Day Twenty-Four

All the way home the sky rains and suns itself but the clouds are too heavy for a rainbow.
We are in the thick of spring now. The infectious yellow fields, the corpses of wasps and bumblebees on our beige carpet; the sun hungry nettles and dandilions, overshadowing our delicate jasmine and proud first garlic.
I keep wanting to stop the car and get out to stand knee deep in spring and breathe in its heady honey smell until I am sticky with it.

But I don't. I keep driving. And write furiously in my head, the throbbing fields over and over again until I'm home.

Day Twenty-Three

I feel like the grey rain and the blue clouds and the moonless sky.
Even wearing my pink poncho doesn't heat up my heart.

It's not until I'm scrubbing the steel sink, and cooking a salty tuna pasta, and noticing the purple kitchen walls sweating with steam that I begin to relax, and feel warmer inside, like the ruby wine in the deep belly of the glass.

And now for the first time in days I'm going to bed before 10 o'clock to my two hot water bottles waiting. One small, brown silk, present from my sister. The other long, large hearted man, promising to stay awake until I get there.

Day Twenty-Two

Tonight the moon floats under the surface of the sky, thin clouds forming a film over it, suddenly reminding me of the plump white mozzarella I bought at lunchtime, floating in it's own plastic pot.

I bought it from an Italian English cafe and carried it with me for half the day in a thin plastic bag, with a fennel salami and six little glass bottles of pear juice.

And all day, I kept feeling happy and wondering why, and then remembering my treasures, small but significant gifts, and imagining home; a pasta with fresh tomatoes, peppery rocket and soft mozarella just melting; the small wooden board with circles of sausage sliced; my husband's smile, touching my cheek, lightly like a pear juice kiss.

Day Twenty-One

Today it would be easy to be defeated. I'm a little bored of myself and my mind reminds me of a blank blue sheet. We drive home late and the the moon, fat and yellow, is burning a hole through the sky, insistent, follwing us to the door and I know I can't give up.

Day Twenty

After work we walk in the long shadowed yellow fields, while at home, pale dough kneaded by my husband's hands slowly swells and spreads in the tin.
On the way back we are walking into the sinking sun and I can't see anything.
At the last minute I turn and notice the paper thin moon fragile against the still blue sky.
Later the bread comes out of the oven, our own moon, almost round, fully risen, with cratered crust the way we like it.

Day Nineteen

On the drive home I imagine dinner in my kitchen the colour of aubergines. When I stop on the road to buy iced caramel coffee to keep me awake, I also buy two lamb leg steaks that I will marinate with garlic and the last of our Morrocan honeymoon spices. As I cross the monotonous motorway miles, away from my beloved soul friends towards my beloved soul man, a long line of ingredients runs past like lamp posts along the road. Rocket. Spinach. Tomotoes. Pine Nuts. Apricots. Cous Cous. Lemon Oil.

When I get home the tomoatoes are finsihed but I find a forgotten yellow pepper and fresh spring onions in the fridge. I chop them with spinach and dress with my loved lemon oil, salt, pepper and pine nuts then stir into the cous cous. A green and golden garden bed for the grilled lamb. A Spring Sunday night supper to make me feel at home again.

Day Eighteen- Afternoon Tea

Today we share a bottle of champagne, the colour of antique gold or ancient wedding dresses, on a bench overlooking the afternoon sea, and laughter rises up, a rush of bubbles and blossom. We lose the cork in the long grass but take endless photos to remember everything else.

And I wonder if someone walking past tomorrow will find it or perhaps they will hear our champagne giggles bouncing off the cliffs.

Day Seventeen

I drive across England in a diagonal line, heading down to the sea and where my two old friends are waiting for me, all the way feeling like a pebble squeezed tightly in the hand of child- treasured long after anyone can remember on which beach or on which summer's day it was first found.

Day Sixteen

In the morning I’m at home and I make bread and little cakes from my huge heart bowl. I think of my lovely aunt who chose the bowl with me, on the same day that I decided to write for 100 days. Last night I read her writing, day two of her own challenge, and I see that on the same day we have both written about our goose bumped bare arms. I don’t believe in coincidences but I do believe in the invisible threads that join life to life, one heart string tugging another.

In the evening I take the train home through London and watch the city skyline sunset, thinking what it takes to make those connections, or more accurately what it takes to make them visible.

Day Fifteen

I've been thinking about how writing my 100 days is like a long walk.

On day one I felt that first joy, that singing in your step that comes from starting something.

The next three days hurt. I would have found any reason to turn back, and every word was hard, like stones in your shoes and holes in your boots and brooding clouds on your horizon.

Then something changed, a wide yellow tipped field opened before me and I was half way across without even realising. If I was a runner I would say I had gone through a pain barrier or that I had found my stride. But I'm not a runner, I'm a writer, so I will say that I went through my first dark forest of shadows and doubts and disbelief and came out the other side; that I found the first notes of my voice.

And then it changes again. A cloud crosses the sun on day fourteen and suddenly I'm self conscious, aware of my bare arms prickling with goose bumps, unsure of the path.

My 100 day walk will be like that all the way of course. Thankfully. What is important is to keep putting one foot in front of the other, one word after the other.

Day Fourteen

Despite my enormous tiredness and the idea that all I want to do is curl up on the sun bathed bed in our room and sleep through from early evening to tomorrow morning, I somehow find the desire to cook dinner. And in the end it is not just any dinner, it is melanzane alla parmigiana which involves many things like slicing purple aubergine into papyrus strips to be fried and blackened and fill the kitchen with delicate and persistent smoke; like layering brilliant red tomato sauce, full of garlic but lacking basil as our plant died again, with the paper thin aubergines, milky mozzarella and drifts of parmesan melting into the dish like snow under the grill. We eat it on top of thick slices of bread, made yesterday by my husband, and think how lucky we are. Like eating in a restaurant I would say, like eating at home would be his reply.

Day Thirteen

After work, we both want to talk, but he wants to sit at the kitchen table and I want to walk.
In the end we do both. First at the table, with our white plates with white shop bought birthday cake, as all the homemade cakes are gone. Then outside, fast over the fields with the sky the colour of bruises, pale yellow, blue grey, the light coming and going and just home in time before it really rains.

Day Twelve

I rescued three squashed pears from the fruit bowl at the very last minute and put them in a pan, peeled and in pieces, with sugar, water and maple syrup, letting them spit and simmer while I rolled out 4 puff pastry circles. Hot oven, pastry circles in first for a few minutes, then pears in a sweet heap on top, brown sugar as a last thought and back in the oven to wait until we are ready to eat them all up with a teaspoon of vanilla icecream balanced on the top of each one and the last of a very good glass of red wine. It is just what I need to remind me to celebrate Sunday to the very last minute as I once promised a good friend I would, rather than be afraid of Monday before it has even arrived.

Day Eleven

We celebrated my husband's birthday, two days late but on the best day of the year so far, undeniably spring for once. A day of kissing gates, and old oaks, and nettle stings and dock leaves growing just by, and lunch outside and a sunny afternoon sleep and a long meal in what we declared our favourite restaurant and a late drive home all the while watching the moon smile.

Day Ten

I cooked butternut squash for dinner and saw that it stained my hands orange and that took me back more than ten years to a little kitchen among the gum trees where I discovered that I could cook all on my own and that I could love a vegetable so much. All those memories are orange, some bright, some fading slowly like the stains on my hands, and some gone.

Day Nine

Today on the drive home, I saw one magpie, just one, for sorrow. For all the rest of the journey I searched for another. I saw bright fat chickens at the edge of the road. I just missed a pigeon as it flew up infront of my windscreen, living dangerously, while I uselessly duck my head on the other side of the glass. I got home and then sat outside in the car and watched two little birds, annonymous brown sparrows, skip and dart in the sunlight. No more magpies, but fortunately I remembered that life is much bigger than our plans and rhymes and supersitions. No more magpies, but fortunately I saw joy, unfurling like the first flush of green over the dark fields.

Day Eight

Today is the day that I almost forgot to write you.
Today is the day that I burnt my finger on the oven, a scar to remember your almost birthday.
Today is the day that I baked almost 30 cupcakes that are almost all eaten already.

Happy Birthday for tomorrow my love, I will wish you 100 days in the morning.

Day Seven

Today, fortunately, I remembered that life is best in the living of it not in the thinking about it. It is best in the dancing in the kitchen and the careful chopping of broccoli and the stretch in my muscles as I run up the stairs. And although sometimes we might want to be the kite, soaring and dancing and chasing the wind, it is also wonderful to be the kite flyer, feet on the ground, fingers in the sky.

Day Six

One wasp freed from the kitchen window,
one wasp rescued from the stairs,
one wasp too late, lying listless in the little turkish bowl on the sill.

Spring is unfolding in the house of the birds and bees.

Day Five

Today with an old friend we look at photos of other people's weddings, drink a bottle of prosecco slowly and eat chocolates from one of our many boxes and I think how some things are constant and some change and both are good.

Day Four

Tonight I only want to write about dinner, that we made together while dancing in the kitchen and laughing at each other. I want to write about the little squares of Italian cracker spread with cream cheese and flecked with smoked salmon and black pepper, served on one of our large white square plates, eaten outside, our first antipasto al fresco, with a rosé wine in my birthday glasses. Then elegant trout fillets grilled with lemon and fat chips, all odd sizes as I never was any good at even chopping, and rocket dressed only with the lemon oil that I’m in love with, that I could drink for breakfast or pour over ice-cream, and more rosé, the colour of the trout. Then grapes, a deeper shade of red pink to finish, like the sky darkening outside.

Day Three

It would be so easy to give up. It is after 10pm and it would be so easy to slip out of my two day old rhythm of writing and in between the white sheets that I tucked tightly around the bed this morning.

When I got home after work I found the first fat bee struggling in the middle of the living room floor. I know there will be more, like there were this time last year. Or perhaps it is just the same determined bee, coming back again and again to be rescued.

Before even closing the front door I got the dustpan and brush and swept up the relentless bee, heavy with sleep and spring, and threw him out into the sunshine, where he landed on his feet.

I don’t know how long he had been there before I found him or how close he was to giving up. This time he didn’t. And fortunately neither did I. Somehow I managed to sweep myself up and throw myself out into the sunshine and maybe I will still be there tomorrow morning on my feet.

Day Two

On the way home I start to think about what to write. Going back over my day, like reading back in a book to remember exactly how you arrived where you are.
I think about what we will have for dinner and whether we will sit outside for the first time. I think about what I will do before anything else when I walk through the door. To my surprise, it is writing.
A list of today:
Going for walk without a coat for the first time
The brown fields on the drive home, familiar and marvellous
The smell of hyacinths as I open the front door
The sunshine through our bedroom window
Not noticing time passing
Feeling really hungry as I wait for him to come home for dinner and make myself hungrier reading recipes-butternut squash, pistachios, pastry- from a shiny magazine, and then hungrier still with my dreams on an empty belly.

Day One- Il primo giorno

DAY ONE- Il primo giorno
The first day is actually the third day as I wanted to start this two days ago! But I know it will always be like that, there will always be an excuse, a drawer to clean, a bed to go to early. I can’t wait for a day without these things as it will never come. I need to start now, on an ordinary April day, no anniversaries, no auspicious magpies, no more waiting.
Apparently Beethoven’s motto was “No day without a line” (From For Today and Tomorrow, Ikeda,p.210)
No day without a line. So every day for a hundred days I will write at least a line. I will battle that part of me that says I can’t, that says I’m too tired, that says there are more important things to be done. Right now, nothing is more important than to do what I have said I will, to be true to my word and the next one and the next one, as they slowly but inevitably appear on the page.
This morning we opened the Seville Orange marmalade and shared it on a piece of toast. The marmalade made by my sweet aunt and left in my kitchen as a gift just before my birthday. It had been waiting, full of perfume and promise, for a day like today. Any day is a good day to open a jar a jam, any day is a good day to sit down and start writing. No more waiting.
I noticed that, not that by chance, the marmalade jar is in the same jar that I bought from a shop in Cagliari more than four years ago for my first time peach jam made for the love of my life. It is the same jar that I carried to England when we came back, full of another batch of summer jam, and paid dearly for in excess baggage worth every penny. It is the same jar that I filled with golden jam made from a bag of yellow plums bought from our village fair and gave to my aunt for her birthday last October, the morning after my cousin’s wedding. And now it is back on my kitchen table, full again of jewelled fruit, and making me smile with memories and what is still to come.