Saw a quote yesterday (I think Wendell Berry) which said that the point where you simply don’t know what to do or where to go is the moment where your real life begins. Like most social media posts I can’t find it now, or verify it because it’s sunk under the dead weight of a million more recent postings. I often wonder why we pay so much attention to the zombie-sphere but then, now and again, something important comes up and yesterday’s crystallized something important for me.
Just recently I’ve almost given up listening to the news or scrolling through it on my phone because it makes me unhappy with no prospect of a remedy at hand. Once the morons have taken over there’s nothing left to do but savour the good bits of life and bin the rest.
And last night when we went to bed I was filled with an unexpected kind of happiness. I’ve always been a rather driven kind of person, but over the past few weeks I could sense that something had changed. I no longer have any big projects on my mind. The Potwell Inn blog is ticking over very slowly and my once burning desire to reach a million words has faded without any disappointment or personal sense of failure; if I get there that’s OK and if not – well that’s OK too. Earlier this week I stepped aside from the Littleton Wassail which has been a very special part of my life for many years but all things come to an end, and last year – after nearly falling off a slippery picnic table while I was blessing the orchard – I realized that I was surrounded by people who really didn’t know that I was once, ten years ago, the Vicar. It wasn’t a sad feeling, but simply a realization that with the passage of time everything changes.
It’s been a rather frantic time anyway, with the hot water in the flat breaking down for three weeks, and the campervan needing some major and expensive repairs; new cam belt and alternator, brake pads, and the full service that’s long overdue. We drove back from the garage in the snow – which was lovely. How much longer can we keep going? But then, Christmas is coming and this week I decided to make a Christmas cake and some Christmas puddings. This is one of my most treasured cooking tasks in the year and it involves a great deal of assembling ingredients, beating, mixing, soaking, steaming and considerable amounts of alcohol (not for me, but the cakes and puds). Sometimes cooking can throw a line into the past. I can’t make the puddings without remembering my mother sweating over the old copper washing boiler as the puddings cooked. Yesterday I steamed them in a rather smaller preserving pan for eight hours. When we moved here I chucked out the two old aluminium hi-dome pressure cookers because they didn’t work on an induction hob. However the new one will only cook one pudding at a time so I opted for the old way; topping up the water through the day as my mum would have done – I remember her lifting the cloth bound puds out with her ancient bleached copper stick, engulfed in steam. The cake, after almost five hours in the oven, was rich dark and moist and I’ll be anointing it with even more brandy over the next few weeks.
Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us. The TV ads sell the usual lies about happy families and perfect days, and we all end up buying into the Panglossian thought that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, while solicitors and therapists clear their diaries for the tsunami of disappointment that comes in January. But Christmas puds and cakes are a kind of token against that eventuality. We can still, at least try to make the world a better, more generous place.
The picture at the top shows me abandoning the wooden spoon and mixing the puddings with my bare hands. There’s no better feeling in the world and the old tradition of making a wish comes with each sensual sweep of the hands. My head is somewhere else, thinking of Christmases past, and meanwhile – for no particular reason – I was slow cooking boeuf bourguignon in the oven. Later in the afternoon I took Madame to the hospital physiotherapy unit and they told her to expect a date for her second knee replacement in the next three weeks. These were so many ordinary, everyday challenges in one day and yet they glowed with their mundane goodness. Van mended; cakes and puddings made; favourite meal cooked, wonky knee replacement in view. The world may be going to hell in a handcart, but the ordinary blesses everything it touches if we dare to allow it.
This year’s solstice will be a very significant turning point for the Potwell Inn, Heading for spring with renewed vigour and everything fixed I suppose we’ll have the dubious pleasure of watching the so-called great powers implode and collapse under the weight of their contradictions. If we let them we are imprisoned by the media, especially the social media, in enforcing universal despair and the sense of powerlessness. A silicone implanted world of lies and mirrors can trap us in passivity. On the other hand the Potwell Inn team is just off for a chilly walk in the sunshine.
