October 27, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 108 Left Over Right

Last night we had Leftovers for supper. Actually, to be honest, we often do. I have never been that sort of a cook who follows recipes, noting down what I might need in order to cook a certain dish and then trotting off to buy it.

Is this, I wonder, because I am too lazy/impatient to don my prescription specs and follow a recipe?

Could be. I remember once thinking I was dutifully following one cake recipe when I was,in fact, following two. I did wonder at the imbalance and curio-factor of blending two unlikely bed mates into one cake, but the wild and colourful in me rose to the occasion with a skip of excitment. The cake, or cakes, arrived as one rather wonky lump, listing dangerously to one side and quite impossible to present on any level surface. I make up my own recipes now.

Back to last night. Well, first I must open the fridge. I creep up on the door and swoosh it open suddenly. This is an old tactic and can often prevent anything escaping.

Aha! I say with a cook’s gleam in my eye. Opportunity presents itself and I grab it quick and hold on tight.

Next, onions. I always need onions and garlic and I rarely run out of them because they lie artfully arranged in a nice basket from Portugal and in full view. Any old vegetables, chopped, julienned, grated, diced, depending on what lies floppily inside the salad drawers. Olive oil, infused with whatever I can more-or-less identify as herbs in the herb garden. I know I should know which is which, but the voles have shifted the labels around. Big pan, light on, favourite wooden spoon ( I never cook with metal weapons) and off we go, but to where is quite another thing.

As each ingredient is added, the house fills with tempting aromas that join together in a rising sound wave until I turn down the heat. As one animal now, it simmers and softens into a harmonious chorus. Now, what would lift this dish? I taste a little and let my instinct guide me.

What? Mint you say, and dark chocolate and fresh nutmeg?

Never doubt that voice. It’s not a left brain thing. This could be casserole or cake. Just don’t argue.

I comply and taste again. Delicious.

I notice 3 old bananas hanging on the banana hook, all in a big brown huff. What can I do with you I wonder? I check the fridge – a tub of elderly natural yoghourt, lemon juice, and in the drinks cupboard which is still called that even though it isn’t any more, I find a teaspoonful of banana liqueur.

I chop the bananas and fry them in butter, adding a spoonful of wild honey and the liquer. Whizzed up in the whizzer to a fine puree, I add three serving spoons of yoghourt. Meanwhile some almonds have been toasting in the oven. I pour the mixture into two glasses, top with toasted almonds and pop them in the fridge, which is empty again.

Or is it? One woman’s empty fridge is that same woman’s chance to shine. It’s all about self belief and no 24 hour shop down the road.

In that famous parting line from Fanny Cradock’s tv series, spoken with such confidence and encouragement into a thousand homes by her husband and assistant, Johnnie…..

May all your doughnuts look like Fanny’s.

June 19, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 68 – Songs for the Girls

fig via: futureengagedeliver.com

I wrote a song for Jenny and one day I will sing it out, perhaps after the funeral. And then I wrote another for my little grand-daughter, the youngest thus far whose naming ceremony is being celebrated the weekend after.

How life organises these things I cannot say, but she always does and it makes a sort of sense. It’s not about one life replacing another, but more that the sharp-edged void created in a heart, when someone dies can be softened by a new life. These two girls will never know each other; will never come together except in my heart, and that is something rather wonderful and quite uniquely precious.

When I write my songs, or create my paintings, or lampshades or cushions or whatever, I work for one person. I think of who they are and what colours they wear and what stories lie in their eyes, and I work to honour and recognise them all. This is why I won’t create a production line, nor paint the same, but in blue, to match the furnishings. Every single piece of work is a one-off.

Much like a life.

The song for Jenny celebrates her as a woman of the sea, of the world and now, of the beyond, wherever that is. The words are taken from a well-known poem and personalised, and I don’t suppose anyone will mind, because they will hear what they want to hear and think what they want to think about Jenny as they take it all in. The music will lift them and pull on their heart strings and someone may well recognise parts of other melodies and other phrasing from a different song for there is nothing new under the sun.

And yet, everything is always new when someone catches a thing and forges it again in the fires of their heart.

The song for my granddaughter is different in that the words are all mine, and the melody pinched from a couple of other musicians who won’t know and wouldn’t mind anyway. We are not talking chart topper here. The words had to be bespoke, just for her, and with respect paid to her mum and her dad and the fabulous crazy wild people they are, and all those attributes now handed on to one little girl. It’s light-hearted and fun and will bring smiles to all the faces watching me stand and deliver.

We are all unique, but it is a rare bird that can fly alone into a busy sky, with its own song to sing, certain that just by singing it, everything is new.

May 14, 2013 by judyfairbairns

Island Blog 57 – A New Song

There’s a young man that I know……

Well THAT’S bad grammar for a start! It should read…….There’s a young man whom I know……..no…that sounds heavy and requires too much lip puckering. It also sounds like the plural of hummus.

I know why the songwriter chose to forfeit the English Prize – some words are really hard to sing in certain combinations, and it sounds different again when you listen back to it through a fancy recording thingummyjig.

We were writing songs, me and two professionals from Wild Biscuit, in a lovely farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. There was a beautiful dog called Blossom, a bonkers horse with wild eyes that dashed by every now and then in a tartan blanket, ignoring any wheedles to come in for the night, and a loudly colourful pheasant from a hot country who (or is it whom?) appeared outside the kitchen door one morning and who now resides in the yard, fed on porage oats and leftovers. Swallows busied themselves with nest building and chattered me awake in the early mornings. I watched a dipper on the pond and heard the Bark Chorus from the kennels across the valley.

Everyone knew this place already, but I didn’t. My bed had soft white cotton coverings, and there were daffs from the garden in a little vase. I sat down with my writings and John said Pick a line, so I did. ‘Hey did I get here early? I see you’re packing up the car.’ and we were off, me with my pencil and he with his guitar and recording thingummyjig. When Mags came in to see if we wanted coffee, we already had the bones of a song in shape and my sore throat had quite forgotten itself in the excitement.

It was the same the next morning. Only this line was ‘Sometimes I feel beautiful, easy in my skin,’ because I do sometimes, and I did that day looking out this time on sunshine and promise and that bonkers horse shooting by to interrupt my reverie. By mid-afternoon we had two songs down, and harmonies and different instruments that rose into place with the push of a button. I loved losing myself in the music, singing into a microphone for the first time in years, hearing the reverb and the feedback and remembering to free one ear so I could hear my voice in real time as well as the enhanced one, that sang me like a boy in a cathedral, with those high ceilings and big echoes and time standing still. There was even Photographer Bill to capture the magic of all this creativity. I gave him a copy of Island Wife and he said he would write his own story one day. Shame, I said, you can’t photograph sound as I scrambled through another verse sounding like a donkey. The next day I would be horse.

It’s a beginning, which is why we call it the ‘Imagine Sessions’. I am already writing a third song in my head and listening back to the cd I brought home of the first two, to think more on rhythm, beat, musicality, harmonies and lyrics; to practise, to lift a word clean away, or shift it, or lay down a new one altogether. And the cough has nearly gone, for on mental tiptoe I can reach the high notes again.

A new door opens and I am stepping through.