Sunday Sunday

A gentle, soft Sunday spent daydreaming and napping.

Outside, the weather coin flipped from spring time to winter and back, blasting my windows with sleet one minute and sunshine the next. Inside, I made crispy grilled bacon and brie sandwiches and ate them at my desk reading yesterday’s newspaper.

Last night I deleted my ex’s phone number from my mobile and his e-mail address from my computer. Symbolic gestures both – there’ll need to be some sort of on-going communication, however sporadic, all the time we still jointly own the barn. But sometimes these small gestures make you feel good. And feel good I do, relieved and elated and deeply calm and content in my soul. That chapter of my life really has closed at last. It has taken a long time.

My Gran always made the Christmas pudding just as the summer holidays were drawing to a close. We’d gather at her house, take turns in stirring the thick mixture in a huge beige ceramic glazed bowl and under urgent strict instruction to make a wish whilst we did so. It puzzled me that she prepared it so far in advance of the big day itself. The days were still long and hot, the sounds of holiday makers and ice cream vans still drifting in from the beach through the open windows, Christmas still a long way off in the future. Gran knew that the pudding needed to sleep during those three or four months, that the ingredients needed to seep and mingle and marinate and mature to marry together their disparate flavours and textures until December came knocking with dark cold fingers once more.

Gran would be up before first light on Christmas morning, taking the pudding from its autumn resting place and placing it inside a giant cast iron cauldron. It would bubble and boil and steam away on the hob, wrapped in white linen and tied round with string. When the last of the plates of turkey and stuffing and Brussels sprouts had been borne away I’d go with her into the kitchen. We’d switch off the gas and carefully lift the bundle through billows of steam onto the kitchen worktop. Snip away the string, pull away the wrappings and turn out the pudding, fresh and glistening and hot, onto a special plate used only for the purpose. Pierce the top with a sprig of wild holly and drench the whole lot in brandy from a squat green bottle with a gold label. Turn the lights off, strike a match to the pudding and bear it through to expectant faces, lit up now with eerie light from the blue brandy flames. It was (and is) my favourite part of Christmas.

Last night I also started work on my book. It had been brewing for some time – a long time – and the words spilled out of my head, thousands and thousands of them. Like the Christmas pudding, I knew it would come when it was ready; there are some things that you just can’t hurry.