Thursday 30 October 2014

How to blog a recipe

Step 1. Pick a really easy recipe. Something you really don't technically really need a recipe for. Like vegetable soup or tuna pasta bake. Call it 'the best xxx you'll ever make' or 'a cosy winter favourite'. You're not a very good cook but you've got a great DRSL, a white table and a driftwood chopping board, so, whatever.

Step 2. Arrange your ingredients on the wooden board. Preferably line them up in a pleasing fashion. This will take a long time but you'll get a lot of pins for your geometric arrangements of carrot and celery. Carry the board over to the window and take a light-flooded photo.

Step 3. Chop the items. Place them all into individual bowls. Carry to the window and make sure you've got your 50ml lens on. Maybe even take some macro photos. Mmm. Carrot chunks.

Step 4. Put things in a pot, add stuff, cook. It's fucking basic, so who cares.

Step 5. Paint your nails. This part is IMPORTANT. Ensure you're wearing a perfect chunky knit jumper, and your manicure is immaculate.

Step 6. Set up your tripod. Set the timer. Pour whatever slop you've made into a bowl and wrap your hands around its life giving warmth - look how wholesome you are! This is where that manicure is all important! Maybe wear some fingerless mittens, just to emphasise how wonderfully cosy it all is. Take a picture. Ahh, the red nail polish works so well against the soup and the bowl. Who cares what it tastes like!



Let me just say, I love recipe blogs. I love finding recipes that are really exciting, look utterly delicious.

Pictures are important when they illustrate some crucial point - and yes, sometimes because they look good - you eat with your eyes first, right? But seriously, the FOOD has to be the thing that looks good.

I have just read one too many of the above - crappy food where the blog isn't about the food at all.  Something just snapped. I realise basic recipes have their place too, for the novice cooks, but really, what the hell. If you can't cook, you don't need geometrically arranged celery and wistful macro shots of cubed veg to help you learn.
 


Monday 27 October 2014

do we stay or do we go

J's godfather has a saying, which J's family are fond of repeating. It goes something like: "When you get to making decisions at a certain age, you always only ever have two choices and they're both wrong."

The phrase has been getting a lot of airing for us lately.

From my last post, you'll know that we were thinking of moving to Bristol. At the time, that seemed like an easy, painless solution to all our problems - the referendum, work, our families being so far away. 

We went down a few times. We met some people. It was all very positive. But then we knew we weren't ready yet - we were just trying to understand what was right for us, and when it would be possible. Maybe spring, summer next year. We don't have the money now. A job was offered and then seemed to disappear. Good, let's just settle in here and enjoy our lovely house, enjoy living where we do and let things unfold. See how things progress, and save money.

And then today, J was offered this job - 12 months contract, he must be there 5 days a week. And everything went up in the air again.

Could we do it? Well, technically. Anything is possible. Flying down Sunday/Monday, back Friday. For a year. But what would the toll be on our relationship, health, finances? We were planning on starting a family in the next few months. That would be a big spanner in the works.

It's almost too long a contract - there's no doing this short term and opting out, returning to Glasgow if it didn't work. But at the same time, it's a chance to move fast.

The past few weeks, while we've been mulling this over, have been important. We've been both trying to anticipate what we would gain, and working out what we might lose. We still aren't there, aren't certain. We are trying to guess how we'll feel when the parameters are all different. It's an almost impossible task.

What we might lose

Our house. Our lovely, cosy, strange little house, which we both unashamedly absolutely love. Is it a house forever? No, probably not. But it could be a house for a few years. This house made living in Glasgow, far from family and friends, so much more bearable, by being close to friends up here, close to J's work, by having an office to let me start a business. It's been a house that has facilitated a lot of happiness, companionable calm and space to think and be comfortable. We haven't had to break our backs with DIY, have been able to put up visitors and J has had a loft. We have had far too many impromptu cocktails out with a 100 yard stagger home. It is a wonderful place to live that felt like our house from the second I found it on Rightmove.

And yet this summer, I also felt trapped here. The neighbours on one side were veering pretty far into the antisocial territory. It suddenly seemed like a terrible place to have a family. But we're back to where we were. We love it and the stability it brings.

Jon's job up here is stable. It's progressing slowly though. Over the summer, it seemed to have stalled entirely. But there are now specks of light on the horizon (aka January) when progress might be made.

What we might gain

Jon would gain a huge promotion. And I would also potentially get more work, more opportunities. I don't want to regret my career. But this comes just at the time that we are thinking of having a family.

I may feel less cut off, both professionally and personally, though these feelings have been waning a little this past month. Perhaps it's with Christmas on the horizon, and lots of family time currently planned in (Christmas shopping with my mum, parents and brother and sister in law visiting as well as Christmas itself). I wonder if I will feel the same come January?

We would be closer to both of our families. I see my parents with my brother's children and I see a relationship that would be impossible if we stayed where we are. J's parents are much more peripatetic - they may come and rent a place up here for some months, if we did have a family. It is, perversely, easier to get to see them where they live than for us to get to my parents, though closer as the crow flies.  And as our parents age, this may be more important.

What we just don't know

How to prioritise and which risks to take. Closer to our families, but harder for us to build our own? Hours of commuting each week? Living a long way out of a town we don't yet know? And will halving the distance to our families have any measurable impact on our lives?




Wednesday 30 July 2014

oh.

Right now, I have a number of posts, all unpublished, where I try to make sense of things. Because lately, quite a few things haven't been making sense.

There's a post where I try to make sense of Glasgow. A post where I try to make sense of the choices we've made (of which Glasgow is one). None published, for fear of how I might sound, or whether i was saying the right thing.

That too is a symptom of a greater malaise that's going on. Or several greater malaises that I've not been able to put my finger on. And the thought of voicing any of these things at all has made me feel unbelievably ungrateful.

But I've realised I feel better when I write things down. No one reads this anyway I'm sure.

Let's start by saying we are damned lucky. We have a house, a great house, in an amazing area, in the most buzzing part of a ridiculously wonderful city.  I work for myself, J works an easy 15 minute walk away. We both do jobs that others envy. I can pop out across the road for a cup of organic coffee, a dozen oysters, a handmade artwork, yoga, an artisan cocktail or any number of hipster bingo numbers. Our families are healthy and we never stop being thankful for this, or surprised and grateful for the house and the area we live in. I can make it all look great on Instagram.

By those measures, the measures that generate envy, we have an enviable life.

But recently, I had a meeting with a business mentor, who asked me a personal question that made me realise: Damnit. I'm really lonely.

I have a few friends - some close, some pub friends, all lovely. But I work alone all day, looking out over a car park in an empty house. Friends have jobs - I am eternally grateful for those that meet me for coffee and lunches in the week. I probably talk their ears off because for the last three days, I've only spoken to J and said a polite hello to the neighbours and the postman.

I don't think I'm built to be on my own like this. Loneliness does funny things to you. It makes you fearful and wrecks your concentration. For a long time, I thought it was a failing in me - but speaking to others helps me realise that there's a reason solitary confinement is generally regarded as punishment.

I've looked into shared workspaces - Glasgow has one option. It's in the middle of nowhere and currently has 8 residents on a busy day. That's no help. You're not going to pop to the local pub if you work there.

I never wanted to work for myself. I just did it because there were no jobs. And I do OK at it. More than that, I guess, I do pretty well. But I never wanted this. And now I'm in a real career cul de sac.

There's pain and conflict in this too. J is happy here. His job is great. He works with fun and intelligent people on interesting, challenging projects and there's plenty of work. It pains him to come home to me feeling sad so many days, and I hate passing this sadness on.

There's uncertainty for us too. The independence vote would mean no work for J. The economic uncertainty in the short term may well leave us unable to move/sell the house, but with no choice but to do it.

The run up to the vote has coloured my impressions of this country, which now feels like a beautiful country full of amazing people, but nastily divided. No one is being nice about this. Whatever the result, it's going to be ugly in the run up and probably even uglier, whichever way it goes. As an English/British person, it's hard to constantly hear how problematic 'you' are from approaching 50% of the population and media.

I love Glasgow - the crazy, divided city that we live in. I love that I find artists and musicians everywhere. I hate that it is half beautiful, half decaying, struggling to prop up the massive space that it once occupied. I want it to be better, but people keep fucking fly tipping and letting their dogs shit on the pavement. And there are so many people let down by it. You see them, sitting by Central Station and think, come on city, fucking sort it out. Don't just leave them there.

But when you're sitting in the middle of Kelvingrove Park on a sunny day, kids playing, bagpipes humming, ice cream in hand, skaters, tightrope walkers and the musuem and university reminding you to be better, it's the best place. The city has a lot of places like this. But between them, these cracks.

But when I go to visit family and I see my mum very manfully not crying when we get in the car to leave for another two months... telling me not to be daft when I try to give her another hug (because I saw her trying not to cry and she knows another hug will tip her over), I feel empty. When my little nephew hugs me and I tell him that if he does that again, I won't want to go home. And he says hopefully 'you're not going home?'

When my mum just keeps saying how lucky she is - lot of people's kids go to live in other countries for Pete's sake, and I know she's saying it for herself and not me.

When my mum tells me she's having a bad week and I work out if there's any way I can see her in the next few days, maybe a shopping trip... no. It's three hours for both of us on the train. She jokes about getting a season ticket for Flybe when we have a family, but honestly, we both know it's £250 each time in return flights. I fear being pregnant and alone when J works away, and alone with children after that.

When we go to England, and the smell after the rain makes me feel almost queasily homesick.

The options open to us now are that I either deal with this - and so, I'm seeing someone to see if I can. Maybe the problem is just me. Maybe it's just chronic homesickness.

Or: Bristol. Moving back to England. Family are closer. Old friends are closer. Will that solve anything? Who knows. We will have to sell our lovely house. J will lose his job certainty. Though if the Yes vote happens, this happens anyway. We have to leave.

The feeling of uncertainty morphs into a feeling of apathy. If all the choices are kind of wrong and you feel guilty about even asking these questions, it seems hard to motivate yourself.

And that's where I am now. There's not much of a conclusion here, except that.

Tuesday 29 April 2014

Joan as Policewoman at Oran Mor: Review

Joan as Policewoman
April 28th
Oran Mor, Glasgow

Oran Mor's basement gig venue is always full of them. Men of a certain age, tight-lipped, impassively raising a pint to their lips, their expression unchanging. It doesn't matter who or what's on stage. The pints raise and lower at the same rate. The gaze never wavers.

A few months ago they were there at a Pokey LaFarge gig. More up tempo jazz-blues-dance-ragtime you'd be hard pushed to find. It is impossible not to jig about, even a little. But the impassive men remained stony, aside from their right pint arm.

So it was at the start of tonight's Joan as Policeman gig. As Joan Wasser shuddered, eyes closed over an extended guitar solo in Good Together, the pints raised and lowered at the same speed, eyes fixed on the stage. Appreciative. Merely so.

The first four songs were from JaPW's new album The Classic - and latest single, the syncopatedly joyous Holy City received an unashamedly joyous reaction back from the crowd.



There's nothing self-conscious about Wasser on stage. Tonight in PVC trousers and t-shirt, black eyeliner, red lipstick she looks every part the coolest girl at school. It's no surprise she's so relaxed: a classically trained multi instrumentalist who has played with everyone who, if you like Joan as Policewoman, you'll admire intensely: Anthony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainright, Dave Gahan, Lou Reed and many more. You're in good hands and she knows it.

And so I'm pretty sure she wouldn't give a shit that during the middle part of the gig, things sort of tailed off a bit. The pace slowed, or remained unchanged for a couple of songs. People went to get drinks. This was the older stuff, lyrically brilliant but familiar, noiser, and with everything going on at once. Wasser's voice was a little lost. The crowd was feeling it a little less.

But on stage, Joan cared as little as the impassive pint guys around me. She was into it, switching from keyboards to guitar to shimmering gold violin, eyes often shut.

Soon the tracks switched back to more soulful sounds - a track that was possibly from Wasser's days with Anthony and the Johnsons, and more tunes from the new album. The pace picked up again and the crowd started to holler. Reviews have suggested that this style doesn't suit Wasser, or somehow betrays her rockier routes. But the brighter, soulful, more vocally interesting sound was rousing, compelling.

When the encore came and the band lined up to sing 'The Classic' a cappella, followed by a solo 'Your Song', the roof almost came off.

When the lights came up, the impassive pint man to my left was very gently smiling, his empty pint glass hanging limply at his side. I looked to the right: impassive pint man no.2 looked misty-eyed at the stage, pint halfway to mouth, and mouthed to no-one in particular: "Gorgeous".

Monday 27 January 2014

logistics and timing and life

A very workaday title for a very wondering post.

Here's the thing.

I'm self employed. I'm 31. I am married. We have a house together. J has a job that's stable-ish, but not 100% stable.

I am starting to feel, and increasingly, J is too, that something is missing. A small, soft, noisy, person-shaped something.

It's not out and out broodiness, though every time we see a cute small baby when we're out, we both nudge each other and involuntarily let out an 'aww'.

It's more a sense that there really should be someone else here who's not. Does that sound strange? I imagine so. To feel the lack of something we've not had. Are we imagining it?

But on the other hand: how does this work, when you work for yourself? I'm feeling that we don't want to wait too long. That the answer might be to save as much as possible and then go for it. Who knows, it might take months. But coupled with the desire to save up for this is the feeling that we need to get other stuff out of our systems. Trips away. DIY. Get sorted, properly ready. I've started playing the Lottery again.

For me, one of the biggest concerns is just how on earth you can be self employed with a business and a baby, without one of the two taking a massive back seat. I think the answer might lie in getting some money in the business, making some profit - and then using that to fund having a family. But I'd really love to hear from anyone who works for themselves, and has made this work.