17.12.24
in the soil
I visit the plot for the last time this year really just because I feel I ought to, although I do put down a layer of raw wool taken from packing materials at work and a layer of manure on top of the layer of cardboard and manure I put on top of the asparagus bed so they are well tucked in for winter and worry for a bit if the cardboard and the wool will rot down enough to let the first spears through in spring but then I think to myself I am being foolish, there is a whole season to get through that will most likely be wet and mild and full of decay and anyway we underestimate the strength of a growing thing, I tuck manure too around the cauliflowers and peg the netting back over my mother’s kale where the wind has taken it and check the fig has not grown too eagerly too survive the winter and just generally say my goodbyes for the year.
in the kitchen
Someone at work asks me if we will be changing the menu to anything more Christmassy through December and I have to tell them that Christmas or rather Vigilia di Natale, Christmas Eve, is the reason for all the fish dishes on the menu, the salad of salt cod and pickled peppers and cauliflower and the spaghetti alle vongole we make every day from clams which come in quite astonishingly filthy to be washed and purged in several changes of salt water. At home I do in the end make the Ginger Crinkle Cookies I read about last week which turn out to be ginger snaps and very good ones and I bring them into work where they are festive enough to make up for it all.
on the page
One of the nicest things about buying books from charity shops rather than from the carefully curated selections of even the best indie booksellers is that occasionally you come across something you can genuinely consider a lost classic rather than something you are being told is one, in a smart new edition with an introduction by -insert trendy author here-. I had barely heard of Paul Griffiths as a music writer and never heard of his Myself and Marco Polo which turns out to be a dense and intriguing puzzle of a book, perfectly aware of its various debts and pretensions and somehow despite its cleverness never annoying.