What a little girl said to me recently (and a truffle story)

“Laura. I was in the playground and there was some writing on the slide. I think some bigger boys did it. Naughty boys. And there was a policeman so I told him and I said, ‘Come with me, Mr Policeman,’ and I showed him the slide and he said those boys were very naughty and he’s going to find them and tell them off.”

Hilarious! A 3-year-old crime fighter! Apparently, she took the Mr Policeman by the hand and showed him the graffiti and gave him a look that said ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ All the while, her mother hid behind the climbing frame and pretended she wasn’t with her.

And now, for a little cheat. I have been writing my NaNoWriMo religiously since November 1st, hitting exactly or slightly over the 1,667 wordcount every day, which means I’m now at 13,605 words. With all this writing, I thought to myself, “Surely there’s a way to double up here, hit two birds with one stone and all that?” So occasionally, during November, I may post something from my NaNoWriMo, if I’m feeling a little too lazy to write for both.

The following is a truffle story I wrote about the first time I ordered truffle butter for myself.

“I ordered my first two sticks of truffle butter online, one black, one white and they arrived a few days later. I immediately took them out of the box, peeled back the packet and smelled them. It was heavenly.

 

I was in work, where they had been delivered and an Italian customer came in. He and I would discuss food every time he came in as I love cooking Italian food and had recently been to Rome and he loved food and cooking too. In my excitement, I grabbed the stick of black truffle butter when I saw him and showed him. I handed it over, telling him to peel open the pack and smell it and he mistook it for me giving him the butter! He took it, smelled it, wrapped it back up and put it in his bag.

 

A hot flush ran over my entire body. He was quite shy and I didn’t know him very well, not enough to berate him jokingly and take it back off him. I needed the truffle butter that evening as I had a friend coming over for dinner and was planning to use it. I didn’t know how to get it back though. I stood in horror as I watched him say something I couldn’t hear, because the blood pumping in my ears was too loud. I realised he was thanking me for the butter.

 

“O god, o god, o god. Give me back my truffle butter!” I screamed at him, silently.

 

In blind panic, I said, “Let me just show you something on the butter, look,” gesturing toward his bag and, thankfully, he took it out, looking quizzically at the packaging. I, maybe too frantically, took the butter from him and scarpered back behind the till, grabbing one of the little takeaway pots we used for putting food in and cutting him off a small section of butter. I put the butter safely out of reach and offered him the cut off section attempting to look generous while he was probably wondering why I was being so odd. I then pretended something urgent was happening in the kitchen and ran off, clutching my truffle butter so hard, my knuckles had turned white.

 

That was the closest shave I’ve ever had, in terms of food.”

The first boy I ever kissed

Some friends and I used go to a Youth Club every Thursday night. There were three boys there; Tom, Tom and John, who we were all in various stages of having crushes on. We were twelve years old and it was all very exciting.

Then some new boys came to Youth Club, Michael and Oliver. I liked Michael and my friend liked Oliver. Something happened one week when he was coming to Youth Club, he got into a fight or someone beat him up or something. He was an easy target as he was really very short. So he wasn’t at Youth Club that week. I missed him and got all Jane Eyre about it and realised I really really liked him.

There was one major problem though. He was in the year below. O. My. Goodness. Liking a year seven boy when you’re a year eight girl is sooooo not the done thing. The girls in school said I’d get called a Cradle Snatcher. I got even more Jane Eyre about it and promised myself this wouldn’t keep us apart! (Yes, we were 11 and 12 years old… What of it?)

There was lots of chatting and what I perceived at the time to be ‘flirting’ but nothing much else. I mean, past that, what is it ever at age 12?

Until there was a school disco. As I went to a girls’ school, the discos would be together with one of the boys’ schools. It just so happened that Michael went to the boys’ school that we were having the disco with that time.

My friend, the one who liked Michael’s friend, and I were walking to class that day, excited for the disco, declaring loudly about how ‘I never thought I’d like a year seven boy,’ and realised all the classes had already started and were sitting in silence and a lot of them had their doors open into the corridor. God knows what they must have thought of our inane chat about year seven boys, like we were such grown ups and year sevens are really little.

Anyway, the night of the disco and there we were, Michael and I, holding plastic bottles of Panda Pops in illunimous colours, bobbing about unrhymically a little bit near each other. At one stage, we took it further by putting our fingertips gingerly on each others’ shoulders and stepping from side to side in time.

And therein lay the problem. I was taller than him to start with and I had put high heels on for the evening. They weren’t mega high but enough to make a difference.

A bit later we were standing separately, each with our gang of friends and there was a flurry of messengers back and forth. This was how things worked at discos.

You saw a boy you liked the look of. You asked your friend to ask him if he wanted to dance. There was some running back and forth until it was eventually decided. You’d linger around until a new song started or until he’d finished his dance with another girl and then you’d walk over, each raise your hands, the girl tended to put her hands on his shoulders and he would put his hands on her waist, all done from afar, mind you. And you would step or sway from side to side for a few minutes then separate and scurry back to your friends. It was the height of excitement for a twelve year old.

If you had decided you wanted to kiss a boy, the same system of messengers ran back and forth to establish a yes or a no and then you approached each other, awkwardly snogged a bit while everyone gawped, then maybe had a little hugging dance afterward, then parted and ran off to tell your friends about it.

Michael and I had decided it was time for the next stage. His friend approached me and asked if I wanted to kiss Michael. I, the classy girl that I am, said alright, but as the height difference would make it awkward, I had spotted some chairs by the wall so we’d have to perch there to even out the height difference. And so we did. We perched, guffawing a little and waiting for the other to start the process. We then kissed a little bit, parted, smiled, unsure of what to say and then stood and each walked off to our friends.

And that was it really. The romance ended pretty shortly after that. I think I’d decided a relationship that consisted of sitting down kissing was a bit too high maintenance for me. I was off to find a boy I could kiss while standing up!

The time I told a man off in the street

For a few years, I volunteered at a legal charity in London. It was on a road with lots of important looking buildings that were law firms and chambers and inns of court, etc. All very suits-and-ties. It’s a quietish road during the day as the solicitors and barristers are busy in their offices squirreling away. I worked at a desk which faced out onto this street.

One day I heard some people talking loudly. I leaned over to see what was going on. A cyclist was getting a telling off from two guys in suits standing next to a very flash car. I had cycled in that day so was inclined to be on the cyclist’s side, if there were sides to be had in this discussion. As it went on, the two gentlemen from the swanky car just got louder and the cyclist, if he was responding at all, was very quiet. I couldn’t hear the exact words they said so gave up being nosey and went back to my work. I noticed the cyclist pedalling off.

Back to work, thought I. I can still hear their voices. O well, block them out. Concentrate. Concentrate on this filing…. I can’t. They’re getting louder and louder. I can hear actual words. I’m on the second floor up, what can they be shouting about so loudly that I can hear them all the way up here?

I peered out of the window. They were shouting, one of them particularly, about the cyclist. Still. Just mouthing off about how much they thought he was an idiot.

Where do these people think they are?! You’re on a quiet street surrounded by offices full of suited educated men and women who do not conduct themselves in this manner. These loud men had suits on and a flash car. So I didn’t understand why they were acting like idiotic students. Didn’t they get it? I became incensed.

I couldn’t work because I was so distracted by them. Everyone was. It went on for fifteen long minutes. They must have honestly thought that everyone wanted to hear their inane nonsense.

“I’m going to tell them to shut up,” I announced, to questioning looks from my colleagues.

Down the stairs I went, out the door and headed over to them. They smiled, probably thinking I was going to tell them how impressed I was with their shoutyness and could they please take me for a ride in their expensive car because I’m a woman and therefore don’t need any more form of stimulation than a fancy car.

I did not ask them to take me for a ride in their fancy car. O no.

“Can you please keep your voices down, we’re all trying to work,” I said, to two stunned faces. I waited, no response….

“O, and you’re just assuming that it’s us?!” the loud one said finally, in a confrontational manner. He was starting down that road, you know, the one which consists of a lot of ‘you can’t prove it was me’ and ‘you’re jumping to conclusions because I’m young and have a flash car.’ He looked ready for a verbal fight and gave me his best ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ face.

“No. I know it was you. Because that’s my window (I gestured to my window) and I’ve been watching you for the last fifteen minutes,” I said.

Silence.

More silence.

And then I flounced. I flounced away. Because I could. Because they had just been royally told off by a girl.

And that is the story of when I told a man off in the street.

A book review or two

In my quest to Finish All The Books I’m In The Middle Of Reading, I have found a few gems that I thought I’d tell you about.

First up is Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie by Andrew Sykes. This is the story of a man who, after resolving to spend his summer doing next to nothing, gets a little bored and dreams of adventure. He decides to travel from his home in Reading to the southern tip of Italy, following a route known as the Via Francigena. He covers France, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy.

For five weeks, he heads determinedly toward southern Italy and the book details the hours spend on the bike each day and the distance covered. Once you have seen a few of these, you start to understand the massive task that he is carrying out. His writing is extremely readable. I’d often intend to read a few pages while on the bus or before work and find myself transported to a campsite where Andrew and Reggie searched for somewhere away from the noisy midnight fishers or party people. Suddenly I was late for work or had almost missed my stop.

Andrew makes sure we are privy to everything his trip threw at him. Rarely are we left with a quick summing up of an entire day in a few sentences. I really love the diary style of this book. It puts you right there in the scene with him and Reggie and connects you to his journey in a way that, upon finishing it with him, you experience a sense of achievement.

Various things stick out in my memory on finishing the book. The scene where Andrew and Reggie cross the lake near Buochs in Switzerland and we are given a detailed explanation of how one “lashes” a bike to boat had me laughing out loud. When Andrew stops for lunch near the end of his journey, in Valrano Scala, and finds something called a “chip pizza” I was utterly mystified. The entire Italy section was very exciting reading for me anyway, given that I have had a preoccupation with Italian cuisine for quite some time and I am also going to Rome in a few weeks. So I read with anticipation and soaked up every bit of it. Then the scene with the chip pizza occurred. And it made me doubt everything. It make me doubt my trip, the Italians, and the future of food in general. What was this madness?! I have since been assured that chip pizzas are very tasty…. I remain sceptical.

Another thing which struck me about this trip is people’s willingness to offer a helping hand. Andrew finds a welcoming face every so often on his trip and these people always show such kindness, it makes you feel good about people in general (the chip pizza inventor excepted).

It is a lovely lovely book. A little while ago I read a book about a man who cycles to India, called You’ve Gone To Far This Time, Sir and love love loved it. Therefore, when I saw this book, about another cycling journey, I came to it with high expectations, having had such a great read last time. I was thankfully not disappointed. It is well written and fascinating. In light of epic journeys being taken, I have start making more solid plans for a walking adventure. Given that I can be quite lazy though, I think Andrew and Reggie will put me to shame as I’ll probably just walk to the shops for some chocolate and back….

(I read this book on the Kindle app on my phone.)

I thought I’d do another quick book review as I recently finished listening to The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivy on Audible.com and it was very good. It was read beautifully, the story was beautiful and it’s one of those books I keep telling people to listen to if I hear they have the Audible.com app.

An older couple decide to move to Alaska and buy some farming land, against the advice of their families. They are childless and it has always been an unspoken heartache between them. Their first few months are hard but one day, with wild abandon, they play outside in the snow and build a snowman. Well, more precisely a snow-girl. They put a scarf on it and carve a face. When they wake up, the scarf is gone and for a long time afterwards, they catch glimpses of a little girl running in the woods outside their home.

The development of this story is handled with such skill that your thoughts on first hearing about the ‘girl’ they see are a world away from your thoughts when the story concludes. It’s a story that creeps up on you. First you’re just listening every so often, thinking that the book is quite good. Then suddenly, you can’t wait to take your break at work, in order to listen to a few more minutes of it.

Finishing this book was something that took a few days of recovery. My initial thoughts about the final scene changed over time and I still feel uncertain about exactly what happened.

It is a book of uncertainties and therein lies the beauty of it. It is intriguing and enticing. It draws you in steadily until every twist and turn occupies your thoughts long after you have stopped listening/reading.

It is also read very well. When I downloaded and listened to a few other books, I realised how lucky I had been with the reader of The Snow Child. If you are already with Audible.com, listen to this book.