30.7.26
in the soil
While I am pottering around the dry ground with not much to do I get a notification from the News app saying that half of the country is officially in a state of drought, a statistic which seems rather low, especially given that it does not include this corner of England where we have not had more that a few teasing drops of rain in well over a month and that the grass I am walking on is crunching underneath my clogs, turning immediately to dust; this morning I woke up to another notification, that Dunwich Heath, a protected habitat near where I used to live in Suffolk, is on fire. It makes me think that the kind of climate change denialism which is not actively dishonest or deliberate propaganda by the fossil fuel industry is only possible to sustain if you do not spend much or any time really outdoors. I have seen just in my own time here, comparing my memories and photographs and notes with traditions around farming and foraging as well as manuals from just a few decades ago, how the seasons are shifting, the summer coming hotter and earlier, the winter wetter and milder - blackberries ready in early July, figs surviving their long ripening process on English trees, last year’s plague of slugs all unmistakeable signs and portents of a change that is here already. Only the deep-rooted plants are really thriving now, the bramble in fact coming into its own, enjoying perhaps that not even the usual weeds are challenging its fruiting and its spread, its burst almost in looping arches across the scorched grass and ragged soil.
in the kitchen
I keep bookmarking recipes for cold broths and then not buying the necessary ingredients or forgetting to make them enough in advance that they will have time to get actually cold rather than room temperature - one from Su Scott involving chilli and cucumber, one from Meera Sodha with tahini and tomato - and in any case it is not quite as hot as last month’s heat when we dragged the mattress into the airier living room and lived on ice cream and cold water. Instead I am enjoying cooking meals where only one thing is cooked to order, the rest being raw or cooked in advance and left to go tepid or ready-made. A trip last week to Chan Chan Chan in New Malden left us with a variety of kimchis and pickles that just needed the rice cooker sticking on and a couple of mackerel fillets grilling to make an expansively luxurious meal of; runner beans from last week’s veg bag stewed with the first few Marvel of Venice from my plot and lots of garlic and rosemary went happily alongside a piece of pan-fried lamb fillet and some simply dressed cucumbers from my mother’s ridiculous glut. Meanwhile in the veg drawer a mountain of courgettes is steadily building that will need addressing in one way or another, although I am running out of inspiration for them somewhat.
on the page
Like everyone else who spends too much time on the right bits of the internet I have spent much of the last few days observing the Discourse around the new Christopher Nolan film, more specifically that generated by Emily Wilson’s even-handed if ultimately rather scathing review of it in the LRB. Having not actually seen the film and having no particular intention to do so I did tell myself I would steer clear of actually engaging in said Discourse, but I do find the intensity of the ensuing debate quite strange. The Odyssey, like all of Nolan’s recent films, is a large-budget holiday blockbuster, financed and built to fulfil the same kind of role as a big thriller or historical novel that you read on the beach. I’m not trying to be snobbish about big thrillers and historical novels that you read on the beach - I read several of them a year, and am well aware that I am in no way capable of that sort of sustained research, writing and storytelling - but I’m also not going to pretend to think that they represent the pinnacle of what it is possible to do with their medium, as certain vocal sectors of Nolan’s fanbase seem insistent on doing for his films. I am reminded of the whole ridiculous Barbenheimer thing, when (some) people acted as if it was a Great Work of Art up against a trashy piece of pop culture, rather than two more-or-less disposable products designed for commercial consumption competing for attention in a crowded marketplace. You might say that Nolan’s genius transcends the limitations of the Hollywood machine; I don’t believe in genius and I don’t think that is possible or even particularly desirable for any artwork to escape the circumstances of its creation, but I do think you can watch the Odyssey or Barbie or whatever phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe we are now on in the understanding that the dialogue might be a bit shit and that they might not have a perfect understanding of their source material and that in a visual medium spectacle might take precedence over storytelling and still be enraptured, for a while.