If We Were Having Coffee (15 Sept, 2020)
"We are bursting through the barricades and reaching for the sun"
Good morning, pals! It seems I have to start this week’s note with a retraction - last week I said it was definitely Autumn, but the last few days’ weather have turned that into a lie. Today we are forecast for 21 degrees - trust me, in Scotland, that counts as Summer!
If we were having coffee this morning:
I’d tell you that I have bought into the Pret £20/month unlimited coffee subscription, and so far I think I’ve had more iced drinks than hot ones - which feels very wrong. Their coffee frappés, though, are to me the Platonic ideal of a blended iced coffee - it’s essentially a coffee milkshake, without as much ‘funny stuff’ as some of the other brands use. (They do use a frappe mix but it’s a relatively short ingredient list). I also rate the Costa and Caffe Nero versions - much more than the coffee shop with the mermaid. You’d probably ask me why I’m so keen to buy into a chain coffee shop’s subscription when I’m so vocal about supporting indies and I’d explain that this is more about getting me out of the house at lunchtime than it is about ‘going for coffee.’
I’d ask if, like me, you’re really missing party food. When I say party food, though, I’m really meaning ‘picky food’, served in bitesize chunks, letting you try lots of different things. I finally realised last weekend that that was something I missed (it was more than six months since I’d had a spring roll!) so on my weekly food shopping trip, I bought a box each of prawn toasts and spring rolls, to add to the Itsu gyozas already in my freezer, and create a faux-party-food dinner, with a mountain of green beans to go with them (please try sautéing them with chilli flakes and soy sauce - you won’t regret it).
I’d tell you that I went into the office twice last week - to meet actual real life humans, and that our security staff have brought all the plants from around the building down to the building’s atrium, to take care of them!
I’d tell you that I’m working my way through all the Eva Ibbotson romance novels, which have been republished by Pan Macmillan. I’m not sure that one of them, Madensky Square, has been in print in my lifetime. It has a foreword written by Laura Wood (her romances are beautiful - please do check them out!), and I’m luxuriating in every page. The protagonist is a 36-year-old dressmaker in Vienna in 1912, and there is one passage which felt like it could have been written by a columnist in Refinery29 in 2020:
After this, the waters closed over my head.
I don’t know the name for these attacks: depression, despair, panic… I only know that there’s nothing to be done; they just have to be lived through. I used to curl up under my quilt, trying not to exist, but now I walk. I walk all day through the city and out of it and by the evening the worst of it is over.
It reminded me a little of Laura Freeman’s The Reading Cure, an account of how reading and walking helped her recovery from an eating disorder, which I borrowed from the library when it was in hardback and now have my own copy so that I can reread it any time I feel the urge.I’d ask if, like me, you’re finding this phase of social distancing almost harder than full lockdown, when we had a clear (ish) set of rules. I’d mention that I’ve been sent the link to Tim Harford’s Bluffer’s Guide To Surviving Covid-19, which didn’t help as much as I had hoped, but might help you.
I’d tell you that I have a week off work booked in October and I’m really excited about using it to make some more progress on my novel and also to start knitting a new project, the Dissent Pullover by Andrea Mowry. The colourwork around the yoke is based on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s famous dissent collar (which - fun fact - is actually from Banana Republic. The jokes write themselves). It terrifies me how many hopes we put on this one birdlike 87-year-old. I will knit all my fears about the November election into it.
This year I have finished more knitting projects than ever (two sweaters, two pairs of socks, a cowl, a pair of mitts, and a baby sweater, so far) thanks to a strategy called the Gideon Method - I’ll tell you all about it later.I’d tell you that gyms and swimming pools have finally opened here, a couple of months after the rest of the UK, but that I’m not keen to go back. I used to go to the gym 5-6 days a week, but they felt like Petri dishes at the best of times… instead I’m saving for one of those smart stationary bikes. Where I am excited about going is our local roller rink, which reopened last Friday. I’m booked in for this weekend - hopefully next week’s note will be written with all my limbs intact…
I’d show you this Instagram post I saw from The Financial Diet about taking expectations off ourselves while we survive this pandemic:
While I think a certain amount of mourning is healthy and realistic, I think taking joy in the survival of this year is a message I needed this week. I had a really productive and positive period between late July and mid-August, and then the corona-coaster struck again… and on top of the turmoil there was a feeling of failure that I hadn’t managed to keep up with what I was achieving for those weeks - but seeing this, and a couple of days of Morning Pages, helped me re-balance myself.
I’d tell you about my current work lunch obsession. As I try to use up some of the stuff that’s been in my freezer for months (to give me more scope to batch-cook soups and chillis), I found a couple of freezer bags of tortilla wraps (I freeze them flat in bags of three, so I can defrost the entire bag and use it before they go bad) which I have been spreading with humous and then rolling up with chunks of falafel and some quick-pickled red onion. The quick-pickled red onion itself is a star - essentially, whenever I cook something that only wants half a red onion, I thinly slice the rest and pop it in a jar with enough white wine vinegar and lemon juice to cover them, and a good half-teaspoon of salt to accompany them.
I’d tell you that I’m really enjoying the music from The Greatest Showman lately, and especially re-imaginings of the original soundtrack. There exists an official album featuring artists like Panic! At The Disco, Kelly Clarkson, James Arthur, and Anne-Marie, but this week I want to share a link to an a capella version from Edinburgh-based choir, Pitchcraft:
And if that doesn’t put you in a good mood to face the rest of your Tuesday, then I’m afraid we can’t be friends. (Only joking, I think?).
Speak to you next week for a little more Kaffeeklatsch, friends <3
Lily
Find me on Instagram: @LilyMCooks
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