Tuesday 1 December 2015

Part One


I've been meaning to write for a while. Other things have taken over. In fact now I should be finishing off an essay, but it just had to wait. I had plans for a recipe for you. I was thinking about my butternut squash and chorizo stew. I even took photos...

But that was autumn, and this isn't. Then a couple of weeks later I made the loveliest tarte tatin, the alchemy of a little bit too much salted butter and sugar in a cast-iron pan with Egremont Russet apples, and all-butter puff pastry. I took step-by-step photos to show you...



Then I got sucked into a translation instead and never got round to it. The moment had passed. 

So now I'm going to grab you by the horns and tell you about something quickly, before it slips away again. I had a moment of great honour earlier. A good friend of mine asked me if I could help out with a photo of the Nailsea Choral Society for a magazine. It was a bit daunting: 80 people, squeezed into one shot, while I was up a ladder (don't like heights, don't do ladders), all under the impression that I was a photographer instead of silly old me. I did my best but nerves got the better of me and in my hurry to be done, I did still cut a couple of them off in their prime.


It was then suggested that I could mooch around taking some informal shots while they got on with their evening. Phew. So I started. And then they opened their mouths, all at once, and a noise came out. When was the last time you heard a sound so beautiful, so glorious, so all-enveloping, that it made your eyes well up? 






It wasn't until I got home that I realised my handbag was excessively heavy. I was cursing the children for handing me all their rubbish and making me carry everything under the sun. Then I saw someone lovely from the choral society had sneaked in a tin of glittery beautiful fragrant brownies. 

And in other news... my translation course is great. Scary, exhilarating, daunting, yes. But rewarding, more than anything I've done for ages. And more me. Someone today told me my eyes were shining when I talked about it. And what more affirmation could you want from life than to know that you are doing The Right Thing? Just one marked piece back so far, and 74%. Life feels good.