One or another group within the church . . . makes a dozen or so pots of soup, and serves them . . . to anyone who wants to come. It’s a nice gathering – not particularly religious in tone . . . but gathering with your friends from church. . . . Somehow it feels like an excellent way to celebrate Lent – a nice bonding. Mindfulness.

Sigh.  This is a lovely idea.  But eating in company is penitential to me.  I guarantee that I’d be eating apples and cashews out of my pocket stash.  Food is such an obvious thing to want to share—possibly the obvious thing****—and that’s often not straightforward either.  I have an unusually bad case, but I have friends with major dietary weirdness too.  Ah, humanity.  What a ratbag.

Diane in MN

Papists don’t give up eggs or butter, either. Ash Wednesday and Lenten Fridays are meatless, and adults who don’t fall into the senior-citizen category are required to fast between meals and have only one full meal a day.

ONE full meal a day?  What?  Why aren’t all you Catholics poor spindly undernourished sad things?  You’re going to have to make an exception for people with ME too.  Maybe Vatican III would like to make a note.

Giving something up over and above these things isn’t required, but is encouraged. Lent is described as a penitential season, but I think it’s more to the point that giving something up interrupts routine behavior and pretty much imposes thoughtfulness, at least in fits and starts.

YES.  Of course I’m doddering down the Anglican route, not the Catholic, and the finer points escape me.  But interrupts routine and imposes thoughtfulness—yes, exactly.

. . . I can totally see adapting this recipe to gingerbread waffles. Waffle Tuesday, anyone?

I have a gingerbread waffle recipe.  Stay tuned.

* * *

* I may be new, but that doesn’t stop me having opinions.

** I’m not trying to be coy or provocative.  I know what I’m trying to do and if I frelling well work it out I’ll tell you about it.  It’s not private in that way.  But if I tell you about it while I’m still trying to grope my way in I’ll just feel like a jerk.

*** And would go back like a shot if I needed that kind of help again.

**** There’s a lot of eating in company in the New Testament too.

Gingerbread pancakes – guest post by BTwin

Gingerbread Pancakes *

Gingerbread pancakes – served with cream, fresh raspberries and drizzled golden syrup

Adapted from a recipe found on The Galley Gourmet.

 

2 cups plain flour*

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/3 cup treacle

2 large eggs**

1 cup buttermilk

2/3 cup milk***

 

Sift (or whisk) together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices into a large bowl.  In a medium bowl, whisk (or use a sturdy fork for those times when the whisk is in the wash or otherwise occupied) together the treacle, eggs, buttermilk, milk and butter.  Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until combined and smooth.

Heat a frypan / griddle over medium heat (personally, I like using my little non-stick one since I don’t have a dedicated “pancake pan” any more but I do wish I had a griddle since presently I can only do one pancake at a time which is very limiting when cooking for more than myself!)

If not using non-stick then grease the pan/griddle with butter.

Spoon 1/3 cup of batter onto the cooking surface for each pancake. (If you’re like me you just pour until it looks about the right size… But then these pancakes are probably better as slightly smaller rather than slightly larger.)

Cook until bubbles appear on the top of each pancake and the underside is golden brown, about 1-2 minutes. Using a spatula, flip the pancakes and cook until the underside is lightly brown, another 1-2 minutes.

Serve immediately. (You could keep them warm in the oven but I’m lazy – and trying to be energy efficient – so I just place a folded, clean, tea towel over the stack on a plate.)

Toppings are always an individual choice – at Christmas we used fresh raspberries, cream and golden syrup^. Today we used fresh blackberries and honey.

 

_________

* Can also substitute Self Raising Flour – and then omit the baking powder and baking soda.

** LARGE eggs. I used duck eggs. **

*** Full-cream, of course. Since low-fat stuff is an abomination. ***

^ In the USA you’ll be struggling to find this. Better stick to (real) maple syrup. Yum.

 

* It’s Shrove Tuesday–Pancake Tuesday–your last opportunity for forty days to spread butter all over each other and lick it off.  I was vaguely aware of pancakes on the last day before Lent begins^, but in  my middle class, first world way pancakes seemed like a pretty mild sort of blow-out^^, it should be foie gras and Domaine Armand Rousseau Pere et Fils Chambertin Clos-de-Beze Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits.  I’m like no eggs?  No butter?  Are you kidding?^^^ 

But there are pancakes and pancakes.  These pancakes look like a pretty good way to go into forty days in the wilderness.  And I wouldn’t say no to a little Domaine Armand Rousseau etc.

^ Do you do this in the States?  My background was generic Protestant and Lent was Papist which is to say an instrument of the Devil+ and so I have very little awareness of Lent ritual.  Over here the Anglicans are so in your face–and the lack of separation between Church and States freaks me out just as much from this side of the line as it had done for the twenty-one years before the bump on the road to Damascus last September–that I knew about Pancake Tuesday because I couldn’t help it.

+ Isn’t it GREAT the way religion brings people TOGETHER?

^^ No, I am sorry to say I have never been to Mardi Gras

^^^ Yes, I am going to have a sort of thing about Lent.  My mentors are mostly saying that giving stuff up isn’t required+ and that it’s more about taking stock and refocussing and recommitting and like that, and I’m saying I’ve only been here five months, what have I got to take stock about?  But as I cruise on line I’ve seen several recommendations that you take something on as well as–erm–taking something off, which, as a beginner Christian anyway, was the way my mind was going about Lent.  I haven’t decided what I want to say about it in public, so I’ll just hide down here in a pink footnote to a guest post about PANCAKES and quietly affirm that I am keeping Lent.  But I’m not giving up eggs or butter.

+ And the danger is that it’ll just be a box-ticking exercise:  Okay, giving up licking butter off people for Lent, CHECK–instead of bringing mind and heart to bear and engaging. 

** Duck eggs??  Maybe it varies with your duck, but I’d translate that to mean three large chicken eggs.

*** So true.

Snow and singing

 

I got up this morning [sic] and . . . it was white outdoors.  NOOOOOOO.  NOOOOOOOO.  Meanwhile all the local weather forecasts were saying ‘dry in the south, snow falling north of London’.  This included the Met office and the BBC, where you type in the name of your town and your post code and click, and your very own personalised weather report appears on your screen with beautiful, detailed maps and arrows of progress, and cloud and sun and precipitation symbols headily mixed in with a selection of totally puzzling indecipherable icons.  The entirety of which may or may not have any relevance to reality.  It’s one thing however to be a big fancy meteorologist in a tall windowless skyscraper in Leeds or Oslo or Bucharest, feeding multi-computer-derived statistics into the master computer for people all over Europe to read from their high-tech devices of choice.  I wonder if the fellow at our local nine-volt radio station feels at all silly after he brushes the snow off his coat and out of his shoes being handed today’s forecast to read over the air to his neighbours saying ‘dry in the south, snow falling north of London’.

MY VOICE LESSON IS ON MONDAY AFTERNOON.  Although after the week I’ve just had, including the aftermath of not-quite-flu, it might be kinder both to my self-esteem and to my singing teacher if I had a bombproof excuse to miss.

DON’T WANT TO MISS.

The snow was teeming down.  It was teeming down so extravagantly that the two big fat robins that hang out in my garden, and generally only pick up the seed that has fallen out of the feeder were taking turns at the feeder.*

Teem teem teem.

Meanwhile, partly because I am too distracted by the blasted weather to concentrate on SHADOWS, I am making various overdue coping-with-the-real-world phone calls.  Arrrgh.  On the phone list are two more Potential Wall Rebuilders.  One of them never answers their phone** and the second one . . . ANSWERS THEIR [mobile] PHONE FIRST TRY***.

An estimate on a brick and flint wall? they say.  Sure.  Where are you?  I tell them.  Oh, we’re looking at a job in Gallowglass.  We’ll be with you in twenty minutes.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They’re going to have a bid for me tomorrow.  They are GOLDEN.

While we were standing around looking at the hole it STOPPED SNOWING.

I had a WAY better voice lesson than I had any business having.  As I said to Nadia—being very underpractised this week due to circumstances mostly beyond my control—it’s worth coming almost no matter what because of the way she resets or retunes my voice . . . which I then lose slowly and inevitably over the week, till I come in again next Monday and she does it again.  But there are still things that happen at home that don’t happen for Nadia because I’m worrying too much about doing it right for her.

Today I sang my first Bb at a lesson.†  I’m going to get high C back.  I am.  Before I die of old age.  Really.

* * *

* British robins are ground feeders, but as I know from experience they will hang upside down from the chandelier for live mealworms, or perform any other acrobatic necessary, so they don’t insist on eating at floor level.  I’m a squirrel phobic, so I’m using squirrel-proof feeders not because they are squirrel proof but because they may discourage the blighters into stripping some other, less defended bird feeder to the paint six times a day, or as often as the idiot local human can be stimulated to refill it, and I am not going to lay an expensive vermin smorgasbord on the frelling ground.  Robins can learn to use a feeder like lab rats can learn to press a lever and get a peanut.  These robins are clearly mutant anyway—they are GIGANTIC, and there’s two of them.  You only get one robin per territory.  This is surely too early for them to be pairing up for nest-building?^  Last year mum robin was pretty huge, but dad was normal robin sized.  The Mutants Are Taking Over.  So long as they don’t start threatening Pav when she’s having her morning frolic^^ I assume we can cohabitate.

^ I hesitate to mention this under the circumstances but the long-range forecast is for a month of winter.  IT’S THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND.  THE SNOWDROPS ARE ALREADY OUT.  THE CROCUSES AND THE FIRST DAFFS ARE SHOWING COLOUR.  IT’S SPRING, OKAY?  GET WITH THE PROGRAMME.  IT’S FRELLING DRATBLASTED SPRING.  IT MUST BE SPRING, THERE ARE TWO ROBINS IN MY GARDEN.

^^ A crap avoidance technique.  Fortunately she continues to be so food obsessed that she will eventually crap, probably before I freeze to death, standing outdoors in my dressing gown keeping an eye on her,+ because breakfast follows closely.

+ I’ve told you she eats rose bushes?  It’s a good thing she’s cute.  There’s also the unwelcome fact that there’s presently a GIGANTIC hole in the wall immediately to the right of the kitchen door, and while there’s a tiny little semi-decorative picket fence in the way, this would not much hinder a hellterror on a mission.

A gigantic hole draped in a fig leaf of barbed wire.  Last night hellhounds and I—hellterrorless, I was tired—were out for our last little quarter-hurtle and . . . there was a frelling street brawl.  We slipped away into the shadows and slunk back to the cottage, but I could still hear it, and I could hear it more clearly than I wanted to through the hole in the wall.  I WANT MY WALL BACK.#

# One of the several unwritten Third Damar Novels concerns a woman living in a walled garden.  Notes about her went into the story file long before I moved over here, let alone moved into town from a large semi-walled country garden to a tiny completely walled town garden.  I feel that—supposing I get around to her—my writing about her experience will take on a vibrancy it might not have had thirty years ago.

** One of the causes of my failure to engage with the real world is that I prefer the sole-trader type, being sort of one myself, and they are the least likely to have things like receptionists, or to answer their frelling phones themselves.  This basic situation has improved with the ubiquity of mobile phones, but people don’t necessarily answer their mobiles either.  Ask me how I know this.  Ask me about punctiliously turning Pooka off before entering the monks’ chapel and then forgetting, sometimes for days, to turn her back on again.  You’d be surprised how easy it is to skip over the opening screen with all the missed messages on it when you’re on your way to your current Audible read-aloud, or the converter thingy that will tell you what Centigrade or metres are in real numbers.

*** They were however impossible to locate in the first place, which is kind of the same thing, about sole-trader types.  They’d done a gorgeous wall in Ditherington several years ago which I’d had my eye on for if I ever got enough ahead in funds to have a short stretch of brick-and-flint wall put up at Third House . . . but they don’t have a web site and they have a funny name.  BUT I TRACKED THEM DOWN.

† Not that I knew it, of course, because that’s the way it goes.  You do your exercises—or your teacher leads you through them—and at the end you check and see where you got to.  I couldn’t sing high Bb in a piece to save my life.

 

Sunday, not a day of rest

 

I was supposed to go to a different Saturday morning prayer group yesterday—it starts half an hour later than Aloysius’, I might make it to this one.   I was awake and caffeined and dressed and everything . . . and it started to snow.  And sleet.  And rain.  And sleet.  And hail.  And sleet.  And snow.

I didn’t go, because I just don’t push anything about driving.  When it started its variable precipitation performance it did look like it was lying, as in nasty slippery stuff on the roads, but it didn’t after all—but I would have spent the entire meeting not thinking about God, but staring out the window and worrying, so I was still better off staying at home.*

Sigh.  I don’t seem to have been made for Saturday morning prayer groups.**

This morning I got up early again*** and went through the awake-caffeine-dress thing again† and sprinted for the New Arcadia bell tower.  I’d kind of forgotten that the sprinting is not merely a time thing but a good way to reinforce the effect the caffeine is having on your unwilling body, which is trying to be floppy and hopeless and moaning, Normal people have a lie in on Sundays.  Niall called for Grandsire doubles, which is fine, a nice little touch of Grandsire and we can all sit down again.  But Roger, who was calling it, was having a brain spasm or something and the touch went on and on and on and on and ON and ON and ON and there was a frelling call nearly every lead and I swear I did about three-quarters of the frelling long thirds†† and my hands are bleeding.  Finally we came out into rounds and he let us stop and I hung up my rope thinking, I didn’t go wrong!  I didn’t go wrong!  First crack out of the box on Sunday argleblargle morning, an endless touch of Grandsire with me ringing inside and catching most of the ratblasted long thirds AND I DIDN’T GO WRONG.  YAAAAAAAAAY.†††

I dunno, this getting up in the morning thing might catch on.

* * *

* Since the weather changed its mind and went away quietly^ I did go back to the monks last night.  Saturday evening prayer is my favourite monkish service because there’s half an hour of silent contemplation before they start singing, and sitting in company is good.

I think I’ve told you that one of the peripheral things I like about the monks is how ordinary and matter of fact they are, barring the distracting business of the long black frocks.  They are less homogenous-looking a group than a church choir, say, which seems to put on a desire to blend with their choir robes—which of course the choir will take back off again in an hour.  The nearly identically black-robed monks however are unmistakably each who he is.  I’m beginning to be able to guess who is walking past me^^ as they file in (I prefer to get there early) or out by the sound and what I suppose I might call the displacement of air—none of them are all that large, but they carry themselves differently, aside from height, breadth and choice of footgear.^^^

This includes matter-of-factness about certain aspects of the ritual.  At the end of evening prayer, the abbot sprinkles the monks and the congregation with holy water.  That’s what the little what’s-going-on book that you pick up on your way in says.#  It says sprinkles.  Well, he sprinkles the monks.  Then he comes down to the edge of the dais and hurls it at the rest of us.  He’s got a censer-y looking thing, it’s just got water in it instead of smoke.  The wind-up is more Sandy Koufax than St Paul.  There are never very many of us, and he is very punctilious about including us all in, even if we’re spaced out over the entire area, which we probably are.  You can hear the water splatter, and if it hits bare skin it may sting faintly.##  I’m always wearing my heavy leather jacket for warmth but it will do as protection as well.

I love this.  I love it that holy isn’t necessarily prim.

^ It didn’t go away nicely—sunlight would be nice—but it went away.

^^ I don’t know if you’re supposed to keep your eyes down, but I do.

^^^ Several of them wear sandals.+  In that freezing icy brumal algid SIBERIAN chapel?!?  Now let’s discuss how many monks have coughs and colds.

+ Birkenstocks.  Of course.

# Mind you, it still leaves an awful lot out.  I should badger Aloysius with more questions.  Christians remind me a lot of bell ringers.  The old hands have forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner.

## Possibly the stinging only happens to hellgoddesses.  Standard mortals merely get slightly damp.

** Maybe I was expressing solidarity with my origins.  I don’t guess anyone got to their Saturday morning prayer, yoga, mud wrestling or knitting groups in the northeast USA yesterday.

*** Eeep.  Uggh.

† Hellhounds opening one eye (each) and shutting it again, hellterror going YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH SOMETHING’S HAPPENING WHATEVER IT IS ME TOO.  OH, AND ABOUT BREAKFAST—?

†† Long thirds are probably the worst of the ‘work’ in Grandsire, and you only have to ring them if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time when the conductor calls a single.  I don’t myself think they’re nearly as grisly as the Dreaded Three-Four-Down Single in plain bob, but they do need paying attention to, especially on Sunday mornings.

††† No, it wasn’t all downhill from there.  I rang Grandsire triples—not dazzlingly well, but I rang it and I didn’t go wrong—at the abbey this afternoon, and while we went off the rails ringing Cambridge major with me on the treble it wasn’t me.

And I went to St Margaret of Scotland tonight for what I was expecting to be an ordinary mild-mannered Sunday evening service and discovered the place packed out and a large plastic swimming pool installed beside the altar.  They go for immersion baptisms.  Golly.

But I have to go back to work.  My copyeditor hates hyphens.  What did a hyphen ever do to her?  Poor little hyphens.

KES, 65

 

SIXTY FIVE

 

I tried to find a tree to hide the van under at the mall, but the parking lot was sadly unpopulated by any trees larger than broomsticks and the van was too big to hide behind a trashcan.  I did park a little distance from where I knew the pet shop was so Susanna wouldn’t get the wrong idea before I could tell her that I’d adopted the Phantom.  Seeing a filthy, scrawny black dog emerging from a van decorated with screaming skulls would not be likely to put a pet shop proprietor in a good mood toward the driver.  I didn’t have a lot of room for dog food anyway so I probably wouldn’t dislocate anything hauling it out to the van.  I could come back later with Merry who might or might not have armrests by then.  I’d have to buy him if Sid chewed off his armrests.  Life was so complicated.

The door went bing bong as we went through and I braced myself.  A friendly-looking woman emerged from somewhere in the back.  “What can I help —” She caught sight of Sid and her face froze.

“Dog food,” I said hastily.  “And a brush.  And a collar.  She turned up on my doorstep last night.  I let her in and fed her tunafish sandwiches because that’s what I had.  We’ve just come from the vet.”  I knew I was babbling but it was hard to stop.  The woman’s face had relaxed a little, and she looked back at me, thoughtfully.  “Bridget says to tell you she’s the Phantom,” I added.  “If you’re Susanna.”

“Yes,” said Susanna.  “Which vet?”

“Jim Cuthbert,” I said.  “Bridget recommended him.  And he’s right here.  Sid—I call her Sid—is actually microchipped and Jim talked to her owner.  Her ex-owner, who doesn’t want her back.  I want to keep her.”

Susanna said a little grimly, “You don’t look like the average dog abuser, although people can surprise you.  But I don’t think anyone responsible for the way your Sid looks would have the gall to bring the poor thing into a pet shop.”  She looked thoughtful again.  “I’ve got some cheap trial-size bags of Splendapet I could let you have, which is a good basic kibble.  And there’s a special—or there will be, as soon as I get the posters up—on Fatdog.  You buy a whole flat for half price.  It’s pretty decent.  No mystery ingredients.”  She suddenly turned her hard look on me again.  “You do read ingredient lists, don’t you?”

“Zealously,” I said, thinking of my mother ranting about commercial dog food, but Susanna laughed.

“I also,” she said, sounding positively cheerful, “have a really spectacular collar you can have.  It’ll look great on Sid as soon as she—looks a little more like a dog and less like something under the woodpile that the mice have been gnawing on.  I’ve been wondering what to do with it since Mrs Stoneman threw it at me when I refused to refund her money after she’d had it for a month and decided she didn’t like it.”  She went to the counter and groped around under the cash register.  She pulled out a cat toy, a postcard with a picture of a parakeet on it, a dented can with a torn label the remains of which read SEN SUP MIN BAL, a spray can of WONDERFURRY, which I noted had changed its logo since the days I was following my mother around to dog shows, and a plastic frond that belonged in an aquarium with a plastic pirate skeleton and maybe some fish.  “It’s here somewhere,” she said.  “Ah.”  Triumphantly she pulled out a dog collar and held it out to me.

“Golly,” I said.  It was black leather, almost as wide as my palm, with a complicated braid of black and caramel leather running down its length that looked like something out of the Book of Kells, and dotted with tiny gold beads or buttons.  I squinted at these:  they had some kind of symbol or insignia on them.  It was probably just the company trademark.  But the collar looked like something Topaz might wear.  I’d need burgundy velvet to go with it.  “Golly,” I said again.

“Yeah,” said Susanna.  “Mrs Stoneman needs something to do with herself besides thinking up complicated ways to spend her husband’s money.  The dog she bought it for was imported from somewhere no one has ever heard of and cost more than I earn in a year.  It’s still a nice dog for some reason.  This collar was a monumental special order and . . . well.  I should have known better.  Mrs S now drives a hundred and twenty miles to the pet shop in Cavendish.  Or rather her chauffeur drives her.  Anyway.  Would you like it?  I know it’s a little—flamboyant.  But it needs something like a tall sighthound to carry it off.  I can’t bear to throw it out, no sane person would pay what it’s worth, and having it around keeps reminding me what a moron I was. ”

It felt curiously alive in my hands, like it might itself produce legs and a wagging tail.  “What do you think?” I said, and held it down at Sid level.  As she put her nose out to touch it I had a flash of what she was going to look like in a few months—and in the flash she was wearing the collar.  She looked up at me and waved her tail.

“Okay,” I said.  “Thanks.  But can we have a cheap nylon one for everyday?”

Book rec: The difference between you and me by Madeleine George

 

Just so you don’t start thinking I only read cranky nonfiction. . . .

I raved about George’s first novel, LOOKS, when it came out a couple of years or so ago.  This one is every bit as good, similar in that it turns a cold sharp eye on the dynamics of high school and the frequently screwed up lives of high school students, but admirably different in the particular aspects of dysfunction, cluelessless, idealism, betrayal and hope that George makes her story out of this time.

Also, it’s funny.  And . . . it has some of the hottest kissing scenes in it I have ever read.*  Oh, and . . . ?  They’re girl on girl.

I hope I’ve now got your attention.

It’s told in alternating viewpoints, Jesse and Emily.  It begins with Jesse:

Jesse is in the sophomore hall girls’ bathroom, the farthest stall from the door, one huge, scuffed fisherman’s boot propped up on the toilet seat so she can balance her backpack on her knee and rifle through it.  She’s looking for the masking tape that she totally, totally put in here this morning, she’s positive, she has a perfect picture-memory of swiping it out of the designated masking-tape cubby in her mother’s rolltop desk in the den and dropping it into her backpack, the big pocket, right here she totally put it here where it is where is it the bell’s about to ring—

The plan is to wait until the pep rally is called and then paper the entire school with the latest draft of her manifesto. . . .

To have begun Chapter One, you will have read through the front matter, which begins:

THE NOLAW MANIFESTO

Demanding

Justice now!

For all

Weirdos, Freaks,

Queer kids, Revolutionaries,

Nerds, Dweebs

Misfits, Loudmouths,

Rapunzels Trapped in their Towers

Trolls Trapped under Their Bridges,

Animals Abused by Their Masters

Detentionites,

Monsters

And Saints.

By the

National Organization to Liberate

All Weirdos,

Or,

NOLAW

 

I’d vote for that.**

* * *

* And I mean kissing.  Not graphic, not relentlessly iterated body-part sex, not soft (or for that matter hard) porn—kissing.

** I’d like to say that I wish I’d known Jesse in high school, but we would never have said a word to each other.  Sigh.

Kitchen Appliance Drama

 

I didn’t sleep very well last night because I’m not breathing very well.  I was just moaning to a friend that this is the drawback to prescribing for yourself:  this isn’t the first time I’ve dodged the flu bullet with homeopathy only to go down instead with a garden-variety head cold which replaces my brains with wet cotton wool and renders me incapable of prescribing myself out of that.  Homeopathy isn’t magic, more’s the pity, although it acts like it sometimes, and if a germ really has your name on it you’ll probably get it regardless.  But homeopathy can alleviate the symptoms and get you through the freller sooner and at a less severe level of yuck.  But only if someone who doesn’t have soggy cotton wool for brains is available to prescribe for you.

I did manage to hear the alarm and was even out of my dressing gown and into structural daytime clothing by the time Atlas arrived, looking like the John Deere with chains big enough to raise Tower Bridge’s drawbridge, here to haul me out of the mire.

I wish.

So . . . my old refrigerator died a while ago.  Hey, it’s winter, the shelf outside the kitchen window will do for now*, most of the cooking and fresh-food storage happens at the mews, and I have a little cash flow problem.  But the kitchen-window shelf routine gets old, and my frelling publisher has to pay me some day, so I went on line and looked for a refrigerator.  And the one with five stars and customer reviews so fulsome as to be nearly erotic and an eco-friendly green rating so high they include a free naiad with every purchase, was on sale.  So I ordered one.

We will pass over the whole dorking-around-for-delivery debacle as this is not the centre of this story.  Suffice that it arrived.  Let it settle three or four hours before you turn it on, said the delivery person, thus establishing it in my mind that it was supposed to turn on.  Perhaps I should have been more suspicious at the speed with which the delivery person and his partner fled out the door.**

As recorded last night, I savaged it out of its box myself, managed to figure out which end was up, and started peeling the astonishingly thick, ugly, logo-emblazoned and adherent inner packaging off the thing, beginning with the gouge out of the back, to check that it hadn’t been damaged in transit.  The problem was that said thick, ugly logo-emblazoned and adherent inner packaging did not, indeed, wish to be peeled.

At this point I got a little hysterical and rang Atlas.

Who today confirmed the awful truth:  that this cardboard, tin-foil and spray-on plastic gunk are actually part of the refrigerator.  They are not meant to be peeled off.  They are meant to be covered over.  You’re supposed to trot down to your kitchen appliance accessory warehouse and choose panels to complement your décor.  It’s supposed to slide under your counter to be a part of your integrated unit display.

I had another look at the description on the web site.  There is a photo which is clearly not of the refrigerator sitting in my kitchen:  the one in the photo is too tall and too thin.  It’s also got a white enamel front, and the text does tell you that your refrigerator will not have white enamel frontage, that if that’s what you want you have to buy it separately.  Oh, frell this, I said/thought:  it’s a door, right?  It’s going to be covered with kitchen magnets anyway.  I don’t care.  The box is still green, five stars, and on sale.

Nowhere does the web site description say that the rest of the refrigerator is going to be covered in spray-on plastic gunk and topped up with logo-emblazoned, tin-foil-backed cardboard—and apparently missing various other small civilised niceties—like Arnie by the end of THE TERMINATOR—because no one is ever going to see them.  Or see them not being there.  Nor is there any hint that ‘under counter’ refrigerators have moved on from twenty years ago, from small self-contained objects complete in themselves which could also slide under a counter to form an integrated unit display.

The thing is a good brand and I bought it from a good store.  I’m reasonably sure that if I had a meltdown they’d take it away and refund my money and I could start over.  I don’t want to.  Life is short—and my new refrigerator is still green, five stars, on sale and comes with an excellent warranty.  I’m going to finish ripping off the ghastly logo surface, Atlas is going to make me a nice wooden top for it, and I’m going to investigate contact paper.  With roses on it.***

* * *

* And burglars peering through the barbed wire stretched across The Hole and wondering if it’s worth climbing through may see the little row of glass jars and think, Crumbs!  They haven’t even got a refrigerator!  Let’s go somewhere else!

** At least they didn’t demand a Health and Safety release form about lifting the thing over the puppy gate.  I was preparing to say that Atlas and I, both of us over sixty and I’m a girl, had managed to lift the old one out, but I didn’t have to.

*** All the drama—I’ll have to catch you up on The Wall some other evening—meant that I was late meeting Tabitha and Joy for a cup of chamomile tea and a CHOCOLATE biscuit.  I went roaring down to the mews in Wolfgang because Joy lives near the mews and I could leave the hellcritters with Peter and . . . there was a large delivery van parked for maximum inconvenience in front of the final archway into the mews courtyard.  First I couldn’t find the beggar and when I did he looked at me vaguely and said, oh, I’ll just be a minute.  They carefully screen delivery-person applicants for strong passive-aggressive tendencies, right?  There was one awfully nice delivery man we knew from the old house and he’s still around and still delivering, but for another company.  The big famous one must have fired him for not being passive-aggressive enough.

Moan, etc

 

 

So yesterday I thought I was dying* or at least coming down with combined typhoid and cholera** . . . which might very well have had a sinister effect on my life expectancy.***

Today . . . I am not too bad.  A little wombly, but not too bad.  Despite the arrival of the new refrigerator which . . . remember the good old days when you ripped your appliance out of its cardboard and Styrofoam and plugged it in?  This one is apparently a doctoral thesis in practical engineering ARRRRRRRRGH.  Atlas is coming tomorrow to examine the problem.

* * *

* Or at least losing the will to live.  A new foreign edition of BEAUTY arrived recently.

 

Moan.

I’m really delighted when my message of active roles for women successfully crosses the translation/culture barrier.

** As a result of the little adventure with the hellterror the other night.  I can’t have Lady Macbethed hard enough.  Although my hands were positively sore afterwards.  I did try.

*** I spent the day frantically popping homeopathy pills^—I have an assortment of hellcritters to hurtle!  I have a copyedited manuscript to painstakingly de-correct^^ someone else’s idea of standard^^^ punctuation and word usage through 273 pages of in the next I-think-it’s-ten days!  I have Green & Black’s to eat!  I can’t be ill!

^Mockorange

I was appalled at the statistics quoted for conventional drugs, particularly the cost of treating the side effects of those drugs. 

Yep.  Iatrogenic—doctor-caused—illnesses are a major killer.  Depending on who you read, the third biggest killer in America, after cancer and heart disease.

Abigailmm

I understand the bafflement, though I don’t condone the vitriol, of the establishment. I was trained in cause and effect, and I sure wish somebody could explain to me a mechanism that makes sense. Not to mention how an umpty-umpth dilution of a deadly poisonous heavy metal can help the innards.

 But I agree, if it helps Darkness, it’s not just a placebo.

There’s some fairly well-documented evidence out there about what is usually called ‘the memory of water’—that water that has been succussed, which means whacking your bottle against the palm of your hand or a big heavy book or thereabouts+ has undergone permanent structural changes by the now ex-presence of the remedy base:  white arsenic (Ars Alb) or club moss (Lycopodium) or whatever.  So after you’ve diluted it beyond the likelihood of any atom of the ‘remedy’ remaining . . . the water is still different than it was before it was treated.

And the foundation philosophy is ‘like cures like’.  Ars Alb is likely to help people presenting symptoms similar to arsenic poisoning.  ::HIDEOUS OVERSIMPLIFICATION ALERT::

Placebos are another tool.  The placebo effect is real, and useful.  I’m sure that sometimes it’s placebo causing positive change rather than the drug—homeopathic or allopathic—but homeopathy isn’t placebo, any more than allopathy is.

True skeptics would say that Darkness’ difficulties had merely run their course and it was nothing to do with the homeopathy.  I know better, of course, since it took me four or five years to figure out what worked with least trauma on these occasions—it’s a ratbag having a patient that won’t talk to you—and I remember how protracted these affairs were before I figured it out.

But you only have to see homeopathy work like magic a couple of times to realise there’s something in it.  Some bruises fade as you watch, after you’ve taken your Arnica.  I stopped getting black fingernails AGAIN after I shut my hand in a door AGAIN after I discovered Arnica.  I’ve told you my Cantharis story, haven’t I?  Speaking of being a moron+++.  I’ve been baking for fifty years but I CANNOT learn not to grab a handle . . . even if it’s been sitting in a hot oven for the last hour.  A few years ago I grabbed the handle of an iron skillet that had been in the Aga’s hot oven—really grabbed it, and so couldn’t let loose fast enough, and heard my flesh sizzling.  By the time I let go I already had a big angry red welt . . . and I knew what a burn like this was going to be like.  Among other things I wouldn’t be ringing any bells for weeks.

I ran for the Cantharis with my hand going THROB THROB THROB THROB.  And started popping pills.  In an ‘emergency acute’ situation like this you take them pretty rapidly—say five minutes apart—and you keep taking them till they start working.  Hellhound digestion and a bad burn both take pretty serious application.

But the Mare-Crisium-sized blister that was coming up by the time I got the bottle open paused and . . . went down again.  I don’t remember how many pills I took.  But finally all I had to show for the experience was a faint reddish mark.  It didn’t even peel.  I didn’t have to interrupt my bell ringing.  And I am not kidding about hearing my flesh sizzle.

. . . Did I ever tell you how Chaos got his notched ear?  That’s another Arnica story.

(And Diane . . . I bookmarked the anti-bloat stifle acupressure point the last time you posted it.  I don’t mean to discourage you from posting it again++ as the subject comes up again, as it will do, because the hellhounds and I are surrounded by careless idiots who throw sandwiches into the hedgerows, but it hasn’t worked for me.  I don’t know if that’s because the hellhounds’ problems don’t respond or I’m doing it wrong.  I incline to the latter, since I can rarely learn even a simple three-dimensional skill without someone demonstrating in three dimensions.)

+Homeopathic pharmacies have machines to do it of course.

++ http://www.hmgdc.org/Links/It_Simply_Works.pdf

+++ For which so far as I know there is no homeopathic treatment

^^ Under extreme duress, the splitting of infinitives is permitted.

^^^ Well it very well may be standard.  Ask me if standard is likely to be the method I adhere to.

Quick and Easy Fruit Slice – guest post by BTwin

Fruit Slice

This is my standby, no-brainer recipe for those times when get a last minute request of “can you provide a plate for this function tonight” or morning tea for the shearer (who is allergic to eggs). It’s very flexible – you can substitute flours / milks / fruits with little problem.

Sometimes I add some spices; sometimes I play with the dried fruit mix (rarely do I use the commercial mix). I have tried using choc-chips in it but it didn’t quite seem right to me – your mileage may vary.  :)

 

Ingredients:

1 cup milk

1 cup self-raising flour

1 cup mixed dried fruit [Australian pre-mixed dried fruit mix is: sultanas, raisins, currants, glace cherries, peel]

1 cup desiccated coconut

1 cup raw sugar [can use finer sugar but raw sugar probably works better]

12 chopped dried apricots [I cheat and used a good handful of the diced ones from the store…]

 

Preheat the oven to approx 175C (or lower). Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Pour into a lined brownie pan. (I just put an oversize piece of baking paper in – and don’t get too precious about having the corners perfect).

Bake for approximately 30min or until lightly golden brown.

 

Note: this slice is a little sticky to cut up. Can be cut while warm or cold although it does cut better when cold.

 

 

For more recipes don’t forget you can trawl through lots of recipes from Robin and forumites over in Playing With Your Food.