Continuing with the story of the trip as we know it.

At the end of August, as planned, I finished off the book I've been writing, and sent it to the publisher.  My contact there has been graciously warm and complimentary in receiving it, and says that their meeting to consider incoming manuscripts is full for September, but they will look at it in October.  So, by the end of October I will be able to tell you if they will be publishing it or not.

Before it went to the publisher, it went to the Badger and to Julie Faraway to read.  The Badger speed-read it, and gave it the thumbs-up; Julie is reading it slowly and carefully, bookmarking it for comment later.  They are an excellent reading team.

I felt relieved when the Badger said the book had come out good.  'Wonderful', he said, and 'Brilliant'.

I was relieved because - like everything I write, I guess - it has little to commend it in the way of plot or action, no dazzling intellect or subtle cunning twists to amaze and confound the reader; it's just a story of the heart.  That's all I do.  I tell the story of life as I have seen it to be.

I hope the publisher will get what I am saying, and consent to add it to my series, The Hawk & the Dove - it will be the seventh book of that series, if they do.  It's about how life can be sweetened (or soured) by the way we talk to one another.

Sometimes publishers have seen where I am coming from, and made it possible for me to tell my stories of the heart, the way I have seen life to be.  Not always.  My book Spiritual Care of Dying and Bereaved People was published by SPCK who understood, and edited helpfully and respectfully, and with them that book had a long, long run, finding its way into most of the UK's hospices and into ordination training programs.  I was so grateful to SPCK.

Then in due course it went out of print and, because people still came looking for it, it seemed right to make an expanded and revised version of it, with three new sections added - one about taking funerals, one about bereavement from other causes than death, and one being the story of my husband Bernard's dying.

The original book had been very personal, coming as it did out of my work (at the time I wrote it) as a hospice chaplain.  The sections I added were even more personal, they were stories of my heart about life as I had seen and experienced it to be.

The re-write was commissioned by another English publisher, but when it was completed, something went wrong.  There had been an error in the contract that both the publisher and I had overlooked.  The commissioned book was to be 35,000 words, a significantly expanded revision of the original with the three new sections.  But the original had 45,000 words.

I had written what I understood we had agreed.  The publisher had been imagining a short 'how-to' book guiding people through stages of grief - a book to hold in your hand.  The manuscript they got was about 70,000 words.

At this point we parted company.  The publisher talked about the book in terms of 'product'.  I talked about it in terms of 'story'.  What I had written, which was the agonising putting on paper of the slow tearing apart of my life and heart and the insights I had found in that, turned out to be too long for the product the editor had in mind.  It didn't fit with the other 'how-to' books in the category.  It would have too many pages, so cost more to produce, and unbalance the budget a little.  She had a suggestion for me.  Couldn't I take the story of Bernard dying, divide it up into gobbets (that was the word she used) and distribute them as illustrative material here and there in the text of the original.

Er . . . no.

That book has found a different publisher now, who also requires some re-writing to turn the story of my heart into suitable product, but who at least have not made the mistake of suggesting that I hawk up the story of my husband dying in gobbets.

I sometimes wonder about products, and target markets, and 'building a platform', and all the ways my wise agent tries to coax me into entering the Human Race.  But in the end I can find nothing inside me to write but the story of my heart, and life as I have seen it to be so far.

What brought all this to mind was a story my daughter Fi told us about over supper last night.  I'll give you a link in a minute.  If you follow the link, it takes you to Tim MacCartney's page where you have to select 'The River Man Story' from the list of stories on the left at the top there.  The River Man Story is the tale that set me thinking about stories of the heart.  Here's the link.

From Beth's blog

From time to time I like to catch up with what y'all have been up to, and I take a little cruise through the 'Blogs I Love Visiting' listed down in the side-bar there.


Today I really enjoyed reading this post about going beyond our usual grazing pastures to enrich our faith in unfrequented territories.  It's from the new blog 12 Steps To Church; at the present time (maybe because it's so new?) I am having trouble fixing the link in the sidebar list, but I'll try again in a day or two.


And I took a while to reflect on what Julie had said about real, inner beauty here.


Then I read about Beth's delicious tomatoes, and shared her family walk at the streamside on the post that had this utterly fabdoodle pic:

Don't you just love them? And do you notice, beard/no-beard - they have the same smile!  That is so cool!  Thanks, Beth! 

Mothers, teachers, hairdressers, the doctor's, the library: fear of so many and so much. The end of the day.

There.  That's better.  Nice big writing.  

I finished the book I have been writing, today.  It's gone off for its first editorial, to the kindly (but beady-eyed) Badger.  Next it goes to Julie Faraway for perusal.  Then it goes off to the publisher on its Journey of Hope and Pitiful Optimism.

I think it's come up good, but I'm so tired and wrecked after the tossing seas of Grim Concentration Against All The Odds that it's quite hard to say.  I'll see what the Badger and Julie Faraway tell me when they've Inspected.

But peering dimly to see what was left inside after the book is all done, I felt a bit surprised to see fear.  Fear of what?  Oddly, fear of my mother coming upstairs.

Let me explain.

I have this problem with having haircuts.  Afterwards, the hairdo always looks fine, very pretty - but it looks like a hairdo still, not like a person.  It never feels like me.  And very little time elapses before I think "I don't want this", and chop off a bit here and a bit there with the sewing scissors, until it looks more normal, more hacked about and less professional; more actually me.  And that's what I did today.

Now, when I was about . . . ooh, maybe five or six . . . I decided to cut my hair.  After I cut it, I was scared.  My mother would come upstairs and see.  So I stuck it back on again with sellotape.  Funnily enough, she noticed anyway.  She was neither thrilled nor filled with admiration.

My life has lurched unsteadily from day one through this landscape of threatening looming disapproval, the OMG What Have I Done of so many inadvisable Bids For Independence and ill-judged Acts Of Self-Expression.  Though by nature timid and reclusive somehow Trouble has followed me with its Terrible Nose on the scent of my vanishing fear.  It knows.  It finds me.

I joined a library, but I forgot to take my book back and then my card went mouldy, and I never dared go back again after that.  This would be about . . . ooh . . . nineteen years ago?

I'd go to the doctor for pre-natal check-ups, and he'd look down his nose at me and say: "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Mrs Wilcock."  He also thought I was Very Tall.  I'm not really. Only five foot seven.  If you don't count the flamey bits and the wings.  When my first child was born, the consultant did his Grand Tour of Frank Shaw Ward saying "That's What I Call A Baby" etcetera: until he came to me.  "What did you have?" he asked.  I was polite.  I didn't say, "A baby, duh!  Dork."  I said, "A girl."

"Ah!" he said, with but the faintest hint of a sneer: "Another one to argue and fight with the doctors."  That was where he went wrong, really.  I just said: "Yes."

And teachers . . . oh, glory . . .  "You have passed the point of no return"; "Penelope's attitude has been a little more pleasant this term" - and it was all downhill from there, really . . .  

The trouble with the hair is if I ever go back.  Trembling with horror and disdain, the artiste combs into the air a skein of my scratchy wool.  "Who cut this?" the ominous questions begin:  "This looks as though it has been cut with a razor!!" (Yes.  The Badger's.)

I have left school, praise be to God on high.  I have left the library.  I guard my health like the Crown Jewels and stay as far away from the doctor's surgery as life will permit.  My mother's kindly, guiding light of disapproval reminds me I am still alive and this still must be me.  And I've blown it with the hairdresser now haven't I?  I will never dare go back.  Have to just let it grow again, I guess.

Oh!  That's better still!  You were there all the time! I can see you now!

Fractionally calmer...

. . . at this end of the day.

Back up to speed.  Interferences zapped for the moment.


Conscious of loving prayer making the difference, as it always does.


Will start back on work in hand when I wake up in the morning.


Word of another book contract today, from my agent - but that will have to wait until September to think about.


Now going to make a cup of tea and watch The Fox and the Child.  Here's the trailer.

How to do love.

I love this man.  Every time I look at this photo, my heart does a little flip.

He and I had a brief email correspondence this morning (he works away in Oxford during the week, and comes home at weekends).

I had a haircut on Tuesday.  I haven't had my hair trimmed for two years, so it had got to the Split Ends & All Dried Out From Half-Way Down stage. A length chopped off seemed practical.  And I'd sent a photo to the Badger of his New Wife, for his approval.

Now you should bear in mind that the Badger loves long hair, and when I said I'd be having it cut, a little squawk of distress escaped him.  But the email I sent with the photo of the New Wife received a reply saying "Wow! She's gorgeous xxx", and he rushed off to show it to the editorial secretary, who (wisely) enthused.

He emailed to tell me the editorial secretary added her seal of approval, and I replied saying I was grateful for that, as the day had not been going well - it's raining and change in weather has brought the usual odd result of drivers behaving erratically, rendering road travel more exciting than one might wish; and I'm not quite happy with how my book is going and can't see what I need to do to make it go right; and this morning I weighed myself when I did my exercises only to discover I'd added a pound.  And I was missing him: a lot.  Sigh.

Very shortly I got an email back assuring me that Wii knows nothing, he's sure I can't have put on weight, but he will check me all over very carefully when he comes home, just to make sure.

My Badger is full of kindness.  He is one of the most cheerful, encouraging, supportive people I have ever met.  It's a wonderful thing, being married to someone who knows how to do love.  I consider myself blessed.

Oh - and in case you were curious:

Writing and praying

Hello my friends,

I am trying a new experiment - a bit along the same lines as a 'staycation'.

I am writing a novel that is about two-thirds done and needs another 20,000 words to complete it.  So I've put all other tasks to bed and am taking August to complete the writing, having undertaken to submit the manuscript to my publisher for their approval in September.

I'm pleased with what I've done on it so far, and want to really concentrate on getting this last third of the book right.

I will be so grateful if you have the time to pray for me in the writing of this book.

Most especially, if you are able to pray for me, what I need is the following:

1) Inspiration.  I know where I am going with the book - it's not ideas I need - but inspiration in the divine sense, so that what I write will be a channel of God's grace and goodness, capable of touching people's hearts lightly in a way that turns their lives to blessing.

2) Discernment, both in my writing and in my life choices.  Though I can put in place firm barriers between myself and most of the world, I always stop and pay attention when my family needs me.  Sometimes it is not clear to me when something needs my attention and when it does not.  The books I write are not for entertainment only, they are spiritual and therefore active - live - in terms of Holy Spirit ministry.  This means that I can guarantee that the minute I begin to really focus on writing, some new thing that wasn't even on the horizon before, and that I don't see how I can possibly get out of responding to, will come up and DEMAND my attention.  True to form, this is happening already.  Today is the 31st July.  I had worked as hard and fast as I know how to get everything necessary sorted and seen to by today, so that from August 1st I am absolutely clear to focus on writing.  And guess what?  This evening, something that was not even a whisper on the wind yesterday has cropped up in my family, urgently clamouring for my attention, that will involve me significantly, is requiring a couple of hours out of tomorrow, and will continue to do so for the next few weeks.   The problem is not so much the hours it will take up, as that writing fiction needs total concentration, and these random things that arise shatter my concentration completely, so that I can't write well if at all.  I will be grateful if you can pray for discernment in knowing how to turn down these interruptions without causing hurt and offence, as well as recognising them for what they are, and if you can also pray a forcefield around me to keep them from invading my ability to concentrate.

Thank you so much, friends.  May be in touch through August - if not; see you in September.

If anyone has read my new book The Hardest Thing To Do, I would be so grateful if you could spare the time to review it on Amazon.

xxx Pen

Does the name Erspamer mean anything to you?

OK - I know - I know - it's a tad early to be thinking about Christmas!  But bear with me; I can explain everything!

A few months ago I was given the honour and privilege of being allowed to become our church's Parochial Church Council secretary.  What does this mean?  Can you guess?  Right first time! Lots and lots and LOTS of paperwork.  Do I like paperwork?  That depends.  I do if it's pretty and it's fun - which it is if it has pictures.

So the minute I had been let loose on the unsuspecting Church Council, the name Erspamer came to mind.  Well, that's not strictly true.  I thought "Wait a minute... who's that guy... the one with the amazing clipart for every season of the church's year... the guy whose clipart Real Live Preacher always had on his website...?"

So I Googled and reminded myself of the artist's name - Steve Erspamer - then I Googled in earnest to find out where I could get his clipart.

I was a bit horrified to discover that it was going for the price of hens' teeth on Amazon, on account of apparently having gone out of print.  Steve Erspamer's clipart is sold in three volumes: Clipart for Year A, Clipart for Year B and Clipart for Year C, following the Scripture readings and the traditional feasts and fasts of the Catholic three-year lectionary cycle.

I managed to get Clipart for Year A at a reasonable price from an Amazon second-hand retailer, then found the Year B and Year C books for sale at Borders - again at a reasonable price.  Each book gives pictures of all the clipart, and a CD-ROM for use with PC and MAC so the clipart can be used for parish handouts etc - or, in my case, for the agendas and minutes of the PCC and the Standing Committee, being the limit so far of my playground.

Then guess what?  Borders went out of business.  Before they had a chance to process my order.  Oh no!  Back to the drawing board. At least I had the Year A book though, and as it actually is Year A at the moment, that was OK.

So nothing deterred I went and searched again.  And this time I found McCrimmons.  Oh, happy day!!  I searched their site for Erspamer and ta-da!  All three books cheaper than anywhere else!  Proper new copies, so no anxieties like you get with buying secondhand in case they've lost the CD or the presbytery puppy has chewed up the first 25 pages.

But that wasn't all I found under 'Erspamer' at McCrimmons.  I found Something Else.  They had this Advent calendar that he has made, wondrous and beautiful and amazing.  It is eighteen inches high (or you can get a shorter twelve-inch one), and folds into three vertically with a sticky tab to fix it, so that it stands up like a triangular house.  I am not describing this well.  Do you know what I mean?  Look:

And it doesn't have only twenty-four doors to open, because it's for Christmas-tide - the whole Christmas story of the coming of Jesus - not just Advent.  So it has forty doors to open!

In the triangular column you create by fixing it together and standing it up (though if you want you could just fold it out flat and fix it up against a window), you could stand candles (better the electric sort so you don't inadvertently reduce it to ashes halfway through the first week of Advent).  As you open each door, the beautiful pictures revealed are on paper like greaseproof paper, so they are like stained glass windows.  Here's one:

Can you see the writing revealed on the inside of the doors as you open them?  The right-hand one is a quotation from the Gospel of Luke, and the left-hand one is a quotation from Deuteronomy.  It's for Day 16.

From Luke 2:5-6

Joseph went up to Bethlehem to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  While they were there the time came for her to deliver her child.

What I really like about that is that it says child.  Because it will be a child who is opening the doors - so, 'a child - like me!'

And from Deuteronomy 10:18-19:

The Lord loves the stranger, providing them with food and clothing. You shall love the stranger, for you yourself were once strangers in the land of Egypt. 

I haven't peeped into the other doors, because I want them to stay closed for a surprise when Advent comes - I just wanted to show you one, so you'd know what the calendar is like.

But wait - that's not all!  There's this as well:

A booklet of readings and prayers by Craig M.Mueller to use with Steve Erspamer's calendar, so the opening of each door becomes a short devotional ceremony.

The booklet starts with an explanatory introduction covering issues like different traditions in different churches.

Then there's a Note to Parents with some suggestions for enriching and extending the calendar devotions with candles, and Advent wreath etc.

Then there's a page headed 'Daily Prayer' which gives a very short liturgy to make a daily framework into which the prayers and readings will fit.

After that come the readings and prayers.

Here are the ones for December 16th:

Think of some trips you have taken.  How long did you travel?  Did you go in a train, car or airplane, or by some other way?  Did it take a long time to get there?

Before Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem.  When they got to Bethlehem, there was no place for them to stay.

Advent is a time to make room.  We pray that this Christmas there would be room in our hearts for Jesus to be born.

Let us pray.

Loving God,

prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus.

In our busy lives

help us to make room for your love.

In Jesus' name we pray.  Amen.

If you have a manger scene, put it up today.  Put out the animals and the manger.  Put the shepherds nearby, in the field watching their flocks.  Between now and Christmas Eve have Mary and Joseph travel closer each day to the manger.

Some days just have prayers and readings, and the opening of the calendar door. Other days have additional activities suggested.

Here is a close-up picture of part of the calendar:

And another:

Now - how fab is that?!!!

Oh - and my order from McCrimmons not only came really really quick, it was the best wrapped parcel I have ever had through the post - bar none!  And as the Royal Mail do a sterling job at mashing the corners of books sometimes, I felt very grateful to McCrimmons for that.

One thing I should tell you.  Because this is a Catholic publication, extreme Protestants who find Marian feasts offensive may not like everything in the clipart or the calendar devotions.  But you can choose and improvise, in such case.

Here's Joseph in his many-coloured coat from the Year B clipart:

All the clipart is free to copy without acknowledgement if you want to use it for a parish or school or similar.  But you have to write away for the publisher's permission if it's going to be used on something you will be selling.
The introduction to the clipart book says: Liturgical images can educate as well as illustrate.  They teach without words.  They tell stories, evoke moods, and remind us of things we almost forgot.  The images in this book do even more: they can lead us into the lectionary, into the scriptures and psalms and even the spirit of the liturgy.  They can lead us into mystery.


Well!  Is that all fab?  Is the Pope a Catholic?

The calendar is called the Fling Wide The Doors Calendar:

The copyright of all materials is with Liturgy Training Publications of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

"You whose day it is, make it beautiful"

The title of this blog post is a quotation, said to be Navaho, that I came across I can't remember where or when - only that I loved it; and I have always remembered it.

This day, my daughter Alice gave me a beautiful thing she made for me - calligraphy by Alice on paper made by Alice.  How fab is that?

The calligraphy is a quotation from a song called It Couldn't Be Better by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, whose music we love.  My children grew up with an album of theirs that we had - on vinyl disc in those days of course.  When they were little, they used to write and draw on the wall sometimes, and that was not surprising because so did I.

I took a big marker pen and wrote on the chimney breast in the kitchen, over the woodstove there, a quotation from that Ozark Mountain Daredevils album:
There's a fire in the stove
Keeping out the cold
Warming wine and winters and babies and home.
(song here)

Seems the habit runs in the family :0D

God bless you, Alice.  It's so beautiful.

And here on the south coast of England, it's a beautiful day.

Yesterday had something beautiful in it too.  The Badger's grandson, his daughter's child, has just arrived, a little further north in Kent, and we were able to visit him yesterday, just two days old.  May he walk in blessing all his days on this earth, may Christ walk with him, the Lord watch over him, and angels guard his way.  May he be happy in life, and may he be free.  May his home be full of love and full of laughter.  May peace reign in his heart, strength and wisdom in his soul, integrity in his spirit and shalom in his body.  Go, little baby!  The earth hath need of thee.

You, whose day it is - make it beautiful.

:0)

xxx

House Names

I wish we had a name for our house.

In Aylesbury I called our house Hagia Sofia (Greek.  Means 'holy wisdom'), though the name never really stuck with the Badger, so we mostly called it 27 Tindal Road.

When I lived in a tiny 2-roomed apartment in Hastings I called it Gezellig, because that's what my friend Carien, visiting from the Netherlands, said it was.  Gezellig, she said, means comfortable, but also like a place that has soul.  It used to be an Old English word too - going back into and before the Dark Ages now -  where its form was gesaelig, meaning ensouled, overtones of the holy.  'Saelig' morphed into 'silly', which meant innocent back then.  It came to mean foolish and lightheaded because people born with learning disability were seen as holy innocents - silly - soul-people.

When I sold my apartment I bought a lovely little house - cosy and homely and friendly.  The perfect house, I thought (still do).  At the time our Fi was working down in Dorset in a retreat house, and to get there we had to drive along Godsblessing Lane.  I loved that name.  So I called the new house Godsblessing House.  Grace lives there now (sounds appropriate!).

Then we came to this house.  I've had various ideas for its name, but it isn't just my house, and all my suggestions have been received with indifference at best. Hmm.

We were talking about this yesterday over supper, when I said High Dudgeon would be a good name for a house.  In fact there could be a whole street. Ivory Tower could be next door.  Hebe thought one of the houses might be called Coventry. Alice named one of them Side Partings .  I think one of them might be called The Sticks - or, for the classically trained and pretentious, The Styx.  And I suppose there'd inevitably be some nouveau riche honeymoon couple move in who would lower the tone of the whole street by calling their house Kenbarbie.

Eating For Victory

Now then, food!  What do I eat, someone asked.

I learned a lot from macrobiotics, but basically it was too complicated for me, and had too many of the tiresome characteristics of a fully-fledged religion, enough to bring on terminal hardening of the oughteries.  So I stashed its basic principles in a spare set of brain cells along with a note-to-self about miso soup, scallions and seaweed – all of which I, unaccountably, find delicious; and then kind of morphed off from macrobiotics and left it in the Admirable But Hard pile.

However Tom Monte’s book Unexpected Recoveries has a most brilliant section on eating for health.  If you ever see that book going at a reasonable price on the internet, oh buy it buy it buy it!  It is just the best.  His advice on food is full of macrobiotic wisdom, but like a bird regurgitating worms for its chicks because they’re too young to handle them in full-on wriggly format, so Tom Monte has processed the diet info we need to know and dished it up in a form the Normal Human Bean can understand.  He gives you the low-down on everything you need to know about eating to stay well – and the bottom line of that is, fruit, veg, whole-grains and beans.

Next I came across The China Study, which sings the same tune.  Colin Campbell recommends (in The China Study) what he describes as a ‘plant-based diet’, which for some reason I find easier to conceptualise than ‘vegan’ – possibly because ‘vegan’ has all kind of guilt-trip associations for me for reasons I’ll go into some other time or we’ll be here all night.  Asked wistfully by some enquirer if eating fish is OK, Colin Campbell says w-e-l-l…. not r-e-a-l-l-y… because fish is more like meat than it is like plants, and eating plants is what keeps you well.  However Tom Monte says a bit of fish is OK if you don’t go mad with it (standard macrobiotic advice).  I find this immensely helpful for eating out, because rare indeed is the restaurant that will dish up vegan wholefood, but fish and seasonal vegetables, or fish salad, or fish on wholegrain bread, are relatively easy to come by.  

I used to drink fruit juices quite a bit until I saw Robert Lustig’s YouTube video about fructose, that spells out unforgettably exactly why and how the body metabolises fructose like fat – so soda and fruit juice are contributing massively to the obesity epidemic of present times.  I haven’t had a glass of fruit juice or soda since I saw it.

So what do I eat?

I start the day with a cup of nettle tea if my long-suffering Badger is home to make it for me.  If he isn’t (and sometimes even if he is) I get up and do my WiiFit exercises, then have a glass of water and 4 Spirulina tablets (steer clear of the gag-worthy ghastly powder form of it) and do whatever needs doing before my body has chilled out again from the exercise and I feel like breakfast.  The Spirulina is g-r-r-reat!  Without it I get low and fretful and start wanting to eat meat and fish.  With it I hum along cheerfully with lots of energy and no cravings.   It has protein – as in, loadsa protein.  It laughs in derision at T-bone steak.

Breakfast – home-made muesli with a chopped banana and unsweetened soya milk.  I make my own muesli rather than getting a branded mix, because they mostly have wheat in.  I don’t want too much wheat because it swells up body tissues.  On the plus side, it does make you feel full.  But also oat grain is soothing in its personality, good for the nerves and calming all-round.  So I make muesli from 2 bags of what I call ‘horse oats’ (the chunky, uncompromising ones not the fluffy ones), one bag of best mixed nuts, one bag of mixed fruit and nuts, a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds – and, if I think to get any, some cacao nibs and some ground almonds.  It’s DELICIOUS!!!  

Lunch, I have a salad sandwich.  That’s medium sliced wholemeal bread, with the thinnest imaginable scraping of vegan marg, then some (but not loads of) houmous on top of that (on both slices of bread), then bits of tomato, radish, pepper, cucumber and lettuce.  Clamp it all together and nom nom nom…

Mid-afternoon my teeth get bored, but there is good news!  Nairns oatbiscuits are made of whole-grain oats and are small and not too sweet, and have only about 45 calories.  So I can have two, then, right?  With a cup of nettle or dandelion tea.  If I’ve eaten all the oat biscuits I raid the bag of dried fruit and nut from the stash ready for making muesli – but only a handful, mind!  Or I might have an orange or some cherries.

Then supper is something cooked.  Maybe a bean curry with brown rice, or steamed veggies with soya sausages in onion gravy, or wholewheat pasta with vegetables in a rich tomato sauce.  Something like that.  I never cook from recipe books because I can’t be bothered and probably don’t have the ingredients.

IMPORTANT THINGS:

Marigold Bouillon mix is fab and tasty and good for you.  It’s our basic flavouring dooberry.

Fresh herbs are culinary salvation and grace.  We grow LOADS.  Tasty tasty yum yum.

The reason many people hate vegetables is because they buy the wrong ones.  They get the cheapest sort available in the supermarket.  Organic, home-grown, or farmers’ market veggies are a whole different ball game – they are of the most swoon-worthy delicion.  Yum yum with bells on.

A pressure cooker is good, especially for cooking the pulses in double-quick time.  The modern ones no longer come with inbuilt terror.

Sometimes a special luxury sinful treat is called for.  Here’s one.  Get the blender out (as is smoothie-maker type of thing).  Hoof into it a good big lump of vegan ice-cream (we have Swedish Glace because it’s delicious and the others are disgusterous), a slug of maple syrup, and a heaped teaspoonful of instant coffee granules dissolved in as little boiling water as it takes to do it.  Glug on some of your unsweetened soy milk.  Then whizz it all up together for about a minute.  Et voilà!  The world’s best coffee milk-shake.  But do not be seduced into drinking this every day!  Remember what Robert Lustig says about sugar, and tremble.

Drink a lot.  Sometimes when your body is whingeing at you, it means thirsty not hungry.  Eat a lot of soup and juicy stuff.


I don’t understand the body chemistry rational for this (the liver releasing glycogen?  The nervous system releasing endorphins?  I just don’t know), but I have found that a ten-minute run does the same as a snack; stops me feeling hungry, makes me feel energised and cheerful.  Why?  Dunno.  But it does.

OK I spec you’re bored now, so I’ll stop.

PS - I do know I mentioned The China Study, Unexpected Recoveries & Robert Lustig's video before - but they are pearls of great price to me and to you - worth reiterating!  xxx