Quicunque

Summer made liars of the Met Office guys again this year, turning their optimistic forecast of long, hot barbeque days into little more than wishful thinking. A few random weeks of sunshine, followed by rain, more rain, wind, and an early descent into autumn. Beans and strawberries remained obdurately green and rotted, while blackberries swelled and ripened early in the hedgerows.

But then, just when we had accepted the chance of the promised barbeque summer was over and were mentally prepared to follow the days into a damp, blustery autumn, laying down jams and preserves and syrups and wines for the months ahead, the elusive summer decided to give us one last hurrah after all. A week of mild, calm, warm weather. Halcyon weather, my father used to call it*. It lifts the spirits immeasurably to see blue sky instead of grey, and feel the sun's kiss on one's cheek instead of the rain. It's all the more precious because soon we'll be immersed in the long, dreary British winter again.

However, this year I'm carrying a little of Summer's Last Hurrah through into the winter with me. For the last few weeks I've been busy bottling and brewing, boiling fruit and sieving syrups, all produce made from wild food harvested from the hedgerows and lanes within walking distance of my house. Making blackberry and rosehip cordials and damson and elderberry wines have been regular annual events for a few years, but this autumn for the first time I've been experimentally making some jams and chutneys, and without false modesty I think I can say they're damned good for first attempts!

The funny thing is, I know I'm not alone in venturing into jam-making and suchlike for the first time this year. Maybe its a sign of the economic times, the influence of River Cottage and big name chefs on TV extolling the virtues of home-grown and home-preserved, or that more people are turning away from unhealthy manufactured foods, but I've read on many blogs, and heard from many equally unlikely people both in real life and online, that they too are starting to dabble with jellybags and Kilner jars. As usual, I am but one mote in a growing trend!

Actually, I think it's easy enough to find an explanation for my own hitherto uncharacteristic kitchen forays. I have an inherent need to do something productive and creative, and one of things that first got me interested in the internet and becoming a web designer was the creative angle of it. I can't write, or make music, or paint, but I discovered I could design and build websites that people liked, and that fact gave me a great deal of satisfaction. It was something I could take pleasure and pride in. Nowdays, I find web "design" as creatively satisfying as a paint-by-numbers kit. It just doesn't push my buttons anymore, and I'm tired of coloring within the lines. Circumstances led to me having more time at home this year and to get my creative buzz I'm increasingly finding myself straying down avenues I would never have previously imagined myself exploring. And I have to say, it's a very interesting journey!


* Halcyon days were 14 days of calm weather at the winter solstice, when the halcyon, a mythical bird identified with the kingfisher that had the ability to calm the wind and the waves, was said to breed in a nest floating on calm seas. The story of the halcyon's origins and attributes is in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which I had to study as part of my Classics course. Yes, I had that kind of an education, I'm afraid.

Although I generally don't write fanfic, I have dabbled. One of my forays, back in 2003, was writing a couple of original characters in a Highlander novel at Panhistoria. The fact I'd never seen any of the TV series - and indeed only the first of the movies, many years previously and well forgotten - didn't stop me. What did stop me, was when the novel was lost in the infamous Crash of '04. Many the novels at Pan were rebult from the ground up, including the Highlander one, but I never revived my characters there. They went into space in a science fiction story instead.

Recently, myself and several of my original writing partners from that first venture into Highlander territory have started to pick up our story again, after a 5 year hiatus. This time it's at Pan's sister novel, Panerotica, even though the story is no racier than it ever was (ie not really at all *chuckles*). We've started by undertaking to repost everything we had saved from Version 1 before picking up where we left off - and it's been an interesting exercise to say the least. I have managed to frighten myself with the realisation I wrote much better 5 years ago than I do now.... *laughing*. Oh, and I still haven't see any of the TV series at all!

Since you have to be a member to read everything at Panerotica I thought I'd share a brief excerpt from the story here. So here is my Watcher character, Dante Sparda, newly arrived in Rome to take up his new (and first) field assignment - observing the Immortal known as Zaekim Sanburd - and harbouring a private agenda that threatens to distract him...

Making notes

Roma, August 21st in the Year of Our Lord 1585. The Woman hath taken a House in the Monti District of the City, at the corner of the Via del Boschetto, where she doth now go by the Name of Margarita and passeth freely amongst the Artisans and all People. Your Servant hath taken a Lodging nearby, and doth Keep close her close in Observing her though she knoweth him not…

Old archive entries from long ago that had been encrypted in code by an unknown Watcher and buried deep in the dusty chronicles, until Dante had found and deciphered them. He had read them hundreds of times, using them to painstakingly plot Marguerite Chauvelin’s route across Europe and three hundred years. Now he read them again on his laptop in the small room of his pensione.

Dante sighed in wry self-amusement as he realized he’d got distracted again while painstakingly transferring the handwritten notes on his present assignment to the computer. Almost without thinking he had brought up the codeword-protected files that contained information on another Immortal, one that held a deeply personal interest for Dante. Though the chronicles asserted she had been dead these last hundred and forty years, she was the reason for his existence and his secret obsession, just as she had been his father’s.

He lit a cigarette, leaned back and closed his eyes, letting his mind slide back to how it had all begun: himself sixteen years old and left without family or means after the violent death of his father in mysterious circumstances. No one had known what to do with him, until a man he’d never seen before had turned up to “tell the boy his heritage”. This was Tomas Le Haine, and what he had told Dante had changed his life forever.

“I am here because of what your father was, and because we look after our own. Andreas Sparda was not just a bookseller, he was also a research Watcher, Dante,” Le Haine had smiled at the grief-numbed boy gently. When he returned to the Watcher Academy in Geneva, he had taken Dante to train him to follow in his father’s path.

But although he was studious and often found pouring over old manuscripts in the library, there proved to be a secretive and wild streak in Dante. He was often missing for hours or even several days, from which he would return inexplicably cut and bruised as if from a fight.

He told no one, not even his beloved mentor, that he had now discovered something to focus his bitter vendetta on. It was in his father’s personal notebooks recording their own family history that he had first found the name of the obsession that had drawn Andreas Sparda into this secret society, and hence to his death.

… Shit! The forgotten cigarette had now burned down low enough to threaten Dante’s fingers and he quickly stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray on the writing desk. A glance at his watch showed he had spent longer simply sitting here mulling over the past than he could afford. Shaking his head and muttering at himself, he closed the Chauvelin file, and dutifully began a new one to continue transcribing notes on the one who called herself Zaekim Sanburd instead.

[from Highlander: For All Eternity, all rights reserved]

Despite the fact we've had cool temperatures and strong winds for the last couple of weeks, after an early unseasonably warm and sunny spell before that, the fruit and veg I'm growing in pots in my back yard (for lack of space elsewhere) aren't looking too badly at all.

My borlotti beans were attacked by Mutant Killer Slugs From Hell who nibbled the tops off, but fortunately the beans haven't thrown in the towel and are doggedly growing again (this time protected by Jerry's Slug Pub^TM filled with cheap beer - at least the buggers should die happy).

The strawberries and new herbs (common and melon sage, thyme, marjoram and flat-leaf parsley) are looking cheerful and determined, but my tomato plant is looking undecided about its chances of success. It doesn't like the constant temperature changes from day to day, and it really doesn't like being buffeted by the wind. I'm hoping it will perk up when and if the weather warms up a bit.

The potatoes are romping away in their little green gro-sacks, but the early harvest varieties are half the size of their late harvest brethren. Hmmm. Now I'm beginning to wonder if I mixed the tubers up when I planted 'em? Seed potatoes all look the same to me. I don't suppose it matters!

The fruit bushes - two self-pollinating blueberries, a gooseberry and a goji berry/wolfberry - are also settling in well, but since they are still quite small and young, I'm not expecting much in the way of a yield from them this year. Next year, I'd like to add a redcurrant or whitecurrant bush - I didn't think they could be grown in containers but I've since heard they can do very well.

I'm beginning to feel like one of those wartime Dig for Victory adverts....

My cats have developed a passion for the padded paper sack my seed potatoes arrived in. The spuds had chitted nicely in the cold shed and I just planted them into potato growing bags (not an easy task with the plaster cast'd arm encased in a bin bag for protection); when I turned round, there were three cats in the emptied potato sack, just whiskers and gleaming eyes visible. Potato sacks make excellent places in which to pounce on your siblings, apparently.

My single tomato plant is growning happily on the living room window ledge at the moment, since it's too young and tender to withstand the gusty winds and bouts of hail and sleet we're enjoying today. I only have one plant because I don't like tomatoes myself, and the yield of one plant is sufficient for the partner's needs without producing a glut.

I have some borlotti bean plants on order which I'm expecting to arrive any day. This will be exciting as I've never grown beans before, but I'm told they're easy (hah! I was told that about sweet peppers and my plant grew one measly thimble-sized pepper) I chose borlottis because the speckled pods and beans are so pretty. Food should be as aesthetic as tasty, in my opinion.

On a completely different note, I've now watched the first four episodes of season 2 of Carnivàle, and the angst has set in about reaching the (premature) end. What a unique and stunning series! It's been a very long time since I have felt so drawn in and mesmerised by the lives of TV-fiction characters *sighs*