No Pocketful of Rye

Two rows of unborn lettuce.

Lockdown continues with its odd little privations. Today I discovered that there is no rye flour in either Tesco or the local health food store. The local Polish grocery has closed, and the nearest is an hour's walk away through a rather dodgy neighbourhood. The organic shops aren't delivering to new customers, and eBay is carrying only enormous sacks. This rather puts a crimp in my plans to make my own zakwas for Polish Easter Soup.

A seller in Wrexham has a bottle of zakwas for sale--but for £10 plus £3 postage. I am not the kind of woman who would either sell or buy a product for £13 that normally costs £1.  I offered him £3 (plus the postage). He said no. "Profiteer," I sneered and clicked away. So there we are. No rye flour, no zakwas.

After work I asked the lady downstairs if she has any rye flour, but she has never even heard of rye flour. I'm starting to think all rye grown in Scotland is requisitioned for the whisky.

In the end I might have to buy a sad little packet of instant żurek power from Tesco because the thought of either walking through Scaryville or taking the Rough Bus during a pandemic fills me with  dread. Not to depress you, but a Detroit bus driver has perished of the Vile Germ. He fell ill four days after filming this.

Meanwhile I have planted lettuce and continued digging holes in the lawn. I had three sorties against the dandelion army: first thing in the morning, for half an hour at lunch, and then for an hour after work. At lunch our bachelor neighbour, who would be on an oil rig were he not on lockdown, came outside and reflected that my weeding the lawn in one metre squares reminded him of crime teams on police shows.

Wicked potentially germy trespassing cat.

"The lawn looks like a crime scene," I said ruefully, looking at the dirt bleeding all over the grass, and was rewarded with a chuckle.

In good health news, B.A. took our new exercise bike to the kitchen for a stationary spin, and after I came in from the garden I pedalled away in the dining-room/guest-room/office for 25 minutes. I will work up to my customary 45 minutes and then to an hour. Today for the first time B.A. and I did not go on our government-mandated one walk.

Besides B.A. and the neighbours, I spoke to sources on the phone, colleagues over the computer, worms in the ground and the trespassing black cat. Here he is trying to take possession of our pallets.

Radishes Planted

Radish seeds planted.

I am feeling very tired and headachey, but I have some nice photos so here I am blogging.

A bit of local countryside.

Yesterday B.A. and I had our nice neighbourhood walk that took us out to farmland. One of the nice things about where we are is that town, sea, hills, countryside and relative wilderness are all only a short walk away. There are some very humble homes around, but there are also architectural jewels. Actually some of the humble homes are jewels, too, as you will see.

We watched The Fugitive with Harrison Ford, talked to my mother on Skype and then went to bed.

This morning I planted a row of radishes and then dug up a lot of dandelions. I suspect I will dig up dandelions every day for the next month, from west to east, and then return to the west end of the lawn to dig them up again. The garden gnome, who looks suspiciously like a Disney dwarf, came with the property, and I don't have the heart to expel him. It was too windy to plant lettuce seeds, so I hope to sow them tomorrow.

We no longer have the exercise excuse.

At lunch-time I hung up a lot of wet laundry outside and helped B.A. unpack our new German stationary bicycle.  He put it together and took an experimental spin. I tried it later, and it was a very different experience from operating my spinning bike at the gym. However, it certainly gets the heart rate up. We chose this model because it folds up and can be put away in a closet when not in use.

This evening I had quite a headache by the time I knocked off work. I hoped a brisk walk through the deserted shopping street would blow the cobwebs out and that worked for a time. However, we decided to drop by the new chippie on our street for a pizza, and some frail looking type in a T-shirt and no coat coughed in our general direction. Nothing like a headache during a pandemic to make you think that maybe going for walks is actually a very bad idea. However, I could taste the pizza and the two squares of chocolate that followed all right, so it's probably just the stress of writing about PP declaring itself an essential service and shilling for medical supplies that should be going to the war-against-coronavirus effort. Heaven knows I wash my hands a dozen times a day.

A higglety-pigglety jewel.

B.A. enjoys exploring, so we got a bit trapped in the back streets as we made our way to the main road. One of our dead ends looked positively medieval, so I took a photograph. This is an example of a humble dwelling (or several humble dwellings) being a jewel.

Eventually I will get back to studying Polish. I don't know when, though. The effort of memorising ten words a day seems inextricably tied to my bus ride to the gym.

Meanwhile, as British women in their 40s having started dying of the coronavirus, I have lost my interest in taking the bus to the nearest Polish shop. This means our Easter soup is going to have very Scottish sausages in it this year, and I'll have to make my own zakwas. My Warsaw friend who is now a cloistered nun once showed me the homemade zakwas she was keeping under her sink, so I understand the principle. Home fermentation is not really within my comfort level, but I'll read recipes carefully.

Lockdown Shopping List

A previous pandemic shop.

Just back from a long walk up a hill, past lovely houses, down a country lane, past more lovely houses, and then along the nice side of the river back home. The Prime Minister may have found this excessive, but I'm sure it did wonders for our mental health.

This was our second outing today, for at lunchtime we braved Tesco together. This was my first normal shop for weeks. Hitherto I'd been popping in and out gathering odd assortments of tins and cleaning products. We had to stand in a queue a shopping trolley's distance and more from the lady in front of us, but it moved rather quickly.

Loo roll has returned, I saw, as has anti-septic soap. I got the last 12 ethical eggs; the rest were from battery hens, the horror. Anyway, I thought it would be fun for non-Scots to see what we got. B.A. said he was proud we got so many healthy things. I had been thinking that it was a very British haul.

The Lockdown List

2 bottles of red wine
box of tins of Indian tonic water
2 tins baked beans
2 tins cannelli beans
2 tins black beans
3 tins tomatoes
1 tin sweet corn
1 tin condensed milk (for Easter baking)
2 salmon fillets
2 sea bass fillets
2 duck breasts (for Sunday, a splurge)
bar of dark chocolate
box of oatcakes
2 aubergines (eggplants)
3 sweet peppers
2 lemons
2 limes
bag of onions
head of broccoli
2.5 kg of potatoes
mushrooms
Bramley apple (for Holy Week baking)
sweetheart cabbage
large bag of baby spinach
punnet of raspberries
loaf of Hovis "Granary" bread
2 bags of tortillas
12 medium ethical eggs
package of unsalted British butter
block of Cheddar cheese
2 pints of whole milk
jar of dried sage
jar of ground cinnamon
2 bottles of hand wash
2 rolls of paper kitchen towel
roll of clingfilm

TOTAL: £68.39

That should keep us going for some time. Apparently the government wants us to shop only once a week, presumably because grocery stores are points of contagion. However, don't tell Boris but I am going to make a daring trip this weekend to a Polish grocery. For some years I've made a Polish Easter breakfast, and I need both raw white kielbasa and fermented rye juice.

Update: On the other hand, risking B.A.' and my lives for soup is probably a dumb idea.

Food Self-Sufficiency Improved

This morning I dug up more dandelions, photographed a worm, and then planted nine beans in cardboard tubes filled with compost. I am very excited by this. It took a pandemic, but I am properly gardening now.

My official news-writing hours are now 10 to 6, which means  I will be out in the garden earlier in the morning but off the computer earlier in the evening, too.

Yesterday my head was more together, thanks in part to coffee. My Lenten penance has been a tad eased there. B.A. and I went on a shorter government-mandated walk than usual and admired choice bits of local architecture.  We are certainly getting to know our nearest neighbourhood better than before.

I wonder if the aftermath of the pandemic will include a stronger sense of localism. People in my neighbourhood have begun to smile at strangers more, perhaps delighted to see human beings who are not members of their household. Certainly I will strive harder not to buy anything from the People's Republic of China. (My composter was advertised "Made in Europe". The eBay seller lied.) It's Made in Europe for me, whenever possible and whenever I cannot find Made in Britain.

At the same time, I am longing to see Poland again. I was hoping to go on the May long weekend, but this will probably be impossible. Even if Poland opens her borders and even if we are sure we are virus-free, there might not be an affordable flight.

A very long worm.

Today we must risk Tesco, as our supplies have dwindled. But in happy news, my mother has finished our masks, and she and my dad have popped them in the nearest postbox.

Now I must get back to work, but I may return to vent my thoughts on localism.

Binged Watched

Oh dear. I gave into temptation last night and binge-watched all four episodes of Unorthodox on Netflix. Here is a promo:

Then I lay awake for an hour trying not to think about it.  As good sleep is necessary to keeping safe and healthy during the pandemic this was all unfortunate. However, the combination of a traditional religious culture, marital bad luck, and travel to Berlin made for a thoroughly absorbing story.

I noticed, though, that the heroine never witnesses a sane, fruitful heterosexual relationship in Berlin. There is a startling amount of homosexual cuddling, but then I suppose that would be the most startling aspect of contemporary life to a 19 year old from an isolated religious community. What I remember from my very first day of university, besides wearing the absolute wrong clothing, are posters of grainy black-and-white photos of same-sex couples snogging stapled on trees and taped to lamp-posts with the superscription: "Enjoying your orientation?" That was startling. It also made me feel that I did not belong. It was the era of the kiss-in, when people with same-sex attractions would make out with each other to make "the straights" feel uncomfortable, to make us stew in our revulsion. The posters belonged to that school of thought.  Come to think of it, at least the heroine  of Unorthodox was witnessing affection, not an "F.U., straight Catholic girl" demonstration.

Life on lockdown is getting more difficult. I saw, to my horror, that I made a lot of stupid mistakes in an article I finished yesterday, the worst of which an editor caught, but he didn't catch them all. I think I will request different hours of work, so that I can work during the mornings and knock off at 5 PM instead of 8 PM.

I miss the exercise club so much, I'm drinking coffee today. It's not just the physical and psychological benefits of spin class and barre: it's talking to other women. It's being just another ordinary woman among women, occasionally talking about non-political women stuff.

On International Women's Day (which admittedly is itself political) I was asked on my way out, just like everyone else, if I would read two lines of a poem about being a woman to a camera. I would. I didn't ask if only biological woman were being asked, or what the charities the project was supporting were. I just did it because I like the club and the women who work there. The benefit the fundraiser was offering to women being helped by those charities was free classes.  At any rate, sometimes I just want to be a woman among other women doing something together because we are women.

Going for walks and digging up the dandelions is not a perfect substitute for being around other women. This is not to say there are no difficulties between women or among women in women's schools, clubs, etc. There is indeed such a thing as toxic femininity. However, if I could transport myself across the ocean by clicking my heels and saying "There's no place like home," I'd do it in a shot to have brunch with a female friend back in Toronto. As the brunch places are all shut, I'd risk the subway to get to her house. I've been self-distancing since mid-March, I haven't been on public transit or a mile from my house since St. Joseph's Day, and I've never had a symptom. My friend would be safe from me.

Anyway, what can I say? Yesterday was dedicated to the dandelions, the walk and trying to write about who said what about whom or what. I made a number of phone calls to New Mexico because not only democracy but faith dies in darkness. While I worked my mind veered between "We need to trust the bishops on this suspension of the sacraments" and "We need to call out the bishops on this suspension of the sacraments." I feel like one of the robot women on "Star Trek" who, being unable to cope with contradiction, conk out. And at the same time a virus floats about punishing both the "old with underlying health conditions" and the "young, fit and healthy."

Here is a photograph from our walk yesterday. The tide was out, farther out than I ever remember it being. The shellfish, sand and shingle seemed to stretch halfway to Fife. We counted three golf balls and a tyre.

CHEERFUL UPDATE: A 10 kilogram bag of potting soil has arrived. Tomorrow morning I will commence planting.

Gratitude and Grazes

I have just come indoors after an hour's dandelion yanking. It's a sunny day but not warm until after a half an hour or so of digging up nasty fat white roots. I shared the sun with Lightning, the cat next door, a few worms, and a few song birds but not with the plaintive voice that instructed me from above that I shouldn't be outside.

A wiggly worm for the worm fan.

I looked up, and there was a golden-haired, bare-legged moppet of about three or so standing in the doorway of the flat next door and up. (To put you in the picture, our building is two stories high, with four flats below and four flats above. The downstairs flats have front gardens as well as back gardens, and the upstairs flats have just back gardens. Charity sector workers both, my husband and I live in an upstairs flat.) I couldn't make out exactly what she was saying, but it seemed to be that I ought to be inside. She lost interest when a cat shot past her into the flat, so now I am not sure if she was addressing the cat or me. She was certainly looking at me, though.

The Moppet's flat is probably owned by the Council, for it is outwardly in a state of disrepair and the back garden is a riot of long grass, garden tables, plastic toys, etc. I wonder if the Moppet has been told that she cannot go outside because of the Vile Germ and if her mother is taking the word "outside" very literally. I certainly haven't seen any children playing in that garden for weeks--or months, come to think of it.

I myself may start taking "Don't leave your home" more literally myself, for I am growing increasingly uncomfortable around people. Yesterday B.A. and I went for a walk along the river and the crowds--oh yes, very polite crowds, crowds keeping one or two metres apart, but still CROWDS-unnerved me. It was as if a third of the neighbourhood had decided to go for their government-mandated one walk at the same time and place.

But my nerves were already in pieces, for our walk along the river began on the rougher side this time, the side on which youths loiter, breaking bottles, drinking Iron Bru, and shooting up heroin, for all I know. The path is not very well paved, and I tripped and fell and began to roll down the hill towards the river, stopping in a large patch of nettles, not far from an abandoned bottle.

My left hand began to bleed, and I was absolutely horror-stricken, thinking of how many germs there could be on that path or what I might have cut my hand on. So I rushed off home at once to wash my hands throughly before re-embarking on our supposed-to-be soothing walk along one side of the river and back. I inspected the patch of nettles for syringes or broken glass: no syringes, no broken glass.

The nicer side of the river.

I enjoyed the solitary part of our walk, but it was all too short, for we soon found ourselves behind a politely spaced out throng and in front of a politely spaced out throng, and I kept thinking that one cough or sneeze would leave tiny droplets in the air for a few hours for us to walk into and breathe. This led to pondering the many accounts of people's lonely deaths by coronavirus I have read, and which I discourage you from reading. At any rate, I was near despair.

Upon returning home, I pulled off my tights and discovered that my left leg was scratched to blazes. I ran a hot bath with lavender bubble bath I bought in some other era and sat in it to calm down, clean my wounds, and imagine my death. This last task interfered with the first, so instead I listed things I was grateful for: having a bathtub, having lavender bubble bath, owning a flat in the first place. I thought about the poor of India losing their restaurant jobs, for example, and having no homes to go to.

(Pardon me---I was just on today's government-mandated walk. We went somewhere less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.)

Gratitude plus remembering that others have it much worse helped restored my equanimity, as did the  baking of a pan of raspberry Bakewell squares. (I love frangipani above all other sweets except dates stuffed with walnuts.) I think the recipe is too sugary, but B.A. loves the result, so that's satisfactory. Gardening and long walks will have to continue, even if just to stop getting fatter from my nerve-soothing baking.

Passion Sunday in the Long Lent

It is Sunday and "Spring Forward" in Britain, so we are now five hours ahead of Toronto and New York again. It is also Passion Sunday according to the traditional calendar, so B.A. swathed our principal crucifix with my purple shawl.

We participated in the Warrington FSSP  Sunday Mass as well as we could, and I have an essential oil diffuser, so that was our incense. We are also fortunate in that we have Holy Water.  You can see Fr. de Malleray onscreen in the photo to the left. 

Worm photo.

Yesterday B.A. printed out a Spiritual Act of Communion, and today he put it in a frame. At present I am having problems importing some of my photos from my phone, but I'll post a picture of that too when I can. 

I ran about beforehand getting ready for Mass, as I was out in the garden fighting the dandelions and communing with the worms. I have had a request for worm photos, so here is the one my computer wants you to see.  Mr. Worm looks like a stick here, but you can see him trying to hid under a leaf.  

Local swans self-distancing.

Yesterday I got a good strip of lawn free of dandelions, and then B.A. and I went for a long walk, keeping well clear of our neighbours and an eye out for the Law. We saw a hooded crow and a number of water birds as we walked along a river to the Firth of Forth.  

Edinburgh or elephant?

It was not very warm, I must say. But I derived some amusement from seeing a family I had never seen before striding down our street, presumably out getting their one government-mandated walk. I wondered if this was as new a habit to them as it is to us. Hitherto B.A. and I didn't take a daily walk together, either. He walked to work and back, and I walked to the bus stop on my way to the gym. 

The highlight of my day was teaching my homeschoolers. The days of six paragraph research essays are suspended until they have access to libraries again, I'm afraid. Last week I gave them a brief lesson on news articles and asked them to produce news articles about incidents at home. When they appeared separately in my "In" box, I was delighted. One was roughly "Boy Makes Mothering Sunday Cake for Mom" and the other "Boy Makes Catapult that Fails." Somehow my genius pupils managed to convey quite a lot about their daily life in about 100 words. Perhaps this is why they adamantly rejected the idea of having a family newspaper. At any rate, I assigned them more newspaper articles and an adventure story each. They seemed up for the challenge of adventure stories although I fear my cake-making boy student is determined to kill his hero. 

Meanwhile B.A. risked illness and death by going to the other newsagent's on our street to buy Doritos and cheddar. I have been following recipes from my old Moosewood Restaurant cookbook, as they are both highly nutritious and suitable for Lent. Yesterday's dinner was Black Bean Chilaquile, which features two layers of crushed tortilla chips, two layers of salsa, two layers of cheddar cheese, black beans, tomatoes, sweet corn, spinach, onions and lime juice. It is quite delicious, and here is another photo: 

Delicious!

We watched The Post starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, and it was nothing at all like working for an online newspaper, at least not for me. I cannot imagine being full of chagrin because Church Militant got the latest Saddest News in the World before we did. Of course we don't gather in a living-room when its all hands on deck. The Post was definitely a period piece, and a very good one. I loved the scenes in the typesetting room, as it gave me a clue as to what my grandfather's workplace might have been like. I even liked the feminist-y bits because I have been told that "a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs" (a line which appears in the film) approximately  100000000000000 times since I moved to Edinburgh. 

Before bed, I chatted with my mum and dad over Skype. This is also a new daily habit. Happily they almost never go outside but unhappily this means they don't have much to report. One of my sisters left them some groceries the other day, and that definitely counted as news: "Woman Leaves Parents Groceries, Chats through Door."  

I have thought of something for my mum to do, and that is to make hospital masks for B.A. and me, ASAP, as he is scheduled to go to the hospital in a week and a half for his six-month brain scan. The assignment, should she choose to accept it, is to make B.A. and me hospital masks and then package them for one of my siblings to take to the Post Office. I found handy instructions online, but unfortunately I don't have any interfacing.