SHERINGHAM DIARY 28 ~ The Singlet Vest & The Fruit Compote

Is it a sign of advancing age when the depth of your appreciation for a good fruit compote on your porridge in the mornings, starts to blossom beyond an unstated enthusiasm? Of late I've been greatly savouring a gooseberry compote cooked on a low heat. Soon to be followed by a plum compote or any other fruit there just happens to be a glut of this week. What is a compote?, well its the continental way of saying something is fruity but not quite a jam. Never sickly sweet. A syrup caught on the cusp of congealing. A compote slow cooked to perfection on the lowest heat possible is a newly discovered culinary ambrosia for me.

My deep indulgence in excessively sweet things and chocolate has noticeably diminished over the years. I say diminished, but I don't mean defeated, just moderated. I will remain forever part of the Lumb Lineage where no savoury meal would be complete without some sort of sweetening at the end of it, usually a dessert, immediately followed by cake. My Dad in his later years abandoned all pretence of eating protein and could be found lurking in the back of a local bakers cafe tucking into a lavishly iced Belgian bun, as his main meal of the day. Myself, I just try to limit this to the weekends. To get my sweet hit I replace iced buns with fruit when possible. So whilst such things are less prevalent for me, they are definitely not absent.

In my dreams my body still looks like this

Another age indicator might be when your dearly beloved hubby forthrightly forbids you, not just from owning a singlet vest, but owning a 'coloured' vest, and bars you from ever publicly parading your torso wearing one. Unfortunately he does know my family has history in this regard with my Dad, who, in the summer, if he hadn't already stripped down to the publicly respectable minimum, would be seen sporting a rather scruffy pale blue one with white (well, it had been white) piping, when outside gardening. The impact of this prohibition on my bodily well being, whilst we were in the middle of a 30 degree plus heatwave cannot be underestimated. I get easily overheated and its consequent mental fluster in even mildly hot weather. If I was a plant, I would be the sort that would wrinkle, shrivel up and desiccate whilst the gardener had turned away to make a pot of tea.

As I've got older, though I'm considerably taller than my Dad, my body has developed a recognisable rectangular quality, a solid stockiness very reminiscent of his. Why any of these things should come to mind now is anyones guess, but the 27th July was the first anniversary of Dad's death, so there's probably been the strong bodily aroma of Dad wafting around. The death of ones last remaining parent is never without significance, whether you personally got on with them or not. I do miss the presence and example of his easy going geniality, I was fond of my Dad and his mostly benign eccentricities, without ever feeling I was that emotionally connected. There were infuriating  things, his stubborn desire to not ask for help and to do things his own way, for instance. But as Hubby would no doubt be butting in at this point, I provide quite a good example of that myself at times. Ah, like Father like Son, and the discomforting reemergence of familial behaviour patterns.

We've completed our second month of trading and Cottonwood Home is doing well. We are now into August, the height of the holiday season, and sales have lifted considerably. Introducing our outside shop stalls has helped increase our monthly take, plus it gets people to actually come in!. Even with the effects of the dramatic shifts in the weather, we've not had a completely dead day for a few weeks now. Currently we are more than covering our costs, though still more to be done. This is high season, so if you don't do well now, well, you never will. The Autumn/Winter season will be our testing time.

Some of our own handmade stock, as a consequence, had begun to look a bit thin. At the moment I have an average of two + making days a week, plus my focus can get diverted into making props for the shop. So progress on new lines is spasmodic. Staying engaged with 'set aside' projects is difficult. This tends to lead to many half finished projects on the go simultaneously, which can feel a bit of a drag. Its like doing slow motion running keeping multiple plates spinning. Not helped during the big heatwave by my mitre saw going into to complete melt down.

One afternoon a family came into the shop. Their little girl was wandering around holding her Dad's phone aloft and chanting 'Daddie's Bottom', 'Daddie's Bottom', Daddie's Bottom. She'd been taking photos of her Dad's bottom from all angles and was now showing them to anyone who would look.

We've sussed out what we do when the shop isn't busy. We have a shop workstation, well a work table. Here Hubby can sew and lampshade make whilst I can get on with upcycling projects I can complete in a shop. At the moment I'm focusing on refinishing a range of jewellery boxes. I've also started exploring the world of mosaic, my first experiment was making some coasters/candle stands. They aren't finished yet, because they're one of the projects I've had to stop spinning to create time for more immediately pressing stuff.

What has arisen out of the mosaic practice is a Postcard Sized Art project. My artwork has a tendency to end up huge and consequently beyond most people's purses. So I've begun making small postcard sized collages, made from offcuts of wood and various bits of objet d'art I've accumulated.  I find them enjoyable things to make, we're selling for under twenty quid. Its a challenging discipline to consciously work small. They're proving to be the perfect art project for me. They dont take long to complete, so there is less chance of me being distracted or becoming bored with them. They offer unlimited scope for stretching my creative imagination and invention. I can take them in any direction I want, and they're also easy to make in the shop.

We were standing in a queue outside the chippy takeaway No 1 Cromer, waiting to actually get in to place our order. Immediately opposite is an amusement arcade, by the entrance is a machine you play Flappy Bird on. Its a video game, so I'm told, where you manipulate a bird up or down to get over columns of green pipes of different lengths without hitting them. Hubby tells me its quite difficult to do.

Anyway, a young man, probably mid teens was playing Flappy Bird, constantly hitting a large blue button with one hand in a trance like and worryingly alienated concentration. Each hit producing the ubiquitous computerised farty noise.

The boy played without an interruption, break in concentration or the game. On and on and on he went. The ticker tape recording his successes spewed out, forming a vast snake of yellow paper around his feet. After, at least, the twenty minutes we'd been queueing, he finally stopped. He then stood for a further five minutes whilst the ticker tape machine caught up,still spitting out his winning hits. Picking up this vast sheaf of paper he wandered off to collect what ever this herculean effort had earned him, probably several cuddly toys and a Red Bull flavoured ice lolly.  I fear for today's youth, I really do.

We were having a veggie breakfast in the Mulberry Tearooms one Sunday morning. On another table a woman expressed loudly her incredulity 'How on earth did you get cheese in your eyebrows?' Indeed, I'll leave you to ponder on that one.