Author: jim

Categories
At Home With Notes From The Kitchen The Guy With The Hand

The Sacred Coffee Bean

Here is the thing about coffee, be it Columbian, French, or Arabic; Americano, latte, or espresso; rich, or medium roast; it comes with a caffeine kick. Before the protests begin, let me say that I have drunk decaffeinated coffee and that it is all very well in its own way, but you must admit that it is rather like a vegetarian turkey roast, well intentioned, but it misses the point. We drink coffee for the caffeine, eat turkey for its meat and consume meat substitutes… Ok, so I’m a little hazy as to why we should consume meat substitutes. They do not fit under the traditional headings animal, vegetable, or mineral. For them a whole new category had to be invented; the laboratory, experimental food category; manufactured, as they are, using unidentified emulsifiers, innumerable food colourants and questionable, scary, turkey-smelling, scent stimulants.  

Coffee, on the other hand, is about as natural as a food can get and about as ancient. At a time when the carrot was still working its way out of a vegetable primeval swamp, still seeking access to the early-human salad dish, the coffee bean had graduated to the top of the food chain and was already being used in religious ceremonies. You can bet a minor fortune that our ancestors didn’t send out for a decaffeinated, religious experience when the stars were properly aligned, and the gods were demanding exorbitant protection payment.

If you are planning human sacrifice to some moon god, an altered state is a necessity. I should think that a caffeine halo would be a minimum requirement for a high priest with murder on his mind. It makes one wonder about the forefathers of today’s coffee beans. They must have been a thousand times stronger and have hailed straight from the Garden of Eden. In that bygone era, coffee beans must have had attitude. Think how stoned a person would have to be to believe that the wholesale slaughter of virgins would somehow cause crops to grow. I mean, there are caffeine highs and there is a place well beyond the rational sphere. To think that a gently roasted coffee bean could send you off in a frenzied search for your sharpest sacrificial blade. Considering cause and effect, Ye Olde Coffee Bean must have delivered a far stronger kick to the head than a modern triple expresso.

OK, I will admit that a person can still become addicted to the modern coffee bean and that maybe, there should be a twelve-step program for caffeine addicts. Step one, ‘I am powerless over coffee and my life has become unmanageable.’ I’m not talking about those smiling, simpering fools who declare themselves dependent without showing any real signs of being hooked on the drug. Of having minor tremors in their hands, dark rings under their eyes or to suffer from slightly jerky, twitchy movements. I’m talking about people, like myself, who one day make a doctor’s appointment because they can’t sleep, there’s a tremor in their hand, and their stomach is shot.

They say that you get the doctor you deserve and perhaps you do. Mine held his surgery in a rented house and saw patients in the fitted kitchen. He was on the functional side of lunacy, had no time for placebos, or malingerers, and was truly concerned with helping people get better, all of which made me like him. He listened to my symptoms, gave me three tablets, and told me to take one a day and call him when they were finished. 

‘Well,’ he told me, when I phoned him, ‘If they had no effect on you, you’re not depressed. Because that was Valium.’ With that he hung up and it fell to me to solve the mystery for myself.

I did what everybody did back then when looking for answers, I went to the library to find a book which might explain the problem. And there, in a matter of minutes, in a slim volume about sleep, I discovered the problem. In fact, the issue was identified on the very first page of the very first chapter.  The conundrum of my nightmarish, sleep deprivation, was solved. Coffee, or more accurately caffeine, was the culprit. The solution was simple. Not easy, simple.

No more of the dark brew, the author assured me, could pass my lips if I ever wanted to experience an REM sleep cycle again, or experience magnificently weird dreams in the wee hours of the morning. It was with a heavy heart that I took up the challenge.

But there are consequences to going cold turkey – real, or a vegan substitute. It can give you the mother and father of all hangovers, one which can last a week, or even two. Then, there is the issue of being deprived of your comfort cup, the ceramic teddy, if you will, one which is always within easy reach and reassures you that all is well in your world. As the weeks passed, my coffee mug stared down accusingly at me from a shelf, only to be ignored as it gathered dust.

Around this time, I came to believe that my addiction was as much habit formed as physical. Therefore, after six months subsisting on a decaf substitute, a sort of mild methadone program, I felt it wase safe to test my theory.

A little experimentation proved me right and I discovered that if I restricted my intake to two, or three cups of coffee a day, my sleep patterns remained unaffected.

Nowadays, all signs of addiction are behind me. I no longer find myself obsessing about my next hit of this pleasant drug, or losing sleep because of it. Coffee no longer rules my life, but it certainly enhances it and I rather enjoy a mild caffeine kick.

Categories
At Home With The Guy With The Hand

The Friday Night Philosophers’ Club

People say that my 91-year-old mother leads a more full, active life than I do. They may be right. She is, after all, not a writer; a  quietish, retiring type who can only be explained away with reference to, ‘The Spectrum.’ She is an extrovert whose life is full of people, plans and places to go. One part of her regular social life is the Friday night visit from a neighbouring pensioner.

To me, this seems like a reverse hostage situation, where the host is held hostage by their guest. The guest feels exactly the same and, though free to leave whenever they want, they are emotionally trapped until given a special benediction, a sign to say, ‘until next week.’ Does such a theory put me firmly on the ‘Spectrum?’ Or is there a more sinister, underling problem hiding in the background?   

After fifty years of being neighbours, ritual plays a large part in their Friday night sessions. The night is flagged in advance by the Thursday telephone call to confirm the event, though, in reality, it is about the bottle. This should be a Prosecco, or a Cava, white or rosé, it doesn’t matter; it’s bubbles and alcohol content which take top billing in the wine department. Once it has been decided who is bringing the bottle to the event, it is time to organise the nibbles. At the farmers’ market, where these are sourced, I am invariably asked at the three baking stalls, what the guest would like to eat, only to have every suggestion dismissed. My mother prefers to choose her own weapons when it comes to killing with sweetness.

Nibbles ready, bottle chilled, it’s time for the Friday Night Philosophers’ Club, not to mention a visit from the unvaccinated Harriette. Even as she crosses the threshold, before a cork is popped or pulled, or a screw cap turned, she will launch into her first philosophical investigation of the evening with her weekly opening gambit.

Harriette does not believe in the vaccine. In this she is guided by a higher power, Christine Gallagher; a mistic who talks about herself in the third person, perhaps because her body is merely a channel for ‘Him’ to speak through. Her sole purpose, it seems, is to ‘Deliver Heaven’s Message’ to the people of the Earth. In these times of the internet overwhelm, Christine is not above using Ireland’s Eye, a provincial magazine, to spread her gospel. Through this outlet Harriet has discovered that the vaccine is, ‘The Mark of Satan.’   

“The Mark of Satan,” repeats a wide-eyed Harriet, reflecting on Christine’s message from above, even before the first glass is poured, “What do you think of that, Mary?”

“The Catholic church has no problem with Darwin,” comes my mother’s reply, strategically using her deafness as a deflection tool to avoid an argument.

“It’s my immune system,” Harriet tells me accepting her first glass of alcoholic effervescence. “It’s low. I can’t have the vaccine because it’s low.”

“You studied Catechesis too,” continues my mother, “So you know that the church has no problem with Darwin.”

“It’s that Guillain-Barré, Mary, you know, I’d have it in a flash, only for that.”

“Oh, this is good,” my mother replies, toasting her friend after her first sip from the glass.

“I got that in Downey’s.”

“It’s very good,” my mother reassures her. “There’s a documentary about Diana for later.”

With that, it’s time to flee, though when I occasionally pass-through, to pour an additional glass or two, nuggets of conversation grab my attention.

 “They got me the new Bob Woodward in the library…”

“Prince Philip and Christine Keeler were, you know…”

“Can you believe a nun saying that Trump was bringing people to God…?”

“She said she’d take my driver’s licence away from me, Mary.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s had to retire because she’s going blind…”

“Somebody put one of those dishes in my tree. They’re watching my every move.”

“Hillary Clinton has a new book out and I’ve asked them to hold it for me in the…”

It seems, as I eves drop, that there are rules to keeping a long-term friendship alive. First, serve your wine chilled. Second, always allow the other person to speak without interruption. Third, ignore everything the other person has to say, on every topic. And, lastly, politics and religion can be discussed, so long as you adhere to the first three rules.

Categories
At Home With The Guy With The Hand

The Accidental Aga Man

An Aga which dates back to the ark is the culinary equivalent of the Morris Minor to modern motoring; there is a sentimental overestimation of its capacities. Don’t get me wrong, the Morris Minor was a great car, for its time. However, it was also slow, clunky, and unresponsive. The Aga, back then, was a bit the same. Especially my mother’s, which landed in her kitchen when the venerable Morris was still in production.

Before the romance of the thing gets to you, remember that my mother’s heavyweight-of-the-kitchen comes with a mercury thermometer (a device so vague as to be practically useless.) Its modern successor comes with an electronic control panel. You have precious little control over the older cooker. Therefore, even if the bar of mercury indicates a nice, hot oven, right now, there is no telling when the silver strip will shrink to almost nothing. In ten minutes, the Aga can turn from a heat-hero, to an arctic-anarchist who intends to ruin your best laid dinner plans. I swear the thing has as many mood swings as a vegan teenager contemplating food labels in the deep freeze aisles of your local supermarket. You must be ever vigilant when cooking. And always bear in mind that the cooker becomes horribly offended when faced with cold-bottomed saucepans. It will take revenge on you should you forget this and be so rude as to place the largest, coldest saucepan from your collection onto its hot plate.  

There was a time when I could handle such temperamental tantrums, but the years passed, I moved onto electric cookers; ones with fan ovens, bright lights, and electric thermostats. I spent forty years forgetting about my mother’s Aga, then covid struck and I found myself in lockdown with my ninety-year-old mother and her sturdy, old range. I must admit that we struggled in the beginning. All three of us had to become reacquainted with each other’s idiosyncrasies. It was a steep learning curve – rediscovering my aged-relative’s lifestyle, becoming used to my childhood kitchen once more, and coming to terms with its neolithic cooker. On a difficulty scale, we might be talking about climbing the north face of the Matterhorn.

Our biggest problem at the beginning was our daily bread. Remember the great, covid, bread shortage of 2020? It will, no doubt, go down in the annals as one of the most unnecessary panic buyouts of all times. It was right up there with the great toilet paper run of the same epoch. Panic, isolation, and being grounded led many people to YouTube for salvation. Never were the words ‘how to…’ typed by so many in a mad bid to save their sanity.  It didn’t matter which ‘how to…,’ you found salvation in, what dark secret your ‘how to…,’ explored. ‘How to…,’ offered a lifebuoy to keep you afloat in the Covid Sea of Terror in which many people found themselves drowning.

After learning everything you needed to know about applying nail polish, or playing the ukulele, I’m willing to bet that everybody looked up ‘sour dough’ on the internet; if only to understand what all the fuss was about. I resisted, the Aga was presenting enough challenges for me on the Soda Bread front, without having ferments living in my fridge, getting up to God knows what when the light went out, planning, no doubt, some kind of explosive escape.

When flour eventually returned to supermarket shelves, I decided it was time to develop a working relationship with the Aga. It was time to bake. Brown bread is easy to make under normal circumstances. These were anything but usual. Mercury thermometers came into the baking equation in a way they never had before. After slopping all the ingredients together – brown bread is easy to make – the problems began.

Any printed markings the thermometer once had, disappeared years ago. A few etched lines remained, a kind of treasure map that might help you to gauge the range’s mood, if properly understood. The line somewhere-in-the-middle became a beacon for the baker staring hopelessly at the mute cooker. A second line, somewhere-below-somewhere-in-the-middle, became another beacon to help triangulate the Aga’s warmth on a given day. The former, I learned after a couple of weeks experimentation, gave me a 40-to-50-minute baking time, and the latter resulted in a baked cake after 50 to 60 minutes. Anybody who needs the security of accurate instructions must know this, vagueness is all the rage in the world of ancient ranges.

However, huge reserves of patience, and much experimentation, yielded amazing results. These, almost outweighed the traumas endured becoming reacquainted with the Aga. The food that came from its oven reminded me of cookbooks from the nineteen fifties. The food looked more real somehow and tasted even better.

But such a prima donna is difficult to live with. The words mercury and cooking do not sit comfortably in the same sentence. Manic temperature swings are not for everybody. Remember too that the carbon footprint of this old oil-burner best not be mentioned in polite society. However, rather like the Mini of old, the Aga has an updated sister. Mercury has been removed from the cooking equation. Proper temperature controls have been put in place. The looks remain the same, but the bragging rights have been enhanced. Convincing my mother that these upgrades are worth considering might prove difficult, but I’m thinking about it. 

Categories
At Home With The Writer's Desk

A Desk With A View

My previous desk was a cluttered space, invariably littered with note-covered envelopes, dusty bric-a-brac, and mismatched office equipment. It was a proper writer’s desk. The only thing of elegance being the vintage, Anglepoise lamp which sat, camouflaged, beneath scrawl-covered post-it-pads. The table was exactly the correct height for me, and the chair was just so. Comfort is what I’m talking about. This was my private space; where I could write, think, or sleep, depending on my mood.

Sadly, that desk was in Sandyford, while I was trapped in Portlaoise for the first Covid Lockdown. As a result, it became my first covid casualty, sanity my second. Everybody knows that we writers have needs; enough of us have told you so. And at the top of that pyramid, our uppermost requirement, is a space of our own. A sacred place, shared only with our muse or, more often, nagging, writerly doubts.

Some scribes like to work in a shed, some need a library, for the more outgoing, a coffee table at a local café is a prerequisite. All of us have a place where we write, even if it is only a tray, laden down with pens paper and note pads. During that first, eerie lockdown the tiny box room in my mother’s home became my new creative hub.

Boxrooms come with serious limitations, size being the obvious one. In my case there was also the view; not mine, but that of the bored soldiers on sentry duty in Portlaoise prison. My window was in their direct line of vision. This increased everyone’s discomfort. They stared at me while I stared at their concrete watchtower and pondered my next sentence. In moments of distraction, it occurred to me that they probably would have liked something younger and female to watch over. As for me, I wanted something more pastoral by way of distraction. Barring that, my old view of an industrial estate carpark would have been a perfect substitute. It would certainly have been prettier than the watchtower; and a lot of life floats past one’s eyes in a carpark.

Building an extension was out of the question, there would, no doubt, have been objections from my patient mother, not to mention her old-fashioned neighbours and the rule-bound county council.

A comfortable garden shed like the one George Bernard Shaw had – one that could be turned to face the sun as it moved across the heavens – was also out of the question. The builders were in lockdown after all. So, in a fit of desperation, I reached into the closet for a solution to my problem. While many people are anxious to come out of their closets, I had to work very hard to get into mine.

Closets by their nature are dark, musty places which no one enters, except in the worst sort of horror stories. This gloomy, boxroom, hell hole took the horror film cliché very much to heart; with its uninviting interior, its abundance of cobwebs and its collection of damp, dusty, discarded books. Judging by the smell of the place, dust mite orgies were a 24/7 event. If you suffered from allergies, simply opening the closet doors would have landed you in a noisy, overcrowded A&E with respiratory failure. To think that this space was to be my salvation.

After relocating the mouldering inhabitants from their dreary hiding place, and transferring the relentless mite orgies to another closet, I began to convert this most unpromising of spaces into my writer’s desk. Extended hoovering sessions followed by the ‘lick of paint’ led me to a sudden realisation; there is a fantastic advantage to living with a ninety-year-old in their own home. Possessions gathered over a lifetime lurk in every corner. A trawl through the darkest, most cluttered recesses of the house offered up a montage from some of the greatest artists who ever lived. This inspiring gallery now lines the cupboard interior and offers a feast for the eyes as inspiring as anything ever viewed through a glass windowpane.

Finally, I feel at home, sitting with my back to the grim, prison watchtower and staring into my freshly decorated, closet.  Whenever my most inspirational muse disappears on a coffee break, or is suffering from a Monday hangover, I need only look up from my keyboard to draw on six hundred years of creative insight. It seems to me that my closet has developed a view all its own.