<< march 2005 >>

This is a building I run past every time I go out on my trudge round the west end which is a masquerade for 'training' for the 10k road race. Several chums are entering this run on the 15th of May. What fun it'll be hoofing it around the south side of Glasgow along to steel bands and cheers.

Running is an unexpected love: from primary 4 onwards I along with Alison & Dawn did Cross County Running. 4 years of hell ensued for us and our families: every 4th sunday in winter did we heave our selves around cow-shit bog fields planted with perkily flickering plastic flags. A trial walk around the course (we'd get stuck in the mud, our wellies knowing something we didn't) before the run. We were always last, the three of us taking turns to be 'the most last'. We had big wobbly red thighs and hysterical snottery noses, but still we wheezed on each month to some far-bloody-flung field. Rennibister; The Whale Bone Gate; Binscarth. Once my shoe fell off as I skidded round a corner and I slid along the ground. Folks pay lots for such exfoliation & mud treatments these days. The best bit was tea out of flasks afterwards as you tried to shovel your block-lump feet into what seemed like baby socks. A proud moment is drivng home once, making Dawn laugh by sticking chocolate chips up my nose so the curled ends protuded. I couldn't get them out and our bellies hurt with laughing.

Birthday boy

Today, it's Stan's XXrd birthday. Along with a fab bum bag (he's a cyclist, not a professional American tourist) I made for him a meal: field mushroom and thyme risotto with black pudding and a soft poached egg, with an apple and rocket salad. It was delicious. Vegetarians/vegans/non-offal fans can omit the pudding/eggs/chicken stock.

for the risotto:
small knob of butter
salt and pepper
half a medium-sized onion finely chopped
finely chopped thyme leaves (about 2 teaspoons of fresh)
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 medium field mushroom, finely chopped
1 tablespoon or so of parsley, finely chopped
5 oz risotto rice
big glass of white wine
2 pints (1.1 l) chicken stock (at simmering point in pot with handy ladle)
butter, grated parmesan and parsley to serve.

2 slices of black pudding
2 large free range eggs

for the salad:
2 good handfuls of rocket
1 apple, peeled & finely chopped (make it a sharp-tasting firm apple)
cherry tomatoes, halved
dressing made of olive oil & apple balsamic vinaigre in a ratio of 3:1
salt & papper

what to do:

Assemble the sald by tossing all together.

Melt butter in a pot over a low heat, and sling in the onion, thyme, mushrooms & garlic
and give it all a good stir for 5 minutes - or until the onion has gone see-through(ish).
At this point, fling the rice in too, and stir it all about too, making sure it gets a good
coating of oniony stuff.
Pour over the wine stirring over a higher heat until most of the wine is absorbed.

So now, you need to start taking ladlefuls of your simmering stock and swish it into the
rice. Stir this obsessively until the stock is absorbed. Then do it again.
Keep adding ladefuls of stock and stirring in the manner of a fast old black & white film
until the rice grains are tender (best to test with one's mouth here). It'll take about
20 minutes for all of this - so make sure there's a good programme on the tv or
radio, so you can stand and stare like a stirring automaton. All this pesky stirring
keeps the rice separate and stops it from becoming gloupy - like porridge.

Near to finsh time, when a tested grain retains a certain overly-firm bite, boil your kettle
and heat up your grill. Slide the black pudding under and keep an eye on it, turning after
4 minutes or so. Fill a deep frying pan with the boiled water. Bring to a gentle simmer.
Slide each egg into the water and set a timer for 4 minutes (for extra large eggs;
reduce to 3 if using medium).

Test the risotto - it should be ready by now. Scrape in your grated parmesan, chopped
parsely and lots of black pepper & stirr lovingly.

Onto artful plates, arrange a pile of salad and present your risotto. Being a show-off
I made cresent shaped with two dessert spoons. Plunk the black pudding on top of this,
and having lightly blotted the poached egg with kitchen paper, set on top of the glittering
dark disc.

I know - it sounds so odd, and artery-compromising. But really, who eats like this often? The deep flavours of mushroom and thyme perfectly - for our unchallenged palates - complement the clove mealiness of the blackpudding and the sharp bittersweet combination of the apple & rocket salad. Yum.

Everybody hurts, sometimes

So...it would seem I've touched a nerve - the vagus nerve anatomy fans - with my discursive approach to the benefits of fibre. Judging from your secretive comments it would seem not one of you have ever had this problem & that I'm a freak. Perhaps I should nestle up in the corner with turnips, brussels sprouts and bran & seeds and create a self-propelling energy source from which I will become rich, rich, rich beyond my wildest dreams.

Love is all around

Anyhow, one correspondant who I know cannot claim to have rose-scented bum air has sent news of her happy engagement.

congratulations Debbie & Ritchie!

The school children with whom Debbie works will no doubt be confused next year when MRS. Duncan's name changes to MRS. Delday. When I was a bairn, I couldn't grasp that some teachers were Miss & some MRS. So every one was Missis. Children are like elderly relatives - you really ought to be married by now they say in one way or another. Some of the residents at the home I'm working at seem quite concerned I'm not married but living in sin. Some, like Maggie, tell me to enjoy my life & not get tied down early. Her bad vision must give her the impression I'm younger than I am. She pulled me over on friday and asked me if I was (AND I QUOTE) "a chink" (note to readers who do not know me - I have almond shaped eyes). Then asked to check my teeth. What could I do but bare my gums?

Back to Debbie and Ritchie...they're a great pair of people. D features in almost all of my childhood memories, and indeed we once decided we'd quite like to get married. This was probably around about the same time as I used to make her pretend to be Bruce Springsteen & dance about along some steps, then haul me out of the imaginary crowd, just like that spindle-houghed Courtney Cox in the Dancing in the Dark video.

The distant sound of trumpets...

I need little fanfare thanks, as I skulk back behind polkadotmittens' control tower desk like a student who's missed several lectures and hopes against all hope that her tutor won'tve noticed her absence (Note to my lovely Ma - this is not me, it is a fictional student. As a Mature Student, I sit with my similarly-aged chums & tut sagely about absences).

Anyhoo, in the way nervous folks do to try to put at ease an angry audience, I shall tell you a disarmingly personal & embarrassing story so that these months of silence shall be forgotten (had you noticed?!).

I am on placement just now, in a care home 3 miles up the road. As it's just off the cycle path, I'm biking up & down every day, which calorie counters out there will know, will amount to a fair energy expenditure. So 6.30 I have a bowl of muesli with sliced banana to which I add plenty of pumpkin & sunflower seeds, and have the same thing at 10 after breakfast is over at the care home. Come 2 it's lunch, so I gobble a roll packed with pumpkin & sunflower seeds made with granary flour by The Lovely Stan. Too, a seeded banana flapjack type thing I like to make to use up foosty bananas.

Then at night we normally have a healthy tea, but on Friday, Stan was out. What ho, I thought, pouring another bowl of Sainsbury's Luxury Fruit Muesli (50% fruit & nuts with no added sugar or salt) and slicing in a banana and topping the lot with more seeds. A couple of raw carrots and two oranges too. Later that evening I'm oddly hungry. "Acht no Stan, you cook something for yourself, I'll maybe just have some more muesli - it's lovely and really healthy too. Mmmmm, seeds!"

By 10 I was sitting on the other side of the room from poor Stan (on a night in we usually commandeer opposite side of the sofa, bums together like siamese twins). At 11 I had to go to bed so tired was I, but found I couldn't sleep. The deep borborygmi and unusual aroma along with intense pain coalesced to prevent me from drifting off.

My terror was of Stan coming to bed and discovering he was living in sin with someone capable of killing him with her digestive tract, so I opened the windows and confessed to him I had a sore belly and was maybe a bit windy. He seemed to think that was cute (????!!) and later came to bed. I awoke very early to find no duvet over me: he was trying to save himself. I thought I'd done so well lying with my bum pointing out of a small custom-arranged gap between the mattress and the covers.

One google search the next morning and I discover that it's possible to eat too much fibre. Thing is, I'm drawn to that muesli box, so great is my love for the mixture of dry oaty flakes, dry vine fruits, dry nuts and dry seeds basted in some semi-skimmed milk.

As I mentioned above, I'm currently on placement in a care home. It is a place divided by internecine conflict, visible through cracks in the smiles and jarring body language. Would I put a loved-one there? No chance.

The care I see given by a majority of the care workers there is excellent: patient and concerned with promoting both the individuality and the abilities of the residents. What is not excellent is how two or three of the carers go about their jobs: talking to another person over the head of a resident being helped out of bed about how 'demented' that person has become. Or telling a woman confused and depressed that she is 'bad' and did a 'terrible job' because she wanted to sit on the toilet longer that the carer had the patience to wait. Or talking about the cases of the residents as dinner is being served: decrying the son of one lady who is understandably finding it hard to come to terms with his mother's provisional diagnosis of dementia. This particular case horrified me: some of the residents may be confused with regards to some issues, some may be deaf, but they are all people and do not in any circumstances deserve to have their families and own mental faculties talked about with so little respect for their status as humans deserving of dignity. The levels of insecurity in both their jobs and their selves means that that they have this great need to have at least one common enemy. Shame then that this often seems to be the people to whom their skills and time are supposed to be dedicated.

On TV there are often programmes unveling the horrors of some care homes - abuse and degredation so appalling. This place is not like that, however the lack of respect for the residents displayed by a few of the workers is enough to have given me a very vaulable education. It's understandable that this kind of work is challenging. One of the care workers, L displays an excellent attitude, explaining to me how sometimes a resident can become so distressed and confused they lash out. She said when that happens all she can do is explain to the person that their actions are not appropriate that that she is going to get another worker to deal with them. She takes time to get residents ready in the morning: giving them time and space to do as much for themselves as they can manage: a skill unused is a skill lost. She talks to the residents as people - an alien notion to some of the workers who seem to think old=stupid. When I'm older, if some young man comes along and shouts in my ear without taking the time to look at me in the eyes, see me as a person and think about what I actually want and need as opposed to what he would like at the time (get your dinner finished hen, I want a fag). I hope that I've the will to remind him I'm the same as he is, just a little slower and remind him that what he might see as a withered old exterior does not mean that the person inside is all dried up and gone.