Potato babies

Driving back under cotton wool clouds I wonder what to write about, feeling time slipping away as the mileometer counts up towards home.

My answer is in the proud pile of potatoes, heaped on the patio table, pale golden pebbles still wearing the earth, just born, waiting with my husband, to greet me.

Listening to the house

I have never been good at distinguishing sounds.

Downstairs this morning I pause and tilt my head, trying to understand what I hear coming through the floorboards, trying to pull the correct entry off the sound library shelf.

Is it the whir of the toothbrush whitening, or the hum of the electric shaver smoothing, or is it the insistent buzz of the wasp, wings ringing in frustrtation?

The Midas Spider

This morning I move the chest of drawers forward to look for lost earrings. I find two silver hearts fallen there together and to my surpirse a single gold bangle, suspended just above the skirting board, wrapped in the melting grey velvet of a cobweb, held fast.

I rescue it and wonder which magpie Midas spider coveted and caught it and whether there was disappointment when they learnt the cold hard truth that gold doesn't taste good.

Falling

Yesterday I watched stilt-walkers in the rain, reminding me of long-legged elegant birds, on the surface of water. They were learning how to fall, so that they could dance without fear.

They didn't slip on the slick lake of concrete, not once, but the woman walking past, wearing pedestrian shoes, did.

I looked up from what I was doing to see her on the floor, on hands and knees from the fall she hadn't learnt, a crouched creature, waiting to be picked up and put on her own legs again.

Doubt stones

I notice how soon I lose the feeling of being a writer, how quickly the doubt sets in and how it sinks to the pit of my stomach the way fruit sinks to the bottom of a sponge cake.

I have to be an every day girl; to remind myself again and again what it feels like to write- like finding a pair of shoes that look pretty and fit.

Biscuit tins

This weekend we celebrated two wedding anniversaries, 39 years and 240 miles apart.

I arrived at the first one, bearing a biscuit tin as a gift, wrapped in white tissue, waiting to be filled with treats over the many years to come.

For the second one, 4 hours and miles of motorway later, we gave edible rubies- port and homemade strawberry jam- to mark the 40 rich years.

Then, we sleep deliciously, like a blog, says my husband and wake up bathed in the egg yolk yellow light of my other aunt's house and swap jars of deep red jam, like stories, over breakfast.

This afternoon, we drove the last side of the triangle home, talking about marriage young and old, with another tin on the back seat, holding lovingly baked lavendar biscuits, melted marzipan cookies, sticky anzacs and mini meringues, the left over treasures of our family, to savour a little longer.

From flowers to flour

Tonight the courgette flowers remind me of little purses, sunset pouches of petals, holding their treasures of dolce sardo to melt into stretchy threads (but no capers as I still haven't learnt to like them). We fry them in a batter beaten with sparkling water and eat them hot and crackly, licking the salt from our fingers.

I wonder who first decided it would be delicious to fry flowers from courgettes, my husband says as he puts one in his mouth at the same time as two green jewelled capers.

I often wonder who the first person was to discover any kind of food...
I think, how I often have, about the the first person who ever baked a cake; what genius it took to put eggs and sugar and flour together like that. How I would have liked to have been there at the birth of the first cake.

Spiders

I remember one winter morning when I had known my husband for only a few months, we found a spiders web dripping with dew jewels, just by his front door. He was surprised by how beautiful I found it, as though it had never occured to him before. But he remembered and for my first Christmas present a few weeks later, he gave me a book with an inscription 'Beautiful like a spider's web'.

Through my writing I have been spinning webs of meaning in my life, always trying to make sense, always trying to connect one thing to another, to hang quivering diamonds delicately on the strings of our lives. I have realised how much of a relentless spider I am.

I have also realised how easy it is for me to slip through the net that I have spent 100 days spinning; how long it takes to make a habit and how quick it is to break it, the way you can bring an intricate web floating down with one impatient flick of a feather duster.

Polenta

My husband has brought back a bag of polenta, which we cook for lunch to have with my roasted tomato sauce. We make too much, and have to leave half the golden grained cake on the plate, reminding me of the half-eaten moon last night.

The upside down moon

On the dusky terrarce, my arms feel the weight of water, which my husband would normally bear, sloshing in the green can. The moon is half a luminous melon, its other half missing, the way mine has been. In a few hours I will drive to the airport to bring him back. I think of my mother and sister, just leaving another airport, flying in a straight line south to Africa, where the moon, half or full, will be upside down.

The day after St Swithin

In Italy every day has a saint, while in England, you could count them on your fingers. But it's not surprising that one of the saints we do have is a weather man.

The myth of St Swithin says that whatever the weather on his feast day, the 15th July, it will stay that way for 40 days.

Yesterday it rained. Yesterday was my feast day, my 100th one in a row and I know, that I will continue, for at least 40 more, putting words on the page the way the clouds will throw rain like wedding rice all summer.

Day One Hundred

Today I wanted to write about cake, which felt right to celebrate the hundredth day, and because that is where it all began, with a birthday cake and a toast and a wish for more.

But in the end I have run out of time (which also feels right)- it is approaching midnight, and my unperfectly made bed is calling.
I know that when the clock strikes and we tip over into tomorrow, I won't turn into anything that I'm not already.
But I will leave behind a shoe, deliberately, so that I am able to find myself here again and again.

Sweet dreams, see you tomorrow

Day 99

It's day ninety-nine I say over dinner.

I have let it creep up on me willingly, playing a game of grandmother's footsteps, counting to almost to a hundred, not wanting to turn round and see the last day looming.

What will happen then? he asks.

Neither of us answer. In my mind I wonder if I will turn into a pumpkin.

Day 98

Today I am determined to laugh in the face of my smashed car window; to marvel at its splintered crystal surface like a lake of fragile ice; to find the force of poetry in the way it trembles and falls across the back seat as a thousand aqua diamonds.

Thank you to whoever did it this morning. Thank you because you also threw something heavy against my life, waking me up, reminding me of the joy of broken glass, the joy of the struggle.

Day 97

The sky knew what kind of day it was and the clouds were ushered in, whispering grey curtains to cover the sun.

I remember 11 years ago in Zimbabwe, when in the middle of the dry season, it rained, for just one day, a mark of respect for the funeral of a much loved man.

Day 96

Today I understand what it means to be a witness, to keep watch over someone's hope, to hold it like a moon that you know is there, even when the earth has turned away.

Day 95

In one of the many flats we sit up late and drink tea and eat cherries and marshmallows and remember.

In the morning I see the cherry stones, scattered and uncounted, hers mixed with mine, and I feel an enormous sense of friendship and freedom.

Day 94

I decide to stop saving the broad beans for some special occasion and pop every single one out of its pod and briefly into boling water, until their rubbery outer jackets can be slipped off to reveal their tender glorious green. One by one, they collect in the blue glass bowl, waiting to be dressed and decorated with salt and pepper and olive oil, and pale curls of percorino, like shavings of the moon.

And even though it is only an ordinary day of the week we eat lunch outside, with a cool glass of wine, longing for an umbrella, or a canopy of flowers over our heads.

Day 93

The relentless march of the spiders goes on. Now I watch as one works its way up and down the curtain, exercising its long legs. This morning I could have sworn I heard a tiny sound like the click of knitting needles and I imagined the spiders working, persistent grandmothers, their webs falling away from them in loops of droopy stitches.

Five years ago yesterday, London was reeling from unthinkable things, and I remember sitting in a sprawling Oxford garden and watching the spiders spin endless webs and threads between the the legs of the green plastic chairs, as though they were also trying to make sense of things, trying to stitch England back together where it had split at the seams.

Day 92 How to boil an egg

For lunch we have a wonderful warm salad of nutty new potatoes, hard-boiled eggs straight from their hot shells and green beans sauteed lightly with the first pearl of garlic from our garden; all wrapped in olive oil velvet with a bite of black pepper.

It is a lunch that makes us remember the miracle of eggs. I think of mayonnaise and my husband says it. This will be the summer to conquer it and at the same time meringues, as I believe the two were meant to be made together; the perfect use of an egg; a separation made in heaven.

Day 91

Today I heard a man being asked the question 'What's the best advice you've ever been given?'



In response he quoted William Blake: 'If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.'



I think about my 100 days of folly, nearly complete now, and I know I will have to continue, to persist in the act of being true to myself.

Day 90

I unwrap odd-shaped packets of cheese, from their waxy white market paper, making a spontaneous supper out of my Sardinian gifts; heart shaped auricchio; melon pale pecorino; a dolce sardo half moon.

Day 89

I clean a bathroom for the second time in 3 days: the first one was full of sand and traces of sun cream squeezed too quickly out of the bottle; the second one, wearing a weeks worth of dust and webs spun in extraordinary places.

I think how a housewife's work is never done and nor is a spider's.

Day 88 Sa Genti Arrubia

In the bathroom mirror I see the ghost of my bikini, barely there, slighter brighter white than the rest of me, which has turned pale almond or nociola, hazelnut, as my father in law always says kindly.

I kept my promsie to myself and didn't turn red. I am a flamingo at the beginning of the feeding season, not yet flushed fuscia.

But then I come back home, forget my holiday caution and burn both my shoulders in the surprising English sun. I am a flamingo after all, crimson-wing tipped, one of the genti arrubia, gente rossa, red people, as these ancient creatures were once called in Cagliari.

Day 87

On the too cold plane there is a woman wrapped in rose coloured Sardinian carpet.

I think about the things we bring and the things we leave behind.
The two delicate bottles of limoncello, lemon liquour, one with cream and one without, wrapped in a sarong the colour of a butterfly's wing.
The miele di millefiori, Sardinian gold, thousand flowered honey, still sitting on a shelf that we didn't buy this time and that will have to wait until Christmas.

Day 86

The sky is dull and heavy humid.

We are sugar and snow lipped on the terrace on the almost last afternoon: my lips powdered with winter white meringue- the last of the bianchini- studded with shiny almonds like jewels; his are dusty from a flour rolled panino eaten just like that as bread can be.

I think of snow and of the icing-sugar dusted torta della nonna I ate yesterday.

The weather's really changed. He contemplates the sky.

Time to go home. I say and pop the last almond into his mouth like a gift.

Day 85

I slip into the small space of time between leaving my friend and our afternoon tea and calling my husband to say I'm on my way home.

I delight in the fact that briefly, no-one knows where I am and I cross the street and go into the air-conditioned anonymity of Rinascente to window shop elicitly in its designer departments.