of cam­panol­o­gy and choco­late fish

But before I get to that (and a fab­u­lous new side dish), thanks for the unprece­dent­ed num­ber of com­ments on the post a week or so ago, about the recipe file that I inher­it­ed from my grand­moth­er. How did that par­tic­u­lar top­ic come to be such a mag­net for inter­ac­tion from so many of you? I was very pleased.

And just think, the blog was­n’t even OPEN when I post­ed it, so who knows how many more inter­est­ed cooks and grand­daugh­ters could have found it appeal­ing, had the b**dy thing been open. I’m pass­ing through sev­er­al stages in my reac­tion to open­ing up the blog: first I was grate­ful. Why? To whom? Then I felt like a big fat idiot that I had react­ed the way I did orig­i­nal­ly, but hon­est­ly, when some­one threat­ens your child, un-dreamed-of facets to your per­son­al­i­ty come to the sur­face. Name­ly, “I’ll do any­thing, per­jure myself, sell my soul, close my blog? No prob­lem!” Then I decid­ed that feel­ing like an idiot was point­less because it was all over. And then anger kicked in. Anger that I had been forced into hid­ing, all because of one per­son­’s irra­tional­i­ty. Do you know what? I have four actu­al friends in real life, not just on a com­put­er screen but peo­ple I have cof­fee with and write sto­ries with and com­plain about my child with, that I met through my blog, before I closed it. And those of you who know me well know that friend­ship is para­mount, even cen­tral, in my life. How many more friends could I have made dur­ing all those months I was underground?

Any­way, enough of that because it’s a Brave New World. One task I have is going on my hands and knees to Google, Yahoo! and all the oth­er search engines that my long-suf­fer­ing hus­band spent many hours eras­ing me from, last year. I must say, “Mea cul­pa, mea cul­pa, I was a fright­ened fil­ly, but now will you relist my blog?” Don’t know what that entails yet. I’m loath to sit and wait for read­ers to come to me, and seri­ous­ly annoyed at all the read­ers and momen­tum I lost dur­ing my year as a nun.

So, my orig­i­nal point was that some­thing about old recipes, and my evil grand­moth­er, struck a nerve with you. Nos­tal­gia, child­hood mem­o­ries, a yearn­ing for the old days when we were defined by being some­one’s grand­daugh­ter, when those ladies were still alive to tor­ment the gen­er­a­tion in between… Well, I am hard at work on a chap­ter for my book on scal­loped pota­toes, which for bet­ter or worse will push all the same but­tons: ined­i­ble food, dire child­hood mem­o­ries, my moth­er’s head on the chop­ping block once again for hat­ing to cook. She assures me that she is not at all both­ered by my describ­ing her thus to you. “But if you ques­tion my inte­ri­or design, I might take umbrage.” Fair enough. When my scal­loped pota­toes chap­ter has tak­en its final shape, I’ll post it.

In the mean­time, life has tak­en on a fre­net­ic pace late­ly that I don’t quite under­stand. Nor­mal­ly I spend a lit­tle time scratch­ing my head over what to write about here, but since the week­end there has been so much going on that I am only now, on Wednes­day, sit­ting down to sort through pho­tos and form some sen­tences. First up: change ringing.

Cam­panol­o­gy, I know, is not a pop­u­lar past­time any­more. Most church­es have auto­mat­ic ring­ing, I think, and sure­ly the art of change ring­ing is dying out. But I love the sound of bells, and the thought that actu­al peo­ple’s arms are involved in ring­ing them in some far­away bell cham­ber is quite mag­i­cal to me. And I love Dorothy L Say­ers who loved bells. She was to my mind the great­est mys­tery nov­el­ist of all time, and life in the 20th cen­tu­ry was great­ly enhanced by her inven­tion of great Gold­en Age detec­tive Lord Peter Wim­sey, whose finest hour may well have been in “The Nine Tai­lors,” a mur­der mys­tery all about change ring­ing. Are you still with me?

So when I learned that the Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety, of which I am a mem­ber, was award­ing a prize to the Best Young Change Ringer to a 13-year-old girl in St Mary’s Church, Bluntisham, Cam­bridgeshire, where Say­er­s’s father had been vic­ar before the First World War, I knew my chance had come.

Now I know you’re all think­ing, “What could be more pathet­i­cal­ly nerdy than an Amer­i­can in Lon­don putting a copy of ‘The Nine Tai­lors’ in her hand­bag and buy­ing a tick­et to Bluntisham to spend two hours in a church lis­ten­ing to change ring­ing and watch­ing a teenag­er get an award from Dame Nor­ma Major,” and you’re right. It is nerdy. But I men­tioned my odyssey to my friend Jo, who real­ly under­stands what life is about, and she said, “Any­thing you do because you love it and it’s some­thing you’ve nev­er done before is a GOOD thing.” Well put.

It was but the work of a moment to google Bluntisham and find that… it would take me for­ev­er and a day to get there. John could not dri­ve me there because Avery had fif­teen dif­fer­ent things to do on Sat­ur­day that required trans­porta­tion and hand-hold­ing (tis the sea­son of music exams). I blub­bered about this state of affairs to my friend Annie who prompt­ly sug­gest­ed that I look up Bluntisham on a map and see what was the near­est big­gish town, take a fast train to there, and then get a taxi to the church. Done. Up ear­ly Sat­ur­day, dressed in sober, church-going clothes (my vision of coun­try tweeds), and… deep breath. Tube to Kings Cross, train to Hat­field, BUS to Hunt­ing­don, taxi to Bluntisham. In all, three hours. Insane. But I had my copy of “The Nine Tai­lors” to amuse me, and the love­ly Fen Coun­try speed­ing by out­side my win­dows. It is FLAT.

The taxi dri­ver was love­ly, answer­ing all my ques­tions about flood­ing (big plot­line in the book), sound­ing exact­ly like the char­ac­ters in the book, writ­ten some 70 years ago. “Gov­ern­ment long ago sort­ed out the flood­ing, got us some new sluice gates…” He said flat­ly that I was nuts to have come so far for some bells, but gave me his busi­ness card and said, “Now when you’re done, like, and you’ve had a cup of tea, give me a ring. HA HA.” I arrived at the church with 45 min­utes to spare, so I spent them in the gar­den of the near­by pub with a bit­ter lemon, look­ing up at the church spires and imag­in­ing myself in the nov­el. Then off to the ceremony.

There were per­haps 50 peo­ple in all in the church (com­plete with cheru­bim in the South Aisle, just like in the book! I was thrilled to see them). Most of them were mem­bers of the Ladies Guild of Change Ring­ing, whose help had been sought by the Soci­ety to find a suit­able recip­i­ent for the award. And they were all dressed in track suits or jeans, as befit­ted ladies who were about to pull hard on mas­sive­ly heavy, long bell ropes. I felt slight­ly sil­ly in my church­ly clothes. And my cam­era was about sev­en­teen times the size of their lit­tle dig­i­tal jobs, but it was a once in a life­time expe­ri­ence, and I want­ed prop­er pic­tures. The Chair­man of the Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety spoke. The Pres­i­dent of the Ladies Guild spoke. The Rev­erend of the Church spoke. Then lit­tle Chloe came for­ward to receive her award from yes, the wife of the for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, Dame Nor­ma Major (I won­der what she did to get her Dame-ness: sure­ly just sur­viv­ing being mar­ried to John Major was not enough). And what was Chloe wear­ing? A black cock­tail dress and three-inch red heels. I am not mak­ing this up.

Then we had bells! The local ladies rang, with Chloe throw­ing off her shoes in order to join them. “She’s a good girl, Chloe is,” her moth­er said when I con­grat­u­lat­ed her. “She’s a one for the rug­ger, and she will flirt with the boys, but she’s a good girl, and the ring­ing’s been great for her.” The idea of a teenag­er with an eye for the boys, a clos­et full of Jim­my Choos and her heart in the bel­fry struck me as almost unbear­ably touch­ing. I asked Chloe to sign my book, and you’d have thought she was asked for her auto­graph every day of the week. “Sure, no prob­lem!” she chirped, and dot­ted her “i” with a smart lit­tle cir­cle. More ring­ing, from any­one in the audi­ence who was expe­ri­enced. Then the church­war­den opened the steps to the bell cham­ber and we could climb up, gaze down at the bells, which were lov­ing­ly restored dur­ing Say­er­s’s father’s tenure as vic­ar. And re-ded­i­cat­ed a few years ago with mon­ey from our Soci­ety. One bell now bears the leg­end of the Dorothy L Say­ers Soci­ety, which I think is lovely.

To the Church Hall for tea, which I drank alone as befits the odd­i­ty from town who came all by her­self, but grad­u­al­ly two Soci­ety mem­bers edged over to me. “Come from far away, did you?” “Lon­don,” I said. “Fan, are you?” “Oh, mas­sive, I even named my cat Lord Peter Wim­sey,” I said warm­ly, and that did it. I was accept­ed. The two ladies told some sto­ries about “gorm­less things Amer­i­cans say” on the Yahoo! Lord Peter email group, and as I did not jump up to defend my coun­try­men, they dropped their guard. Out we went then into the ceme­tery where I was led to the grave­stone of a woman called Tho­day, one of the vil­lage names in the nov­el. Such fun to see it, as if a fic­tion­al per­son had come to life (well, strict­ly speak­ing, death). And I wan­dered around with these two Eng­lish ladies and we played ceme­tery games: find­ing every asso­ci­a­tion we could between the names on the grave­stones and char­ac­ters in mys­tery fic­tion. It was def­i­nite­ly a spe­cial­ist sort of day. How I missed my moth­er! She would have dived into the game with both feet.

Then it was time to retrace my steps back to Lon­don, my head pos­i­tive­ly filled with the past, fic­tion­al and real, with a sense of won­der that a per­son­’s life­time achieve­ments — a row of mys­tery nov­els on a shelf — could engen­der such devo­tion and long-last­ing wish to com­mem­o­rate her. A link between lit­er­a­ture before the war, and a red-haired rug­by-mad bell ringer just out of child­hood. Lovely.

I spent Sun­day recov­er­ing from this extrav­a­gan­za. And cook­ing the most gor­geous side dish, copied as best as I could from our local Ital­ian del­i­catessen, Sun­dri­ca, near the Ham­mer­smith Tube Sta­tion. Guess what? There’s rock­et in it.

Warm Chick­pea Sal­ad with Feta and Rocket
(serves 4 as a small side dish or 2 as a lunch salad)

4 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medi­um red onion, minced
2 tsps mild cur­ry powder
2 soup-size cans chick­peas, drained and rinsed (about 500 grams drained weight)
juice of 1 lemon (this suits my lemon crazed fam­i­ly, but cut down if you like)
8 oz feta cheese, crum­bled into bite-size pieces
2 cups rock­et, loose­ly packed
salt and pep­per to taste

Heat the olive oil in a heavy skil­let or saucepan and fry the gar­lic and onion gen­tly till soft. Add the cur­ry pow­der and cook for anoth­er minute, tak­ing care not to burn the gar­lic. It is essen­tial to cook the cur­ry to avoid the bit­ter­ness that can come from mere­ly adding it raw, as it were, to the dish.

Add the chick­peas and the lemon juice and more olive oil if the mix­ture seems too dry, and cook very gen­tly for about 20 min­utes, stir­ring fre­quent­ly. Add the feta cheese and toss well till the cheese is warmed. Tip the whole lot into a large bowl and toss with the rock­et, then sea­son and serve.

****************

This is a love­ly dish, warm and com­fort­ing, but with a sophis­ti­ca­tion that comes from the cur­ry and rock­et, a zing from the lemon and plen­ty of salt from the feta. Per­fect with a grilled pork fil­let, roast chick­en, shoul­der of lamb.

Mon­day found me at school (look, I can just SAY that and I won’t get arrest­ed! and I’m not hid­ing!) to vol­un­teer for the Lost Prop­er­ty Sale. This is an event of mam­moth pro­por­tions, requir­ing the efforts of at least a dozen vol­un­teers, the mus­cle of both school handy­men to bring tables, rolling racks. The whole Lost Prop­er­ty room with its smelly PE kit, mis­matched train­ers, count­less lost cardi­gans, for­got­ten down jack­ets, swim­ming tow­els and lacrosse sticks had to be turned out, orga­nized and laid out to sell. A mount­ing fury took over all of us at one point: “What is the mat­ter with our chil­dren that there is an entire room full of their belong­ings and they don’t even appear to MISS them?” I haven’t even men­tioned the locked cab­i­net full of watch­es, cam­eras, cell phones, iPods, jew­el­ry, HOUSE KEYS and Oys­ter cards for the Tube. How do these chil­dren func­tion? Do they have spares of EVERYTHING?

So Mon­day was the last oppor­tu­ni­ty for the girls to come by and claim their belong­ings with­out hav­ing to buy them. All the ladies I work with there are fod­der for a nov­el some­day. Peg­gy plucked a hair from a jack­et and start­ed to drop it in the bin when she sud­den­ly stared at it and said, “DNA! We could find out EXACT­LY who this jack­et belongs to! Let’s start get­ting sam­ples…” And Mar­i­anne turned to me, as I was strug­gling to move a huge rack of sweaters to one side of the hall, put her head on one side like an inquis­i­tive bird, and said, “Sure­ly you are not under the impres­sion that the rewards for Lost Prop­er­ty are earth­ly ones? No, one must wait until the next life to be thanked for these sacrifices…”

The girls ambled up, most­ly on their way to or from lunch, pawed through things, made inef­fec­tive claims to items that were clear­ly not theirs but just looked appeal­ing. And through it all, there was crown­ing glo­ry of the sale, the mys­te­ri­ous five choco­late fish which appeared sud­den­ly some weeks ago between the hymn­books and the dis­card­ed French texts. Choco­late fish the size of, say, a screw­driv­er. Not East­er bas­ket choco­late fish, but BIG ones. Where did they come from, and why on earth did some­one donate them to Lost Prop­er­ty and not sim­ply scoff the lot?

It was real­ly fun­ny to take these super-cool girls, all slung about with Aber­crom­bie and fringey scarves, ask them, “Is there any­thing in par­tic­u­lar you’re look­ing for?” and when they shrug and gig­gle and say, “Not real­ly,” you say, “Are you sure you haven’t lost a… choco­late fish?” Nev­er failed to get a reac­tion, and some actu­al con­ver­sa­tion. “They rat­tle when you shake them!” it was dis­cov­ered. We priced them at a pound each, and I deter­mined to get one for Avery. What is the point of being the incom­ing head of LP if you don’t take advan­tage of the oppor­tu­ni­ties attached thereto?

Tues­day dawned bright and fair and the sale start­ed at prompt­ly noon. Pan­de­mo­ni­um! One par­tic­u­lar moth­er has a boom­ing voice and absolute­ly no hes­i­ta­tion about mak­ing a total fool of her­self in a good cause, so she ran about wav­ing t‑shirts at girls and say­ing plain­tive­ly, “Take me home, says the lit­tle t‑shirt. I don’t want to live in Lost Prop­er­ty any­more, I want to live with YOU, and I’m only a quid!” The hour-long sale seemed to last for about three min­utes, three very loud min­utes. Avery drift­ed in and picked up some Con­verse high-tops, a Gap jack­et, a plaid cash­mere scarf, and… a choco­late fish. Thank good­ness. I stayed behind after, to learn the ropes for my even­tu­al­ly tak­ing over after East­er. Anoth­er meet­ing at school tomor­row WITH my lap­top, to receive instruc­tion, wis­dom and a dose of humility.

Today I ambled into Maryle­bone to have cof­fee with my friend Angela (she of the thin­ly dis­guised school scan­dal mem­oir in my writ­ing class, bless her), who kind­ly intro­duced me to her neigh­bor, the excel­lent cook­ery writer Sybil Kapoor. Her lat­est book, Cit­rus and Spice, is a very inven­tive approach to struc­ture: she choos­es twelve “flavours,” like cit­rus, ozone, ver­dant, smoke, and cream, to embody each month of the year. I’m not sure I like the struc­ture, actu­al­ly, which tries very hard to explain what I think is essen­tial­ly an intu­itive sense — what fla­vors go with what oth­er fla­vors — in a sci­en­tif­ic way. Yet she seems to real­ize this is a conun­drum, because there are many instances in which she says, “For what­ev­er rea­son,” which I think under­scores that we don’t real­ly have a def­i­nite sense of why crab goes with cit­rus. It just does.

So whether you agree with her approach or not, the recipes sound mem­o­rable and tempt­ing, a good sign in a cook­book, and she is a delight. Shy, thought­ful, absolute­ly will­ing to share her exper­tise in pub­lish­ing food writ­ing. Quite an intim­i­dat­ing morn­ing, how­ev­er, leav­ing me to won­der if I should just sit back and let the big girls run the show. The thought of try­ing to pen­e­trate all these mar­kets where there are already quite enough tal­ent­ed writ­ers is daunt­ing to say the least.

Right, I’d bet­ter put aside my own pet­ty life and see how Avery’s com­ing with her Eng­lish project, the life and career of Agatha Christie. I have nev­er con­vert­ed her to Dorothy L Say­ers, but it’s still ear­ly days. Let the bells chime.