The story of the wooden spoon

This is a story. A story about a wooden spoon. I have had this wooden spoon for almost ten years. We have been through a lot together. There have been ups. There have been downs. But through it all, we have remained together.

When I was little, we used to walk to my Nana’s house every Sunday and she would make us lunch. She always made mince and something. I think it was potatoes and other vegetables. I wasn’t really paying attention. I just loved the mince. Maybe she cooked it especially well. I don’t know. I just know that my brother and I were obsessed with it, couldn’t get enough of it.

When she died, I was on my gap year in Africa and my dad and brother did all the sorting out of her stuff. When I got back from my gap year, I was immediately packing up my life again to move to university and my dad gave me my Nana’s cutlery to take. Amongst it all was a wooden spoon. One of the spoons she probably used when making our Sunday lunches of mince. It was sturdy and served me for almost anything I decided to cook (mostly pasta and sauces, as I was an unimaginative student).

When I left university for the summer and then actually ended up running away back to Africa and then coming back and going to a different university, again the wooden spoon and I found each other and made the journey to London together.

We survived halls of residence in tact and we moved into a flat just over the road from uni (the ‘lazy’ in my name becomes clear now) and lived with one close friend and two strangers. We found them on Facebook. They seemed fab. In fact, one of them disappeared and his room started to smell and his parents had to come and clean it out. And the other was nice but buggered off after a month or so.

I was not there the day she left but she obviously packed in a bit of a hurry. Or she intentionally broke my heart. Whichever it is, I have not forgiven her.

I came home that day and did not notice anything amiss. I hadn’t suspected she had a cruel heart made of stone. A few days later, I wanted to cook. I chopped something, I diced something else, I warmed some oil in a pan, I reached for my wooden spoon…. And it was not there. Panic swept over me. I looked around but it was not there. I realised where it must be but had no idea where it’s new home was.

Coincidentally, a girl I had lived in halls with in my first year at uni came over to say hi one day. She was still living in halls and mentioned that the girl who had moved out of our flat had moved in with one of her boyfriend’s friends, also in halls.

And so, the plan was put in place. They would wait until she had gone out one evening then sneak in, find my Nana’s wooden spoon and sneak back out, returning the wooden spoon to me asap.

And they did battle valiantly. They entered the battlefield, used their skills of stealth and sneakiness and retrieved the wooden spoon! Hoo! Rah!

Since then, I have guarded the wooden spoon carefully, not letting another silly careless mistake happen again. When I moved into a lovely massive converted coach house, it came with me. When I moved out a little while later, I carried in my backpack as I cycled to my new destination.

And now it sits happily in the utensil pot thing with the other utensils. It sometimes feels a little threatened by the presence of two other wooden spoons. Yes, two! But it knows those are but small wooden spoons, not comparable to it’s relative long-handled glory. It is the most useful when making things in a big pot, where the other wooden spoons, short-handled as they are, would fall into the food below.

Here’s to my Nana’s wooden spoon!

Thoughts

I’m having one of those I-can’t-think-what-to-write-about days. Well, actually, I should qualify that statement. I’m having a bit of a lazy morning where I’ve spent an hour or two reading other blogs and listening to an audiobook so now my brain is in too many different places to think of something to write about. So I shall just list the thoughts that are in my mind right now.

– Will I ever become a world famous piano player? Or will I forever be stuck on the line, “And you come to me on a summer breeze” from How Deep Is Your Love? And are ten fingers enough to play this piece of music? At the moment, I need about twelve to be able to play it properly.

– Chocolate and cherry mousse cake is fabulous. And making a genoise sponge for the first time went ok. As did making custard from scratch…

– Beouf bourginon is not actually that difficult to make. It is also extremely tasty, despite its easiness…

– Planning an African adventure is muchos fun, even if it isn’t going to happen for over a year…

– I can’t cope with X Factor winner James Arthur’s ‘my-parents-divorced-when-I-was-a-kid-and-now-I’m-traumatised-for-life’ routine. I just want to shake him and say, “Get over yourself! Grow up! I know your parents are divorced but SO ARE EVERYONE ELSE’S!” He writes songs about it which are really ‘deep’ apparently. So his Mum says. “Yeah,” she goes, serious face on and eyes looking down to the ground. “It’s really… It’s really… (she searches for the appropriate word, having used deep about four times already)… It’s really… deep.” Thanks for that, o mother of great eloquence and feeling. It’s good to know that, as a man in his 20s, the single most important that has happened in his life is still the separation of his parents when he was in primary school. Sometimes, Mr Arthur, people are better apart. Get over it.

– My rooibos tea has gone cold.

– There is a cat digging in the garden. I didn’t know cats dug.

– I am really intrigued about what happened with Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend. I genuinely really like him. I just finished reading his autobiography, Blade Runner, a few weeks ago and it was really good. He seems like a down-to-earth, decent type. And a brilliant athlete. His arrest for murder seems totally at odds with the man I imagined him to be. Of course, a book written by him will obviously give the impression that he portrays, not necessarily who he actually is. And by the same token, a charge for murder is not a conclusion of guilt. There’s this space in between the law and the media and the person’s own voice, where they reside, and I don’t suppose I can know who he is or what has happened. I guess we will see what the outcome is.

– Today I am going for lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in way too long. I am excited.

Things I once believed

That rottweiler was pronounced ‘rock-weiler’

That my mum was telling the truth when she said, “O, Laura, you’ve got to eat your sprouts, I got them especially for you.”

When a planes flies over and you stop and wave to it, the red light that flashes on its under carriage is the pilot waving back.

Sausage dogs just hadn’t grown up yet.

One day I would marry Michael Jackson.

I also believed that Lisa Marie Presley had ‘stolen’ him from me.

That I would grow my hair until it wad the longest in the world and get into the Guiness Book of Records.

I had a singing range similar to Mariah Carey’s.

My diary would one day be published, like Anne Frank’s.

There was a boy living in my attic like a fugitive.

That my Dad was saying “Whitey Ess” when he talked about a work training programme called YTS.

There was a possibility that I might well be stolen by monsters who could make my bed sink into the floor and into a pit where children were kept as slaves.

Life was like Famous Five books. I was always looking for adventures and was puzzled by the lack of smugglers and baddies.

The asparagus reader

Chat magazine has come up trumps yet again. There is an ‘asparamancer’ telling us about how she predicts the future by throwing asparagus in the air then ‘reading it when it lands.’ She talks about how she’s quite famous because she’s the only asparagus reader in the world.

Things she has predicted have all come true, she says. This edition, from late June has a prediction about Euro 2012. She’s pretty good at this asparagus thing because she accurately predicts that Germany or Holland will win…. O… Wait a minute….

The euro will also finally collapse but it won’t affect the British economy too badly. That’s a relief, because she so good at predicting things, evidenced in her Euro 2012 winner prediction, that I totally trust her on this one too.

She also does a reading for one of the Chat writers. It says there is an indication of alcohol and to cut back if overindulging. It says there is a trip planned with a friend and she will have a meaningful meeting on this trip.

A few things are wrong with this prediction. ‘Cut back if you’re drinking too much’ isn’t a prediction! It’s good medical advice. Most people drink alcohol. A lot of people who drink alcohol do so regularly. This, we are told, is bad for us, we should not drink regularly. Also, if you drink at home, it’s seen as a bit alcoholic-ish. If you have a few big nights out at the weekend, it’s a bit binge drinker-y. It’s likely that most people who drink have, at one time of other, thought that maybe they were drinking too much. So talking about overindulgence in alcohol, it’s a safe bet that a lot of people will fall under that barrier.

About planning a holiday with a friend. That’s not a prediction either, is it? It’s July. Most people with kids will have something planned for summer, that’s when most people are going on holiday. For the childless among us, they’re probably waiting for September or October to holiday, when the flights are cheaper, or maybe a bit later, to get some winter sun. Predicting that someone has a trip planned is not a special skill. It’s just a good bet. 90% of people in the UK will have a holiday planned.

Meeting someone significant on the holiday isn’t very insightful either. When you’re on holiday, everything feels exciting and exotic. Everyone you meet seems quite exciting and lovely. Because you’re on holiday, you’re looking for adventure, for new experiences and people. That’s not a prediction. It’s another likely guess.

So aside from all that stuff, how exciting is it that the lady reads asparagus and is really good at it. Honest.

Lots to get excited about!

Ok, I’ve been making a point to be more excited about things recently. I found some good stuff too. Joan Rivers’ birthday, Donald Duck’s TV debut, the Jubilee….

And today I have yet more to be excited about. This morning I went swimming. Again? I hear you all say, in admiration. Well yes, again. That’s three times in a swimming pool in the past few weeks. If I keep going at this rate, I’ll need to get some silly goggles and one of those tight caps in a loud colour, like yellow or red. O wait, there’s more. Not only did I go swimming, but I went in the outdoor pool today! How hardcore am I? Actually it’s lovely there because it’s got lovely trees all round it and the sky was blue and the sun was shining on my face and I could almost pretend I was on holiday. I also did a few more lengths than last time so am thinking of letting the Olympic Games committee know to count me in for next time around.

So after a fabulous start to the day I came home and baked some muffins…. Well at least it’s even stevens now. If I hadn’t been swimming then it would have just been the muffins and I think it’s generally frowned upon to just bake batches of muffins every day without at least pretending to do some exercise to have earned them.

They are banana bread muffins but I made them chocolate flavoured and put lots of cherries in them.

Another reason to be excited is because one of my other post-exam goals was to be more sociable and this weekend I have got that covered too. I am channeling my inner country bumpkin and spending the weekend in wellies with some uni friends.

Now the ‘lazy’ part of my username betrays itself a lot in my friendships. I am unfortunately quite a lazy friend. I’ve worked since I moved to London. Even around my full time undergraduate course, I was also working full time and volunteering part time. And when I was at uni, it was easy to see my friends because we were all in the same place. Then we all left, and my schedule didn’t get any less busy, and I didn’t make up for it by ensuring I kept in touch with everyone. So I’m very very guilty of having friendships that I don’t invest as much time in as I should. I will dedicate some time soon to seeing people more often.

That’s partly why this weekend will be so great. The main reason is of course that I’ll get to spend it hanging out in a tractor in wellies. That’s obviously the MAIN reason. But it will also be lovely to see friends again.

Double excitement then! Swimming and weekend away. Woop! I’m off to pack my going-away bag. Lots of waterproofs and warm jumpers! I love an adventure!

Omg, we could solve a mystery or something and then it really WOULD be adventure! I could live out one of my many childhood dreams, to be George from The Famous Five. Hopefully there’s a crime this evening when we arrive!