Bookselling From Another Place

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad - not a title I would have normally picked, but fitting in nicely with this year's resolution to read more of foreign places. So why was I a little nervous about reading it?
"I have written down what I saw and heard, and have tried to gather my impressions of a Kabul spring, of those who tried to throw the winter off, grow and blossom, and others who felt condemned to go on 'eating dust', as Leila would have put it."

I think my primary worry was that this was a book written by someone invited in good faith to this family's home who made notes on their conversations, the things they told her and the events she witnessed; and then she returned to her comfortable home, far removed from theirs, and wrote about them. This kind of behaviour makes me uncomfortable, as though I've overheard something I'm not supposed to. So I started off discomforted by it, and then I came across this:
"One powerful man had found an especially good stone, large and jagged, and he threw this with force, aiming it carefully at her body, and it struck so violently in her abdomen that soon the first blood of the afternoon showed through the chaderi." 


Only 31 pages in and I'm rendered horrified, so nauseated by this sentence that I want to hide the book and run away. But I don't, and I keep going because these stories need to be told, almost regardless of who does the telling. There is no other sentence in here that made my blood run quite so cold. Have never understood the lust for violence; nor the bred-in-the-bone, natural-as-breathing belief in women as lesser beings. If you can't be used as a marriage bargaining chip or a breeder of children, your voice, your wishes count for nothing.
" 'She's crying, she doesn't want to,' her two older sisters tell Sultan and Sharifa in front of Belqisa. Belqisa looks down. But Sharifa laughs. It's a good sign when the bride is unwilling. That indicates a pure heart."

And then there's the Taliban: their rules seem drawn up merely to crush individualism, and more still just there to suck the joy out of every day:
"Prohibition against female exposure...prohibition against music...prohibition against shaving...mandatory prayer...prohibition against the rearing of pigeons and bird-fighting...eradication of narcotics and the users thereof...prohibition against kite-flying...prohibition against reproduction of pictures...prohibition against gambling...prohibition against British and American hairstyles...prohibition against interest on loans, exchange charges and charges on transactions...prohibition against the washing of clothes by river embankments...prohibition against music and dancing at weddings...prohibition against playing drums...prohibition against tailors sewing women's clothes or taking measurements of women...prohibitions against witchcraft..."

And lets not forget the separate 'women-only' clause:
"If women dress fashionably, wear ornamented, tight, seductive clothes to show off, they will be damned by the Islam Sharia and can never expect to go to heaven. They will be threatened, investigated and severely punished by the religious police, as will the head of the family."

This is no easy read: it provides no answers and although the author attempts to remain impartial, you can sense her anger and incomprehension at the treatment women receive, even those in the fairly enlightened family she is staying with, running like a red vein through the book. Leila's existence almost chokes you with it's poignancy and you wish bitterly that the change taking place in that country would get there a little faster.
"She feels her heart, heavy and lonely like a stone, condemned to be crushed for ever. Leila turns, takes three paces to the door, closes it quietly behind her and goes out. Her crushed heart she leaves behind."


I am ashamed of my own complaining. 

Adventures in Sourdough Part 1

A week. A week of adding flour, balancing it with a little water to make sure the starter was neither too wet nor too dry. A week of mixing, prodding, dampening the towel, worrying, sniffing (sourdough stater does not smell nice - the clue is in the name), mixing. 

Finally last Saturday, I could measure out enough of the starter for a small loaf, leaving some in reserve to feed and grow for next time. Mix, knead, place in bowl, leave. For 12 hours to be precise as this sucker don't rise quickly - sourdough is the very essence of patience, I've discovered. So I went out for the evening and ate home-cooked Thai food that was so delicious, even as the chillis were burning my mouth, all I could think was "I don't care that this is hurting, I don't want to stop eating it".

Rose bright eyed in the morning and switched the oven on. Prodded my lump of dough with a tentative finger and watched as the indentation slowly puffed back out again and disappeared from the surface. Never before have I considered putting into my oven something that looks so unpromising (well, apart from the Mexican Puddle Pudding several years ago and despite looking like a brown-sugar-topped cow pat, it tasted pretty darn amazing). Gathering the remembrance of puddle puddings past to my wavering soul, I bunged the lump into the oven and took the dog for a walk to soothe my bakery nerves whilst the heat did its thing.

Down to the arboretum where the thinned out silver birches looked black against the sky and made a noise in the wind that sounded like bones hanging from a witch doctors awning. 

There was a peculiar stillness about last weekend - possibly because I was on my own for the most of it, a grateful and much needed own-ness, but still the world felt as though it had hushed just to see how this bread experiment of mine would work out. 

Which it hadn't, obviously. 

So back to the house, now filled with the right type of just-baked-loaf smell. Take it out, up-end it. Tap on the bottom to hear the hollow sound that tells you bread is done and let it cool. Take myself out of the kitchen to prevent picking, poking or pinching of the hot crust. Read a bit of the paper. Fold some laundry. Flick little felt balls for the kitten to chase. Give in after just 30 lengthy minutes and get to work with the bread knife. The result?

Without a doubt the Best. Loaf. I. Have. Ever. Made. 

2 slices later, I come to my senses enough to toast a couple more and butter them. Perfect with mackerel pate made the day before. As I sat, feet curled underneath me, reading the weekend book reviews and munching my way around the plate, I wondered why I eat anything else. 

Balanced diet be damned - I may only ever eat this again. Oh, and home-cooked Thai food as made by the genius friend at the weekend.

A Problem

I don't know what's happened or why the bloggy gods have stopped smiling upon me but for the moment I find myself unable to comment on other people's blogs, respond to comments left on my own or even (today's new twist) see comments on my own blog.

Believe me, after 3 days of trying on 3 different computers, I am more than slightly losing my temper.

At least I can (whisper it in case they hear me and take this away too) still post. So I will. But not today - today feels like a twitter kind of day instead. Also knitting.

How does your day feel?

Hey, look at that, it's all back! Which means I will be. Soon. But not right now. Have yourselves a happy little weekend everyone!

The Kneading Project

This afternoon, I stood in my little kitchen and pulled my long-neglected custom-made bread bowl (custom-made by this person - he really is very clever!) and stood with my bag of organic flour, waiting to create my very own sourdough starter from this recipe.

Given that I'd been, only this morning, to a lovely little deli and treated myself to one of the best sourdough loaves I've ever tasted, for less than the cost of my Saturday paper; why on earth would I bother to make sourdough from scratch?

I've always loved bread. From when I was very small and fussier than an injured barracuda, refusing all vegetables but carrots (peas at a push); prodding at all meat but beef and chicken with a suspicious fork; firmly clamping a stubborn mouth shut at any potato that wasn't roasted or chipped; bread was my saviour.
It soaked up the Sunday roast gravy. It pillowed a combination of cheese and tomato (the only way to get one of those red nightmares down my gullet - I will not ever never eat a tomato). Bacon butties on a Saturday morning. Spiked on a toasting fork and watched with an eagle eye as it browned over the fire. A mini cottage loaf, thickly buttered, to accompany a bowl full of soup. Sesame seed rolls toasted, with marmalade, as a second breakfast at my grandparents.

However, much as I love it, it can't be denied that there are serious problems with much of the bread you see today. Yeast and sugars used with abandon to make it rise faster; additives to make it last longer; the soft pulpy mass of your average bagged loaf is no more real bread than I am a Nobel Prize winner. I reject this bread.
The beauty of a sourdough is that the starter is created with just flour and water, using the natural yeast in the air that surrounds us to bubble and come to life. It creates a loaf both soft and chewy, that smells like bread should and tastes like angels made it. And it takes time. Time and patience, love and attention. Dedication. Care.

I don't make new year resolutions but, here on my little ship, I start projects. This bubbling, fermenting life feels like the right one to start now.

"I also kneaded bread and produced the finest pane rimacinato, the most delicious ciabbata and focaccia that had ever been tasted in the region. Sometimes I would add wild thyme to the dough, or fragrant rosemary, plucked fresh from the hedgerow, with the dew still on the leaves."
La Cucina - Lily Prior

Things You Don't Expect

Just how quickly the world you have spent so long creating will unravel.
Just how very hard it will be to get the words out.
Just how child-like and unformed your daughter's hands are as you hold them.
Just how your father's silent arm around your shoulder will prove as much a rock to lean against as your mother's garrulous support.

The 4am sleeplessness, stood outside with your head against the wall, looking for answers it refuses to give you.
The twisted, unexplainable, straight-from-the-soul logic behind decisions made.
The gut-aching fearful emptiness of the future.
The silvery, gutsy value of sisters and friends.

How tears will surprise you in the most inconvenient of locations.
How little you wish you could reverse decisions made.
How much you will change from the person you knew.
How a small golden thread of self is strong enough to carry you through some of the blackest months you have ever known.

After 17 years as a half of something that seemed, to the outside world, so strong and solid, rooted till the end of time, I'm not any longer. And everything I knew has to be relearned.
I feel adrift, unanchored for the first time in my life, but I'm the one who cut the anchor rope.

"A ship is safest in harbour, but that's not what ships are for"

What a Difference...

... a year makes. This time last year, I was gazing out of the window with a rolling spin-cycle of feelings running through me: delight at the sight of everything made just so darn beautiful by the snow, and a churning ever-increasing panic at things I just couldn't do because I couldn't dig the car out.



But it was so very pretty, I remember as I squelch and slide through mud this year, vowing once more to invent dog wellies.

It was also the last Christmas that could be considered normal in this little house by the hill. Next year, we have to look for new ways of normal. I find it best not to think too much about this Christmas. It makes the heart and the head hurt.

I'll explain another day, promise. For now, I wish you all a mini-stollened, mulled-wined, turkey-stuffed and pudding-flamed Christmas. May the corks pop freely over your dinner table and I'll be back in the New Year.

A Literary Round-Up of the Most Unliterary Kind

It would be interesting, I thought to myself, to see just how many books I read during the past 12 months. Not being one to write them all down (although I always mean to) anywhere except on this blog, my random musing led to a whole evening's worth of trawling through blog posts. My word but I do ramble on about nothing in particular to you patient lot!

Are you ready for the list? Then here we go:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
In the Blue House by Meaghan Delahunt
The Last Cigarette by Simon Grey
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
Caravaggio by Andrew Graham-Dixon
Marrying the Mistress by Joanna Trollope
Selected short stories by Zola
The Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Aphrodite's Hat by Sally Vickers
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Hidden Bhutan by Martin Uitz
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Horses Make a Landscape More Beautiful by Alice Walker
Laurie Lee biography by Valerie Grove
Elegies by Douglas Dunn
Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories
Colour of Memory by Geoff Dyer
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Fireworks by Angela Carter
Fludd by Hilary Mantel
Whigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes
Foundation: A History of England by Peter Ackroyd
about 10 Agatha Christies re-read for comfort purposes in September. Yes, sedate, stately crime from the 30s and 40s can be comfort reading.

So there we are: a grand total of 43, averaging 3.58 a month. I had been a little concerned that my reading tended towards the safe, comfortable, overwhelmingly middle-class, and that I thought no more of extending my range or stepping out of the comfort zone than I did of becoming vegetarian: it's reassuring to see that it's not necessarily the case. That I am capable of moving out of that zone with other voices. Standing out amongst the new books (shown in blue) are: In the Blue House, Mr Chartwell, Zola, The Bloody Chamber, Fludd, Whigs on the Green (for Mitford's lightest of touches) and Any Human Heart.
My only fails (to finish) were The House of the Spirits, and the Crimson Petal and the White - life is too short and reading time too precious to waste on books that don't make your very soul vibrate with excitement when you read them.

The run up to Christmas and new year will be spent revisiting some old friends - Pratchett, Gaiman, Austen and Masefield - I think another 4 can be fitted in before the 1st January dawns.
And next year? My mum has already handed me a copy of the Bookseller of Kabul, and I feel it's time to tackle writings from hotter, stranger countries than this damp and gloomy one I inhabit. Although I have promised myself a Bronte (Tenant of Wildfell Hall), a Duffy (The Bees) and a James (Death Comes to Pemberley); I'll be looking towards India, China, Afghanistan and Africa, to name but a few, to take me far away from daily life. Suggestions?