September, rosemary, dreams
Approximately-weekly news, #64
The garden blackberry harvest continues.
As does Harris’s Project Underground Car Park. (Look away now, if you are of a delicate disposition.)
This weekend, I have a delivery of wood chips, soil, and grass seed coming. I am not, it must be said, filled with hope. I think we all know who will triumph in this battle of wills. One of us just wants a garden underground car park more than the other one wants to prevent a garden underground car park.
I love it when autumn comes. The light. The skies. The fact that people stop trying to make you eat food outside.*
We had a beauty of a September beach sky at the weekend.
And it is not too cold for ice cream.**
(I had Dubai chocolate, BMB had rum and raisin.)
The nights are darkening. Soon we will light the fire in the evenings. These things happen every year, and still they surprise me.
The New Book is pretty much put to bed: the copy editor has done her excellent work, which included (among other things) sorting out all the ways I got the dates wrong, and stopping the twins from being 24, then 26, then 23, all within the space of five weeks.
Somewhere early on, one of the characters thinks about making a rosemary cake, and my editor asked if there was a recipe we could include. There wasn’t… but there is now. It’s yummy.
This isn’t the first time I’ve written a recipe for a book. Rufus’s Favourite Chocolate Orange Cake features in my second novel, ‘The Other Half Of My Heart’, which is set in a bakery, and also includes horses.***
(Would you like me to share the chocolate cake recipe? It’s a good one! And I’ll be sharing a cover for the book soon. It’s my favourite one yet.)
Still with food, I bought ‘Boustany’ by Sami Tamimi. It only arrived yesterday, so I haven’t cooked anything from it, but that doesn’t stop me from recommending it with my whole heart. The recipes and the stories around them are gorgeous. This nourishing, warm manifestation of Palestine is one I think we need to see, remember, and hold hope for.
You know how sometimes there’s a book that everyone reads, and somehow you can’t get on board with it, even though you know absolutely nothing about it? I was like that with ‘The Dry’ by Jane Harper****, and I’m here to tell you, I was straight-up an idiot. I’ve just read it and it was excellent. And even better, it’s the first of a trilogy. I know what my next two reads will be.
One of my favourite things: writing clients messaging me to say their books are being published. I’ve had two of those emails this week and I could not be more delighted. More on those books in due course, and just in case you need to hear it:
Publication has to happen to somebody. Why shouldn’t it be you?
(Details of writing services here. If you’d like to discuss anything, please get in touch.)
Grieving continues to be… non-linear. I’ve found sleep again, and I’m learning to let myself feel hollow, rather than stuffing that space full of Haribo or browsing every pair of checked trousers in the world (even though I have checked trousers). I’ve traversed things I would have talked to Lou about - exam results, birthday plans, the things that I planted in my garden on her advice, that are now growing - with a calm sorrow that feels right, even if it isn’t easy.
And then there are the dreams. In the dreams, Lou is alive but dying, and I dream us sobbing and sobbing as we say goodbye. I dream of walking to a church where I know her body, lit by a single candle, is lying, and then trying to turn back because I meant to bring something with me, and finding that my feet will literally not allow me to change direction. I dream of us in our early twenties at university, realising that we have forgotten to do any work/go to a lecture/find ourselves a flat/job (again), which is not unlike a memory, except that in the dream she is dying already.
When I wake from the dreams, I am very, very glad to have a dog to walk. Getting out under the sky, while the grass is still dewy and the birds are busy, is just what my soul needs.
So, this week is about doing some House Things, filling in a hole, and putting together thoughts on the next book. The first two are really important in making the third possible: I’m at the ‘back brain’ stage of the process. It’s exciting, thought I might not be saying that on the seventh hole-refill.
Be well, my friends.
Stephanie x
*I just don’t like it. I can sort of cope with a picnic, so long as it’s not my main meal of the day. I REALLY don’t want to sit outside a restaurant.
**Because, obviously, it never is.
***The horses are not in the bakery.
****Also, I have yet to read ‘Shuggie Bain’. I know I should, I’m sure I’d enjoy it, but - even though I was sent a proof before it came out - somehow it’s never happened. I have absolutely no idea why.
❤️