the scent of water

Faeries Exist

 

Maybe not literally. I can't prove it. But I do know that sometimes, when I get a little too grown-up and focus on all the things I have to do, all the bills I have to pay, all the uncertainty in my future that I am struggling to stand up under, so much of the colour drains out of my day. Things get heavier and harder, and tomorrow begins to look a lot like today, which in turn looks so much like yesterday.

If it takes a little metaphorical sprinkling of faerie dust to brighten up the shadowed corners, then I'm all for their existence. (I don't know why I'm spelling faerie like that, other than that I'm a git, which is as good a reason as any). In that kind of a world I can be a book writing philanthropist cancer curing rock star artist. With a cute cottage by the sea.  In that kind of a world, anything is possible.

 

Tropical Ginger Cake

Cake. Cake, cake, cake, cake, cake. I've had an unseemly craving for cake for a while, but for inexplicable reasons have resisted it. Then I had an epiphany. I like cake. I'm good at cake. I should make cake.

Iona and I have poured over baking books from the library but neither of us could narrow the options down to just one. Thus far, she has 5 separate flavours on her list for her upcoming birthday, and yes, she believes that all 5 at once would be ideal.

As for me, I finally just opened one of my books at random and bought the necessary ingredients for whichever cake I landed on. Tropical Ginger Cake, from 200 Cakes and Bakes by Sara Lewis (200!). The flavour's good, but it's a little dry, and probably more suited to autumn than it is to a muggy summer's afternoon.  But still.  Cake.

Here's the recipe.  If you don't have golden syrup, you could try maple, or even honey.  And I used crushed pineapple, for those who have access to that too, and low GI sugar in place of the muscovado.  I know, I know, it's like having diet Coke with a Big Mac.  Which I also do.  Next time, I think I'd lessen the ginger and maybe soak the coconut in a bit of coconut milk, and I've changed the general method slightly because their way was too fussy.  I've also included more lime juice, because I could. Look at me, I'm cake connoisseur.

 

Tropical Ginger Cake

150 g (5oz) butter

125g (4oz) muscovado sugar

3 tablespoons golden syrup

250g (8oz) self-raising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

50g (2oz) desiccated coconut

3 eggs, beaten

200g (7oz) can pineapple rings, drained and chopped

 

For the Icing

100g (3.5oz) softened butter

200g (7oz) sifted icing sugar

1 tablespoon lime juice

 

Preheat oven to 180C (350F), and line the bottom of a 23cm round tin with baking paper. (I’m guessing. I haven’t a clue how wide the diameter of my cake tin is. It’s something along those lines). Melt butter, sugar and syrup gently in a saucepan, put aside to cool slightly. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, then add beaten eggs and pineapple to the sugar mix. Gently fold into the dry ingredients and pour into cake tin.  Bake for approximately 20 minutes, until skewer inserted into centre comes out clean.

For icing, beat all three ingredients together, and ice cake when cool.

 

Back in 5 minutes.

Apparently I have taken a wee blog break. No, no-one told me either. You could have one too, if you wanted. Take a cupcake with you. They're rather small, but perfect with a strong cup of tea.

I made something and then I went somewhere

It took a full year of Andrea and I sitting next to each other in classes before we discovered how much we both loved to make things.  One of the things she loves to make is decorated cakes, and when I saw some of her icing roses I held her down in a headlock until she agreed to teach me how to make them too. One of the above is hers, and I will refrain from saying which, because frankly it's painfully obvious.  The only one that actually looks much like a rose.  They are so easy though, and satisfying in the way quick and pretty things that have no other use in the world than to decorate something momentarily are.

After rose making lessons I took her out to see The Descendants.  I wasn't expecting Hawaii to remind me so much of New Zealand in its look and feel, and I wasn't expecting it to be such an emotionally nuanced film. It reminded me how important communal story telling is, how we usually only know a small part of the story of someone else's life but are quick to judge in any case, and how very normal it is to find love messy, difficult, and a source of both joy and sorrow.

Hatched

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.  ~ C. S. Lewis

This morning she was a chrysalis, this afternoon a butterfly. When I took her photo, she was not yet able to move but was clinging tightly to the shell of her old life, waiting out the vulnerable few hours between rebirth and flight.  She survived it just fine.  And even if she hadn't, even if she had a choice, it was worth the risk.  Far better to be a Monarch, if for just a minute, than to rot inside a tiny shell.

More library books

 

One more skein: Leigh Radford

 

Derek Jarman's Garden: Derek Jarman, with photography by Howard Sooley

 

Timeless Quilts: Designs by Ruth Van Haeff and Janine Flew

 

So.  Someone's feeling a little domesticated...

Style

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. ~ Gore Vidal

Everytime I visit the library I come out with at least twice as many books I had been intending to leave with.  It's been this way since I was a little girl and it will be that way until I am an old lady. At the last visit I grabbed Romantic Style off the shelf as I flew down the aisle - with a cover like that, how could I not? I would never have that much white, or that many roses, but flicking through the pages does feel a little like visiting a favourite Aunt who wants to sit me in the comfy chair, fatten me with cake, and tell me what a pretty wee lass I am. 

Not coincidentally I had been reading Sam Gosling's book Snoop, in which he explains his research about the connections between people's personalities and their stuff. Bedrooms and bathrooms are the best places to find the truth, apparently.  I loved the book, not least because of how it expanded my understanding of the people around me, but also because of the questions it asked me about my own personality.  What would you say about me if you snooped around in my bathroom, my bedroom?

Not a lot.  Quite disorganised. Decidedly boring. The love of books would sneak in, a teeny slash of colour here and there, but otherwise my house is the house of someone who wishes to make no mark at all. In all the many places I have lived my whole adult life, I have rarely, if ever, decorated anything inside of any of them. Given my love of colour and design, this is pathetic.  Beyond pathetic to pathological. Am I afraid the style police will show up and imprison me for crimes against humanity if no-one but me approves of the shade of green I paint my living room walls? Probably.  It's a concern.

It's a little bit gutless to try and make yourself so invisible that you offend no-one. And, as my friend Deborah likes to tell me, it can't be done anyway. I did know that. I just wasn't quite aware of it.

All of which to say, I quite like certain shades of green and purple, and lots of the pinks, blue in the right spot, and a very little bit of orange and yellow. Off white, some greys, teal for sure, but very rarely red or black. Also chandeliers.  Just so you know. Just to give fair warning.

Smart shoes and salad

Once upon a time, a week or two ago, I opened my letterbox and found a cheque.  For me.  For achieving the highest psychology grades in my year.  And everyone lived happily ever after.  I suppose I could have spent it on books for the coming year, stationery, invested it even, but in the end there was just the one sensible choice.

Shoes. Obviously. It's not that they are anything spectacular, it's that they are mine, the fruit of my very own guts slogging. A young friend christened them my smart shoes, and I am pretty sure they actually do raise my IQ by a good 10 points everytime I wear them. Or is that my height by 10mm?

And? As part of my study this year I get to write a thesis on creativity and blogging.  It feels like cheating and pretending, like I get to play 'school'.  I'm pretty sure there is a rule against research topics being that much fun.

The salad. Also low on the spectacular scale, and also all mine. Well, Iona's.  She planted, picked and chopped everything in it, and thinks it well worth its own piece of internet glory. I think she's right.  For sure, it tasted good.