Another fold

This cloud - taken from tags in this blog, using Tagxedo, has nothing to do with what I'm thinking, other than that I should be doing something else, like wrapping presents ... but it's fun, and only took a few moments ...

But I was thinking, yet again, of the way time crumples when you undertake annual tasks. Stir-up Sunday, familiar to generations of Anglicans as the day when the collect for the day reminded them that it was high time to stir up their puddings and such for Christmas, may have morphed into the feast of Christ the King, with the collect only mentioned before the service in case any of us was relying on it, but my fruit has been soaking in booze for a week and now the cake is in the oven. Two years ago I wrote a poem about the same sense of a folding in time, when the intervening years vanish in the routine (lining the cake tin - still the same palaver) and smells of cake-making.

Today I was recalling the first time I baked my own cake, instead of going back to sample my mother's cake and perhaps purloin some for our own house. I was on maternity leave, it was cold, and I had slipped on the frosty pavement in Clarence Drive, having gone to the shops before the sun reached that spot. At that time a good stone over my usual weight (I'd think nothing of it now - darn!) I came down with a crash on my rear end. Panic and pain. Would the baby be all right? (yes - still is, as far as I know) Had I cracked my coccyx? (probably, but nothing was done about it). Whatever long-term problems might arise, it was too sore to sit down that afternoon, so to take my mind off the pain and the angst I baked a Christmas cake.

Actually, the memory makes it sound more spontaneous than it must've been; I recall I had planned things, had been given a recipe by a friend whose cake I'd enjoyed, so I must have had the fruit soaking and needed only the impetus to turn it into something. That self-same cake from the self-same recipe is now in the oven, about to have its hat put on and the temperature lowered. Before I go to bed I shall pour the fruity left-over booze over it and wrap it up carefully, and another year will begin (I'm kinda governed by the liturgical, I fear). Perhaps the child who did not suffer from the fall will phone. Life will stagger on.

And then there are puddings to turn to ...

White smoke at last

Whew! The white smoke was billowing metaphorically around Holy Trinity church, Dunoon, today - and in the other episcopal charges of the Cowal and Bute district - as we were at last able to acknowledge that a new priest had been appointed. The Reverend Andrew Swift, originally from Aberdeen, is currently a full-time curate in a semi-urban parish in Gloucester City, and before training for ministry worked in the shipbuilding industry.

For the first time in almost 30 years there will be a young family living in the Rectory, the last such family belonging to our recently-retired bishop, +Martin. At that time I was one of the young adults in the congregation, and some of us were reflecting the other day that we are now the Old Women of the tribe - though strangely we don't feel like it. Thirty years ago women of my age wore tweed skirts - remember these skirts with the pleats from each side of the hip? - and Pringle twinsets under their sensible jackets and above their sensible shoes. They perhaps wore pearls, or a Luckenbooth brooch. At yesterday's meeting there were jeans, technical-fabric trousers, trainers, hiking boots (so still sensible footwear!), fleeces and T-shirts. Presumably we now head to the grave dressed as we have since we left mini-skirts behind ... but I digress.

Life is short, but at least with a new priest it will be less demanding - just a bit - for the lay team, who may not have to write so many sermons. And it promises to be interesting. What more could we ask for?

Of Time, and its passing*

Goodness. Another reminder of the passage of time in that most unpromising of venues, the recently-rebranded-as-Morrison's in Dunoon. With the re-opening of the larger of the town's supermarkets came the questionable advantage of a couple of self-service checkouts - good if you have a packet of coffee and a carton of milk, but rather slower if you have a big shop which you struggle to accommodate on the smallish bag area. And certainly not good if you have to queue to use the facility in the first place.

I found myself with only a couple of items the other day - just right for a quick swipe at the barcode reader and away. But there was a problem. It was just after midday and the local primary schools were out. A small boy - about nine, I'd guess - was hovering in front of the touch-screen. I asked if he was finished with it, whereupon he dabbed at it with his gloved hand, then hit it, then attempted to operate it with his nose. At this, I suggested he quit fooling around before I lost patience. There was an interesting moment, a fraction of a second, when I wondered if he was going to resist my charm, but no. He left, breenging past me to join his little friends, only to be seized by the checkout assistant who was hovering: he still had to pay for a bag of crisps.

I realised that this assistant was in fact a former pupil of mine, and asked what he had done to deserve the thankless task of guarding the self-service checkouts. It seemed to me that it was the equivalent of the naughty stool, though he assured me it was simply that as a part-timer (because of going to college) he had no status and got all the dirty jobs. "It's these kids, " he told me solemnly. "They're little bastards, all of them. Were we like that?"

I told him that there was a reason for my teaching secondary, and that no, his lot had been relatively civilised when I knew them. But I couldn't help reflecting that this too was a sign of the passing years, when before my very eyes I saw the adult weariness on the face of someone who had been sitting at a desk in front of me ... when? Not yesterday? Not last year?

Oh dear.

*I feel there is a touch of Bacon's essays about this title. I rather like it. But how do you spell breenging?

Tempus fugit in corpore sano

I've been thinking about food today. Actually, I began by wondering where the morning had gone, and it was while I was making soup for lunch that the foodieness kicked in. T'other day I was checking out my messages (shopping, for the non-Glasgwegian) in the local Somerfield when it struck me forcibly how much I was spending. No booze, nothing fancy, one piece of pork fillet the only meat there - and it came to over £60. For two people. I stuck my credit card in the thingummy and commented that it hurt less than handing over cash.

'But you eat healthy food,' opined the youth who was serving me. I had taught him at some point in the past - a pleasant, polite sort of chap. 'It's expensive to be healthy.' I suppose he was looking at the veg and the "best ever" (or whatever) fruit, and the Tropicana juice and the soya milk - but he had a point. It's expensive not to buy the basic loss-leaders. It's expensive not to like the taste of Dutch hothouse tomatoes and to prefer Pink Lady apples. Expensive in money terms.

And in time terms - and this is where this all began - it's expensive to make your own soup (carrot & coriander, with onion, garlic and a wee bit of crushed chili and a sweet potato to improve the texture - about 20 minutes + cooking and blitzing time) and to prefer to make your own bread (I was making the starting 'sponge' which is now sitting in my pantry bubbling gently while it gathers flavour). Sometimes I use the machine and it takes only about 5 minutes to sling the stuff in, but sourdough takes longer, with the floury hands-on bit the time when someone is bound to phone you. Worth it, though - a great taste and texture.

But I digress. Where the time went this morning was partly on cooking, and partly on swimming. For the rest, I was seduced by a particularly enticing post on Kimberly's blog and spent an hour on the phone. But wanting to eat well and being a domestic goddess is clearly to blame for much of what I have left undone of what I ought to have done ... so is there indeed 'no health in me' after all?