Nine (and very nearly a half) weeks

We’re over halfway through week nine of lock down. At the beginning of all this, my search history reflected what was going on in my life, and presumably, lots of other people’s too. “Where can I buy strong bread flour?” (Nowhere, was the answer, but my husband discovered that 00 pizza flour made an acceptable substitute). “Where can I buy yeast?” (Again, nowhere, so I begged and borrowed some from friends and worked my way through it, occasionally making soda bread in desperation until it started appearing in the shops again). “What are the symptoms of Covid-19?” (With three children, a husband and two elderly and extremely vulnerable parents, that was a worry. So far, so good, thank God.)

As time went on and nearly all my paid work dried up, the other half of my brain, the creative half which is the bit that started this blog in the first place, suddenly realised that it was time to take some of the stuff that had been knocking about in the lobe marked, “big words and made up stories” and actually write some of it down. My search history reflects this. By week two of lock down, a random sample of my google searches were, “Common 18^th Century Hertfordshire Surnames,” “Medicinal Herbs in the 18^th Century” and “Where is Meryton Supposed to be in Pride and Prejudice?” My reading pile doubled in size and started taking on a rather Austen-esque flavour. Longbourn by Jo Baker, Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope, Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid and Emma by Alexander McCall Smith, plus surely the greatest novel ever written, Pride and Prejudice, were my preferred bedtime reading. I found myself writing a book of short stories, based on minor characters in Pride and Prejudice. It’s nearly done. I’ll keep you posted on progress.

Hard on the heels of this new creation, my search history changed yet again. It was becoming clear that grey roots, shaggy hair and wispy layers were going to be a part of our lives for quite some time to come. “How do I cut my own fringe?” was my next question. Back came the answer, “By letting your eleven-year old daughter loose with the kitchen scissors.”

I wouldn’t want you to think that I’ve spent my entire lock down gazing at my hair and googling herbal remedies. There was a flurry of Antarctica-based research a couple of weeks ago due to my daughter’s Year 6 topic. I am now an expert on Shackleton and all his expeditions. 

With social distancing really beginning to bite, my search history reflected new ways to communicate. “How do I set up a Zoom account?” How does Microsoft Teams work?” and “How do I read a book on Audible?” were questions I was asking myself. Never the greatest of technical whizzes, I have got to grips with some new platforms even if I haven’t worked out how to change my background.

With bread proving happily under a tea towel, my blackcurrant gin mellowing nicely in bottles under the stairs and my fringe all sorted, my next project took shape. I write for the ACW’s blog More Than Writers once a month. In April, I wrote a jokey piece about an imaginary lifestyle blogger and writer called Isabella M Smugge (I Am Smug – get it?) which caused much mirth. The next month, I wrote a much more serious piece but used Ms Smugge again for comic effect. The comments were complimentary and several people said they’d like to see a book about her. Guess what?

My google searches are now along the lines of, “Common Suffolk Surnames”, “Posh Girls’ Names” and “Top Five British Bloggers.” I’ve written a book proposal, a story arc and four and a half chapters. As you’ll see from my blog heading, my earliest dream was to be a writer. I crushed that dream and put it away somewhere safe, but now it’s back. My favourite writers are those who create whole new worlds, and Isabella’s world is taking shape.

Let’s not run before we can walk, but in a few months’ time, I really hope that my google search history will say things like, “What should I wear on the red carpet?” “What is the best answer to where do you get your ideas?” and “How do I organise a book launch?”

Dear readers, you saw it here first. It’s been nine (and very nearly a half) weeks and Ruth the blogger is morphing into Ruth the novelist.

Feels pretty good.

I now declare this book open

If you’d told me at the end of last year that come May 2020, I would regularly hurl myself into the path of traffic while wearing a snazzy face mask, I would have laughed in, or near your face. Had you predicted that my last major social event would be a trip to Southampton to see my sister and her family while struggling with a cold of epic proportions, I would have been surprised.

Since then, everything has changed. Men are sporting magnificent beards while women display a scattering of what my hairdresser used to call, “Nature’s Highlights”. Home barbering is now a thing. Yesterday afternoon, my eleven-year old daughter trimmed my fringe and my world makes sense again.

Since lock down, I’ve become a more involved member of the ACW, a supportive and fabulous writers’ group, as well as taking my first steps in book reviewing. For me, there is nothing to compare to the smell and the feel of a new book, its pages as yet unread, its secrets still to be unlocked.

A few weeks ago, I was very excited to be asked to be part of my friend Fran Hill’s virtual launch team. Fran now has two actual books under her belt. She is a Proper Writer, as we unpublished folk say. For this reason alone, I curtseyed low when first we met, full of respect and admiration for anyone who could write lots of words in one go, put them together and turn them into something which an actual publisher would publish so that people could buy it in bookshops.

Pre Covid-19, Fran and her publisher planned a book launch for Thursday 21^st May. That’s today. In an alternative universe, people would have sipped Prosecco, nibbled canapes and stood around saying nice things. Fran would have said a few well-chosen words, everyone present would have clapped and had another flute of fizz before buying her book and heading home.

Nothing daunted by the lack of a government announcement confirming that writers were key workers and could therefore meet together in small, excitable groups, Fran started organising a virtual book launch. And this is where we all come in.

“Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?” is out today. Yes, TODAY! A hilarious, warm and touching memoir of an English teacher’s year at a secondary school, it is the ideal read for lock down. Having taught for 16 years and now an English tutor, Fran really knows her stuff. The narrator of her memoir, “Miss”, has a fondness for Baileys, is breaking out in menopausal spots and has a love-hate relationship with her bathroom mirror and scales who conspire to tell her uncomfortable truths.

Fran is having her virtual book launch on Facebook and you can join her, live, from 8.00 tonight by clicking here: https://www.facebook.com/events/263230455056350/

Bring your own drinks and nibbles. Lie on your bed in pyjamas and slippers if you like, or dress yourself up to the nines. Fran won’t mind what you look like, she’ll just be glad you came.

You can find out more about Fran and her work by clicking here: https://www.facebook.com/Fran-Hill-Writer-430140043700388

You can snag your very own copy of , “Miss, What Does Incomprehensible Mean?” by clicking on any of these links: https://spckpublishing.co.uk/miss-what-does-incomprehensible-mean, https://www.hive.co.uk/, https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/search/?keyword=miss,+what+does+incomprehensible+mean or 

 http://www.warwickbooks.net/

Happy reading, everyone.

A quick spin around the ingredients, Clive

I’m the proud owner of three battered cookery books which I count as amongst my most precious possessions. One of them is signed by the author. They’re cookery books, but they are also beautifully written statements of intent. In their own way, they started a revolution. Their author was unlike anyone who had ever gone before, and I’d contend that no-one since has ever been quite like him.

And that author is? The great Keith Floyd.

 Let me take you back to April 1986. Aged 19, I had just started a new job at Devon Life magazine, based in Exeter where I then lived. I was an Advertising Sales Executive, earning the princely sum of £5,000 per year. My job was to sell adverts in our glossy magazine, chase copy and occasionally design adverts. Quite soon, it was realised that I was rather good at talking restauranteurs into buying space and I became responsible for “Wine and Dine.”

The further west you went in the West Country, the quieter and sleepier it got. Somerset and Avon had Bristol, from whence came Bristol Illustrated, the fun and funky magazine in our group. Dorset seemed to have nodded off shortly after the Tolpuddle Martyrs left for Australia and never woken up. Cornwall was all about tourism, surfing and fishing. This left Devon, a place I loved and still do.

In the mid-80s, it was home to three award-winning and ground-breaking restaurants. The Carved Angel in Dartmouth was run by Joyce Molyneux, one of the first women to win a Michelin star. Sonia Stevenson cooked at The Horn of Plenty at Gulworthy in West Devon, on the Devon and Cornwall border. Gidleigh Park in Chagford, on the edge of Dartmoor National Park was a byword for luxury and cutting-edge cuisine.

Over the border, Rick Stein was making a name for himself at the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow. I had plenty of restaurants and pubs to ring and even got to write reviews of some of them. However, the name on everyone’s lips in 1986 was Keith Floyd, the talented cook who was taking TV by storm.

Our regional TV station was TSW. It gave us all the local news and weather, plus Gus Honeybun, a large rabbit who would deliver the requisite number of bunny hops to anyone who wrote in asking for a birthday dedication. Truly, they were simpler times. Big news in the office, however, was not Gus and his bunny hops, but a new programme starring one of our region’s most talented cooks. A Somerset boy who’d run a number of bistros and restaurants in Bristol, Floyd burst on to the scene with, “Floyd on Fish”, all set in the West Country. Nowadays, it’s hard to get across just what a revelation the programme was. An enthusiastic, arm waving cook who addressed the camera man by name and ordered him about, who abused his producer and who was clearly passionate about fresh fish was not something the British public were used to seeing.

In the Devon Life office, we were ecstatic. We claimed Floyd as one of our own. Each week, we’d discuss the programme in minute detail. Floyd was generous to other West Country cooks. One segment featured Sonia Stevenson at the Horn of Plenty, another Rick Stein in his kitchen (“Rick, dear boy.”)

I bought Floyd on Fish which quickly became one of my very favourite books. It still is. Great illustrations, simple instructions and most of all, an assumption right from the start that the reader wants to learn and to use fresh ingredients. When Floyd came to the Barnfield Theatre next door to the office on his tour, I was there in the audience drinking it in. He was brilliant.

Floyd on France was just as good. A typical recipe reads: “Cookery writers and chefs of yesterday terrified the living daylights out of people with their old wives’ tales about egg liaison sauces. Ignore all this and follow me.” I did.

When Floyd bought the Malsters’ Arms in Tuckenhay, it fell to me to ring him up once a month to encourage him to advertise in our pages. He was always very friendly, as was Rick Stein who became another customer. In 1990, I bought A Feast of Floyd which I would read from cover to cover, regularly. These books stood out for me, not only because of the brilliant recipes and reassuring tone, but because of the beautiful, lyrical writing in between. Even now, I can close my eyes and recall whole phrases. “Low tide at Cancale and the beach stretches far to the Brittany horizon. The sun has resigned, washed out by the early evening grey.” Any one of Floyd’s books weaves the recipes together with mellifluous descriptive prose.

Time went on. I left Devon Life and went to run a restaurant. I left Devon in 1993 and my books travelled up to Essex. We moved to Suffolk in 2006 and they took up residence in the book shelves in the dining room. Floyd’s recipe for fish paella was the basis on which we started our Spanish catering company. We turned to his cook books on a regular basis, but life took over, and I rarely managed to watch him on TV.

When he died in 2009, he was about to watch a documentary, “Keith Meets Keith” made by Keith Allen. I never did get round to watching it, but last week, I did.

It was painful viewing. That energetic, bombastic, irreverent cook had become a tired, washed out man in poor health, but still with flashes of the old brilliance. The saddest part for me was the slow descent into alcohol-fuelled anger at dinner, when his long-estranged daughter whispered, “Please, Dad, don’t.” Anyone who has loved an addict will recognise that vain hope that perhaps, just perhaps, this time it will be different. Sadly, it rarely is.

I almost wished I hadn’t seen it, but just the same, today, while I watched him visit Vietnam for “Far Flung Floyd”, I saw again that reverence for food and its preparation, that deep respect for those who cook it and the love of the new and the unfamiliar. In his three volumes of autobiography, there are clues to his mercurial lifestyle and personality. His Uncle Ken, who no-one could ever tame, his aunt who killed herself after concealing great unhappiness, his own deep-down loneliness and depression. It was all there, for anyone to see if they dug deep enough, but the great majority of his output was joyful, irreverent and life-changing.

I know a number of great cooks who say that Floyd was the one who started them off. His legacy (terrible word) lives on. For me, my treasured books are returned to again and again, full of the beautiful prose and fail-safe recipes of one of the greatest cooks and showmen who ever lived.

God bless him.

Digging for Victory

Yesterday morning, enjoying a restorative cup of tea after doing the daily mountain of washing up with the partner of all my joys and sorrows, he enquired what I was writing about this week. “Floyd, Stein and all those chefs I used to know,” I replied. 

“But it’s VE Day on Friday – what about that?” Quick as a wink, I changed horses in mid-stream, like a young gazelle leaping from crag to crag, very nearly tripping myself up on the similes and metaphors piling up all around me.

VE Day is far too important a milestone to ignore. I’ve bumped the chefs to next week.

My esteemed spouse is a chemist by profession, but having spent the last 26 years manacled to me, quite a bit of my writing know-how has rubbed off.

“How about comparing World War Two to lock down?” he enquired, drying up a plate.

“On it!”

“You could talk about the similarities between then and now. You know, digging for victory and all that.”

“Yes, I could! Good thinking.”

Covid-19 has put paid to national plans to celebrate VE Day, but tomorrow is still going to be a big day. Locally, both Pettistree and Wickham Market have plans to decorate and celebrate. Our resident bagpiper, Jim, will be marching up The Street playing (probably in shorts, displaying his handsomely bronzed limbs) and many of us will decorate our houses and gardens. Even in these difficult times, we can all pull together. Perhaps especially now.

Since this all began, there have been acres of newsprint devoted to the similarities between the war and the pandemic. Loss, fear of the unknown, a deadly killer and heroes emerging to keep us all safe. There’s been an outpouring of creativity, too, people writing songs, poetry, learning new skills in their enforced quarantine.

Many of us have started digging for victory. A number of our friends locally have dug up parts of their lawn and started putting in potatoes, carrots, beans, cauliflowers, courgettes, tomatoes and suchlike, all of which grow beautifully in our light Suffolk soil. Waste is right down. Every scrap of our household waste (banana skins, orange peel, eggshells, teabags etc) goes into our new expanded empire of compost bins along with grass cuttings and the resulting compost will help our veg to grow.

There is a sense of everyone pulling together in our communities. I am a member of the Pettistree WhatsApp group which is full of helpful suggestions, offers to go shopping, beautiful pictures and inspiring words. One of our number has gone out and bulk bought flags and bunting so that we can all decorate our houses and gardens tomorrow. A lady halfway down the High Street in Wickham Market who has been growing and selling plants for twenty years has made over £400 so far this year which she is splitting between Marie Curie and the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. As we chatted at a safe distance yesterday, she told me how lovely it was that she was meeting so many new people.

I was born to relatively old parents for the time (36 and 40) in 1966. There were still bomb sites all over London, gaps in terraced houses and a very real sense that the war wasn’t that long ago. Both my parents lived through it as children and young people. My mum told a story about their precious egg ration which sounded like something from another culture at the time, but now makes a lot more sense.

Mum lived with her mother in the East End of Glasgow. Her father was a Captain in the Merchant Navy so was away much of the time. Thursday was the day that they received one precious fresh egg on their rations and Thursday team time was looked forward to all week. The egg was gently frying on the stove and Mum (aged about 11) left the kitchen to go and lay the table. Suddenly, there was an almighty crash and the house shook. She ran back into the kitchen to find that the ceiling had collapsed, weakened by the nightly bombardment. You or I would be upset about the state of the kitchen, but the first thing out of my grandmother’s mouth was: “Jean! The egg!! Is it all right?” It was duly extracted from the mess, dusted off and enjoyed before the task of tidying up began.

Before the pandemic, I’ll be honest. I was careless. I didn’t value what I had as much as I should have. I didn’t waste food and I wasn’t profligate with money (chance would be a fine thing), but I wasn’t as careful as I might have been. Since lock down, we have been recycling, re-purposing and re-using like mad. And quite right too. The wartime spirit of, “make do and mend”, “dig for victory” and “lend a hand on the land” is back with us, today, in 2020.

So many gave so much to buy our freedom. VE Day is important every year, but perhaps this year, even more so. I will certainly be thinking of all those who bravely sacrificed their lives so that I could live in liberty and it seems to me that it would be only respectful to continue growing fruit and veg, cutting right down on waste and building on community spirit long after the pandemic is over.

 Whatever you’re doing tomorrow, join me in stopping to think a while on what they gave for us, and what we in turn can do for our descendants.