It's February now

plates of clementines, mad men, fig jam and salted butter, relax

It’s February now, and I haven't written here once since this new year started. I come to it to see what would happen if I sat down and wrote, and I find a collection of writing and images that I started in January and never finished, never published. I think I’ll just send it as it.

It’s February now and the kitchen table is home to a blue and white plate that I picked up at an antique junk yard in the south. On the plate sits a pile of clementines with their leaves still on. Clementine after clementine after clementine. And next to the plate sits four candle sticks doing all that they can to keep this lingering wintery month feeling warm, feeling bright, feeling soft, feeling friendly.

It’s February now and the world feels odd, mad men on the other side of the Atlantic doing inconceivable things, amongst the rest of the chaos. But I don’t want the horrid things to be part of this, I want this to be a place of harmony, a place to be that might help to lighten the horrid, if just for a moment. All whilst holding thoughts for those who don’t have the option, the privilege of taking a moment to forget.

It’s February now and I’ve just received my first piece of mail to my new home in Paris. Colette’s The Pure and the Impure. Her best work, she suggests. Three people of whom I adore are reading it at the same time. I think to myself, surely that has to be one of the greatest joys, sharing a book like that. I just finished Clarice Lispetor’s An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures and Marguerite Duras’ Writing; both of which were thoughtful gifts from thoughtful people. I started Deborah Levy’s Real Estate, the final book I have to read in her autobiographical trilogy, of which I’m reading out of order. But I think I’ll wait on that and let Colette consume me. In a pile next to my bed are a few books of short stories — Anaïs Nin’s Little Birds, The Complete Short Stories of Oscar Wilde and Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Perhaps I need to be less promiscuous.

It’s February now and men fill my mind. And I’m not speaking of those mad men I mention, but lovely men who arrive at my home with the gift of a book, who come over to cook dinner the night I arrive back from cooking for 15 people for a week, who offer scrambled eggs and coffee in the morning, who lay in bed and read to you a story of Anaïs Nin, but still, who drive you mad. Is it the man who drives you mad, or the feeling of giving up your solitude? Is it the man who drives you mad, or the sheer overwhelm of starting a new life?

It’s February now and it’s toast with fig jam and salted butter for breakfast, or warmed oats, and always hot, black coffee; it’s chicken and leek soup for lunch with lots of ginger; it’s an omelette and greens for dinner.

It’s February now and conversations about spring, about summer are starting, plans are simmering. But I’m staying here for now, in this moment of stillness and calmness and quietness. Though happiness isn’t it a word I’d describe this moment with, perhaps contentment is. With a moment to stop after endless movement comes some difficulties, but ultimately it’s a very good thing, and a thing to feel intensely grateful for. Of which I do.

It’s February now and I’m glad to be back here. I should come more often, and I will now, I hope. Below are musings from the year that was, words from a year that was; a year that I’ve come to know as transcendent.

Thank you for being here.

H. X

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I might be down in the dumps a hundred times, but each time I would clamber out again to good coffee, on a lacquered tray beside an open fire. Each time I would clamber out to silk stockings and perfumes. Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are. — Anaïs Nin

I might be down in the dumps a hundred times, but each time I would clamber out again to good coffee, on a lacquered tray beside me in the morning sunshine. Each time I would clamber out to lit candles and a bowl of soup. Each time I would clamber out to a buttery croissant, to a crisp white cotton shirt, to just-washed jeans and a soft cotton singlet. I would clamber out to long walks and good book stores. Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.

CORSICA

Wedges of chèvre, spoonfuls of bruccio
Walks of rocky paths lined with immortelle and myrte, and wild lavender and dancing red poppies
Swims before lunch, swims after lunch; swims before dinner at the restaurant in the sea two metres from our table
Joan Didion and Deborah Levy and Simone de Beauvoir and Annie Erneaux and Marguerite Duras and Elizabeth David and Susan Sontag
Books and writing in the garden in the sun; white blouses and red shoes in the garden in the sun
Lighting apricots on fire, drying flowers in between pages of books
Looking out at the horizon, looking out at Sardinia, water so blue it makes you laugh
Omelette for lunch, cochon de lait for dinner
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and The Beatles and Robert Plant and Art Mengo and Valerie June and T. Rex and Albert King and Petru Guelfucci
Seats by the sea, seats in the morning sun at the kitchen table, seats under the grape vines, seats by the bar
Bruccio ice cream, myrte ice cream, fig ice cream, chestnut ice cream
And tonight a saxophonist
Corsica

on bruccio ….

On the island it’s bruccio season. Corsica’s ricotta in a way. It’s savoury but also a little sweet; it’s salty, it’s light, it’s creamy. It’s made from ewe’s milk, or from goat’s milk. It’s like nothing I’ve ever tried. I’m told the only way to eat it is alone, with a spoon, but, well, that would be denying oneself of much pleasure. With honey and with flaked sea salt; in an omelette with blanched chard drenched in lemon, olive oil and garlic; with early-season strawberries; with fried courgette, a fried egg, lemon and parsley; on bread with olive oil and a dried fig; stuffed into sardine filets with sautéed chard and lemon. There’s also fiadone — the white cheese baked into a cake with lemon zest. And then there’s the goat’s cheese I found in the corner store, bought from the woman who milked the goat’s, made the cheese and had just dropped it off. Well bruccio, it surely has been a divine thing to have in the fridge.

on bloomers …

I woke from an afternoon nap to the sound of a roaring engine, I immediately knew what it was, despite the dream state I was in. I’ll take it for a test drive and check the tyres, and come back to get you in half an hour you say. He hands me a large pair of leather gloves, a leather jacket, a heavy helmet and a black scarf. I’m taking you, Harriet Davidson, on your first Harley Davidson — a name association that I’ve never felt quite aligned with, my little red Vespa felt a little more me, but a motorbike through mountains, well, thrilling. And I’m taking you up to Sartène to see if those “shorts” you told me about are still there. They were lemon-yellow vintage bloomers that I’d seen the week before, hanging on a rack in one of Corsica’s oldest towns, sitting high up mountainside. I was distracted by myrte and bruccio ice cream, a scoop of each, and decided I didn’t need them. But sometimes things just get you in their grip and they’d sat in my mind over the week. As we roared up the hill, me clutching onto you for dear life, it was amusing to me, the juxtaposition of this heavy, masculine leather that dressed me, that came with a feeling of security and strength, with the pair of light, lacy, feminine bloomers we were off to find. There they were, sitting on the rack waiting for me. We continued to climb the mountains on that black and yellow bike, weaving and winding down the hill passing caramel-brown cows and calves that lined the road next to dainty wild spring flowers. The sun set and lit up the imposing, red canyons.

The bloomers dressed me on my last day in Corsica, their femininity coming with a feeling of security and strength, different to the leather, one I was more at ease with. I walked the path down to the sea, passed the soon-to-flower immortelle bushes, dived, sun soaked, and wandered home by the vineyards, then by the butcher to buy a piece of veal to take with me for a dinner in Paris with a lovely man. But first, a final dinner with you, another lovely man, at the base of the mountains — Cap Corse rouge and Corsican ham and grilled octopus and Corsican cheese then chocolate mousse. Ah.

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CHERRY PICKING WITH CHARLENE

A nap by the Loire
A strawberry tart made with strawberries we plucked under the Saturday morning sun
Up the ladder to the world of the cherry tree, green as green leaves dotted with the hanging rouge jewels
A most beautiful, most brilliant woman
Sitting around a table with wonderful people, the table home to a plate of cheese, or a chard galette made with chard plucked from the garden a few minutes earlier, or braised chicken, or bacalhau cooked with potatoes and chickpeas, always a green salad with leaves from the garden, always a cheese course
A wander through a never ending brocante
A friendly accordion player
Frites, flan, apple tart to go with a lunch of andouillette and caramelised onions
Talks of dreams and plans and homes
Plucking sureau//elderflower from a tree by the Loire as the sun goes down to infuse milk for a crème pâtissière for a strawberry tart
Friendship of a sensitive cat and a lovely man
Being welcomed into family rituals
A train back to Paris with a very full bag of treats, like homemade strawberry confiture, a slice of strawberry tart, chèvre, a bulging bag of cherries from the tree out the back
A train back to Paris with a very full heart

AT HOME IN PARIS

A blank canvas — home, the physical space, but also the way I choose to live in, to live in this city. Rituals, habits, tastes, likes and dislikes, language and humour — it all gets questioned, and it’s fascinating to see what sticks, what goes, what evolves and what appears. A moving and exciting thought; a moving and exciting time.

I look up home, the dictionary gives me: as in residence, the place where one lives; as in country, the place of ones birth, residence or citizenship; as in household, those who live with a family in one house; as in birthplace, a place of origin. Seems so black and white, but the dictionary perhaps does have a habit of simplifying complex and precious matters.

I buy a century old piece of thick scrummy linen that has been died indigo with plants of the south to drape over my bed; I buy books, two by Deborah Levy, one by Virginia Woolf; I buy glass jars to put almonds and oats in; I buy two candle holders, one white and one indigo blue; I buy a notebook with the words ‘REFAIRE LE MONDE’ stamped across it to scribble in as I repair my world, my home — not that it was broken but I certainly have thoroughly dismantled it these last few years, and along with it, my concept of home; I buy a vacuum. Indigo, white and terracotta are the colours I feel drawn to in my space, to live with — tactile and earthy. Soon I’ll buy a rug and a lamp, frames and a new piece of art. But I don’t want a lot, not yet, not now.