17.2.26

in the soil

I plan today all wrong, first believing the forecast when it says it will be windy but dry, then getting to the allotment at the exact moment it begins to rain, deciding I will stick it out until I get too cold, leaving as the sun comes out again, messing around for long enough to miss the train I was planning on getting, then finally walking back to the railway station through a brief hailstorm to find that the later train is delayed by forty-five minutes due to something or other and so I wait unable to use my phone because I forgot to bring my charger with me; in the middle of this I give myself an enormous blister on my thumb because I can’t be bothered to put my gloves on to continue last week’s whittling project. All in all not a day well-spent but it is hard to see it is a waste of time exactly partly because I doubt I would have done anything more productive at home but mostly because it is a pleasure to spend time outside, even in a light rain, chipping away at a piece of hazel-wood, when - despite knowing that there is another cold snap to come - the signs of spring are everywhere, new shoots of nettle, new shoots of fennel, leaves of wild garlic coming up amongst the grass and the weeds at the base of the hazel tree, I think for a minute about picking them all and making one tiny sacred soup but instead I just cut a bunch of daffodils and walk off into the fickle weather.

in the kitchen

Pancake Day, of course, the end of Carnival or Carnevale or Mardi Gras or whatever you choose to call it, tonight a restaurant in town is doing (as it is also the Lunar New Year) endless crispy duck pancakes and so I won’t be cooking any pancakes myself; I have a vague idea to make Staffordshire oatcakes which are a sort of savoury oat flour pancake to have with bacon or cheese or both which I may or may not follow through on. Last year I made buckwheat galettes; one reason I never seem to make sweet pancakes (just sugar and lemon, thanks) for Pancake Day is because my enthusiasm for them is pale compared to my wife’s enthusiasm for frittelle, Venetian doughnuts made with a barely-sweet yeasted dough enriched with pinenuts and raisins and dusted hot from the oil with sugar which we make together for an event at the community gardens (she makes the dough, I fry it) and then she makes again the day after just for fun, fitting to gorge ourselves just once a year.

on the page

I order a copy of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Book VI of The Aenied because I want to read it again and I don’t know what I have done with my copy and the same day it arrives I buy a battered old Everyman edition of The Divine Comedy because it feels like I should probably read it and I had completely forgotten until I had both books in front of me that Virgil is of course a main character in The Divine Comedy and that Book VI specifically, a descent into the underworld, is an obvious and major influence on Dante’s work. I don’t have much to say about that except that it is nice when things line up, and when books come your way just at the time when it seems that you should be reading them.