Author: farleyrose59

Serpent Tales

farleyrose59 5 Comments

 Aruba beach      aruba flag

I never fail to learn something new when I listen to BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent and last week my attention was caught by a report from the Caribbean island of Aruba. In recent years it’s been suffering a plague of boa constrictors and, as the island’s main economy is tourism, this is not a welcome influx. They’re thought to have been introduced by someone releasing some pet boas into the wild. This explains how they got there, but until recently no-one could understand how they were managing to make their way so efficiently to the furthest reaches of the island. The mystery was solved when they were discovered to be expert hitchhikers. They’re attracted to the warmth of car engines where they curl up and stay quiet while the unsuspecting drivers ferry them around the island.

snake

This story reminded me of Bernard the boa constrictor who went missing in Portsmouth a couple of years ago. His owner had enjoyed a heavy night at the pub and attempted to get into a taxi with the snake draped around his neck. “There’s no way, you’re getting in here with that” said the taxi driver, not unreasonably, and so poor Bernard was brusquely removed and thrown into the nearby bushes. The owner took off in the taxi but someone notified the police and the story was reported on all the local TV and radio stations. My sister and brother-in-law live in Portsmouth and the next day were watching television quietly in their sitting room when they heard a terrible noise in their kitchen. They have a ground floor apartment surrounded by lawns, bushes and flower beds, and in the summer they leave their sash windows open. At first they tried to ignore the unusual thrashing sound, but eventually they looked at one another and wondered if this was just the kind of noise that an angry boa constrictor would make in the confines of a suburban English kitchen. They tiptoed into the hall and worked out a strategy…how to respond if they pushed the door open and a giant snake lunged at them. My brother-in-law has held a number of responsible positions in his life, including father to four boys and commander of a nuclear submarine. He took charge bravely, and positioning my sister next to him for reinforcement, made a sudden dart at the door. It flew open to reveal that the ice-maker on their fridge had gone berserk and was firing frozen lumps at the walls and ceiling.

I often think of Bernard and wonder what happened to him. I can’t find any reports of him being found and since they live for up to thirty years, who knows what he might be up to these days. If I lived in Portsmouth my obsessive personality would force me to check my engine every day before getting into my car.

 boa

Another snake, this time a python, cropped up in one of my treats and unwittingly contributed to my sense of mid-life confusion. I’m currently watching all of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth documentaries. I started with the Life of Birds series which I thoroughly enjoyed and then went onto Life in Cold Blood. This is where I encountered the python. The film showed speeded up footage of the snake lying quietly for months, barely moving, with just a pilot light metabolism to keep it alive. Then with no apparent warning it decided it was hungry and sensing an antelope nearby, struck out with forked speed. The animal was squeezed in its coils and over the course of several hours, it disappeared head first down the python’s throat with its hooves sticking out. The snake’s flexible jaws stretched wide open and in order to avoid suffocation it left the top of its windpipe hanging out of its mouth like a piece of flexible tubing. Once the antelope was down, the python’s physiology began to change. During the next few days its liver doubled in size and its heart increased by forty per cent. It took about four weeks for the python to digest its meal. Hair, horns, hooves, everything. Then it went back to sleep again till its next mealtime many months later.

There were many interesting moments in the Life in Cold Blood series but I often think about this episode. One motivation for doing my treats is that I’m ensconced in an existential crisis. I’m in middle age. What am I for? This is puzzling enough, but I have to wonder… what must it be like for a python?

python Photo: Shankar S. United Arab Emirates

The Clock Struck One

farleyrose59 5 Comments

clock

In the last post, Riding on Branch Lines, I said that unexpected things often happen when I’m immersed in a ‘treat’. My fish project has been no exception. This treat has involved cooking ten different fish and was prompted by my lack of confidence with seafood. I’ve always been put off by the bones, strange appearance, and fierce warnings about overcooking.

In Fish Mondays, I described how I had problems in sourcing the ingredients at the beginning but that once I discovered the seafood section at my local Asda, this got easier. Last week was the penultimate fish and we had sea bass. However, this week, for the final flourish, things got a bit tricky. I’d exhausted all the unfamiliar species at the supermarket counter and had to look further afield. I decided that my best bet was the Wednesday market fish stall in the nearby town of Winchester. This was also a good opportunity to visit the specialist clock shop in the town centre and get some advice about my large oak mantel clock which is incapable of keeping the correct time.

I arrived early at the market with my clock in a plastic carrier bag and sure enough there was an enticing display of fish, many of which I now recognised. I deliberated over the huss but eventually opted for turbot. These are large, heavy flat fish and I bought one to share between two. I also bought some new season asparagus at the neighbouring vegetable stall.

Whilst in town I thought I’d try to solve another problem that’s been bothering me for a while. My bedroom overlooks the neighbours’ garden and when I’m getting dressed we regularly surprise one another. Although I’ve managed to avoid net curtains for most of my life, I decided recently that the time has come to give in to modesty, so when I passed a fabric shop, I went in and bought a couple of metres of the plainest muslin available.

By this time I was a bit weighed down and the bags were banging against my legs. The clock clanged as I walked and every now and again it made a half-hearted attempt at a chime. Then, as I was making my discordant progress through the town centre I spotted Winchester Cathedral and it occurred to me that I could soak up a bit of history before going home. Within a couple of minutes I was at the main door and as I stepped inside, the clock chimed one o’clock which was both embarrassing and inaccurate. “I’d love to look around” I said to the man at the ticket desk, “but I’ve got a lot to carry. Could you possibly look after this?” I handed him my clock and as I did so it attempted to strike again. “Could you take this, too?” I asked handing him a large flat parcel. “What is it?” he said suspiciously. “A turbot” I replied. “A what?” “A turbot”. “Oh, and I’ve got this” I said handing him the muslin curtain. I paid for my ticket and was just about to join the guided tour when I noticed the bunch of asparagus sticking out of my bag. “I suppose you want to leave that too?” he said, taking the words from my mouth.

asparagus

The next hour was absorbing and delightful. I stood on Jane Austen’s gravestone in the nave and squinted up at the window dedicated to her memory. A pane at the top depicts St Augustine from whose name, Austen is derived. I walked across decorative floor tiles dating from the 13th Century, and then as I turned a corner towards the high altar my mouth dropped open at the enormous, ornate stone screen. I also learned about the hero who saved the cathedral. There was a great deal of structural movement at the start of the 20th century as the building was erected on a wooden raft over a peat bog. At first, the engineers tried pumping the water out but this made the subsidence worse, so in 1905 they brought in William Walker. He was a Royal Navy diver who worked every weekday for five and a half years. He would dive into the water under the cathedral and pull out the peat with his bare hands, replacing it with concrete and bricks. Each day he spent half an hour getting into his diving suit and would then work two three-hour shifts, emerging after the first one to smoke his pipe and eat a mutton pie. He obviously did a thorough job as the cathedral has only moved one millimetre during the past century.

diving helmet

The tour ended in the crypt where the Anthony Gormley statue, Sound II, stands beneath the arches. The sculptor models all his statues on his own body so it’s eerily lifelike. The crypt was dry when I visited, but in the winter it floods and so the figure is often up to its knees in water. I also learned a new word, which is something that always cheers me up. The monks used to attend eight services a day as well as High Mass. They weren’t allowed to sit down but they did have a kind of bottom rest that they could lean against. This is called a misericord.

With my ecclesiastical diversion over, I returned to the desk. “Please could I have my clock, asparagus, net curtain and turbot?” The obliging attendant looked relieved to see the back of me and my bags, and I was pleased to have spoken a sentence that I’ve almost certainly never said before. In fact I have to wonder whether anyone has ever spoken that particular combination of words.

Getting back to the fish project, it’s been interesting to discover that in common with many of the thirty-seven preceding treats, it has changed me. I now have many new dishes in my repertoire. And something surprising happened half-way through. With the first few fish I was cautious, perusing cookery books for instructions and following them carefully. But by the time I got to the fifth one, I realised that fish really is very easy to cook and this gave me the confidence to experiment. The details are on the Fish Recipes page.

Next…vegetables.

sound II

And following on from the last post there are now a number of new lists on the Treats Collection page. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.

Riding on branch lines

farleyrose59 4 Comments

steam train

I think the time has come to broaden this out a bit. You’ve heard about some of the treats on my list. Now I want to hear about yours. As I said in Permutations, the chances are that many of my treats won’t appeal to you – and I probably won’t like some of yours. But it’s always intriguing to see what people come up with when they give free rein to their imagination.

Taking the time to think about what you really want to do and committing it to a list has benefits that aren’t immediately apparent. At first it might seem self-indulgent and even a little narcissistic. But all I can say is that these mini-projects have brightened my life immeasurably over the past few years. They’ve propped me up, filled in gaps and offered unexpected experiences.

Knowing what’s on someone’s wish list tells you a lot about them. Are they thrill-seeking, contemplative or a mixture?  Who has influenced and inspired them? What have they done, or missed out on, that makes these dreams special to them? You learn surprising things about people – even those you think you know well. Try asking friends and family and see what you discover-  (it helps with present-giving too, particularly for ‘got everything’ kind of people).

Some of my friends and family have lists and I’ve posted these on The Treats Collection page. They range from
‘visiting all the churches in Oranges and Lemons’ and ‘taking a friend on a barge holiday’, to being an extra in a film and going to Oktoberfest. If you have some ideas you want to share then I can add them to the page. I use the model of `60 treats before I’m 60’ and fully intend if I live long enough to reward myself with 70 new ones on my next major birthday to soften the blow. You might be less greedy than me, and have only a few. But however many you have, I’d love to hear about them. You can email me on 60treatsandmore@gmail.com

We also might differ in how we approach them. My project has evolved with time, and now it works very well for what I want. It’s guided by just a few principles. The first is that I don’t plan treats very far ahead. If I had rigid dates in my diary or head, for when they should happen then they’d become a burden. Instead, I try to allow things to unfold when the time is right – it’s amazing how opportunities present themselves. When my concentration was shot to pieces a couple of years ago, my riding treat was just what I needed. For that hour each week I had to put my grief on one side and simply focus on not falling off. But I didn’t know when I wrote my list that this was how my horsey encounters would work out. Then at other times treats have fallen into place because I’ve suddenly had a bit of time to fill – or a special person I’ve wanted to spend time with. Perusing the list and pondering which to pick next is like choosing from a very classy box of chocolates.

Beyond the essentials, then I’ve not planned the treats themselves a great deal. For nearly four years now, I’ve been having adventures by darting down absorbing little alleys and riding along branch lines. Many are too good to ignore. When I start out, I never know where they’ll take me. A highlight of my make-up project was discovering a rich crimson Russian cafe, and a trip to Greenwich Market included an unexpected criminal encounter.

branch line

The second of my guiding principles has been that once written, the list is non-negotiable. When I told my friend Esther about this, she said pragmatically “but you can change it as you go through, can’t you?” “No”, I said, feeling panicky at the very thought. There’s a good reason for that. For years I had no way of holding on to the things I longed to do. Ideas popped into my head but when confronted with other priorities, they popped straight out again. It’s only been by making a list and committing it to paper, that I’ve started to feel that these things are possible. If I keep changing the list, then I am forever on shifting sands.

For most of my adult life there has been some member of the family needing me to do something for them. Sometimes they’ve all wanted things at the same time. I recall one unusually orderly occasion when all four children formed a queue as they waited to speak to me. One wanted me to sign a school trip form and write a cheque; another burst into tears and needed a hug. I can’t remember what the other two wanted, but I do know that when Will’s issue had been dealt with, he went straight to the back of the queue and lined up again. Being a mother has affected most of what I’ve done for twenty-seven years. My sister has four children, too, and it’s been the same for her. She once turned up at a hospital appointment and was mortified to be shown a letter that she’d written to the consultant and signed ‘love Mum’.

The third of my guiding principles is to believe that each treat will happen. That somewhere an opportunity will present itself. Somehow in the next three years, nine months and eleven days I have to get to Japan. I’m not sure when or how I’m going to manage it, but I remain steadfastly optimistic.

bullet train

*****

And once again the final word concerns fish. Fish Mondays have continued, so I’ve added hake and swordfish to the Fish Recipes page.

Cruciverbal Thursdays

farleyrose59 7 Comments

 crossword start   biscuits

Words are such a source of pleasure and fascination. It improves my life no end, to know for example, that pantophobia is not a fear of lingerie but is instead a fear of everything, and that a gongoozler is someone who stands and stares idly at canal boats and locks. And I probably spend more time than I should, puzzling idly over the fact that I’ve never heard anyone say that they’re gruntled, and wondering why I’ve been both overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but never knowingly, whelmed.

Then there are the words that are intriguing because they’re counterintuitive. If someone says that they’re a peripatetic teacher, my reflex reaction is to commiserate. Bucolic sounds more belligerent than idyllic and for years I could not remember what colour vermillion is. Somehow it just doesn’t sound like red. Do choirboys wear hassocks or cassocks? I’m never quite sure. And which man would be brave enough to flatter his wife by telling her she is ‘truly pulchritudinous’?

However, despite having a largely happy relationship with words, I’ve never been able to get on with cryptic crosswords. Although I can do the simple crossword adequately, its wittier sibling stumps me. The clues make no sense at all, and leave me fretting that I’m not intelligent enough. But I’m trying to connect with the world better, and so a desire to join the select, knowing club of crossword enthusiasts led me to put ‘learn about cryptic crosswords’ on my list of sixty things to do.

Like all the other ‘treats’ it was entered onto the list enthusiastically but it stayed there ignored, while I enjoyed some of the easier things.  One of the problems was knowing where to start. I tried looking at the solutions and working back from there, but most of the time I was no wiser for knowing the answers. Then I thought I’d try a book. There are many which promise to cast light on cryptic mysteries but even though I gave it my best efforts, and had a few enlightening and satisfying moments, it was frankly tedious. Not for the first time, I reminded myself that treats aren’t meant to be hard work. I did learn, though, that the crossword was invented in the US in 1913. It was called a word-cross at first, but within just a few weeks it had settled into its familiar name due to a typesetting error.

Perhaps there might be a course or seminar I could attend? I searched the internet optimistically but there was nothing. This gave me a clue, though as I realised that what I’d been missing is having other people to learn with. Books always look exciting and I set out with good intentions, but then I lose confidence and concentration. When you’re learning with other people you can ask questions, have a bit of distracting chat, and a laugh, and then get back to the issue in question.

Then suddenly one morning, the answer popped into my head and I thought of my friend, Caroline. I remembered how when life was tricky, several years ago, I would sit in her pretty garden as she plied me with tea and homemade cake, handed out tissues, and made kind noises. I remembered, too, that she completes The Daily Telegraph crossword every day.

“Could you give me six Cryptic Crossword Masterclasses?” I asked when we next met for lunch in town. She looked a bit surprised to be cast as an expert in this way, but quickly agreed and we settled on fortnightly Thursday morning sessions at her house.

I looked forward to our first meet-up, and it didn’t disappoint. We started with coffee, biscuits and family news and then I stepped into a world where a flower can be a river and butter can mean a ram or a goat. Caroline had done her preparation well and had a stock of crosswords for us to work through.

She started with anagrams. If a clue includes words like otherwise, different, reformed, inside out, and brew this will often denote that there’s an anagram in the vicinity. She pointed out that in ‘I leave guy floundering in a prestigious academic group’ (3, 6), the word ‘floundering’ was telling us that the solution is an anagram. And so I rearranged the words ‘I leave guy’ and there like magic was the answer; ’Ivy League’.

Gradually I learned all kinds of tricks and we filled in more of the solutions. Caroline taught me to look at words in a different way. In the clue ‘A well-oiled lock’ (5), she steered me away from keys, grease and latches. “Think of another kind of lock” she said, and so eventually we got to hair, and the solution, which is ‘quiff’. Next she covered some of the common conventions. The letter ‘t’ can be signalled literally by ‘tip of the tongue’; ‘learner’ often indicates ‘L’ because of L-plates, and more often than not, the word ‘artist’ in a clue suggests the letters ‘RA’  (from Royal Academician). Using that tip, Caroline guided me through ‘They support British artists’ (4) to the solution of ‘bras’. I liked that one. Solving a clue brings a rush of pleasure. After an hour and a half we’d had lots of chat, eaten through a plate of biscuits and drunk a whole pot of coffee. We’d also completed a crossword and I was on a high. We arranged another session in two weeks and Caroline handed me a grid to do in the meantime.

The next day I sat down to solve the clues. But I searched in vain for all the conventions I’d learned, and saw none. I solved one anagram, got a short-lived high from that, and then sat disconsolately for half an hour. I owned up to Caroline at our next session, a couple of weeks later but she was cheerful and explained that there are hundreds of conventions to learn. Over the next couple of months I jotted down many of these in my pink notebook and gradually managed to solve more clues.

Part-way through this process I set off on the train to Leicester to visit friends for the weekend, taking my pink notebook and a newspaper with me. As usual the crossword looked impenetrable at first, and this time there was no Caroline to coax me through. But a train journey was just what I needed. The luxury of uninterrupted time when I could worry away at the clues. By the time I arrived I’d solved a third of them. The next morning I remembered that my hosts are cryptic fans, so I fished out my crossword and together we sat in the garden and finished it. Then they produced their favoured puzzle, the Saturday Guardian. This was quite different from the Telegraph, and notably lewd. All weekend in between doing lots of other fun things we returned to the crossword. Each solution brought a little moment of happiness and I realised then that this initially solitary pursuit had become surprisingly sociable.

I got a lot out of my cryptic crossword immersion and one of the pleasures was discovering some of the clues which are so witty that they’ve become legendary. These are three of my favourites. The answers are at the end.

  • Of of of of of of of of of of (10)
  • Gegs? (9,4)
  • HIJKLMNO (5)

And while I’m on the subject of words I want to say something about ‘treat’. It’s the word I’ve used to describe the sixty things I’m trying to do. It was fine when I started, but it’s not completely accurate anymore. It’s become inadequate to describe what these things are doing for me. I’ve tried to think of a more apposite word but can’t come up with anything that sounds right. ‘Goals’ is too worthy, ‘challenges’ too exhausting, ‘pleasures’ sounds a bit dodgy, and ‘experiences’ is both dull and passive. Other ideas I’ve had are pretentious or just plain silly.

There is a definite problem, though, in that ‘treat’ conjures up the image of something lightweight and fluffy. It’s true that some of them have a light froth on the surface, but as they become real they grow roots that anchor my life and stop me from being washed around. They’re not about self-indulgence. They’re helping me recover from challenging life events and to stay passably sane. In the absence of anything better, I’ll have to stick with ‘treat’, at least for the time being. Perhaps from now on when I say the word, I should toss my head and roll my eyes with post-modern irony.

 crosswordend

Answers

  • Oftentimes
  • Scrambled eggs
  • Water (think….H to O)

And here’s one I prepared earlier:

OK, so the auditory apparatus is inside out, and it’s caught between the tips of two tongues… it’s still pretty special. (5)

And a final word ...Fish Mondays have continued. Lemon sole and sea bream are now on the fish recipes page.

Permutations

farleyrose59 3 Comments

trumpetWe’re all so different in our view of the world. I might say to you that I love trumpets, old black and white films, macaroons and cycling downhill. My number one book is Remains of the Day and my favourite bird is the flamingo. I despise Jaffa cakes, loathe fantasy movies, have no patience with flutes and simply refuse to cycle uphill. You might reply that you “couldn’t agree more” with all of that.

But I’m pretty sure that you won’t.

I played a game with a friend the other day. It was about well-known people. I kicked off with Terry Wogan. “I can’t stand him”, I said. “But he’s great”, my friend argued. “I really miss his radio show”. “Bryan Ferry” I replied, thinking of his leather trousers and the louche way he caresses his microphone. “Oh, no”, was all my friend had to say about that. We worked our way through a miscellaneous collection of celebrities and had to agree to differ. But there was a select group with whom we had no quibbles… Meryl Streep, Sandi Toksvig, David Attenborough and The Queen.

I developed a fascination with these complex webs of taste when I wrote a list of things I want to do. I’d got the idea from reading about a librarian who came up with sixty experiences that she wanted to have in the year before her sixtieth birthday. I had no trouble scribbling down my own more leisurely list and then I realised that there was no point of intersection between the librarian’s longings and my own. Hers included holding a tarantula, sending an email to Test Match Special, having a bell-ringing lesson and driving a fork-lift truck. None of those are on my list, but then she probably wouldn’t be wowed by any of mine either. Ask a hundred people, even a thousand, and they’ll all have a completely different set of choices.

A bit more pondering led me to wonder why I’d chosen the things on my list. The obvious answer was that I wanted to do them, but I thought I could learn more about myself by delving into why these particular things appeal. A few remain mystifying even to me, but mostly they fall into four groups. For some, it’s about pleasant associations and wanting to recapture their essence. Watching all of Billy Wilder’s films is one of these. They take me back to rainy childhood Saturday afternoons by the fire. A couple are about sharing something with a special person. I love Edinburgh’s austere elegance and wanted to take my younger daughter, Molly, so I could see it through her eyes. Others such as riding, have challenged me to learn new skills and to broaden my sense of who I am.

However, the greatest number of treats on my list have been about feeding my curiosity. There are things that I’ve missed out on and which make me feel cut off. It’s like that radio programme ‘I’ve Never Seen Star Wars’. My version is that I’d never seen Brideshead Revisited even though it’s a cultural landmark, and I’d never been to New York. I’ve now done both of those things and so when these subjects come up I can relate to them. I’ve learned to identify some bird songs, too, and time outdoors is now more pleasurable. These kinds of things are about becoming more connected with the world. I enjoy learning new things and know that the more I find out about topics, the more I get out of them. Escalating this to a greater scale than my own small adventures I can even see that there’s an evolutionary advantage for mankind in being curious. It leads to the solution of problems that help us adapt to our environment. The pleasure we get from learning is the reward that compels us to keep on doing it.

There are a few treats, though, that haven’t been what I thought they’d be. I’d expected to like all of them, or they wouldn’t have made it to the list. But a couple have helped me find out what I don’t like. It’s felt odd to be doing this kind of self-exploration in middle life. Surely I should know these things about myself already? I realised recently that one of the problems is that I get distracted by wanting to be like people I admire. Annoyingly often. And so it was with my patchwork treat. I was filled full of romantic notions by the quilts in the American Museum in Bath. There’s a room full of them. Many were stitched by the early settlers and I imagined them at sewing bees, gossiping companionably by candlelight whilst producing something beautiful and functional. I was realistic enough to know that a quilt would be too ambitious, but a patchwork cushion seemed like it could be achievable so I put it on my list. I was inspired, too, by the exquisite creations of a friend. However, the bit I forgot is that she’s calmer and more patient than me. And she’s also much more visually astute. I also conveniently forgot that I’ve never liked sewing and am never likely to.

When the time came to have this treat, I got myself all set up with Radio 4 in the background and a large cafetière of coffee in the foreground. For several hours I cut, tacked and stitched away enthusiastically, although from time to time, I did have a niggling doubt about the wisdom of my colour juxtapositions. My machining looked a bit wobbly, too. But I tried to stay positive and keep my thoughts focused on the end product and how lovely it was going to be. After all, it was meant to be a treat and self-doubt is part of the creative process.

Self-deception is never a good idea, though, and by the end of the afternoon the truth was unavoidable as Molly came into the kitchen bringing an air of the Emperor’s New Clothes with her. As always, she wanted to know what I’d been up to and was keen to offer encouragement. I watched as she examined my efforts closely. Then she wrinkled her nose. “Perhaps you could give it to someone you don’t like very much”, she said kindly.

 flamingo

And for anyone who’s been following Fish Mondays I’m pleased to report that the monkfish and tuna experiments were successful. The recipes for all my fish encounters are now on the ‘fish recipes’ page above. I’ll add to them as I go along. But don’t expect any recipes for herring. Did I forget to say? I can’t stand fish with small bones.

Fish Mondays

farleyrose59 7 Comments

fish

I’m in a funny state of mind at the moment. Much of my time is spent thinking about the films of Billy Wilder, the novels of Jane Austen, and fish. This is both absorbing and frustrating. However, the ins and outs of Hollywood masterpieces and Regency love triangles will have to wait for future posts. For now, I’m going to focus on the fishy situation.

I’m trying to cook ten different varieties of fish and to end up with a recipe for each that I feel has been a complete success. The essential test is whether I would be happy to serve it to friends. This all sounds quite straightforward but I’m having to negotiate some unexpected hurdles along the way to seafood bliss.

Before going into the details of my fishy travails, I’d better explain why I’m doing this. It’s all part of my list of 60 things I want to do before my next big birthday. I started this nearly four years ago, and have already done 38 of them. There have been some splendid highs – Glastonbury, River Café chocolate cake, riding and Berlin. And a few lows where things just didn’t work out as I’d hoped. But that’s life and I’ve learned something useful from each. And I’ve had a huge amount of fun with them. These ‘treats’ have helped me to learn more about who I am in this potentially shapeless post-children phase of life. They’ve also helped me through some challenging life events.

So… back to the fish. I put this treat on my list because although I love cooking, I’ve not got much confidence with fish. I’ve always been put off by the bones and the scary warnings in recipes not to overcook it. And then of course there’s the cost. If you’re buying for a family of six, as I usually was, you would need to regularly re-mortgage your house. I want to demystify the process and broaden my culinary horizons.

When I first told my daughter Molly, then aged fourteen, about my fish project, she looked impressed. “Are you going to catch it yourself?’ she asked. Since then I’ve had such problems sourcing what I need, that I’ve begun to wonder whether her suggestion might have been easier.

I decided to start with plaice. Something familiar and therefore not too daunting. A peruse along my extensive cookery book shelf led to the plan of stuffing it with prawns, garlic, lemon and parsley. Mmmm. I set off optimistically to the supermarket with my list. Two whole plaice, prawns, garlic, two lemons and a bunch of flat-leaf parsley. But as a fish-buying virgin I hadn’t bargained on the fact that late on a Monday afternoon, two whole plaice would be so hard to find. I wandered around disconsolately and that night we had mushroom risotto.

The first day of the working week seems to be turning into fish Monday in my house, so the following one I turned my attention to skate. I’ve had this with black butter in restaurants several times, and like it very much. Again I identified a likely-looking recipe and again I needed lemon and parsley. Also capers, butter, white wine vinegar and two skate wings. I set off purposefully in my lunch hour to track them down. At the large branch of Sainsbury’s I ticked off nearly everything on my list and then joined the queue at the fish counter. The man who was serving there looked professional in his white coat and boater. I placed all my confidence in him. But I was misguided. “Oh, no”, he said. “We don’t stock skate”. “Try Asda”. Now, I only moved to this area a few months ago and am still finding my way round the city. But my knowledge was enough to be aware that this is a fifteen minute drive away and my lunch hour was rapidly disappearing. I thanked him, swore politely under my breath and paid for the fish-related things in my basket.

Back in the car and on my way to Asda, I spotted a branch of Waitrose. I was sure that they wouldn’t let me down so pulled into the car park. “Do you have a fish counter”, I asked an assistant, ever so slightly urgently. She smiled reassuringly and pointed towards the back of the store. There, lay a beautiful array of fish, all pink, white and grey with the odd bit of parsley scattered around for some visual satisfaction. And to my relief I counted six skate wings lying there enticingly. There were four people in the queue ahead of me so I resolved to wait patiently and try not to worry about the fact that I’d already used half of my lunch hour. Salmon for the first customer. Cod for the second. Scallops and monkfish for the third. And five skate wings for the fourth. Yes. Five skate wings.

I’ve rarely disliked anyone as much as this customer, and glowered at her as the assistant packed the fish into a bag and handed them over. Then it was my turn. “I need two skate wings”, I said looking sadly at the singleton on the slab. “Do you have any more?” The young assistant went off to check. She was only gone for three minutes but this was a significant proportion of my remaining lunch hour. No luck. I toyed with the idea of sharing one wing between two of us, but that seemed a waste of effort so I did a bit more swearing under my breath and set off for Asda.

Another fish counter that looked inviting. And I counted four skate wings. There were three people in the queue so I fidgeted and glared suspiciously as each one was served. Smoked haddock, prawns and cod were dispensed efficiently and then it was my turn. “Two skate wings” I panted, waiting for the hitch. But there was none, and the nice lady assistant popped them into a bag, and then sealed and weighed it. She started making pleasant conversation but I was in a hurry and not in the mood for small talk. I tried not to look rude whilst grabbing the bag and dashing to a vacant checkout. I put it on the conveyor belt and once again was faced with a chatty assistant. As I got my purse out to pay for my one item, she smiled. ‘That was a nice easy shop’, she said innocently.

I rushed back and arrived ten minutes late. That evening I chopped and stirred and the kitchen was full of a wonderful smell that took me back to various pubs I remember from my teenage years by the coast in Devon.  The skate with black butter was delicious.

This Monday it was seared scallops with a light dressing made of garlic, olive oil, finely chopped vine tomatoes and herbes de Provence. Rick Stein’s recipe didn’t let me down. And nor did Asda. I got what I wanted straightaway and even had time for a sandwich. Things in the world of fish are looking up.