Pruning the Apple Tree

I am reasonably sure nobody has pruned our apple tree in years. It stretches over three neighbouring yards, and when I went in there with our new pruning saw, I found many dead branches. Now we have enough old, dry apple wood for a satisfactory bonfire.

Pruning the green wood made me nervous, but I sawed off a few thin branches that were crossing  other branches. Later I read a few more how-to guides on the internet and was satisfied that I hadn't done anything wrong. This morning I went out and had a look at the tree with a pruner's eye, and I see the there is much more to do. It would have been better to do it in April, but we're still far enough away from winter that I think the tree will be okay.

I'm looking forward to having a bumper crop of apples--next year if not this year. We've been drinking our stored-up 2019 cider, and we've only two bottles left now. I want to keep them to sustain us through our next cider-making marathon.

Yesterday Benedict Ambrose went up the hill towards where the Roman fort used to be and collected elderflowers for his famous elderflower champagne. When he returned the rich scent of elderflowers emanated from his collecting bag and filled the whole kitchen. He had already zested and squeezed a dozen or more lemons. Now our large fermentation bin is sitting at the safe end of the bathroom, covered in a muslin cloth.

Elderflower champagne reminds me of twelve-hour parties and weekend guests at the Historical House. However, this is no longer such a melancholy thought now that we have had a proper Sunday Lunch in the garden. One day there will be a bigger Sunday Lunch and then several Sunday Lunches to look back on fondly.

Last night before I fell asleep I re-read a Wendell Berry essay beginning with his 16 year old impatience, in 1950, with a mule team slowing him down as he drove his father's nearly new tractor. His grandfather, who had always worked with mules and loved the good ones, had died in his mid-80s only three years before. Berry's grandfather had rejected tractors, saying that they compacted the soil. And here is where I once again exult in the memory of seeing a farmer behind a horse-and-plow on a hill between Kielce and Krakow, I think it was.

Farming sounds like very hard work, much harder work than gardening. It is easy to become romantic about it, so I have to keep telling myself that. The chances of Benedict Ambrose agreeing to  start a market garden with me are zero--and I have to admit that this shows good sense. Still, I love the idea of being self-sufficient, and when B.A. was recovering from brain surgery, he watched endless hours of My Self Reliance videos.

One of the things I love about B.A. is that he enjoys watching surviving-and-thriving in the Canadian wilderness videos even though he entirely dislikes camping and didn't own a saw, for example, until Monday. His idea of a perfect dwelling is a "double-upper" in the New Town, and I have to admit that this would indeed be ideal for winter parties. One of the drawbacks of our current flat is that it is a bit of a squeeze for weekend parties.

Back to Languages

Last night's Italian class was so great, I decided to pull up my socks and go back to proper language study. This morning I made my coffee and studied Italian for half and hour and then Polish for half an hour. I then wrote a note to my writing students and included it in the cardboard envelope of marking.  I was going to do 20 minutes on the exercise bike, but the laundry needed hanging out.

Then I went to work.

Benedict Ambrose told me some years ago that if I had stuck to Italian and Italian alone, I would have been fluent in it already. This is very likely true. One of the positive benefits of not studying Polish for two months is that when I speak to my Italian tutor, Polish no longer intrudes. However, I am determined to become trilingual (at very least), so what can I do?

At this point I would be willing to study Polish in a different room from the one I speak Italian in, wear different clothes, learn entirely different sets of words (winter words for Poland, summer words for Italy; ecclesiastical political terminology in Italian, secular political terminology in Polish, etc.). Anything to stop Polish from getting in the way of Italian, and Italian from getting in the way of Polish.

Meanwhile, I feel energised by my two month break from Polish and extra Italian study, and I think I will even work on my Italian accent.

Gardening News: My Burgeon and Ball Folding Pruning Saw arrived today. To the best of my knowledge, it was made in Sheffield. I am now going outside to saw some dead apple branches.

The Most Beautiful Sunday

This morning was overcast, breezy and not overly warm but nevertheless the most beautiful Sunday this spring. Today a kind priest came to our home after we watched the Warrington Mass, heard our confessions and gave us Holy Communion.

We had not received Holy Communion since St. Joseph's Day. I won't tell you how long it was since I'd been to confession. (Benedict Ambrose is better about this than I am.) Having Holy Communion today reminded me of my First Communion--the first official one, I mean.*

The government regulations in Scotland are such that we can now visit with a few people from different households as long as we all stay outside and six feet apart. Thus, B.A. set up a chair on the landing right outside our outer door, and I put down our green silk Moroccan prayer rug just inside our hall. When Father arrived, I retreated behind the sitting-room door, and B.A. made his confession before the outer doorway. When B.A. was done, he got me. Then I made my confession before the outer doorway.

Then we had Holy Communion. For this the priest wanted a roof over his head, so he stepped into the hall, gave Communion to B.A., and then, when B.A. moved out of the hallway, gave Communion to me. The sun shone through the little white Disc, and afterwards I cried. Not so tough and sophisticated after all, am I?

B.A. brought the priest water in a china bowl for his finger and thumb, and the water went into the half-barrel herb garden. I shall have to think very carefully in future about exactly what goes into it! Servant of God Dorothy Day, having found herself at a coffee table Mass, took away the coffee cup used as a chalice and buried it, so that it could not longer be used for coffee again. All traditionalists should tell this story when other Catholics denounce her as a communist.

After this very happy and unprecedented reception of two Sacraments at our door, B.A. and I gave the priest Sunday Lunch under the apple tree. It was our first ever meal in the garden. Since I wouldn't let B.A. buy an ugly Made-in-China object (£30), he put his beloved barley-twist table (it looks like this but cost a fraction) under the tree. I covered it with the tablecloth we bought in Florence. Then I brought out a bottle of red wine and two bottles of our homemade apple cider. B.A. brought out the pork loin he had put in the oven before the Warrington Mass and a warm potato salad containing homegrown lettuce, kale, chard and radish.  Unsurprisingly, we were joined by Lightning the Friendly Cat, who clearly had designs on the roast.

For pudding we had slices of an enormous (if I say so myself) Black Midnight Cake, which I unashamedly boast comes from my mother's old Betty Crocker Cookbook recipe. This time I improved upon it by taking my mother's advice to tie wet dish towel collars around the cake tins, so that they would rise flat. They weren't entirely flat, but they were flatter than last time. I spread jam on the bottom of the slightly thinner one, stuck the fatter one on top and covered the whole with cocoa buttercream icing. This I served with peanut butter ice-cream, which B.A. thought slightly odd, but the priest appreciated.

It was a delightful lunch, and B.A. and I both prayed during the Warrington Mass "Prayer against Pestilence" that we would not pass along COVID-19 to the kind priest. We don't have symptoms--and have never had symptoms--so we think he is safe-- from us at any rate.

Not so safe my radishes. As Father and B.A. sat at the table talking about shoebills in Japan, I lingered nearby fussing with my veg trug.  Espying an insect on a fallen radish leaf, I picked up bug and leaf and asked Father if he knew what it was. He did.

"It's an aphid," he said.

Aphids have discovered my trug! I shall have to consult my growing collection of gardening books.

*My first unofficial "First Family Communion" occurred thanks to the liturgical experimentation of the 1970s. It felt very strange, and had none of the ceremony of my official First Communion, in which I wore the white dress and veil my mother made me, the next week. Yes, in the Church of the 1970s, you could have two First Communions: first First and, er, second First. Bizarre.

It, was, however, an excellent metaphor for the schizophrenia in the Church during the 1970s (and to a certain extent, ever since). Not being Europeans, my family didn't celebrate First Communions with parties, etc. But God bless my Grandmother Cummings: she sent me a gold cross and chain to mark mine.

Gardening Update: Two of the five scarlet runner beans have germinated and appeared above ground.  The trug has released the biggest of the radishes so far. Some of the radish thinnings don't have proper round radishes growing, but red fingers. This may be due to over-crowding. 

The thinned out lettuces are growing bigger in both the raised bed and the trug. A bad cat has been digging around one of my new rows of radish seedlings in the raised bed for the usual reason. More wooden anti-cat spikes have now been inserted.

A Walk to the Wee Boulangerie

"If you can't blog something nice, don't blog anything at all" sums up my radio silence there. My belief in humanity is at a low ebb and, besides, I feel like the internet is slowly sucking out my brains. 

Fortunately  I worked with my writing students today, which meant a pleasant morning reading and marking up their stories. Their homework was to write about a plague, paying attention to their tone. Unsurprisingly, both of them chose a sorrowful tone. Oddly, they also chose to write about historic plagues, not the COVID-19 pandemic they're actually living through. One story was set in a small Italian village, and the other in an English village within a castle.  

To my surprise, my boy pupil wrote a powerful love scene. His English hero's wife locks herself in a room when she discovers she has the plague, so that the hero doesn't get it. The hero bangs on the door, reluctant to allow her to die alone. She yells at him to go to his brother's house. "What will you do for food?" wails the husband. The response is that without food, she'll die more quickly and be out of her misery. The husband staggers out, overcome with grief and horror. It's really very good. 

Sadly, when I told my pupil all this over Skype, he wrote "Worst Story Ever" at the top of his copy while his sister shrieked and hooted with laughter. 

I sent them off with another writing challenge. I confess that I'm afraid that if I were to accept my own writing challenges, I wouldn't do as well as they do. That said, I make a super editor. 

The other joy in the day was going for a walk along bike trails to Edinburgh's Wee Boulangerie. Unfortunately, the path was very heavily travelled by, and social-distancing was sometimes difficult. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and it was very pleasant to walk under the trees and look at Arthur's Seat and then the Salisbury Crags rise before us. 

But before we really got started on this walk, we enjoyed a short detour to visit a neighbour. We espied him through his window making his lunch and then he popped out through his front door, preceded by cats both black and ginger, to bring his food scraps to the bin. Thus, we all had a nice chat before our friend went in to his lunch and we continued our walk to the Wee B. 

Unfortunately the cashier at the Wee B had cleaned the cappuccino machine for the day, so we had to make do with frangipani tartlets and a milk bun. B.A. went to look at potential garden tables in Edinburgh Bargain Stores, and I did a quick sweep of the neighbourhood to look for cappuccino. Unfortunately all the hipster cafes were shut, and even Kilimanjero closed at 4. Starbucks was open, but I didn't want a cappuccino THAT badly. 

After B.A. was dissuaded from buying an ugly new table, we took our Wee B treats to George Square and ate them while sitting on some steps, looking at the park. When we felt rested, we bought our groceries at the "student" Tesco and took the Rough Bus home. 

It had been some time since we had been on the Rough Bus, but memories came roaring back when we heard the eldritch shriek of a young local lass behind us and listened to her cough. It was hard to tell if she was off her head on drugs, mentally ill or just a neighbourhood personality. She descended from the bus where we expected her to descend, to be offensively candid. However, one must admit that the young man with her was rather a dish. 

Now I have hung up the laundry and B.A. is cooking tonight's locally-sourced sausages. The world is not so terrible after all---especially as I have not read, and will not read, the news. 

A Gentle Walk

Despite the madness across the ocean, and more madness down south in London, Benedict Ambrose and I had a tranquil walk through our humble but leafy neighbourhood.

Today I planted beets. I also wrote two articles and recommended to Twitter Sohrab Ahmari's essay about his Manhattan building being under siege. Sadly, I spelled "Ahmari" wrong. Mea culpa.

I told B.A. that I'm going to save all my earnings to pay off the mortgage and invest for our retirement. I'll buy nice clothes only for trips to Poland and for Polish Pretend Son's visits, so as to give the impression that I dress well all the time. B.A. said that this clothing plan was not normal. We then passed the locked, darkened beauty nail shop the hairdresser's, and I declared that I would go to them as soon as the lockdown is over, so as to give them money and help keep them open.

I think my clothing plan is brilliant, though. If I bought three very nice, very expensive, made-in-Britain outfits and wore them only in Poland (and when PPS visits), they will last forever and I will have a strong motivation to remain the same size. For daily wear, I will commission dark blue, ankle-length denim dirndls with big pockets from my mother. I think this is an awesome idea. Make me some denim dirndls, Aged P!

Aged P has already made me the face mask to match.

Another plan is to make our flat a small indoor paradise, so that I will be thoroughly happy with it by the time we are able to sell up and move toe the New Town. Of course, it is possible that we will never be able to move to the New Town, which makes turning the flat into an indoor paradise even more important. Covering over the rest of this ghastly magnolia paint would be a start.

Then of course there is the garden, which I will slowly turn into a Victory Garden of the richest soil to be found on this side of East Coast Organics.

My brain will be fully cultivated with Polish and Italian, French improved enough for one week a year in Quebec and maybe enough tourist Russian to make new friends in Toronto.

So those are my plans.

Two Skeptics

During the course of my work duties today, I learned about two people about whom I had heard only a little before: the South African engineer Elon Musk and the Canadian artist Claire Boucher, known best for her pop persona "Grimes". The couple have recently had a baby together, and even more recently a rocket ship designed by Musk's company SpaceX made a successful trip. Thus, they are both in the news.

Studying two such talented and successful people was a humbling experience. Musk designed and sold a video game when he was only twelve and turned a profit at pay-for-entrance parties he hosted at university, without leaving his desk. He dropped out mere days into a PhD program so as not to be left out of the internet revolution. He co-founded Tesla, designing electric cars, batteries and solar energy generators, and he founded SpaceX, designing recyclable rocket ships and other space gear. He also cofounded OpenAI, apparently because he is worried that Artificial Intelligence will ultimately be bad for humanity.

Musk is not at all religious. Even when he was very sick with malaria, he did not pray. He believes only in the laws of physics and the value of human civilisation. Interestingly, he is very concerned about the human race going extinct, and this is what drives his interest in space exploration and colonisation. Because fossil fuels are finite, he is also interested in conserving their use and switching to solar. 

According to Aeon magazine, in 500 million years the sun will start scorching the food chain. I suppose at this point the human race (if it is still around) had better have found a younger sun. Reading Aeon's interview with Musk reminded me of the issues of Scientific American that came to my childhood home and also science fiction novels. Classic science fiction novels remind me of my father for some reason; possibly because I was not allowed to read ones written after 1960. I read that Musk read a lot of science fiction and many comic books growing up, and I think it is delightful that he can now make science fiction into science fact. 

Musk was married to a Canadian writer, and then to a British actress. Divorced from both, he is now dating Claire Boucher, or "Grimes." Boucher should be interesting to Catholics because she is one, albeit a lapsed one. I read many, many articles about Boucher, and watched a number of Grimes videos, today in order to establish her religious practises. In short, she doesn't have religious practises although she retains an interest in religion.  

Boucher was "brought up" Catholic and went to Catholic school in Vancouver, but both she and her schoolteachers seem to have been very badly catechised. Apparently when, as a skeptical six or seven year old, she asked teachers for proof the Gospels were true, they told her not to ask questions. That was intensely stupid of them. In seventh grade she had a Wiccan period, which she thinks was a phase, and I think was pretty early for that particular phase. I didn't have any Wiccan friends until university. However, I'm almost a generation older than she is, and I suspect I was better catechised. Also, my parents made sure the Mists of Avalon never fell into my innocent hands. 

After high school, Boucher hightailed it off to McGill University in Montreal, where she studied philosophy, neuroscience, electroacoustics and apparently Russian before dropping out to begin her Grimes project. And what is cool about that, besides Boucher drawing upon the first three things in her musical projects, is that I know someone who did electroacoustics at McGill around that time. However, I consulted one of the musicians in my family, and he advised me it would be kinder not to mine our old pal for information. 

Watching Grimes videos was rather interesting. She told a German interviewer that "Genesis" is about her nostalgia about believing in God. As a Catholic child, she was impressed by stories of God's anger and hell and thought of what she was told like action films. So I watched "Genesis" and found it rather astonishing and bewildering. There's a scary figure with sometimes pink and sometimes snaky braids, who is presumably the devil. Then there's a blonde girl out of a Japanese cartoon with an enormous snake, who is presumably evil. Then there's a young woman in a black outfit, including high-soled boots, with a sword, and then a mace, and then a flaming sword. Presumably she's the angel guarding the way to Paradise. Finally, there's a car full of Grimes and her friends zooming hither and thither as in a video game. 

It was suggested I watch "Kill V. Maim" if I could stand it, and the sad thing is that I thought it was great, except for bare chested male clubbers licking fake blood off each other, which is not something I remember from my nights at Savage Garden, Sanctuary the Vampire Sex Bar or Velvet Underground. The video is clearly inspired by video games again, and it's mostly set in a battered looking Toronto subway station. Grimes and her Gothed-up pals dance about or drive around a green screen in a pink convertible to rhythms that would not disgraced the black lit walls of west Queen Street West. I would not, however, have worn pink boxing gloves, at least not outside of a gym. The black feathery wings would have cost a gazillion dollars at Siren, but I had a friend who could make the fangs. Drag queens, especially not of the ugly yellow wig variety, were not part of the scene in my day.

This video, Grimes explains to interviewers, is supposed to be from the point of view of Al Pacino in Godfather II, only being able to change sex, is a vampire, and can travel through space. Well, that makes total sense to me. At least, it makes more sense than 99% of the Rammstein hits Volker II thanked heaven I couldn't understand. 

At this point, my gentle reader is wondering what I was doing in Goth clubs in the 1990s, and it's a long, complicated story involving Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Toronto Poetry Scene, a former child star and a 6'5" Polish-Canadian. I was looking for the Belle Epoque, Cynara, in my fashion. I liked the rot-gut wine (I could only afford one glass), the candles, and the roaring. Thanks to some deficiency in my hearing, I couldn't understand the lyrics.  

But to get back to Boucher, she revealed what she currently thinks about religion in this interesting interview.  Her erstwhile Catholic mother divorced her dad, by the way, and married a Hindu, which may be one reason why Boucher was, last year, so interested in polytheism. But she also felt that religion is "the best science fiction" and "incredible art." 

"It's incredible storytelling, incredible character design, incredible visual art," Boucher said. 

"Mysticism is an evolutionary byproduct," she continued, risking scandalising her grandparents. 

"I think we’re inherently religious, even if we’re not explicitly religious. We get emotional about things that feel religious. Even the way people feel about you, it’s a form of idol worship. I don’t know what else you would call it. If there’s an artist I love, I see them live and I cry, and I’m like, 'Man, I’m acting like some 14th-century farmer right now.' I feel like some pilgrim seeing a holy relic or something."

Okay, well, that's not anti-religious, exactly. And now I should stop listening to The Killers and Skype my mother. 

Update: The point I wanted to make about Boucher/Grimes is that I think its cool that she is so in tune with pop culture that she can recycle it into something new,  but all the while nodding to her inspirations. She's a culture creator, not just a  culture consumer. That's what an artist is. 

Pork Roast and Cider and Joy

As protests and riots make a mockery of lockdowns, I am wondering how much longer ours  is going to last.

I've spent the work day reading and writing about the late George Floyd, his killing and the aftermath. It's all horrible, of course, except for the stories about Floyd helping out Christian missionary work in the Houston projects. One thing that strikes me is that looters got Rodeo Drive; an earlier generation made an attempt on Rodeo Drive during the Rodney King riots and failed. If I remember correctly they were dissuaded from entering by the National Guard, but don't quote me. 

There was window-smashing, if not looting, in Toronto shortly after the American Rodney King riots started, and on the subway I listened to a man with a lacerated hand and a dazed expression repeat "You gotta stop the shooting." 

Today I am wondering if there is more or less cache in owning a Chanel jacket or Gucci bag looted in a riot, and I find myself faintly disgusted at the idea of owning any name brand coveted by a looter.  My favourite handbag was made by a Polish veteran of the Battle of Monte Cassino and sold in his Edinburgh leather goods shop to B.A., who gave it to me as a gift. My favourite dress was made for me by my mother.  

When I was seventeen, I longed to own designer clothes, but I now realise that the real privilege in contemporary life is having married parents who are fond of each other, live within their income and are good at such things as home repair and sewing. 

Unfortunately I am not good at home repair and sewing although, given that I can now speak Polish  (on a good day) and grow vegetables, it is not impossible that I might learn these other things, too. At any rate, I cannot imagine I would feel happier owning a Chanel jacket than seeing a new vegetable appear in the trug.  

Yesterday my three great joys were Italian class, conducted over the phone; a locally raised pork roast   cooked perfectly by B.A.; and our homemade apple cider, which B.A. pronounced the best ever. A branch of elderflower buds has appeared in our garden, poking through the mingled branches of beech hedge and apple tree, reminding us that we're going to make elderflower champagne this year. 

This morning before work I entertained myself by reading about organic soil. Organic soil does not sound as glamorous as a Gucci bag or a Chanel jacket, but it is certainly more useful and also more  valued by the man with the highest status in Britain, i.e. the Prince of Wales. 

Yes, even if I win the lottery I will not shop at Gucci or Chanel. I shall buy my bags from Launer and employ my mother as a full-time dressmaker.