lifestyle – Page 11 – don't confuse the narrator

modern manners

I’ve been to several poetry readings in the last couple of weeks, including an anthology launch where I was among the readers, and one by the elderly New Zealand poet C.K. Stead.

The launch lunch for The Apple Anthology (published by Nine Arches Press) was a fairly casual event, with a number of readers, and a varied audience eager to sample the cider, sandwiches – and inevitable apples.

The other events, though, were more formal and I was disconcerted to see people in the audience tapping away at their smart phones and laptop keyboards when I thought they should be listening. (That’s why I chose the photo of the owl, an eminently educated bird, with those marvellously disapproving eyebrows I can never hope to match however much I frown on modern youth.)
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food for thought

With their pristine kitchens and artfully messy family rooms, IKEA homes always make me feel inadequate. Somehow the simple storage solutions aren’t enough to help me keep my house in order, though I admit that’s my problem, not theirs.

Still, there doesn’t seem much hope that spending a small fortune on stackable storage units and designer drawers will improve matters, so when I picked up a copy of the catalogue, rather than thumbing through and compiling a wish-list, I stopped to ponder the cover, which in itself provides a host of images to question and wonder at.
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Firstly, there’s the mystery on the top shelf: what on earth are those little newspaper cones?

Are they purely decorative? Are they an unfinished children’s school project – miniature Christmas trees, perhaps, waiting to be painted green? Are they paper cloches keeping seeds in the dark? (If so, wouldn’t they just collapse when watered?)

Then there are all those Kilner jars. Well, OK, they’re from IKEA, so they are Korken, not Kilner, but it’s much the same thing.

But what are they being used for? Those onions aren’t pearl onions, the tiny white ones I associate with pickling; they’re too big even to be shallots; so why have they been put in jars? They should surely be hanging in the shed with the air circulating to keep them dry and fresh over the winter.

Bottling lemons seems quite reasonable in comparison. Except I thought you bottled them in brine or vinegar or sugar syrup. It’s all very well having an air-tight seal on the jar, but unless the fruit or veg is submerged in some kind of liquid, I don’t think it’ll keep.

Then there are all those unlabelled bottles on the bottom shelves: is that jewel-bright liquid raspberry cordial or home-made wine? In this family-friendly environment – is it family-friendly with all those heavy glass jars within easy reach of little hands? – I suspect the former.

And don’t get me started on the carrots. There are two full shelves of carrots in jars as well as the great crate-full under the trolley on the left. My mother used to say that eating my carrots would make my hair curl; it seems to have been more successful for the little girl in the picture than it was for me.

They say fine words butter no parsnips, but, fine words or not, IKEA apparently bottle them. And turnips, too, judging from the pile on the table. (I assume the mother has just dashed out to get another hundred pounds worth or so of jars. I hope there’s an adult in the house to keep an eye on that child – after all, a trip to IKEA takes a minimum of half a day even if you only go for one thing.)

I do know about preserving soft fruits and vegetables, but it had never occurred to me that root vegetables should be bottled. IKEA seem to think they should be: carrots, turnips, parsnips… but no swedes. I wonder why.

the afterwash

After travel comes washing. As I hung out the second load this morning, I remembered this short poem from a few years ago.

Monday

Wind paunches the belly
of a wifebeater while
blue-black denims drip.
The kitchen drain belches suds
and she ponders ironing
white collars.

coordination

As I understand it (confirmed from doing some reading on the Wildflowers-and-weeds website) lots of flowers such as thistles and dandelions are not really single flowers, but composite flower heads made up of many tiny individual florets.

neighbours and other animals

When we first moved here, the village seemed to be home to a surfeit of satanic and unholy animals. Some belonged to neighbours, some were just wild visitors.

Emilio had a half a dozen goats and his lad used to herd them across the unfenced part of our land to graze in the olive grove: an enduring image is that of a sleek black goat poised, watchful, on a rock or stone wall, or up on two legs under an olive tree. ( I am glad to say that despite the ease with which he assumed this vertical posture, I never heard the horned one speak.)
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