26.3.24

in the soil

Perhaps it is just the sunlight or rather the smell of the sunlight in the air and on the grass now dry enough to cut but it seems this week as if colours are fading back in like the entry into Oz, we are over the rainbow and the forget-me-nots, sun-bright middle in sky-blue petal, spread their miniature heavens across the ruins of the artichoke, the rain-fed grass takes on a deeper green, red speckles of ladybird move across grey decaying plastic and even the centipede I disturb among the chicory seems a brighter orange than anything I have seen in months, there amidst the earth. On the way back to the station I look up through cherry blossom at a clear sky and think, we made it through the winter, and the next second, how trite, but if there is one thing we learn it is that not everybody does –

in the kitchen

We are in that peculiar season in which London restaurants, fed by Natoora, are overflowing with the produce of a Mediterranean spring, their plates bright with broad beans, peas, artichokes, asparagus and expensively imported nettles shoving out last of the wild garlic and the Yorkshire rhubarb while out in the provinces we scrabble for what we can get. We do – winter more than done – get our hands on a box of puntarelle or asparagus chicory, twenty or so crowns of sharp dandelion surrounding a head of crisp pale shoots to slice finely and curl in iced water and dress with anchovy and garlic and red wine vinegar in the style called in Italy puntarelle alla romana or in Rome simply puntarelle, the only proper way to serve it, although in a shocking breach with tradition we add big chunky croutons to soak up more dressing and present it alongside roast lamb and its juices which – hot and cold – seems to fit the weather as well as anything else would.

on the page

In The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana Umberto Eco (in a translation by Geoffrey Brock) tells us of a man, a dealer in rare books, who has lost his memory in an accident – his memory, that is, of his own life as he lived it. He can remember only (only!) everything he has ever read, and must try to piece his life back together from a history of his reading, from the picture-books and comics of early childhood through boys-own adventure stories, encyclopaedias, stamp-collections, religious and philosophical tracts, a discovery of literature; recurring symbols (of course Eco cannot do without his symbols) and his dreadful teenage poetry lead him towards a revelation of his lost teenage love. Relatable for any book-lover, I suppose; there was a particular line I wanted to write about, something I thought said something important or perhaps merely interesting about the human condition, a line I can no longer find – make of that what you will.