The Joy of Less

Not a sequel to that famous 1970s classic, the Joy of Sex. Or maybe there is one - the Joy of Less Sex.
Anyway, the Joy of Less as in buying and using less, making do, etc in this time where increasingly I feel we won't have much choice in the relatively near future - might as well get used to it now. And it's nice; gives a great feeling of satisfaction and not being taken in by supermarkets and the like.
So. Less.
I've always been quite good at Less with regard to cooking - instilled probably during wilderness student days coupled with a slight laziness about buying ingredients. My mother was also queen of making-do, mainly as she absolutely had to. These things do get absorbed . . . my son rang me yesterday while he was preparing an evening salad! Yes!
Today: Slight glance at dust-covered recipe books . . . yawn. What 's in the cupboard/veg basket.' Oo, look, garlic, a leek, a potato, half an aubergine a few mushrooms and . . .' quick look in fridge . . . 'yep we have cheese and yogurt. That'll do.' This comes under the heading of one-pan cooking in our household. I've probably blogged about it before as it's so useful.
How to do it - serves two, or more, or less depending what else you can find/ want to leave for tomorrow's 'what's in the cupboard' gastronomic experience.
Fry garlic and leek in big frying pan, chop up mushrooms, aubergine, or whatever other veg is available, add to pan, sauté for a bit, add a layer of very thin sliced potato, bit of white wine/sherry, seasoning, put lid on and let it simmer for about ten minutes, then add dollops of yogurt and or cream, and crumbled cheese. Put lid on and go and do something else for ten minutes. Just check the pan hasn't dried out from time to time, add water/lemon juice/soy sauce if so. Ready.
Serve at the table or if you're on your own you can eat it direct from the pan. Yes, I do this sometimes, while watching a youtube about collapsology, permaculture or something appalling in French about millionaires spending habits - just for language instruction, of course.
One pan. One fork. Almost no washing up. New project! Useful, if rather thin, cookery book?

                  

My other no-waste achievement today was to make a protecting bag for my novel when I hike around London bookshops with it. I had thought about buying one of those laptop bags but there isn't a shop locally that sells such things.
I'd wandered around the house for a while looking for a solution. Knitting one? No wool, and I can't remember how to cast on anyway.
Make one out of . . . hm. Old shirt/duvet cover? No, something thicker, more protective. At the bottom of the jumper cupboard I found a small embroidered rectangular blanket, an item that has travelled around with me forever though various moves but has never had a use. It had been, apparently, my cot blanket - crafted from a big, much-darned blanket by my grandmother. How perfect. A recycled thing I could recycle and use for my book which is largely concerned with recycling. And I found a 'I've Been to London' cloth badge in Mark's mother's old sewing box. Bit of ribbon from the wrapping box . . . done.
I might have to go and buy a cake to celebrate, however. Ah. Not needed, Mark's made one out of things he found in the cupboard.

                             

Suddenly a brighter day

Following on from last post . . . brighter for me anyway.
Interesting that a most magnificent rainbow had arched over our house just before the postman turned up and delivered a large blue sack containing a box within which were four copies of my novel, Londonia.

Thanks Tartarus Press. They look awesome, in the real sense of the word.







To pre-order:http://www.tartaruspress.com/hardy%2c-kate-a-londonia.html

Metaphor

It's a grimy, greasy day today and far from the Union-jacketed persons crowding London's streets drunken with Brexit, we've done it! hysteria, I took a walk down to the banks of the river Aude to document the havoc caused by 'natural causes' - excessive rainfall (which would have previously been snow before recent accelerating climate warming) and partial opening of a dam higher up in the mountains.



The metaphor being, destruction: uprooting and huge damage, but not by something out of our (humans) control, but by something chosen - and unfairly.
It just feels so sad. Both our poor root-revealled/fallen trees along the river, and that fact we have managed to extricate ourselves from a union which, although flawed, at its center had major human ideas of protection, trade, movement of citizens, and, crucially to guard against future happenings of which our older inhabitants remember all too well.
(See link to moving short film projected on the cliffs of Dover by the admirable 'Led By Donkeys')

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/led-by-donkeys-brexit-message-1-6492234

So, the documentation of toppled trees, containers moved several hundred yards from their original place as part of the canoe club, and the remaining evidence of the full force of nature in its river form - huge scoured bowls full of rocks and sand.
I had stood on the old bridge during the day of the actual flood and had watched, along with many other people in a strange silent glazed state as the brown waters rose and trees cracked and broke against the ancient stonework, knowing as we all did that there was nothing that any of us puny humans could do about it.










   

The past uncovered

And only because the garage flooded.
Mark went in there yesterday to get his bike out and came back hurriedly, face pale: 'catastrophe!' It was as unfortunately a lot of his music stuff was in there and is now fairly saturated. The other things that got part-submerged were folders of artwork - nothing valuable monetarily just artworks from ours and child's respective pasts.
Staring at my own sodden photographs, drawings and paintings I was seized with the urge to bin it all, so I did, holding back on a few things for . . . what? Nostalgia? we never look any of the folders' contents. Maybe it's just a certain security in knowing our pasts are there should we ever need physical reminders.
Mark's still going through his stuff and the purge-frenzy is not happening; most of it is laid out in front of the fire slowly crinkling into parchments from the 70s and 80s. Ezra's (son) art from age of four or so are more difficult to bin even though most of the pictures have leached into strange unintentional renditions of the aurora borealis. I've kept quite a lot especially the ones with surreal titles such as:
'very special piano and some chocolate,' a landscape with a tiny lawnmower, ' and 'a bus stop and people waiting at a bus stop and an acorn cup.'
Other casualties of the flood were all my documentation of the Wirksworth festival back in the early 90s; something I was very involved in for several years. Again, do I need all this anyway? Ezra won't want it when we've shuffled off this beleaguered planet. I've dried a few mementos and the rest of it's gone to the dump, the images of the actual event still fresh in my mind.
Possibly the best thing to do is document some of it, put it on a blog and make it into a book - which I did do with the last ten year's worth of life-recording. Yes, think I'll do that.
So, a few pictures.



Some of the rescued stuff before investigation



Drying. From the left: one of Mark's from Secondary school, one of my Beasti paintings  (Alfi Beastie's, Don't Eat That' book) something me and Ezra did when he was titchy, and another Ezra painting.

                        

                          A pencil drawing I did on art foundation. No idea who it was.



A later Ezra work - about fourteen?



A cartoon of our Geography teacher for secondary school rag. I can't recall his name now.

Four legs good, three legs better

This bloggist is very, very sad to announce the death of our tiny, runty dog, Satie, who has featured frequently on this blog.

                        

Rarely can there be such a tiny being with such an enormous character. Rescued from a life of ridicule, he entered and then guarded the Hot-House compound with bristling fearlessness. Ridicule?
Somewhat, yes.
Satie was purchased at half-price from the only Italian greyhound breeder in this region; half-price as he had a pointy chest, was extra small and would therefore never be shown. Nicknamed Bébé, his pedigree name had been 'Donatello des Tendre Calins' - Donatello of the soft cuddles . . . we were having none of it and he was re-named Satie after the composer who, apparently only wore grey velvet suits, this minute dog, resembling at the time, a scrap of grey velvet.
I think he imagined himself to be the size of a doberman and was fearless, barking furiously at any dog that threatened the pack (at that time, us, and a rescue Italian greyhound from SPA called Una)
He fulfilled utterly his breed's mission - to snuggle with the owners (apparently, they were bred to warm the beds of the Italian courtiers) on the sofa under many blankets without seeming to need oxygen.
He was loyal, loving, manic as if constantly on a small dose of speed; at times infuriating with his staccato bark, demanding to be let out-in-out-in-out-in, etc, and always there to be mused over - why are his ears so big? and his teeth? how can his legs be so skinny?
Eluding to legs, a major event in his life was losing one during a play-fight with our bruiser cat Bronzino about seven years ago. After several operations to try and mend the limb it was decided that it would have to go, and it did, leaving after a short time, a fur covered stump which would still move with as much manic-ness as the rest of him.
He coped admirably, accepting, as most dogs do, the loss within a short time and he continued to maintain his angry stance, seeing off other hounds whatever their size.

            

He could walk/hop for hours; even just a few weeks ago he had managed a hike of four hours with us up to the top of the small mountain viewable from our garden. Except he would no longer be able to see the mountain; the cataracts were getting worse. He'd also had most of his teeth out, leaving him with a demented grin.
Dog of a catalogue of operations . . . broken tail, the leg, the teeth removal, near death through poison-eating, near-death through eating a bee . . . but dog of such determination and strength despite it all.
Losing a pet is always tragic, especially one of such tremendous character. But I somehow feel he will always be with us, hopping along on a walk with his funny tri-cornered gait, wrapped in his favourite orange blanket or sitting in the sun on the doormat with that grin and half-closed smily eyes.

R.I.P,  Satie. Aka: Runty, Tripod (thanks, Alvin) Tyne, Sat-Nav. 17/1/2020

           

The writer's road

                                                

Mine has been fairly long, vertiginous and with various pot-holes but I've definitely got to a happy destination with Tartarus Press.
Londonia, is now live on their site - link below. I feel proud to be one of their authors and to have my story enclosed in one of their elegant cream book bindings.
The novel can be pre-ordered on their site, and we will be holding a launch in March. Details to follow.

                                               
This incredible painting by Karl Fitzgerald has been chosen for the cover.



http://tartaruspress.com/hardy%2c-kate-a-londonia.html

Trump is an environmentalist

Madness. I know. But after looking at what he has achieved in the last few days, and everything else he has contributed to our only home's future (no, we are not going to go and colonise another planet - or at least 99.9% of us are not) I wonder if perhaps his real agenda is to completely break everything down. Utterly. For the planet to heal without humans digging away at it, adding useless bits to it, turning the oceans' waters into plastic particles. Maybe, he realises it's the only way. Smash it all down. Start again.
Perhaps leave a few golf courses though, just for nostalgia and the occasional putt - him shuffling around the green in his recycled flax all-in-one regulation garment clutching a hand-carved peasant niblick to then climb back onto the donkey-powered golf caddy.
No. Not really . . .  It's evident he, and the others of his ilk, don't give a shit. More than that they only give a fleeting, money-god shit; one that will last until their miserable sad lives fade away and their new existence in a Hieronymus Bosch vision of Hell begins to play out.
Hoo.
I need a cup of tea. And I have to fill in the application forms for French nationality. Thanks Cameron, Johnson, etc.
But on a quieter note . . . what to do when rankled by all this madness. Walk, look at the real stuff, create a small wilderness if you are able to, or even a mass of pots on a balcony for the bees and birds. My NY resolution. To do more of this. When we move, I want to buy a house with an oversized piece of land and let it do its thing; help it do its thing without creating too much unwanted intervention.
I admire writer Paul Kingsnorth for many reasons; link below to an interesting Youtube on his theories about re-wilding amongst many things.
Happy New Year, btw.
One of my strongest memories from that usually busy, food and drink filled day of the turning year will be stopping in a motorway services to stretch our legs. We had watched a robin flit about the little patch of woodland that had been left to re-wild itself between the whirr and grind of traffic and mass consumption within the ugly services building housing a million things that none of us need.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_s8Vo00Xug&vl=en