CARROT CAKE REVIEW ( Archive) No 1 - Is This A Banana Cake In Disguise?

First Posted on my Perfect Carrot Cake Blog on July 13th 2017

Blakeney, Norfolk

At first glance, the cake itself had a good tan colour, with shards of walnut distributed through it fairly evenly. The butter cream, if indeed it was such a thing, was a little stingy, with an appearance of being thin in consistency, and hence no stiffness. That said there were no marzipan carrots on top ~ thankfully, and it was a decent wedge of cake, sometimes you can feel a bit cheated by the slither like size of a portion, but not here.

On taking my first bite, wait, what's this taste, its not remotely carroty, no, its bananary. The first taste to assail my buds, was of ripe banana. Quite a lot of banana, so much I handed it to Hubby for his first impression, 'its as if they've served you a banana cake by mistake' said he. So, mucho mucho banana! You can tell from its visual texture that it does have carrot in it, but the banana completely overpowers it, and any flavour from the walnuts is swamped and reduced to a textural highlight. In a lot of Carrot Cakes the addition of mixed spice or something similar, can be a mixed blessing. Very similar to banana, its very easy to put in a dollop too much. In this Carrot Cake there appeared to be little or no discernible spice flavourings at all.

The cake had a moist texture, but with a peculiar after taste that left a dry powdery sensation lingering on the palate, as if you've accidentally swallowed medicinal chalk. Hubby thinks this after effect and the banana, could be a sign the cake had no egg in it. The dry powdery sensation probably arising out of an excess of bicarb. If it was, apparently, a Vegan Carrot Cake, it was trying to keep very quiet about it. If you don't inform people, you are effectively saying there will be no discernible difference in experience between a traditional and your vegan carrot cake. If there is a discernible difference in experience then the consumer has every right to feel disappointed or short changed. A well made, tasty Vegan Carrot Cake is more than a theoretical possibility, but 'Hey! careful with that banana & bicarb Eugene.' I find I'm experiencing this floury after taste quite frequently these days, and its not pleasant ~ and avoidable.

The frosting, that all too suspicious butter cream, that most likely wasn't butter cream? Well, it tasted overpoweringly sweet, and not a natural sucra either. After the banana, this cream successfully stamps on any natural carroty sweetness there might have been, Though perhaps there was a not enough carrot in this Carrot Cake right from the start, which in my book is close to being an original sin.

CARROT CAKE SCORE 4/8

CARROT CAKE REVIEW 24 - The Golden Rules of Carrot Cake.

Perhaps I've erroneously assumed you knew what The Golden Rules of Carrot Cake are. So I've decided to publish them. Here they all are then,the twelve guidelines. Those things to look out for and be avoided by those who make carrot cakes and, more importantly, those who eat them. Never have to consume a maladroit, unpleasant tasting carrot cake ever again. You can no longer make the excuse that you did not know! Learn them or have your taste buds abused.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 1

A spice cake is not a carrot cake.
Blindingly obvious though this is, I have stomached this sort of fart inducing cake far far too many times. Grating a solitary carrot into a basic sponge mix, then trying to disguise the paltry amount of an essential carrot cake ingredient, by throwing in a whole sack load of mixed spice. This should fool no one of anyone discernment. It's not as if carrots are a rare and expensive root vegetable, they are not bleeding saffron! A bald man wearing a mismatched toupee only attracts more attention to the clear lack of hair, so why bother? This is the completely embarrassing charade of the rank amateur.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 2 

Don't be a Size Queen - Bigger is not Better
I've been caught out more than once by this. When ones eyes are bigger than your instinct or judgement, desire combines with gluttony and the outcome is rarely a good one. Why do we assume a larger slice of cake will mean a bigger piece of bliss will come with it? This should be a salutatory lesson to us all in the deficits of consumerism. Frequently as you sink your teeth into a huge slice of carrot cake, you experience the bursting of overinflated expectations. The moment it hits the palete it painfully informs you that your entire life experience has had all taste, satisfaction and meaning sucked from within it

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 3 

Marzipan carrots are spawned from the devil's a-hole.

To paraphrase Captain Beefheart - ' A carrot cake doesn't have to hit me to let me know it's there'. Similarly a carrot cake does not require those little orange almond paste turds arranged around it in a clock dial formation. Its a patronising insult, catering for some cliche of the confectionery simpleton. I prefer in a carrot cake a 'show not tell' approach. Fortunately these 'little bits of macerated shit' usually indicate a factory produced carrot cake. These are so often dreck anyway, the marzipan carrots just scream at you - avoid! avoid!! avoid!!!.... loudly. Please pay attention and respond according to whatever your level of personal integrity is.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 4 

A gluten free carrot cake is a fake carrot cake
In these days where relativity and sensitivity rule, how do we ascertain the true from the false? The pure carrot cake from the adulterated imitative facsimile? Sometimes a cafe doesn't even have the courtesy to tell you its gluten free, they perpetuate the illusion that whatever they substitute for the sake of those delicate of stomach, produces a carrot cake indistinguishable from the real thing. This is an arrant lie, the most greasy of egregious falsehoods.  Let us call a spade a spade. I'm fine with gluten free cakes etc etc, etc ( I'm grovelling quite low right now ) but if I want a carrot cake that is free of being gluten free where can I now go? Increasing the range of choice is fine if it works for everyone's benefit. But there is a point where its held like a sword of Damocles over you, and one persons expanded choice becomes another persons diminished choice and loss of quality.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 5 

A carrot cake recipe cannot be strained.

This is pretty much a repetition of No 4 but extended to include dairy, egg, wheat, nut free etc etc.etc ( Oh how tired I am of my neutered invective)  One day there will even be carrot free carrot cakes and the ludicrous degree of substitutions to a carrot cake recipe will have reached its complete nadir. Once you start messing with a recipe that's taken generations to refine, you start having to throw all sorts of unmentionable things into the recipe mix simply in order to cement the dam thing together. The result is either the nearest thing you can find to an orange brick, or an over-puffed cake that disappears into dust or a Burnt Sienna slurry once in the mouth. Yuk!!! 

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 6 

Tray bakes are not real cakes

Making a superlative carrot cake is an art.  There are many diversions, wrong paths you can take, that walk you away from the path of righteousness and truth. Tray bakes are one. Tray bakes lack everything that make a cake enjoyable, the care over presentation, the layering, the complementary flavours, the frosting choices you make, I could go on and on. With all these delectable choices to be made, why the frack would you even consider a tray bake? How often do tray bakes have marzipan carrots on them? There, I rest my case. Tray bakes are just lazy baking. Do not ever allow yourself to be so brazenly short changed.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 7 

Drowning it in sugar will not disguise its blandness.

Imagine you've made a carrot cake, a delicately flavoured thing. You then make a frosting, which in order to make it stiff you dump a whole ton load of icing sugar into it, or worse, a few too many pipettes of saccharin. What you end up with is a cake which you can no longer really taste, it is a dead cake, very effectively strangled whilst having a sugar high. 

Now, stretch your visualisation still further, and conjure up the remote possibility, that you've actually made a particularly bland carrot cake. One you would be hard pressed to identify in a darkened room. Then slaver it with overly sweetened frosting, or even icing sugar with a bit of water. Then weep like the Madonna of Syracuse, tears falling down your cheeks, a compassionate wreck, as the icing dribbles like a sweaty moron down the side of the cake.  Sugar never rescues the bland.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 8 

No Banana! do you hear me, No Banana!!

Many of you will already know of this bet noire. Its one of those tendencies, particular in the dairy free cake, to use the banana as a substitute glue. In a carrot cake once banana flesh enters the mix, like an alpha male, who will simply take over and dominate the proceedings, overpowering and beating the subtle humility of the carrot cake flavours into submission. It becomes de facto a Banana Cake in all but name. 

What I find really annoying, is that until it enters your mouth you do not realise what has been done to you. Perhaps you get a slight whiff of it as the cake wafts by your nostrils on the way to your gob. But by the time the cake has gained entry into the temple of your taste buds, it will be too late, The Banana Masquerade will have been successfully perpetrated.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 9  

Before I buy tell me exactly what I'm purchasing.
Give us the information master, do not let us stray from the straight and narrow through lack of adequate signage. Be clear about what confections you are offering up to the world. Do not practice a deceit upon any true believer, nor withhold or be economical with the truth. It's a sacred right of any cake worshiper to know exactly what is to be offered for their digestion. Whether it's gluten free, vegan, dairy free, wheat free, or made with the yogurt of Tibetan Yak milk thrice fermented through the yeast infected sock of an old man, etc etc etc, just bloody well say so. 

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 10 

Sponge cake with grated carrot thrown in, is an insult.

This is, I acknowledge, rare, but it has been known for disreputable cafes to serve up a basic sponge mix and simply throw in a few strands of grated carrot and voila its a carrot cake. If there were such a thing as a Cake Licensing Board, I'd be on it. Issuing cafes permits only after stringent retraining and quality control to serve particular types of cake have been passed. I'd insist on regular refresher courses and inspections. So if I discovered anyone passing off a basic sponge as a carrot cake they'd lose their license immediately.  They'd be humilated in the catering press and the chef banned from ever running a cafe ever ever again.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 11 

Keep it Traditional - experiment but be convincing

The true, authentic and blessed traditional Carrot Cake, is currently fighting for survival, in the face of attacks coming at it from so many fronts at once. Many find issue for health, dietary, ethical and ecological reasons with one or multiple ingredients. So actually to find a cafe that still makes a straightforward classic carrot cake is a very rare delight indeed. Simply to ensure its continued existence I have endeavoured on my blog to pioneer, uphold and defend it in its original and purest form. 

That said, occasionally a carrot cake does successfully stretch the traditional envelope by experimenting with adding orange rind or other such 'moderne' ingredient. If this is a convincing innovation whilst remaining at an identifiable adjunct to a true carrot cake, then I'd be the first to applaud.

Golden Rule of Carrot Cake No 12 

The Sultana Paradox

Part of the lusciousness of a truly weighty carrot cake, lies in its happy blend of texture and moistness. The nuts add grist to a carrot cake, as do the sultanas with their globules of re-hydrated grape. However, there is one unforgivable sin with regard to the use of sultanas. This is when they're used simply to compensate for a general lack of moistness. I've eaten a carrot cake as dry as the Gobi Desert with only speckles of sultanas within it as the sparse oases of moisture. It had more in common with kiln dried wood or a five year old Panettone than a carrot cake. So as with many things the context is all.

Postscript

Here in the midst of our pandemic strewn lives, it seems harder to remember what a flat white and a slice of carrot cake eaten inside a cafe is like. Once we are free again to indulge ourselves in public spaces, will we just be grateful to just stuff any old dross down our gullet, or will we stand up and fight not just for more - but for better?  Awful carrot cakes are being made all the time, some probably lurk still, frozen in a fridge, waiting to be defrosted and catch you unawares once the doors of cafes can fully reopen. So be vigilant.

Until we can once more safely widely venture further out, I'll be re-posting a few past Carrot Cake Reviews, over the next few weeks, to both instruct and torment your appetite.

MISS LUCKMOORE SAYS - Week Three

'In a number
is only the equation of actuality
dimensions and proportions
transcend the prisms of our measurements'

From In Fabric - 2018

FINISHED READING - You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

This is Damian Barr's first novel, but far from his literary debut. He wrote a very successful and much lauded memoir Maggie & Me published in 2013 and has become a recognisable and likeable figure on the literary scene, online and on TV. 

You Will Be Safe Here is divided into two sections, both set in South Africa in different time periods. One half during the Boer War, the second in the decades prior to Mandela's release to the political factionalism after his death. There are thematic links between both halves, of enforced imprisonment, torture and isolation. The white Boers in the first half are fighting for independence from their colonial oppressors, whilst in the second some of their descendants are AWB supremacists trying to rebuild their lost kudos. The central white characters in the 70's through to 2000's, frequently struggle with or resent their diminished position in the new South Africa. Anger and disdain being replaced by mawkish bravado.

The book introduces us to the dubious morality of a British run concentration camp during the Boer War. In every shameful way the antecedent of the Nazi extermination camps and the Soviet Gulags, and all subsequent systematic genocides since. Here the wives and children of Boer resistance fighters are incarcerated, held in an attempt to break their husbands resolve. The Boer women in these camps are told 'you will be safe here', but in reality its far from so. Barely provided enough food and provisions to survive on, many, its estimated at over 25,000, die horrendously. 

Barr uses the device of a secretly written diary of a Mrs Van de Watt to highlight our ancestors reprehensible behaviour. It holds a mirror up to how the British conveniently wash their hands and overlook their colonial atrocities. Burying them beneath a veneer of parental benevolence and patronising tolerance. 

In the second South African period we follow the messy lives roughly scraped together by Rayna, her illegitimate daughter Irma, and her son Willem. Willem is also born into illegitimacy, and grows up seemingly at odds with with everyone else's expectations of him, he's a boy not yet a man but already being told he's not yet legitimate enough in his masculinity.  When Irma hitches up with Jan, an overt supporter of De Klerk and the AWB, Willem's life takes a definite turn for the worse. Jan convinces Irma it would be best for Willem to be sent to a New Dawn Camp where they'll knock him into shape. What starts out as pseudo military discipline ends up as altogether more sadistic.

The original inspiration to write the book arose from reading a newspaper article, of a real life story of a young gay man who was sent to just such a camp and died there from appalling mistreatment. Barr's story takes a similar tragic trajectory, and his obvious empathy for it, means it has a lot more going for it as a narrative. The Boer war diary, surprisingly, has a less cogent emotional pull.  

Any novel with such a division in the storyline, creates a fissure down its middle that can prove tricky to pull into a cohesive whole. 'You will be safe here' has an off kilter emotional landscape, even though there is historically and contextually continuity stretching across it. Threads are picked up in the second part from the first, but they are just threads, they do not feel sufficiently integral to the story arc to compellingly bond it together. Whilst it is an admirable book, I'm not sure Barr has completely mastered the task he created for himself. Yet it is a finely wrought debut novel, ambitious, with moments of great impact, so it bodes well for whatever he chooses to write next.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY NO 46 - A Nightmare In Moon Blue

An evening infused with the glimmer of clear full moonlight, brought an eerie quality of silvery blue white to everything it touched. It is something only our lunar companion can do. This monochromatic landscape viewed from our bedroom window, revealed a previously unfamiliar surrealness. Taking its forms from the paintings of  Dorethea Tanning or Paul Delvaux - semi-deserted with strange shadows, the half formed, malformed, hybrid creatures. All sense of a spectrum of colour lost to a finely executed grisaille, where all the stories are ingrained into its ground.

As you go to bed on such a night you go with an expectation of slumbering solidly through till dawn, punctuated by the occasional interlude of a pleasant dream.  I went to bed early and fell off to sleep with little trouble. It maybe true that I dream extensively of bunnies, unicorns or doves, but my memory remains blank to them regardless, unless those dreams casually slip into an altogether darker more fearful territory

I am in our bedroom, looking up immediately above the bed at a ceiling hatch that opens out into the roof void, I'd hardly call it an attic. I climb up a step ladder to the ceiling and push this panel to one side. As I pop my head into the roof space the first thing that catches my eye is a box, its full of vinyl records - I say to myself ' Oh, so that's where they are'. Off to my left I sense there are small orange slits, animated eyes that creep slowly upon me and before I can tell who or what they are pounce and are all over me in a squall of a cat fight.  I scream out, flail my arms, kick my legs furiously trying to get them off me. 

'Vidyavajra, Vidyavajra its a nightmare, a nightmare, wake up!',   Jnanasalin's voice breaks through,
'You kicked me really hard'
'Oh sorry',
'What were you dreaming?'
'I was being attacked by cats in the attic'.
Strange that the one abiding thing striking me as significant about this nightmare is - Vinyl records!

Oh, this blessed and most venerable lockdown, we bow down to you, we submit ourselves to the curtailing of our liberty to freely walk hither and thither, we sit open handed beseeching The Rishi, for he is the munificent Sunak, who shakes the money tree, lets it rain grants, loans and furloughs so we all might not starve, for otherwise there will be nothing left standing once the pestilence has past. We turn on our TV to watch 'Bouncing on Ice', even though its cheaply produced tat and not a patch on Strictly, but entertainingly distracts us from our petty housebound woes. 

When home is also your workplace its harder to divorce your mind from whatever project you are working on, because it remains spread out on your kitchen table, reminding you of its unfinished nature. In an ideal world our work spaces and craft rooms would be in an entirely different location, in the expansive grounds of a stately home estate for a pepper corn rent, for instance. But they aren't. From time to time we have to cleanse our home space of work related stuff or else it feels as though an encroaching disease is about to turn everything into a tumble of junk.

In a smallish terraced house like ours, rooms have a multi- purpose anyway.The bedroom is also a shrine room. Our guest room doubles as our craft room and, now that JS and I attend a different Sanghas, an auxiliary shrine and zoom meeting room. Lockdown has only increased the pressure on multi-faceting space with  its physical and mental correlation. I suspect because its happening in the depths of Winter, the indefinite prolongation of this third lockdown has everything it had before, but heightened by the winds, the drifts and accumulations of snow, not only outside, but in our psyches too.

Our retreat at home experiment went rather well. So much so, coming out of it proved to have the bumpy re-entry one often experiences after retreating. Lock down has a great capacity to heighten not just the failings and flaws in the functioning of our society, but also the failings in functioning of your own lifestyle. After the retreat JS experienced the same desperate need for free creative space as I'd had a few weeks previous. So we've instigated one day a week left open for both of us to create in, for our imaginative well being and enjoyment. We haven't settled on a name for it, but Breakout Wednesday's, Sharpen The Saw Day, Open Space or Art Club, are being trialed.  

I've picked up an old 'reliquary project' and started preparatory work  sketches for a new painting, whilst JS has begun experimenting with lino cut. His first couple of efforts are showing great promise, it might be that lino cut is exactly his sort of visual medium. How these projects progress during lock down, and more importantly afterwards, will be the real test. When the pressure to make things for the shop reasserts itself, will an Art Day simply be overwhelmed or sidelined? Lets wait and see.

Cottonwood Home being closed has not meant we've dropped developing it as a business. The website update will forever be an ongoing one, and we've sourced some really lovely new lines for the Spring/Summer that we are quite enthusiastic about. We also recently swapped the sales platform we were previously using and so far the website is producing more orders than before. As the need for open creativity has proved, we need to ensure, even in the midst of genuine concerns about the future of high street retailing, that our anxieties don't become all consuming ones.

We awaited the arrival of real snow, with alacrity and childish delight. But once it was here for over a week it got tediously repetitive, so one wished it to be gone soon. Its the wind darling, its so direct and forceful. Whenever gale force winds blow we have all on to keep the heat in our living room. Our glass paneled front door effectively replicates the experience of leaving the fridge door wide open. The wind penetrates through its ineffective door seals, which the force of door bolts and a keyhole cover made from a magnatised bit of synthetic rubber pealed off a cheap Sheringham fridge magnet, make only minor compensation for when its blowing a severe gale directly at, and through it. The door is due to be replaced this Spring/Summer, restrictions permitting. Can't come soon enough. Its easy to see how at times like these Upper Sheringham could get cut off completely from even the main town, which is barely a little over a mile away.  But then at least it once had its own shop and a pub,now it has nowt. Ah, how thin the sliver of civilsation has become, dependent upon centralised distribution and lorry logistics.

For about a month or so I've been attending online a different Zen group, called Stonewater Zen. They are part of the White Plum Sangha, which originated in the US and was founded by Maezumi Roshi. In the UK they have a main centre in Liverpool, and another in London, with a few satellite groups scattered around. Nothing near me, so this is a Zoom dependent relationship for now. I rather like them, they are a friendly bunch, impressively well organised. 

They generally have a more grounded approach to practice, which I like. I'm greatly appreciating the Dharma talks of Shunru Sensai, these invariably take apart a koan or a chapter of Dogen and teases out some pithy, very applicable point of life or practice. He is rather good at it, and I have so far come away with something he's said dwelling on my mind, often for days after.

I recently did a weekend Zazenkai with them online, which is a short sesshin, and I really benefited from it. I did have a significant insight. I realised I neither wanted nor needed to be ordained into another Buddhist movement. All I require is a place to practice, in a sangha where I find a source of inspiration and support.  Anything other than that I suspect would be me seeking some sort of external self-validation out of it, what you might call 'special me' territory. Ones level of practice and going for refuge need to be independent of, not dependent upon, having a name, position or status, whether actual or illusory.

MISS LUCKMOORE SAYS - Week Two

'The dress is your image,
and from me onto what you project
through an illusion,
one sensation of mind,
one fabric in recollection of touch'

From In Fabric - 2018

WATCHED - Relic

These days some Horror movies are receiving plaudits and praise for their commentary on political or social issues, of which Get Out was perhaps the most significant step up in that trend. But it has had some seriously good precedents too, one of which was The Babadook with both its creepy book and struggling single mum, are her concerns real or psychotic?, both narratives feeding into its fearful terror. It also took risks and didn't always take the well travelled route. The same can be said for Relic. 

Similarly its an Australian produced movie, brilliantly made by first time director Natalie Erika James. It starts from a Grandma going missing. Her daughter and Grand-daughter have to come to terms with the fact that they'd taken her for granted and neglected her at the moment she most needed them. Then she returns unexpectedly, she appears fine, cantankerous and independent as ever. As the film progresses doubts about her mental state grow, can she continue to live on her own anymore? should she go in a home,? should she live with her daughter? or her Grand-daughter live with her? When do you take someone's independence away from them, for their own saftey.?

These are very modern human questions, how do you continue to care when your love one becomes a relic of who they once were, lost to their mental instability? Underpinning this, giving the story a further grissly twist, is that the house appears to be diseased or in the possession of something. Spatterings of dark mould constantly become more extensive. Junk filled confined spaces may be hiding something altogether more malevolent. Is there another form of relic still inhabiting the house?

During the last twenty minutes of the movie you have to remind yourself to breath. Where - without making a major spoiler - a nightmarish reality unfurls.  Both thought and fear provoking. This is not your standard horror jump scare fest, its much more of a subtle slow build, psychologically and emotionally tense, its an gripping watch. Recommended.

FAMILY FRAGMENTS - Voyeur In The Attic

22nd October 1932
Mother has been shouting for me up the stairs, on and off, for at least the last twenty minutes. I am currently pretending not to be here. I know what she wants, she wants me to go to the corner shop for her ciggarettes. Even though Mrs W has said she can't have any more on tick. But she knows Mrs W thinks I'm a her 'luvly boy 'and that I remind her 'of my Winston' and hence, can deny me nothing. Why Winston is no longer around no one wants to say. You just see an awkward look fleet across their faces. Whatever the reason, he long ago abandoned this place.

What am I doing instead? Well, I'm enjoying staring out of  my bedroom window, just watching. There are regulars who pass by each day like clockwork. Current;y, Mr B, lunch pack in hand, is waiting for his regular lift into town to turn up. I'm expecting R soon, on her way to buy cake from Mrs W's in another doomed attempt to please her grump of a husband. There's not a lot going on around here otherwise. Its only just a village, with a few straggled streets, a tiny chapel, a pub and Mrs W's general store. Our Victorian terraced houses look like they've been in a pub brawl, and lost a few teeth. I'm fourteen years old and don't mind saying, I'm mostly bored.

What I do is read novels and listen to classical music on the radio. I don't understand why people think that's odd. Even my Mother wonders where I got my posh 'la-di-da' tastes from. Not her, nor my Father either - inbred in the Pennine hills, hardly ever ventures down to the valley bottom, let alone into Halifax, if he can at all help it. And he chides me for being 'such a sissy'!. Doesn't think its healthy for a boy my age to have no interest in sport and few friends. He's ashamed of me, and hasn't minded saying so either. So I lose myself in stories, escape into listening to music for a while, observe the world outside, there is frankly not much else to do. 

Sounds like Mother stomping up the staircase. Better conclude.

15th January 1933
It's been snowing heavily for a couple of days now. As usual the buses can't make it up the steep and tight bending approach roads to the moor top. Abandoned where they slip until it begins to thaw. After a few hours of snow yesterday, we were officially cut off from civilisation, or should that be more cut off? There is therefore not much work on the farm, so once he'd checked and fed the animals Father was sent home by his boss. Been slumped in his chair ever since, generally getting in Mother's way.  She is whining at him all the time. To the same tune I've heard all my life. 'There are jobs around the house you could be doing, but do you do them? do you eck' I'm keeping well out of their way today. War has been declared. I don't want to get caught in the crossfire.

I can't see much anyway, no one is about, just one big continuous flurry of snow. I despise, no, I hate the Winter. I like observing people, where they are going, what they're up to, I get a bit despondent otherwise.  But it has meant I've reached the end of the book I've been reading, its taken me ages, hundreds and hundreds of pages. Its Thomas Hardy, so the plot trajectory has been clear from the start, no one will escape their past misdemeanors. Like the weather outside, it was never going to turn out well, and it didn't.

6th March 1933
For the first time this year there is a whiff of Spring. Mrs Goodall obviously believes so. She's stood by the terminus bus stop spruced up in her best coat and hat, which usually means she's off into town in hot pursuit of a cheap shank of beef. The bus is late, I've got the timetable here, should be 9.45 and its already gone 10. She keeps glancing nervously at her watch. Well, here it is now. Oh...she's not going into town, she's meeting someone off the bus. Its a young chap, early twenties, dapper, quite handsome, his face half hidden behind a floppy fringe,he kisses her! She seems very pleased to see him, and does that annoying thing of tidying up a lads hair in public, even though he's fully grown up. 

11th March 1933
There was a lot of talk at school today about exams, our interests, favorite subjects, to start thinking about your future career etc etc. I just want to do something that will enable me to get away from this place. So just tell me what that is and I'll do it. Mr A talked vaguely about being ambitious and grasping opportunities blah d blah. He obviously wasn't brought up round here. I think I might like teaching, I'm quite good at drawing.

One of the things you can rely on my Mother for, is the fast transmission of gossip. She tells my Father everything, even though he professes to not want to know 'about other folks goings on'.  I hear it all from the other side of our kitchen door though. Mother slaps the back of my head hard if discovered - some things not being 'for your ears', apparently. Nonetheless it very quickly came to light that Mrs Goodall's visitor is her nephew Duncan, her younger sister Daphne's eldest.  Not much more to report, as yet.

12th March 1933
Saw D walking up to Mrs W's this morning. Came back with a cigarette lit, hanging suspended to one side on his lips, he's such a film star. Still no news, as yet ,on why he's staying with Mrs G, but Mother;s got her sniffer dogs out, it wont be long.

I've decided to grow the fringe of my hair longer, not exactly like how D has his, but similar. Mother might not let it alone for long. She keeps threatening me with the scissors, says my hairs too thin, lank and greasy - 'you're not a hermaphrodite' - which is probably the longest word she uses but doesn't know the meaning of. Don't really care, if floppy fringes are good enough for D, then that's fine by me.

14th March 1933
There's one problem with an attic window, like seats in a theatre, it has a restricted view. By rights I ought to be able to see all of what happens up and down our street on either side. Yet I have a better view of the pub at the top one side and Mrs W's on the other, than the bits closest in of the houses next door. Case in point, this afternoon D was out doing some gardening for Mrs G, but he kept sitting down on the doorstep which placed him out of view. He seemed to be making heavy going of the digging then stopping and staring across the valley blankly, before returning to more aggressive digging. It has also been unseasonably warm, shirts have been removed and laid over walls ! 

4th April 1933
The gossip update came incomplete. Mother came in all of a terrible fluster, literally bursting a blood vessel to tell Father something scandalous. She'd been to her hairdressers in Mytholmroyd and someone there knew someone else who'd worked in an engineering works in the Pudsey area over Bradford way. Seeing I was all ears, she said, 'and you young man had better clear off to your room'. As I left, she made a point of closing the kitchen door loudly behind me. 

I made the sounds appropriate for going back to the attic, then returned. What I heard was muffled and spasmodic. There was some big upset, something happened at the engineering works, beaten up, sacked, bricks thrown through windows somewhere, sent away for safety. This was followed by a prolonged silence. Then she clearly said ' Should we say anything to Lawrence, do you think?'  That's the bit I don't really understand, what's this got to do with me?

April 24th 1933
I was in Mrs W's  on an errand. There was the usual gaggle of local woman in a gossip huddle by the entrance. Whilst looking for the items on the shopping list Mother had sent me with, it suddenly went deathly quiet, the clucking chatter abruptly stopped. Just the echo of the entrance bell and the door creaking closed. I turned and there was D. He gave me a self conscious nod, but looked deathly white as if the ground was about to swallow him up. I've not seen him close up before. Its obvious why the fringe is long; it conceals a serious scar down his temple. 

He walked over to the counter and bought twenty Players, Mrs W looked at him with what I read as sympathy in her eyes. Once he'd left, the group resumed talking, becoming indignantly more animated. Mrs W appeared to become really irritated and barked  'Are you going to buy anything Masie Thomas or should I start charging you for floor space?' which appeared to stir everyone into action shopping lists came out, baskets quickly filled and paid for. It was clear Mother's news has been widely disseminated and had not resulted in universal admiration or understanding, quite the opposite. 

22nd June 1933
In the Summer I take the old pack-horse track when I walk too and from school in the valley bottom. It keeps me out of the way of a gang of bullies who pursue me, call me names - 'my lady' and 'girlie' are the current ones I get from them. The old pack-horse track is actually more direct, its steep and overgrown in places and, to be honest, it is more knackering. But I'd rather that than be pushed or chucked over a stone wall again.  

About half way down, on the left is a granite overhang we used to call 'the cave' when we played there as kids. I often stop there for a while. As I approached today I could see two people already sat down there on the grass. I didn't think they'd seen me, so I hung back in the bushes, watched for a while. Holding hands, hugging and kissing, the usual sort of thing. I couldn't really see who they were as they walked further away from me. In my rush to hide myself in the gorse I got badly scratched on the face, which took some explaining away when I got home. 

8th July 1933
I've been spending most of today listening to the radio and reading. Even though its really hot out there I'm indoors staying out of the sun, my pale skin turns bright red if I stay out too long in it. There are plenty of folk walking up and down the street as if they're on the seaside promenade. D comes out at least once a day, a visit to Mrs W's for cigarettes mostly, but also, I notice, an occasional wander down the pack-horse track.

9th July 1933
Once the warm weather arrives people open there windows wide, to let fresh air into there stuffy little lives, Mrs G does it like clock work every day from ten in the morning to early evening some days. Yesterday evening I was sat here reading, pretty much as I am now. I heard raised voices from next door. 

'Your Mother promised me there'd be none of that Duncan, that you'd put a stop to that....behaviour'
then a male voice 
'I don't think I was seen Auntie, we are careful '
'round here its better to assume everyone will see, because sooner or later they seem to know everything somehow'
there then followed a very long pause
'Sorry Auntie, I just wanted to see....... '
the voice tailing off into smothered sobbing.
'Well Duncan try to think beyond your self, consider what the consequences for me would be, should the police knock on my door'
Mrs G's tone sounded kinder
'the situation isn't fair on you.....this was only meant to be a temporary solution..... I should go somewhere no one knows me at all'
'and where might that be?'
'Down south, anywhere other than here. 
'Your Mother's not going to thank me for pushing you to go still further away'  
'but if I stay here there will never be an end to this, not a good one anyway, it will keep coming back, Askew's such a twisted vindictive bastard'
with that the window suddenly slammed shut.

I did some investigating, well, I looked through a telephone directory in the Mytholmroyd  Library. and there is an Askew's engineering works in Pudsey.

31st July 1933
In the middle of the night the police came knocking next door. Their car headlights having illuminated their presence and the whole terrace, so obviously everyone came to their window to peek out of their net curtains, if they have any.  The police weren't there for long. Once they'd left I could hear Mrs G through the wall wailing loudly on and off for an hour or so. Something bad's happened for sure, but no one, not even my Mother, knows what. Mrs G hasn't put a foot outside the door all today, and there's been no sign of D either.

1st August 1933
The whole place has been rife with speculation. I can see folk stopping complete strangers to ask what they know, if they've heard anything. Mother has been unusually quiet.  

At teatime, Father came home, the Evening Courier was tucked under his arm. He had a triumphant smirk on his face as he laid down the paper in front of Mother and put his finger on the lead story - Savage Murders in Mytholmroyd. She put on her glasses and carefully read the paper. 'I knew something like that would happen' and went back to tend to tea.

I picked up the Courier to read:

'A local man walking home from a local Public House in Mytholmroyd found the dead bodies of two young men in a back alley. The police say the bodies were of a twenty two year old, Stanley Riley of Headingley and twenty four year old Duncan Hemmings, originally from Armley.  Both bodies had been brutely attacked, being severely kicked and incurring several heavy blows to the head that were the cause of death. Police suspect the attack happened shortly after the pubs closed at 10pm. Its not known at time of going to press exactly what the relationship between the two men was. There are indications they may have been former work colleagues. Police enquiries are continuing and all the deceased's relatives have been informed. Police are appealing for any witnesses who may have seen the two men at anytime during the night of the 31st July to come forward.' 

Mother emerged from the kitchen, she'd obviously been weeping, saw I'd read the newspaper article. She stared right at me and said. 'I really don't mind what you choose to do with your life, but don't ever end up like that Lawrence, I couldn't bare the shame of it' and returned to the kitchen sniffling.

Father, following her into the kitchen, cleared his throat uncomfortably and half gestured towards me
'Don't you start blubbing too Lawrence, make yourself useful and set the table'

WATCHED - In Fabric

 

In Fabric is written and directed by Peter Strickland and was originally released in 2018. His unique output ( Berberian Sound Studio & The Duke of Burgundy, look them out ) draws on a diverse range of influences. The trash art of auteur Daniel Argento, a 60's & 70's colour palette, shabby gothic, voluptuous characters that make you feel Fenella Fielding will just wander in at any moment. Everything in In Fabric is cranked up and heightened, including the spoken word. The soundtrack is an elegant mix of period and horror pastiche with a modern feeling and expansiveness. This film deftly moves between absurd comedy, horror gore, archly mannered to naturalistic performance. To merely describe the plot will never quite convey the sheer brilliance of this movie. You could summarise it as a horror satire on identity consumerism.

We are introduced to a department store in the January sales. Shelia is venturing to go out on a date and needs a new dress to bolster her confidence. She finds a dress she likes, dyed in 'Artery Red', she buys it. Once home the dress begins to take on a malevolent life of its own. The dress is then passed on into the hands of a washing machine repairman whose mates force him to wear it on his stag night, then on to his girlfriend. Death follows this dress.

The film script for In Fabric is bizarre and utterly wonderful. The language of the head sales lady/witch  sounds like sales talk, but is also like the incantation of a spell being cast upon the potential purchaser. Anyone whose worked in retail will find this aspect a complete hoot.  Excellently played by Fatma Mahomed the head of sales Miss Luckmoore is this weird otherworldly creation. Here are just a small sample of her divine utterances;-

'Dimensions and proportions transcend the prisms of our measurements.'

'The hesitation in your voice, soon to be an echo in the recess in the spheres of retail.'

'A provocation. For what else must one wear?'

'Darings eclipse the dark circumference of caution - Be bold!'

'Did the transaction validate your paradigm of consumerism?'

'And may I interest you in other desire supposes in our exclusive boutique?'

The washing machine repairman is only ever referred to as Reg Speaks, and indeed if you get Reg to speak about the inner workings of a washing machine everyone who listens goes into some sort of ecstatic meditative reverie. None of this is ever explained, nor does it need to be, on some level this film does have its own nightmarish logic that completely captivates you.

'A dramatic affliction has compromised our trusted department store. Get out graciously.'

That said, I suspect not everyone will get on with this movie, it is very knowing about its contrivances and artifices. But I absolutely loved it. Its available to stream on IPlayer for the next month, but also you can buy it very cheaply too.

Oh and for the Buddhists amongst my blog readers Miss Luckmoore says:-

'Desist warning attention to the askew perception of self'

MISS LUCKMOORE SAYS - Week One

May I interest you in other desire supposes in our exclusive boutique?'

Taken from In Fabric - 2018

TV FAVE RAVE - Interior Design Masters

Now on its second series under the new Design Masters banner, and I think its forth format revamp, I think this programme may have finally found, not only the right presenter in Alan Carr, but the right balance of experts, novice designers and tasks set.

The nonsensical and completely unnecessary recycling challenge they once threw into the already turbulent mix midway has, thankfully, long gone. What you need to see is left entirely to the camera and edit - the character of the designer, how their talent, personal conceits and preferences, resilience and resourcefulness stand up under pressure.

This years crop are the usual, and hence, very familiar, motley bunch. The twink who thinks they are god's gift to design, the flamboyant OTT designer who you just know is going to struggle to rein it all in, the inspired one who's designs are too clever or elaborate by half, always in danger of having to do a last minute edit to finish on time.- the one who self sabotages with confidence issues, but usually pulls it off - the one who can't budget to save their life - the inexperienced raw talent that blossoms and will often win the competition. Also, every male contestant, if they are not already gay, then their dress sense and camp demeanour show they've read and inwardly digested the entire bible.

Episode 1, did not disappoint. Michelle Orgundehin has found her feet now, so she can say quite cutting but true things to a contestant like 'your just lazy as a designer' and you cry freedom for her. She met her match this week with the seasoned performer that is Lawrence Llewelen-Bowen, also both a master of design and the pithy put down.

Marvellous stuff.

ARTICLE - Water Takes The Shape That It's Given

Inspector Montalbano is investigating the death of a prominent politician, whose body was found in a car left in a place known for prostitution. Witnesses say they saw a man having sex with a woman in that car the night before. The post mortem confirms he died of a heart attack, Montalbano, however, is suspicious about the scene of the crime, there are just one too many anomalies. He visits the deceased's widow who believes the death of her husband was politically motivated. Neither of them has any proof. 

'What can I do' bemoans Montalbano.
'Well, you could just accept the shape they gave to the water'
'what do you mean' he asks.
She recounts a childhood encounter with a young country boy .He'd put on the edge of a well a bowl, a cup and a square tin all full of water, and he was just staring at them
she asks him
'What are you doing?
he replied with a question.
'What is the shape of water?'
laughing she says
'Water doesn't have a shape, it takes the shape that its given'

I watch a lot of crime procedurals, not usually with the expectation of being left reflecting on a phrase. But 'water takes the shape that its given' stayed with me. There is something about it that made me want to dig a little deeper into the what and why of it.

I was viewing this particular episode of Montalbano the morning after five days on retreat at home had concluded. My retreat reading had been Dogen's - Sansuikyo - The Mountains & Waters Sutra, and a commentary on it by Shohaku Okumura. Other watery spiritual metaphors had seeped in from other reading directions; from Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild and Sheng Yen's commentary on Seng Ts'an's Faith In Mind. The natural symbolism of water appeared to be falling out of thin air and into my lap. Then, once the retreat was over, I was merely relaxing watching TV, and was presented with yet another.

'That -- water takes the shape that its given'

Our bodies are largely made of water, too little and we die of thirst, too much and we drown, it scalds, it freezes, it falls, it pools, it moistens, it floods, it flows, it steams, it snows. Water adapts itself to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. Water is a shape shifting element. 

'Water reaches into flames, it reaches into the mind and its images, into wit, and into discrimination, and it reaches into realisation of the Buddha-nature'     Dogen

Waters capacity to flow as a spiritual metaphor is irresistible. To be able to mimic waters ability to go with the flow of whatever it encounters, to get through, in, over, around or under it. If only our experience of life could be more like that. Moving smoothly from one thing to the next, nothing ruffling us as we ride those tigers and paddle through those doldrums. Water brings insights into a better way of relating to reality. 

That our original shape was quite like water 

Water has more than ease of flow to recommend it.  Unlike humanity water never gets stuck for long in one particular form or way of being. If water has any sense of itself as water, it is not one that is stifled or inhibited by its own self consciousness. Water doesn't have a fixed permanent sense of who it is. A quality of water is that it has no will, no desire for control over its destiny. Water is compelled to fully embrace its innate willingness to adapt and be transformed by external circumstance.  It doesn't have to be protective of, or define, who, what or how it is. Water is content within its wateriness.

'Water embraces whatever shape it currently is, however brief.'

Dogen extols the virtues of water. Though he asks us not to allow our perceptions of them to be limited only to human centred viewpoints.  Do not assume perceptions are the same for all sentient life. How, for instance, does a fish view water, what form does water take through a fish's eyesight, how would that perception feed into its imagination and way of living?  Can we conceive of what fish-water, duck-water, or Buddha-water might look like?  Lets not assume all sentient life defaults to the human way of seeing things - for why should it?

Perceptions of water take the shape that we give them.

Humanity tends to find different perspectives, different ways of doing things challenging. It prefers consistency, routine and certainty over their opposites. Our use of the internet appears to be making intolerance of other cultures and opinions more intense. History shows that people have often tried to force people to believe or see things in one way, the way that they do. If they refuse to conform, then we imprison or kill them. Yet our opinions, like our sense of our self, evolve, they are not the fixed things we think they are. Actually we all possess a more water like sense of self, even if we carry it around in a bottle.

Like water our sense of our self can become frozen

We protect self identity, reinforce its shape through how we interpret our perceptions, the stories we weave around them about who we are, why we are the way we are, what we are or are not capable of. Then apply the same criteria to other people, why they are who they are and what they are. We force ourselves and others into predefined shapes. Seeing them only as what we've made them into, the particular box that we've constructed then put them in.

'In general, ways of seeing mountains and water differ according to the type of being that sees them. There are beings which see what we call water as a string of pearls, but that does not mean that they see a string of pearls as water. They probably see as their water a form that we see as something else. We see their string of pearls as water.'    Dogen

Can we imagine ourselves being more like water? Adopting the shape of other peoples opinions and ways of being, To understand anyone requires imagination, empathy and being able to listen, often without comment, as we soften our world view in order to accommodate someone else's. To see the world as if through another persons eyes, broadens who we are or can be. Someone being different to us doesn't make them unknowable. We can befriend people entirely unlike us, it can be quite invigorating. 

We already do this in a smaller way with friends, partners and family, all the time. Unconsciously adapting our shape and way of being in order to sit easier with another person's shape and way of being. We find ourselves behaving differently with friends from schooldays than we do with those from our work or the buddhist centre. People from these different contexts don't necessarily get on, even though they all have you in common. They appreciate a different side of you. There are people you clash with all the time, something about their shape you cannot adapt to or accommodate. It's worth investigating why.

Different people's shape allow you to be a different shape too. 

There is a traditional Buddhist story of the five blindfolded people each describes what an elephant is like for them. One knows an elephant only by its trunk, another by its ears, another by its legs, another by its tail, another by its belly. Each is correct according to the experience it has of it, but incorrect in describing the whole animal.  The same goes for us and our family, partners and friends, each has their own partial view. No one can fully describe the shape of you, not even you.

' Now let us be wary of this. Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistakenly assumed the various images to be one object? ....If the above is so, then practice-and-experience and pursuit of the truth also may not be only of one kind or two kinds; and the ultimate state also may be of thousands of kinds and myriad varieties.'    Dogen

Lets integrate the diversity and inconsistencies that we hold within ourselves, be with them, rather than fighting against them. Resist making ourselves conform to a consistent shape, particularly if that shape is not of our choosing. The shape of ourselves can be far more flexible and fluid than we allow it to be. The same is true of other people, of our way of seeing the world, of our conception of how reality is. There maybe an infinite number of tracks up to the top of a mountain, numerous routes to cross an ocean by, many a circuitous, winding path toward Buddha Nature.  

Reality functions like water, it has no permanent shape.,

Reality shape shifts

We are shape shifting sentient beings, that do not yet realise it..

POEM - Midnight Musk

The silence tonight
has the quality
                        of thickening cream
liberated, openly receptive
as well
           as this giving gesture
done in mime, suggestive
aloof
though not lacking a sense
for human history
                             and wonder
in a deepening amour, yes,
the type of amoroso that is learnt
from leaning into it,
                                keen
listening to the listening itself
                                                as it listens
conjuring nothing out of nothing
with an open handed palm, generous
to a fault, flawless even
like a deep blue sapphire, softly
ringing, a bell with no clapper
swings, soundlessly stirring
                                             not a thing
that might reawaken sound
into calling an echo
                                into the air
though I do not hear emptiness
in this no-thing-ness
I hear
         everything.

written January 2021 by
Stephen Lumb