Grandma

Empanada

It might not look like much but this is my very first home made 'Empanada' - my new Spanish love.

Inside the pastry there's all sorts of delicious flavours... tomatoes, tuna, green olives stuffed with pimento, onions, hard boiled egg and parsley.

It's moist, it flavoursome, it's simply delightful for lunch served with some fresh spinach and a drizzle of balsamic syrup.

I hear that out in the villages they make it with chorizo... I intend to send my companera out to get me some.

Yes sir.



Oh and while we're discussing food... is it ok to dip your Twix in peanut butter when the shop has run out of Snickers?

Sunday Walk

Night Owl

What is so wrong with sitting in a cafe on one's own, with a glass of wine and a man with half a face sat next to you?

In Pamplona, where the city streets are bare on the afternoon of a winter's Saturday, I am waiting for the Ear and I am curious why in Spain people gaze at me with a mixture of wonder and amused disgust. What, with my hair and alabaster skin (through which you can see my blue blood), I am immediately identifiable as a 'giddy'. Only worse. A giddy with a book and with a pen.

Possibly this is a crime here.

I am a guilty giddy who doesn't mind my own company. In fact, I am probably growing too used to it.

Me, myself and I. (Plus laptop, book or brightly coloured fineliner)

When my job finishes in May this will officially have been 9 months of utter idleness as a result of following love, to no avail.

A woman must learn to live on her own at least once, even if she doesn't like it.

LESSON LEARNED.

Turns out this memory stuff is actually quite difficult to manage.

So 'once a day' might be more like 'when inspiration arrives'.

When it comes to typing off the top of my head I can tap away like a maniac.

But when it comes to actually writing something for a purpose I freeze up and I can't tell if it is

appalling laziness or, as my friend kindly pointed out, crippling insecurity.

For example, I attempted to write about the time that my friend CC and I decided to sell lemonade on the

roadside. It was full of gaps, lacking detail and generally not very good.

I've lost my creative touch!

Any advice?

Dusty Cabinet

Today in Spain is good. The sun is shining, my washing is on, I cleaned the toilet, I have a box of toffee
and while my soup is lacking a particular depth, today in Spain is good.

Today in England is not good. I'm not sure if the sun is shining, or if anyone is eating a bowl of vegetable soup
but I do know that my family are at the memorial service of a very young, kind and lovely girl.

It completely knocks the wind out of me everytime I think about it.

Cancer + 24 year old + Six Months = Gone.

That kind of Maths is just wrong.

Here we all are, bumbling along day to day in a general state of unawareness that potentially, everything could
end pretty bloody quickly.

And so it got me thinking, what would happen to all of my special things? What would happen to all of my online accounts, all frozen in time?
Suspended infinitely.

Above all though, what would happen to everything inside of my head? All of those little memories, perceptions, thoughts?

People close to me have died before, and I have always maintained in my heart that they live on through the people that loved them. For instance, everytime I have a cold I invariably find myself in the kitchen with a jar of honey, ramming spoonfuls down my throat- a cure, my Grandmother would say. When people say 'haych' instead of 'ach' (h) I can feel my hair standing on end and it irritates me something chronic, but these are just influences from my late Grandmother who lived with us from my birth until her death.

These are not things that are mine.

I ALWAYS find her speaking through me. She still has a voice, and she will always have a place in all of us.

So last night, when I was sat in a bar waiting for a friend, I took out my notebook and a friendly orange pen
and scribbled as many memories as I could think of.

It was AMAZING what just popped back. The silliest, smallest things. Some, I worry, are actually dreams and not memories but this doesn't matter. It was like an evolving map of my world and everything that's in the dusty cabinet of my head.

I decided recently that I wanted to start writing again. I was pretty good when I was a teenager, and these days
I feel like everything I write is totally generic and lacking in any kind of originality.

So, it is my plan to try and write a memory a day on my blog in an effort to improve the quality of my writing
and to make a little place of self preservation.

So I can still be heard after I am gone.

:) xxx