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.