This morning I cleaned my teeth with fresh sage leaves. I need to dry some sage later which I will bake and crush with salt crystals, making it into a powder which I can then store in a glass pot to clean my teeth when the fresh sage finishes. My tongue tingles and my teeth feel shiny and clean. My whole mouth feels cleaner than it does with toothpaste. I was talking to my daughter this morning on the phone trying to explain the difference in my life today to what it was like last week. I am enjoying the preparation of my food and the eating of it far more. I am enjoying the peace of my son not being here and I am returning to that time before television and constant noise. I have not watched television for many years, preferring to do other things. Now the peace I have is poignant and productive. My daughter said ‘but on Sunday when I cook dinner it is hard work’. I thought and answered. Traditionally during the industrial revolution a Sunday was the day for chapel and church here and those who were not religious would have spent the day in preparing food and eating it and nothing else. The religious people of this valley would do all that on a Saturday and then only eat the cold food on Sunday so they could spend their day back and fro to the various chapel or church services. Today with the car and Sunday shopping and football games and everything else one is drawn to on a Sunday this quiet time has been lost. This one day a week where people stop and reflect is no more. The preparation and eating of good food has to be fitted in with the television in the background and the sound of computer games and electronic toys. Before the television and radio that day would have been filled with only the music or noise that people made. This is why choirs sprung up. People make more music when it is quiet in their lives. We are being bombarded today with sound.
Tomorrow I go to a funeral and then to the market. I need a chicken. I will try to get a free range chicken and my mouth is watering already at the thought. Food is paramount in my life for this week. The change even though slight for me is a huge change. I am not panicking yet but I have nearly been there. Bare cupboards, no tins to fall back on, no plastic packets to dish up in minutes. Next week perhaps I will start on crafts I have been wanting to get on with for years. Who knows, but first tomorrow that chicken and no Sean Rutherford,if you are by any chance reading this, I have not yet put a big fat VEGAN at the end of this blog. Not yet J
