Elettaria

 CW: passing mention of death/ mourning.

The first time you taste it,
it is likely lost in a mélange,
a tangle of strange, bright frissons,
more scent than anything.
The apple flares to life,
more itself than it was alone.

The same is true for the next time.
And the next.
So that the first time someone tells you:
Be careful of the cardamom,
you are surprised, digging through slow-cooked lamb,
and discovering four things you didn’t know you liked.

One of them is her – eager to please,
but no-one is suggesting she’ll replace the unspoken.
You are, all of you, too old for platitudes,
but politeness is a gift you can bring
to this new table on a barrage of charm.
She seems nothing like your mother, and he loves her.

Alongside whole cloves of garlic
you unearth dark, wrinkled, unprepossessing pods,
which have seeped their soapy sharpness
into the sacrificial flesh.
Later you will recognise it in a brief stint,
never written home about, as a chambermaid,
the linen closet fragrant with peaceful secrets.

And even though these days it only graces you
in glass-bound mixes blended by other hands,
you cannot now untaste it,
and it stands coolly apart from
neighbouring clove and cinnamon,
a reminder of love after death,
and the inevitability of new memories.

This last sample piece I’m going to post from Spectral is from the section on Joy, and, like a surprising number of the pieces is centred around food… and not, obviously. Like many of the joyful pieces, there’s a great deal of focus on being embedded in a body that enjoys a range of sensations. In interesting contrast, now I come to think of it, of the pieces that outline a body that creaks with pain and fatigue and difficulty. I’m very glad of this observation, for a number of reasons (not least being that, at the time of writing, I’m battling my body’s tendency to just be a texture of pain against, and moving through, a world that is unmoved by that static scrawl of “please, no”).

(My study smells quite compellingly of cardamom, for a start!)

This piece, while hesitant and shy, is still very warm, and I hope the smile it brings me can be echoed in you too, no matter how good or bad a day you’re having today.

This piece was very nearly something different, which is probably why it came last, but I was determined to draw at least one illustration for a piece in every section. Having already drawn four for Nature/ The Sea, and two for Whimsy, Joy looked like it was going to be left behind, but I finally decided what kind of pottery I was going to draw, and here it is. This is a quaich, and it comes from the Uig Pottery on the Isle of Skye. It is surprisingly small, and fits in the palm of my hand – a really pleasing weight and texture.

I probably wouldn’t know much about quaichs if it wasn’t for a somewhat impulsive trip back to Skye in 2005, this time to Uig, the port that opens up to the Islands via a number of ferries. I got to do a lot of walking, meet some really interesting people (including one of the potters), and experience exactly what it’s like to be able to hear nothing for literally miles around as you sit on a hillside, except for sheep, a dog down in the bay, and the ever-present gulls. I deliberately went up on the anniversary of my mother’s death, starting the ongoing tradition of Being Busy Around That Time (which often, with the timing of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, involves travelling to Scotland and/ or performing on stages. I think she’d have approved…).

I have a friend to whom we never got to say goodbye properly, due to, well [gestures vaguely around] All These Interesting Times. I think I’d like to drink a dram to her health (she loved a good whisky) from this cup sometime, hopefully down by the sea, in the company of good friends who loved her.

Once I’ve cleared the pods out, of course. That might be too experimental, even for her.

Hope you’ve enjoyed these glimpses at the book and the journey of creating the illustrations for it. There are a few more things lined up for you to become privy to but, for now, I’m going to have a couple of days off before I get stuck into making the audiobook…