Skinny-dipping

Where normally the cloak of nighttime would draw me to the brightest lights: in the country, I like to stay in the shadows when I misbehave.

Last night arrived at country house, wrung out from a day of travel, forgetting, and last minute deeds. I was dead tired, leaden, ready to drop off my chair. Ready to, had I been home, tuck myself under the covers with the DVD’s of Pride and Prejudice (the original, Firth-esque version is the only one I will ever watch) and a hefty batch of roastbeef sandwiches.

But in the country it is different. Not here the gentle soothing of empty carbs and stockings. Not here the surrendering to narcolepsy. Soon the restoratives of a wind blowing round the cherry tree, the sun piercing grey clouds and the homey chatter of my mum, aunt and grandmother had filled me with new energy. And once we’d had our fill of herring, eggs and potatoes, a berry pie and beer and coffee and Aalborgs Jubilee to fill in the cracks, I was ready to discover the evening.

Now here is another fundamental difference between city and countryside. What to do with surplus nighttime energy. Where normally I would drag some poor unsuspecting friend to some bar or other for some chat and maybe some eyeing – here I was left to my own rescourses. And those of nature, of course. I decided to take a walk.

Throwing on a woolly sweater and the same sandals that carried me across the mountains to Santiago de Compostella a few years ago, I set out among the scents of the sleepy gardens. In late light there where creams and yellows and blushing pinks both falling heavily on branches and soaring upwards on the gusts of wind.

Rustlings and creaks provided background music as I made my way out into the fields, where the black horses had gathered for the night under a big chessnut. The waves crackled over the pebbled shore and somewhere out at sea I could spot the pale white belly of a lonely boat. It was irresistible, I had to go in. Making my way tenderly over the slippy rocks, I left my clothes behind a shrub, tangled in the branches of a wild rose, and then hurried, pale white belly full of jitters, into the freezing cold and darkly inky water.

It was brief. It was glorious. It was better than any shot. Towelling myself of, barely even shivering yet, I made it back to the house. Going to bed, with both the east and the west window open, in sheets that have dried in the same wind that bothered the pages of my book, cool glass of water at my side and all summer before me: I felt like twelwe again, or younger; giggling at a secret and fully expecting the summer to last forever. And the roses.

Give Me a Break

The past few days have not been kind to my budding ulcer – whom I have named Claus and whom I shall feed gin&tonic at first opportunity after lunch. There has been a project deadline, of a humongous and mindachingly boring project, at that. At the same time, I have been juggling multiple end of season social engagements and a visiting friend: what with leaving keys under carpets and finding time to shower – I have been stressed out. 

Usually, a few hectic days would be nothing, I’d just put my head down and get whatever needs to be done done. But last night I snapped. I do not know if it was the project itself, or the build-up of recent breakup, current homelessness and the need to be perfect hostess – there was a snap and that snap was heard around the world. Or at least, the office.

At the end of the day, running late and flustered, I had appx 15 minutes before I needed to be in cocktail dress, in heels, with something resembling an updo, half way across town. But instead of being within reach of my ladyshave, or at least, emergency tried and true bronzer, I stood swaddled in papers with the urge to kill the copymachine. Or euthanise it, more like.

And it dawned on me: this is not what summer should be like. Where was the white linnen? Where were the flasks of elderflower lemonade? Where were the big sea kayaks, and the profiteroles, the wellingtonds and the dusty roads, the hidden mushrooms in shade and the blackberries in full sun? Where were all the ingredients of a hot summer? I wouldn’t find them chez the office, thats for damn sure. The printer was one more thing on my list, the ulitmate symbol, of why I need some time off, pronto. Also featuring:

1) Legs are colour of egg-shell painted walls

2) I introduce my self in bars with title, surname and spellin my email-adress

3) I haven’t seen the inside of a kitchen in a few weeks

4) The garden is blossoming – need to tame it

So for the next few weeks: will keep you posted from beneath the apple tree.

The Omnivores Dilemma

For the longest time, I ate raspberries, convinced that it would be tantamount to sacrilege not to like live sweet rubies. I was also sure I did not like liver, and I did occasionally drink beer. In short, it took me a while to trust my own taste and realise that what is manna and honey to one, is too sweet and mealy for me.

Well you live and learn. An excellent liver pie a few years ago turned my world, and since then I am a fan of anything intestine. But I have also developed rather a thick skin when it comes to insulting the resident cook. If it doesn’t please me I wont swallow.

 I have stopped the raspberry intake and choose a glass of wine, or even water, instead of forcing myself to sink several litres of bitter gold – even if in a swirling pub. I embrace my hatred of cantaloupe and crostini, as well as my love of stingy nettles and bloody dripping raw meat, my abhorrence of liqorice and my fanatical support of anything tart: grapefruit and broccoli and ruccola – bring them on.

With age, alas, I try to eat or non-eat based on personal taste only. There are exceptions to this rule: a certain sense of manners comes into play, of course, and I would not spit in a salad offered by a friend, even if it would contain apples and cucumbers (an unholy combination, I find). Also there are cases of extreme hunger when I may manage something pork. But as long as it is my time or money going into the pot, and I am not starving, I want the pot to live up to my standards. Or be sent back.

My theory is this: if I have paid for it or spent time making it, I should not have to go through further loss of money of time-is-money by eating something I don’t care for. And to continue my newly developed trend of obvious analogies: the same goes for men. Which begs a few questions:

Is the customer always right, or am I, as it were, ordering the cook to fire my meat to a cinder for lack of culinary experience? Should I stick to what I like no matter if it isn’t always the healthy option? Does it matter if the produce is fantastic if it has been seasoned all wrong? Can you save a sauce once burned? And most importantly: will I ever be happy with a one-sided diet or would my teeth fall out? What if over-consumtion will develop into allergies halfway through the meal?

But to close on a more optimistic note:

A man survived the WWII concentration camps to marry a Cordon Bleu chef. The only subsequent tragedy in their relatively contented life was that despite all her efforts at sautes and souffles and tangerines and cold boiled tongue with a parsnip side, all he ever really felt like eating was bread and salt. A few years of inhumane misery and starvation will have you running for the basics.

And so, I go on the dating market.

Sub Par

The Stockholm subway system is in no way either sex, fricadelles or cointreau and should thusly have no place in the blog of a single girl trying, as it were, to cure her own ham.

Or to put it plainly: the Stockholm subway system is neither sex, drugs or rock n’roll and should thusly have no place in the blog of a single girl who is supposed to be writing on food but who is finding it hard to keep on topic, what with the current lack of arm-candy.

It is however, reminicent enough of a bad date to merit a posting: smelly, slow and newly ridiculous. Case in point: the station announcements. They are translated. Like this: “plinplinpling ODENPLAN” that is, a little jingle and then the name of the station, ODENPLAN, is translated to “next stop: ODENPLAN”.  Take a pause and think about the sheer idiocy.

And hopping on, off track: when got out of subway tonight, having payed a visit to my grandmother and mown her lawn, was bumped straight from the fumes of the compressed “humanity” riding the slow train to dullsville into the scent of my ex-ex-ex (jesus, it really has been a while) boyfriends mothers perfume.

Now, I do not miss the boyfriend. I certainly do not miss the mother. But I do miss the nights of sitting out in their greenhouse, vines overhead and tomatoes all around, eating shrimp and roquefort and listening to the swilling of the sea and the swooping of the bats.

I am not a sentimentalist. I take nostalgia as a sure sign, the way the cloggy green snot at end of cold is sign of healing. A sign it is time to get a hobby. Or for lack of stamina, a short term obsession.

So I shall learn how to mend a punctured tyre and then I shall take some days out of my vaccation and ride my bike from Skåne to next stop: ODENPLAN. It is about 700 kilometers. What to pack?

A Slow Simmer

Today I had a close encounter with the life that could have been mine – if only I didn’t like The Heels.

Even if you are in the business of PR/Spin, not normally recognised for profundity, you sometimes need some background material. Something for the weak vines of gossip to cling to, something for the tender tendrils of innuendo to lean against. Something solid. Some facts. This is why, today, in the name of research, I made my way over to the Royal Library: housing pretty much all that has been printed. Ever. In Sweden, at least.

I was on a quest to find some old articles, not available on that beautiful thing, the world wide web. This in itself, actually going to the library and asking for a tome, gave me a sense of backwards time-travel. Outside, the overcast and chilly day, with great gusts of wind and my skirt plotting all sorts of Monroesque getaway plans, my toes were freezing, the bus was lacking, and my hairdo – always a bloody mess – was more of a bloody mess than ever. All in all, the general feeling was one of upheaval and great adventure.

The fairytale feeling was further enhanced when I reached the big mellow eggshell building in the verdant park. Its big wooden door opened with a creak. I stepped inside, fully expecting goblins or beauties veiled in cobweb, but got the next best thing and, like struck by a spell, was swallowed by the silence and the slow-mo of academia. A real life forgotten kingdom.

No rush, no fuss, no frills, no yelling. Everything, in fact, that is the opposite of clamouring for attention the way us media hungry professionals do. It was bliss. Rather like eating a very well cooked meal of boiled summer carrots, boiled leeks, boiled cauliflower and boiled cod (perhaps with a hint of mustard sauce) after weeks and weeks of brash cross-over height-building fad-following cuisine.

…and I do miss it. Miss the buildings and the bad coffee and the rational thought and the honesty and somehow back boned stubbornness of answering to no one but the harshest of moral and integrity-fondling judges. Not for them the headlines and the yellow prints, the on-offer-nows or the fast paced swarming of the media pack.

But not for them either the sharp suits or the red soles or the thrill of out-cheaping the other cheaps.

And so I totter on. 

Outside, in the nothing that passes for Stlms most central square was a huge tv-style billboard. It informed me in large red print that Lohans mother gives go-ahead to Lohans lesbian relationship. I say go Lohan, but do I need to know?

And these shoes hurt.

Smell My Wrath

This is my last week in work before vacations. And after my four weeks off I have one more month to go, and then (I) am the hell out of here, switching to new and exciting and wonderful and glorious job (for real). All of this is very good.

Less good, however, is the sudden realisation this morning that I have a shitload of important stuff to get through before leaving. The projects that have been slowly drifting in backwater have suddenly turned into a veritable tsunami of deadlines. So I will have to unplug myself from any social events, or even sleeping, and instead chain myself to my laptop for the next few days.

And this will present a cooking challenge. How do you vary your menu and keep it healthy while having three meals a day in the office? It sports a fridge and a two ring cooker, but no fan, and only half a skillet…

I started of this morning with cottage cheese on home baked hazelnut loaf: all you need is a knife. This was good, and I only wish, in hindsight, that I would have stuck to cucumbers and other non-pungent comrades for the entire week. But instead, for lunch, I had brought some cold boiled potatoes and…and here is the humdinger… five smoked herrings.

Now, in case you have never encountered a smoked herring, let me save you the suspense. They smell. They smell like fish. Like dead fish. Stuck in a smokehouse. For a long time. But still dead. Since I had wrapped them in ten layers of plastic for the trip from the seaside to town, I had sort of forgotten about this little detail. But was brutally reminded when they were unleashed.

The smell spread. Firstly through the kitchen, then through the rest of our quite cramped and warm office. It spread to my hands and from there to my computer. It spread to my bosses pants and to the kettle. It stunk up the fridge, of course, and my colleague said even his very spicy curry tasted of them.

Of course, you can’t be a lover of food and have a hard time coping with the smells. I am more or less imune to the stenches of the cheeses and the bloody, the pickled and yeasty. I have tackled the inside of a pigs stomach, the slow and tender cooking of cabbage, and the preparations of pea soup. But it is one thing to battle these enemies in the fair and level playing-field of the kitchen. When they invade the conference room, it is a whole other ballgame.

My original and deluded plan was to leave the herrings in the fridge and eat one for lunch every day this week. But even this first airing gave rise to a perfect mutiny amongst my co-workers, and threats of “throwing out” or “down the toilet” were issued. As it wasn’t perfectly clear whom it referred to – me or the scaly ones, I realised I’d better make myself, or my smokey friends, scarce. It was me or them. And since I haven’t the time to defect right now, the fish had to go.

The simple solution: feed them to the office. This afternoon, while I have been slaving away at this god-awful memorandum on something I’d much rather forget – I have had to content myself with listening to a slurpy sloppy finger sucking orgy of fish devouring in the kitchen. They sit around the table, the boss and the rest of them, and feast upon the carcasses of my poor dears. They even have beer.

And all I’ve got for company is the smell.

Walk My Way

On how to walk 30 k without really noticing.

The rain was pouring this morning, on the walnut tree and the wilted lilacs and the bluebells, on the windowpanes and the sparrows and the slate grey sea, and on any plans for garden work. So instead of a couple of hours of hard duty on my knees in the weeds I stayed in bed, in bed, with a book, in bed with a book and tea. The best way to do it.

The best way to do it, yes, but only for so long. After a while, appx. three cups and 10 chapters, I started to feel an itching in my feet. The pillows were to warm. And the sheets were all crumpled and crumby. It was time to get up and out. So, digging out the waterproofs and the wellingtons, my mother and I decided to brave the forces of nature and go for a quick stroll.

The quick stroll turned into something more, though, as we meandered through the mist and spray of the sea. Not a soul was out but the gulls, and as the wind died down and the rain let up slightly, we decided to make our way to my sisters newly perfected seafront house, some 15 k down the coast.

Said and done, we stalked of, and arrived some hours later, just in time for that dead hour between tea and cocktails – a dilemma solved amicably by my brother-in-law serving us both cinamon swirls and champagne as we ooed and aahed our way through their fabolous construction of sleek tile, soft wood, kitchen cupboards shutting to contented clunks and windows facing west. We spent a while discussing politics and stereo equipment, and then, just as the discusssion on the latter got a bit too heated, the sun broke trough the heavy clouds, letting ripples play on the waves and the lawn.

It was too tempting to resist: boyed up by bubbles and having given our feet a rest, we decided to decline all offers of rides and walk back. After all, if you’ve gone fifthteen you might as well go thirty, and as long as we kept a good pace we’d be back just in time for dinner…

Well, at least we started out briskly. But show me he who can hurry along a freshly scrubbed shoreline and I’ll show you a blind man. As we went on all thoughts of dinnertime was suspended, we even stopped chatting, and just looked around.

First there where heavy boughs of sweet maple and tangy growths of nettles, then there was the toffee flavoured saltstained pine forrest, and the deep purple layers of seaweed washed up and hung to dry in it. The church chimed in a small village, chalky white planes of rock jutted into the water, the silvery sheep slipping on crushed shells, another village was too small even for a church but where a big-bellied fisherman with a deep cough rowed a dinghy, his boat very like one in the flock of swans or one of the sleepy creamy cows, deep in mud and churning green grass. There were creaky gates to keep things in and steep ascents that gave us a view of the bay, a stream to jump over, a pool of red poppies spilled in a field of rape, and though our feet ached, it was only for the last few kilometers of elderflower and jasmin and white roses over a base note of dry grass we felt any real hunger.

We arrived sated but starving, threw together dinner – liver florentine, new potatoes, cucumber salad, glass of red – and sunk onto the wooden chairs as if they were softly cushioned sofas, and I plan to spend the evening in bed, in bed with a book, in bed with a book and tea will be the sweetest of reliefs.

Tomorrow will start the morning with a quick stroll down the harbour. And maybe do a little bit northward. Nothing much. Just a few k, into town for some bread maybe. A picknick breakfast, perhaps. On a cliff.

Drive Me Crazy

I don’t drive. It has nothing to do with environmental concerns and everything to do with having lived cityside all my days and never having had any actual need for a licence. Also, it is due to always being able to summon up a man: taxidriver, boyfriend or father, to take the wheel in times of crises. To sum up: I have been pleased to have a perfectly legit excuse no to mind ones units, not to remember the way, and not to know how to stow a trunk. Non ownership of drivers licence is a true ticket to freedom.

However. When it comes to excursions, moving and travel it is a bit of a hassle.

Last night for example, I had to bum a ride with my sister, her husband and their toddler for the 700 kilometer trip to our countryside house, wherefrom I shall soon set forth on a midsummer spree. There will be midnight dips and charred barbeque, mosquiots and foolery… but I am getting ahead of myself. Let me first tell you about last nights ride down the highway of hell.

My sister, her husband and their toddler are a close knit family and I love them to bits. They are generally generous and contented people, a good bunch. Little did I know that while enclosed in a car, they are the monster family for the netherworld. I guess I can’t blame them for the traffic, the flat tyre or the pouring rain. But I can say, that for 6 out of 8 hours trip, there was a constant bickering and vomiting and general unpleasantness. And all I did was stare out the window.

I had expected to be forced to sing for my supper, in a way, by providing car games and gossip and a pretence at interest in financial news to keep all of them entertained in return for my free ride. But instead, I was left to my own devices, plugging in the mp3 and leafing through back issues of Vogue, pretending not to notice the absolutely horrendous, gut wrenching (litteraly) fighting and barfing that was taking place. It did, however, give me time to ponder. As I was transported through the darkening Swedish summer landscape, I got to thinking about other rides I’ve bummed, so to speak, in life.

I remebered my first serious boyfriend, whos hearse-like gargantuan black chevvy pick-up truck blew my fifthteen-year old mind. It was the absolute height of fashion and adulthood. We spent a lot of time in that thing, and his selling it coincided eerily with out breakup, three years later. The relationship, as teen relationships are, was of course a long series of crappy breakups and ridiculous making up. But I do miss the car – have never felt safer than while rolling through the city in a tank.

University, then, was a wirlwind of beat up cars and borrowed cars and generally hazardous cars – very much symbolic of the dating scene at the time. There was also a lot of time spent with a girlfriend, proud owner of a small green puttering thing, in which we would roam the country, smoking out the window and crooning along with Bonnie Raith.

Then there were the summers, with sandy feet up on the dashboards and wet hair sticking to a hot neck, and someone elses shit-for-brains taste in music ruining a perfect moment, and the endless drives in the wrong direction because A just wouldn’t listen when I told him to turn, and the death-ride through Denmark when B insisted he could drive perfectly well with one hand on the phone and one hand on my knee, and the forgotten parking meters and the weird smells and the openings of car-doors with hangers because C lost the key and, a sweet culmination, the cross country trip struck in the backseat with a dog, trying to keep up an even massage of the preassure points of a big slobbering carsick dog. For eight hours. 

By the time I was through this litany of sins and good intentions, I realised that some things change. While the rain was still pouring, the road was still long and I was still a die-hard fan of “Love Me Like a Man” , I no longer smoke, I do know right from left, and I am no longer ok with ALWAYS riding shotgun. While getting chaufeured around in style -or a tin box held together with tape- is lovely when the right person is at the wheel, it is not nice to be dependent on the kindness of the reckless driver, the incompetent ear or the directional fool. For those occasions when no man is on the horizon, I shall get my own bloody car and steer it. Even if the right to toot my own horn hinges on having to haul my own moving and pay insurance and generally do all sorts of unpleasant male things. 

As soon as I find a man willing to teach me.

Betting Man

I have been bet upon. Like a pony, or a dare. It is really quite humiliating. And headache inducing.

Last night was the night of the damned, aka “The Brentifier”, aka the office summer party. I woke up this morning and my pillow, not to mention my hair, skull, teeth and brain ached. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that this is the probable result of sticking fifteen people under the age of thirty-five in a flat with nothing but a few flimsy canapées to protect them from the onslaught of the open bar. Just add music, and you have a holy mess.

Last nights party was a bit more on the edge, a bit more dancing on Titanic even than usual. We came straight to it from watching a debate on a newly proposed law, that will give the Swedish governement the right to scan all communication that crosses our borders to check if were plotting to bomb something.

This is not only a terrible breach of integrity, but also a blatant display of stupidity. I think it is mostly the complete and utter inadequacy of the measures, and the complete and utter unlikelihood of actually catching anyone worth catching, that has me up in arms. As this story will show, being up in arms can have terrible, terrible consequences when paired with liquor. 

The others were happy to forget about the damn thing and go on dancing. But as the night went on and the Margarita’s went down, I got more and more incensed about this new legislation. While the others were clinking glasses and snogging inappropriate people (will tell more later), I wanted to talk about freedom and integrity and each persons solemn duty to stop the madness. It was fun, waving pitchers about in great gestures and saving the world, as it were, fag in hand.

And this is were things went terribly, horribly wrong. A “friend” of mine decided – I guess in order to shut me up – decided to put his money where my mouth was. He organised a little bet, on weather I, so justly alight with the fires of holy fury, would do something about it. Namely, brave my horror of large crowds of chanting people, and join the next mornings rally against the legislation.

At three o clock in the morning, happily dancing away to St Elmos fire, I promised that I would be there, dressed in white, and that “this is the time where we have to do what our grandparents, no I mean grandchildren, anyway, this is our war”. I think I actually even mentioned Custers last stand. 

This morning, however, I was in no mood, no mood whatsoever, to stand out in the could shouting at my elected representatives to get their acts together. I was in a mood to stay under the duvet and eat things. In fact, I may still have been drunk, but a sobbing, heavy lidded, queasy drunk: not the drunk that takes on the folly of our modern times.

I bravely stuck to plan though, clad myself in white, tone on tone with my pasty skin, donned my sunglasses and made my way to the sight of the rally. It was only when I got there, that I realised it was all a set-up. I was there. Large groups of irate teens were there. A smattering of crazies were there. But my colleagues were all home, snug in bed. I shouted a few half hearted slogans and then scurried of to the office and the coffee-brewer.

… later, they ambled into the office after lunch, smirking at my lonely self: defeated by ballot, green at the gills, and a newly anointed contributor to the wisdom of crowds.

Call of the Wild

I am not a Bridget Jones kind of person. True, we may share a certain je ne sais quoi, but mostly, I am pretty organised and well composed. Not the type of person to leave kid at butchers, or show up at a close friends wedding looking like a madwoman and smelling of sap. Until this weekend.

Friday the coffeepot was my bitch. And like any bitch she had her revenge and kept me up all night. Consequently, when Saturday morning rolled around, the rain pouring like mad and the train leaving at seven, all I could think was “the horror, the horror” and skip a shower in favour for a few more moment on the squidgy. Anyway, it wasn’t to be a problem; right? I had plenty of time to shower, shave legs and wash hair once arrived at the cabin where I’d be staying for the countryside wedding. Hmpf.

Once on the train I stowed my bags and umberella, leaned my wet shoes up against the radiator, slipped on my flip-flops and fell asleep. Rudely awoken four hours later, I had to rush of the train. Only realising on the platform, that while I did still have a desperate grip on wedding gift and shoulderbag, umberella, toasty shoes and makeup bag were now heading for Gothenburg without me. Not easily daunted, I prayed for good weather and for my weekend roommates to be packing warpaint and hairspray.

Arrivning at the cabin, it was locked. We were to leave for church in  15 minutes, and the caretaker was to get to where we were in twenty. Warily, I viewed my cohabitors. Two of them were bald. The third was an empassioned ornitologist in sensible shoes. Not the type of people to carry extra blusher.

Realising it was every man for himself, I ducked behind a fir and wriggled into my clothes, wetting my ladyshave on the rainsodden moss for a very close shave, digging into purse for those hairpins wich have made a permanent home there, for one to stab ones fingers on while searching for change. They had moved. I considered a twig but thought better of it at the honking of of the leaving shuttle.

Rather wrinkly, and relying heavily on a minisize bottle of Opium, I borderd the transfer bus to the ceremony.  On this, the fifth or sixth bump and grind transport of my day, I realised there had been no breakfast, nor yet any lunch, put inside me and now it wasn’t just the engine roaring. 

Church was good and I cried, not out loud but almost, as a couple of rather sizeable spiders showed themselves as having been transported into the house of god by way of my purse. The bride was a vision, the groom was handsome, and luckily the organ was loud enough to stifle the sounds of my starving. As we exited I stole some of the pearly sugar we were to throw, and, longing for good old days of throwing rice, left the spiders behind to wind their way among the cherubim.

Things looked up briefly as the evening continued with lots of bubbly, an excellent dinner and speaches and a few stolen cigarettes. But then came the rain. And the gusts of wind, chilling us all to the bones. The only way to keep warm was to dance, but me and my other single friend realised quite quickly that we were the exception to the rule on a veritable Noas arc of twosomeness. We both zoomed in on the only available single guy, but she, realising that her shawl was slightly warmer, gave me right of way.

The gentleman really was a salvation, a tall, dark chellist-cum-archivist, and more importantly, owner of a very warm coat and with a willingness to slow waltz and quick step me through the night. It was quite lovely, with long conversations about Julie Andrews  and the realtive merits of alphabetization versus numerical sequences. I don’t even think he minded very much about the pine needle behind my ear…

Sunday was all planned out for a lovely brunch in the shade of the old oak on the sloping family laws. It would have been execellent protection against harsh rays, but couldn’t really do much for us as the hale came down like manna from the skies. I sipped my fruit gaszpacho and nibbled my cold salmon, wrapped in every spare bit of silk I’d found in my bag, looking very much the unfortunate victim of a Saint Tropez mummification and feeling the ice melt on my bare toes…

My single friend and I finally realised just what we were up against as the four hundred years old oak croaked suspiciously in the oncoming storm. Claiming chillblains and frozen didgits, we excused ourselves to the multitude of slightly chilly looking happy couples and, throwing ourselves in a warm car and speeding back to the concrete: very glad for our newly married friends and extatic to be out of the jungle.

I am usually organized and well composed. I am not the type to forget a dentists appointment or break plates while washing up. But when the forces of nature and countryside, public transportation and singlehood join against me – I guess you can call me Bridget.