‘The Mashed Potato of Getting Up’

Singing as the Darkness Lifts, Episode 27: The Mashed Potato of Getting Up…

Podbean Link for those who like to listen

This morning the air smells of coal. It might be the smell of cooking from the restaurant next to the hotel, but for me in the moment it was coal. 

This week I have been working on not pressing the snooze button. I feel far better when I get straight up, but some days when my day starts slightly later I have been doing a snooze! I must have been listening to myself because on one of my ‘I need to be up mornings’ I turned off the alarm and got out of bed straight away to hear myself say, “Ah yes, it’s like mashed potato.” 

I love mashed potato, but when I think about making it I think about washing up the pan and the masher afterwards. I don’t enjoy the feel of the starch in the washing up water and it always seems to need extra scrubbing. But… if you wash it up straight away it’s a lot easier than if you leave it. So my morning mantra now involves mashed potato.

Keeping a potato theme, but moving to chips… Kath fancied chip shop chips on Saturday night after our first day at the East Anglia Yarn Show so I decided to Google options and discovered a restaurant about a mile away from where we were. We were shown to a table (booth seats… my favourite) and given menus. On reading we found it wasn’t like the places we were used to and the menu was a range of different versions of fish where the chips were a side rather than an equal. We are vegan and happy with chips and peas so we checked it was ok to order something that simple, and that they didn’t want us to go to the takeaway side instead. We were welcomed so I settled into my nice seat. Not long after we had ordered, the chef came out to offer us things to go with our chips and peas so that it became more of a meal. And that’s how we got a bespoke platter of battered mushrooms, onion rings, pickled onions and gherkins and a little salad alongside our chips and peas. So nice to meet people who care about doing their job well even though we would of course have been happy with chips and peas. It’s been a long time since I had a chip shop pickled onion and it reminded me of being young! I photographed the food because it brought a smile to my face and I think we will remember the time we went out for chips and the chef did us a special that wasn’t on the menu half an hour before closing time. Today's photo shows the feast and Alt text tells me this picture shows a plate of fried foods and sauces. I describe it as a vegan platter of fried mushrooms with pickles, chips and mushy peas made by a kind chef in a fish restaurant.

I learn something new every time I do a yarn show, but one thing which is consistent at the moment is my sharing of one of my #ElasticBandPhotos with people that I meet that I think will be fun to talk to. I don’t have much to say about yarn and crochet and knitting because I don’t do these things, so it helps me if I have something visual to show to strike up the conversation. Pleasingly I have started some good chats in this way and it is fun to see people’s reactions. I loved the fact that one of the vendors I met this week invited me to photograph the band that was inside their pouch after I told them about the band I saw at Welwyn Garden City yarn show.  Another vendor told me they got what I meant when I said they were like modern art and that they could see my comparisons. Oooh, and exciting news… I will be exhibiting a selection of my elastic band photos in the Autumn. I will keep you posted as the full details emerge. Oh, and I never tire of hearing someone say, “I saw an elastic band and thought of you.”

Don’t forget to share any photos that you take of abandoned bands. I am always interested in what catches people’s eye.

During this show I was able to take time to really marvel at the talent of my lovely wife Kath. I understand how the shows work now and I have the confidence to interact with people and can talk about the patterns. I now don’t mind looking after the space on my own while Kath goes for lunch. Standing in the booth on my own and laughing at the term ‘booth babe’ this weekend I realised I was in the midst of beautifully designed patterns that people were coming to buy and that these had started life in moments in our house. 

I like to make sure I tell the people who I notice are doing a good job that they are doing a good job. I think sometimes people forget to say it, or think that people know that they are doing a good job. I am a great believer in the fact that this kind of recognition gives a pleasant boost to the day. During the last  week the people I have told face-to-face have all been new people that I have met whilst out and about which feels fun too. 

 

I also got some nice comments about things that I had done to support others and those words were highly appreciated. 

Everyone involved in the launch night of ‘To Light the Trails’ did an excellent job on Sunday night. What a zoom room it was, and what a launch! Such powerful words were shared and held there and it was an absolute privilege to be part of it. Huge congratulations to Anja of Sidhe Press for carrying the vision through and providing a safe space for the poets and their poems. Being involved in this work as a guest editor has shown me so much. I know the poems would have affected me last night even if I hadn’t been involved, but to have read the poems as submissions and then to reach the point where I could share time and space to hear them read by their authors was absolutely awesome.

 

Here’s to words and all the things that make our hearts sing.