Cake number . . . 2,392

I like these sort of calculations: how many months might I have spent standing in postoffice/tax offices/supermarket queues/waiting for a tyre to be changed; how many months in bed - or years, rather; how much time drinking tea? how many weeks listening to The Four Seasons while waiting to be connected to insurance companies/banks/electricity providers, etc.
Then there are the more interesting calculations: how many times must I have walked down our road into town and back? in thirteen years - say four times a week, on average - 52x4 =208, thirteen years  =2,704, probably round it up to 3,000. Considering the previous house-owners reckoned they had done the meander around fifteen times in eighteen years (they were very fond of their BMW) - I think we're doing pretty well, walking wise.
And onto Mark's cakes, at least since I've known him - twenty-three years.
Probably on average (very vague calculation following) he makes a cake twice a week.
104 cakes a year x twenty-three years = 2,392 . . . cakes. Not to mention all the bread, Parkin, flapjacks, etc.

This was one of his best, but then I often say that - they are nearly always amazing.




The only two failures I can recall: a beetroot cake and a Neanderthal version of a Battenburg.

ten years have got behind you

no one told you when to run . . . a great and poignant lyric from Time - Pink Floyd.
It's true, time does just melt away - hours, minutes, days, months and years. How to remember all the things that did happen, all the greats, goods and downright miserables - photographs, films, blogs, etc, and diaries.
I used to keep a little diary of the days back around the time of Dark Side of the Moon. I found one when clearing out some stuff the other day - tragically boring with mention of platform shoes, Mud and other groups, and occasionally, a reference to some mild groping that might have been going on in my fledgling love life.
Then the habit stopped when I went off to art foundation and never really got taken up again until our son was born on a fouly (if that's a word) dank day in January 1998. Something so utterly monumental (and painful) had to be recorded, along with all the following baby's days, weeks and months of life. And so it continued; the diary habit stuck and a day doesn't pass when I don't dutifully fill in a page, pen sliding across paper sometimes as I head towards sleep.

                             

The first journals were a mix of exercise books, funky handmade things and extra special tomes like the silk-covered one in the photo above, bought at my request when Ezra was born.
In the last few years I have discovered the page-a-week type diary, which although are uniformly dull in appearance, make sense when trying to store all these capturings of the past.
So, what are they like my diaries? Probably like most other people's diaries - a list of daily happenings with occasional excited scrawls at the top of the page: Ezra got a 19 in music, short story accepted for publication, finally understand how to make pastry, been bloody raining for four days non-stop, etc.
In fact the weather thing becomes an important element in later diaries (little sketch of sun/cloud/hail, whatever) along with information: when the first fire of the year was lit or when it was first possible to swim without a limb falling off; when pomegranates were ready for jam-making or when the broad beans were sowed.
However pedestrian the descriptions of each day the fascinating thing is I can open any page of any year and suddenly that day comes back to you, wholly or partially, depending how mind-numbingly boring or incredibly exciting those hours had been.
I'm going upstairs now to unearth one from the attic . . . back in a mo.

Here we are: Saturday 24th March 2012: picture of the sun with estimated temperature of 12 in the morning to 25 in the afternoon. 'Ate on terrace, no fire and the start of the one euro train from Limoux to Carcassonne (an event worth noting!)
'Woke horribly early, went downstairs and tried to sleep with the dogs but Satie (runty dog) snored. Dozed till 6.30, tea, writing, exercises, brek. Loads of jobs, Mark to work, Kim and Chris (friends staying) up at 9.00. Lot of morning chatting which was nice. They left at 2.00 ish, Mark and Ezra went to Carcassonne on new 1 euro train, I did writing, jobs, emptied water butts, weeded, cleaned back of house, phoned Mum. Boys back at 6.30. Writing, bath, Ezra bed, two episodes of Queer as Folk, USA version - brilliant, bed 11.00.'
So, not incredible, but I can remember that day quite clearly and doubt if I ever would have recalled our friends staying in March of that year if I hadn't written about it.
Of course our son will eventually have to decide what to do with all theses millions of badly written pages, but until then, I'll keep a diary, every day.

Post for my brother

Half-brother, actually, but oddly I don't know if it would feel that much different if you were a whole brother . . . which you most certainly are in a different manner of speaking.
Anyway . . . so glad we found each other after all this time. How did that all slip away? no matter, the years have passed, just a few notes in a diary and the odd: 'I wonder where he is now'? sort of thought.
As an only child, to discover I'm not quite so 'only' is a wonderful thing. Come back soon, both of you, and we'll do some more catching up.

twenty minutes

While going to the printers yesterday, I discovered the surface of the road I would normally take had disappeared - took a different road to circumvent the huddle of yellow machinery and found myself lost. Lost in Limoux?
How can this be possible? Ezra and I have walked every inch, surely; gaped at every wood-effect door, and neat, gnome-filled garden and wondered who lives in the houses with the untidy, exciting gardens.
Yes, lost. The no-entry signs were confusing: one way streets for no apparent reason. After a bit of hapless car-wandering I ended up at the municipal cemetery. I thought there was only one in Limoux - on the main road, a solid rectangle of ancient stone tombs. I must admit, although being a fan of death-logements generally, I've never been in that one - something to be rectified.
Anyway . . . I parked and went into the one facing me rather than do the rectifying of going to see the other one . . .
Anyway, as I said: twenty minutes.
Time; an odd thing. You can spend twenty minutes faffing, trying to find where they have moved the tinned tomatoes in a supermarket, or glassily watching a game show, knowing it's crap but not being able to move; or sometimes twenty minutes can become stretched, embedded, something your mind chooses to remember.

time

Oh - the boy person is a just few centimetres short of me - if I stand up straight. I glanced, this morning, at the photo of him I took when he was in the plastic cot next to me in Birmingham maternity ward. Nearly fifteen years ago . . .Where does time go. Evaporates. I'm glad I keep a diary, deadly dull though it is, I can open a page from anytime in the last fifteen years and that day will come to life, the few scrawled words a window onto the few hours we spent walking, eating, laughing, crying - whatever.
Some days stand out; some are dully uniform. The lists may be addressed, or not; we will walk the dogs, music will be practiced, lunch eaten, some attempts to make money, a step closer to the finishing of one or more projects.
I must get out of my furry slippers and velour jog pants and further the day before it, like all the others, becomes another diary page.

River of time

This is a photograph of the sideboard that Mark's dad made, brought back with us from the UK on the recent trip back
He was a truly remarkable man: art lecturer, architect, priest, and early in his years, furniture designer and maker.
This is the only piece that has remained in the family; made in the 1930's out of many different woods, rosewood, walnut, oak and more. I wish I had known Bill, I really only met him in the last few years of his life when he had advanced parkinson's, but I could detect the brilliance and humour still within him.
The sideboard is a precious thing to have in our home, not only as a wonderful example of design from that period, but as a constant reminder of Bill's artistry.
Odd to think that when we are long gone that the sideboard will still be around, perhaps in Ezra's house; I like to think so, along with all the thousands of bits we have amassed. What will he do with them all? What to do with all the personal items we seem to have acquired from Mark's mothers house?
Is she missing any of them where she is now . . ?
This is all far to early in the morning for these thoughts, I'll be onto what is outside the universe in a minute.
To be continued.