The Hungry Years Revisited

I stand upon the shore of a wide sea
Whose unknown depths profound I soon must cross
When the last sand of life runs out for me.
The clouds have fled. I look back on my life
And find it brighter than I was aware.
David H. Smith (The Parting)

THE SEA VENTURE was a greasy spoon on the Harbour Road in Warwick, Bermuda, next to the Darrell’s Wharf ferry stop, and within walking distance of Warwick Academy where I was taking my GCE “O” Levels.

I never really mastered the art of studying for examinations; if I attended a class and took notes, that was it. I would not reread my notes or do further research from other sources, even if requested and required. I did not take schoolwork home. What I heard and remembered, and what lodged in my mind during the short time it took to summarise the lesson’s points in a few words, was all that I took into the hall or gymnasium where we sat in rows to write about Biology, or History, or Physics, or Chemistry. In fact, I sat eight “O” Level examinations and passed six, and only just managed those by the smallest margin. A year later I picked up the two GCEs I had failed at first: French and English.

Looking back forty-five years, I recall very little about the subjects, the information I was tackling so badly then. I do manage to revisit the classrooms, the looks of my fellow pupils, the teachers, and the layout of the rooms, the dust and the boredom. Right now I can picture my situation in every one of the forms I spent a school year in, and I sometimes dream of what might be thought the best years of my life, spent in grey trousers and a blazer in the winter, and khaki shorts and knee-socks in the warmer weather months. I would be hard-pressed to tell you much about Pythagoras’s Theorem now. In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Every schoolboy knows that, and that Henry VIII died in 1547. I must have been able to demonstrate that theorem in 1965, in a concise manner. One could not waffle about such things and get away with it.

I could tell anyone trapped by my words in 2010 (one would hope enthralled, dazzled by my genius) a fair bit about the Sea Venture restaurant on Harbour Road. Basically a hamburger joint, it began as a long, narrow room next to a shorter narrow room occupied by Betty’s Beauty Salon. The Sea Venture eventually nudged Betty out of the building and put a few tables where the accoutrements of the hairdressing business had been. The main room at the Sea Venture featured a long counter and one sat on uncomfortable stools there facing the Harbour. However, there were no windows, one looked around cake-stands at the grill and cupboards which housed the tools of the eatery business, and, I suppose, the comestibles that did not need refrigeration. There were three two-seater tables on the road side and one could look out at the passing traffic, but as I rarely went alone or with just one other person, we tended to sit at the counter or in the annexed room.

As a little boy, I’d been taken to the Sea Venture with my sisters on Sunday outings with my father. At home the only meats I recall having were chicken drumsticks, and minced beef made into a pie with onions and potatoes. We might have fish fingers on a Friday. My mother was a most unaccomplished cook. One of my sisters, to this day, tells me she believes our mother prepared nice food. That sister has inherited our mother’s and grandmother’s inabilities in the kitchen and I cannot eat the food she prepares. She can turn anything into sticks and sawdust. My father had not stayed with my mother longer than it took him to get residency status in Bermuda. Perhaps, if she had been able to prepare fine dinners he might have stayed longer. I imagine her bouts of insanity would have scared him off in time. My father never took us to the lodging house he might have been living in (I wonder if he was untidy, or ashamed at his situation) and, so, to the Sea Venture for a hamburger and a Coca Cola. We got to know the original owners of the restaurant, the DeCosta family, quite well.

The hamburgers at the Sea Venture were very good, juicy and not over-cooked, if not very large. One could not get a double burger in one bun, it was not on the menu, and Manny DeCosta would happily sell you two burgers on two buns, but he’d not fool with nature. The French fries, as they were listed in the menu, being what at home we called chips, were delicious and one lathered them with tomato ketchup from a plastic squeeze bottle. One could squeeze mayonnaise and mustard on the burger or hot dog one might order. Coca Cola or a milkshake to drink. They had pies and cakes for dessert, which could be served à la mode. If my father could be persuaded to part with another shilling, I’d have blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream. That did not happen very often.

Curiously, I managed to be awfully thin into my teen years, despite the burgers and fries and milkshakes. In fact, I was concerned that I was too scrawny and rowed a boat to try and build myself up. The exercise made no difference. I was introduced to steak, pork and beans covered in brown sugar, asparagus, and yams covered in marshmallows, and lavish desserts in the bountiful kitchen of friends, in my last year at Warwick Academy. I started to gain a little weight. I gained something more important: access to books, wonderful books, many, many books. That triggered a passion for reading that has not relented to this day. I often find myself skipping meals because I’m deep into a book. I can write while eating, but I cannot read and manipulate a knife and fork.

Manny DeCosta had sold the Sea Venture during my last year at Warwick Academy; the new owner, Carlos, another Portuguese fellow (we called them Gees, which is probably offensive), hiked the prices. With schoolmates skipping classes or at the end of lesson time I’d pop into the restaurant for French fries and a Coke. Burgers were too costly. I did find another burger joint across the Harbour in Hamilton. The Hawaiian Room had fishnets pinned to the ceiling, and nautical decor. Pretty ghastly, come to think of it. But I could rustle up the price of their Hawaiian Burger (it had a pineapple ring atop the beef patty) and a butterscotch sundae.

During my teens I was mowing lawns and washing dishes for a few pounds a week. Out of those few blue notes I managed to buy a long-playing record album for 31/6 (just over one-and-a-half pounds) and the odd shirt or pair of trousers. Odd, indeed. I was attracted to shirts with floral prints, low-slung denim jeans, suede waistcoats and outrageous flowered ties. I was growing my hair and starting the moustache that I have to this day.

As a child, in England, I’d sometimes go to Wimpy Bars. The little Wimpy burgers were the size of those at the Sea Venture, but, I thought, tasteless by comparison. At the Sea Venture one could ask for all sorts of add-ons: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, and get French fries with endless reserves of ketchup. In Bermuda there is an expression: “Don’t get foolish with the mayonnaise!” which means, I think, don’t go overboard with it. But it was a joke as everyone wanted as much mayonnaise as possible, and on anything.

I spent the summer holidays of 1971 in London, sub-letting an apartment in Earl’s Court. The apartment had an unpleasant and very small kitchen with a meter than was coin-operated. I made only coffee there. In Earl’s Court, near the subway entrance, was a new eatery called The Hungry Years. The frontage was striking: Embedded in the window glass somehow was a life-size picture of a bread-line from the 1930s. The sort of thing one associates more with North America than the UK, The Grapes of Wrath. I was drawn inside and found wood-panelled walls, a dark and quite large room. The Hungry Years served hamburgers. One could order the burgers by quarter-pound increments. One might have a quarter-pound patty (before cooking) on a roll, or a half-pound of meat. If you wanted a pound of beef, you could have it. The burgers were delicious and one could specify cooking time. Behind the bread-line on the windows the clientele stuffed themselves to the gills with what was probably more beef than was healthy.

I’d discovered McDonald’s hamburgers in the USA in 1970, and they were good. I eventually became a fan of the “Quarter Pounder with Cheese”. The burgers at The Hungry Years were better.

And in 1971, at the age of 21, I had my first anxiety attacks while in London. I never knew when I might be rendered immobile, there seemed no logic to it. One day I’d be racing around the English countryside in a friend’s roadster, or I’d be partying happily at a club till all hours, and then I’d try to step out for a morning paper and find myself vomiting on the pavement in a state of collapse. A year later the bad days had taken over, I had no good days.

As I finished school and blundered about in the accounting world, I felt compelled to search for the real meaning in life. For some reason, I thought psychedelics were that door to understanding everything. I wanted to know. I had to know. God might be anywhere. After my panic disorder set in, I looked to religion. A missionary posed the questions: Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? And these are good questions. Looking back, I think I’d have done well to ask other questions less sweeping, and might have built up my knowledge a little here, a little there, like GCE subjects, rather than accepting something branded The Word of God. However, I had some hunger for knowledge; if not the good sense to figure out what constitutes knowledge at the end of the day. I went for the biggest burger on the menu.

Some years later I was unwell to the point of being homeless. Not exactly without a roof over my head, except when I lost the plot completely, but in sheltered accommodation. That can be worse than sleeping on the beach or in a park or graveyard. I know. Some days and nights I just walked till I dropped. I ate mainly at a Salvation Army soup kitchen. The meals were nearly always spaghetti with three meatballs, and a reconstituted fruit drink. Only one meal a day. On Friday nights a wagon might bring soup and bread around the back streets. Always pea soup. On a Sunday night the Salvation Army kitchen was closed and a meal could be had at the Seventh-Day Adventist church hall. Always vegetables, no meat, sometimes a little pasta. I lost so much weight (over 50 lbs) that people did not recognise me. At the Seventh-Day Adventist hall the volunteers called me “Pops”. I was the only white person there, and must have looked beyond my years. I was not happy with my nickname.

I could afford to lose some weight, and I’m not sure that my hungry year did me much physical harm. Perhaps everyone should have a gap year like that? Looking back, I appreciate that my mind was well-stimulated by my difficult days.

Today I bring to the table experiences that I believe most of us have not enjoyed, or suffered. The big man cannot understand the hunger of the small man, though he might know the hunger of pure greed. To get bigger. Not just in matters of diet and physical size, but in philosophical matters, in business, in politics, in religion.

Happens I no longer eat meat. I won’t be looking for a better burger. I don’t smoke, haven’t for 30 years, but still dream I’m smoking and do crave a cigarette. And when I smell beef pies fresh from the oven at the Amble Butcher, or when the fragrance (the perfume!) of a bacon butty comes from Jasper’s Cafe, I find myself drooling. Like Pavlov’s dog. We all remember Pavlov’s dog, don’t we? Every schoolboy.

Revolution Counter Revolution

And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the Sabbath day that which is not lawful?
And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the showbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath:
St Mark 2 : 24-27

Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.
St Mark 2: 28

THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE sat at the western end of the very long table, his wife sat at the other end, facing him over the top of a silver cockerel centrepiece. The guests sat along the sides, facing each other. It was the mistress who was situated near the switch hidden under the carpet, and she could depress this with her foot and alert Dinah in the kitchen to the needs of the diners.

The courses were brought out, plates and platters and cutlery delivered up and removed, all controlled by the bell. Dinah prepared the food and served it silently, and the dinner table conversation was not interrupted. Dinah wore a uniform and soft-soled shoes so as not to disturb anyone.

I had fairly long and shaggy hair, and a reddish beard, and tended towards inexpensive clothes seen on sale in shop windows anywhere from Hamilton's Front Street to a High Street in England, and dear ties from Liberty of London’s archival collection.

The hosts’ daughter had invited her boyfriend, who was my close friend, and a few others to dinner. We had started the evening with drinks on the patio below the swimming pool, water splashing down through a dolphin's open mouth into a small fish pond. The younger folk chain-smoked and talked politics a little and Jesus a lot, and then moved on to Virginia (Woolf) and Tom (Eliot) and Vincent (van Gogh) who we all knew on a first-name basis.

We painted and wrote poetry. Pictures and words that seemed rather over-interested in embryos unborn and also adults in the womb, and angels falling, head first, to the Earth. I do not recall pictures of well-born, upstanding, healthy children or men and women. I cannot recall any angel rising to an occasion. Our pictures and words turned everything upside down. The colours tended to swirling purple and scarlet backgrounds and pasty flesh. Our generation was seeing this, I appreciate now, looking at old album covers. We painted and wrote with loud music playing, the sleeves of the records littering the rooms. I dare say much of the music was dark and mysterious at the time. Revisited, the music just might have been muddled.

I don’t ever recall drinking beer with my friends. It was not that I disliked the taste (I still cannot stomach it), we simply did not drink the stuff. We drank spirits, fancy cocktails if we could locate a bartender, Bacardi and Coke if we were at home. We did drink and drive. I never thought twice about hopping on my scooter after several lethal swizzles and some pills.

The first time I voted in a General Election (this in Bermuda) I went to the campaign headquarters of the political party that could best be described as Conservative in Britain, or Republican in the USA, after the polls had closed, and waited for the results to come in. No computers, no texts, just telephone calls from the counting places on the Island. And at some time after ten o’clock that night the man who would be Bermuda’s new Premier came into the room where many of us had gathered and said we had won. Actually, he seemed to be using the “royal plural” it seemed to me then. The man was not only the new Party Leader, but the first black Premier in Bermuda’s history. The whites had elected him in an unequal electoral system, the blacks did not celebrate. My father and my mother’s parents were not terribly fond of people of colour and did not know what to think.

In Bermuda, about forty years ago, the names of the ruling families were the same as sixty, eighty, a hundred, two hundred years ago: White families with considerable business interests, from banking to law to clothing to fine crystal. If you look at the roll in Bermuda’s current government, those same surnames appear. But something has happened: The leaders are black, they are the descendants of the slaves owned by the former white leaders, slaves who took their masters’ names. The blacks ruling Bermuda now are, for the most part, of a political sort that one might call Labour in the UK, or Democrat in America. That said, it should be pointed out that the successive black Labourite governments of the last thirteen years in Bermuda have lived well. Champagne Socialism in its most simple form. A small and newly privileged ruling class literally drinking champagne and having a Party-party at every opportunity, never mind recession or political morality. The only way such a clique can remain in office is to keep the voting population naive, to fool most of the people all the time.

In the past decade Bermuda has lost its tourism industry: The lovely hotels have gone and now cruise ships stop briefly so that passengers can buy a t-shirt manufactured in China and a fridge magnet, and go to the beach by bus if the weather is good (and if the buses are running). Something else has happened: Bermuda is now convulsed by gang warfare. In the eight months since 2010 began, seven people have been shot to death on the streets of Bermuda, over twenty have been shot and have survived (many others have been attacked with knives and machetes and clubs). I shall note that all of these deaths and gunshot victims have been black, and the generally younger men brought before the courts charged with gun-related crimes are also black. The witnesses, many of whom refuse to give evidence, seem to be black.

Before that dinner party so many years ago, my hosts had parted company with their cook, Dinah. I am not exactly sure what the reason was, whether there was any real fault or problem. My friend, back from boarding school, had found herself having to pitch in at home when it came to mealtime; it was all a bit chaotic. One day my friend telephoned me and asked if I would go with her to try and locate Dinah, she had no telephone, I'm not sure we knew her surname, but someone had come up with an address that might be helpful. Off we went on our mopeds and ended up in a neighbourhood that I’d not been in before. Bermuda was segregated in many ways then, not the least in housing. We were where poorer people of colour lived. We parked on the street and walked up to the door of a white house and knocked. Dinah answered the door. I had not met her before, and I stood back. My friend had a short conversation, then, all smiles, walked over to me and said Dinah was returning to work for her parents. Immediately.

The older folk must all be dead now, and the neighbourhood where Dinah had lived is now a no-go zone for not only whites, but for anybody who might be on the wrong side of the local gang.

I was very much a New Labour supporter back in 1997, and recall how thrilled I was when Tony Blair swept into office. It had been time (and then some) to get rid of the Tories. Of course, Blair let many (most?) of us down badly. I was certainly glad to see the back of him. Sadly (but not surprisingly) his successor, Gordon Brown, was just as bad as Blair. It was time to vote Labour out in 2010.

I tend to like the “outs” and hate the “ins” when it comes to politics. I do not like our Conservative-Liberal Coalition Government. However, for want of a better system, we had to vote Labour out to get rid of Gordon Brown. As E.M. Forster said: "Two cheers for democracy."

We had Beef Wellington at that dinner party I began this piece with, the wine, red, was an Aloxe-Corton, and we had brandied cherries over ice-cream for dessert. When it came time for coffee, the mistress of the house shuffled about in her seat. She seemed a bit agitated. Finally she called out towards the door to the pantry: “Dinah, are you there?” Dinah came through. The switch under the carpet had jammed; the bell had not rung in the kitchen. It’s always something.

As Big as a Bread Bin, Perhaps

Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?
William Shakespeare (King Richard II, Act III, Scene II)

THERE IS A GOOD DEAL to be said for product placement. A seduction by the truth has just been brought home to me when I searched online for the quotation above from Shakespeare's Richard II. At the top of the screen was an advertisement for a national bakery chain. Could it have been linked to my search for the key word "bread"? Delicious, convenient, less expensive.

I'm not sure whether Shakespeare intentionally inserted the phrase "I live with bread like you" as a reminder that King Richard II, after his forced abdication and the accession of Henry IV, was imprisoned in Pontefract Castle where he was intentionally starved to death. His heart most likely gave out on 14 February 1400. Unhappy Valentine's Day.

The Forme of Cury, a collection of recipes, was the first English cookbook, and was compiled by King Richard's Master Cook. Richard surely must not have handled his dying very well. The King enjoyed a good meal. He might have envied his great-grandfather's fiery end. That would be Edward II.

But I digress, as always.

I live a few doors down from the only real bakery in Amble. There is another chain bakery outlet further down which has goods delivered each morning, brought in from who-knows-where. They have no aroma though. Lost somewhere on the motorway? Our minimart has bread and bakery items trucked in as well, for some reason most of these come from France. "Consumers please note this product may contain traces of frog and/or snail." Our nearest supermarket, ten miles inland, has fluffy white breads if you like that sort of thing. I don't. It's not even fit to chum fish or feed the jackdaws.

I like a locally baked (just this morning) (still warm from the oven) (fragrant) (soft) (crispy crust) (tasty) (whole wheat) (reasonably priced) loaf. I buy a small loaf twice a week, and have the counter girl slice it in medium slices, which are the thinnest (go figure) one can get nowadays. I pay £0.85 for a loaf. A large loaf to last seven days would work out less expensive, but I like the freshness of two smaller loaves, one on a Friday, one on a Tuesday.

My grandmother, the one who lived much of her life in Bermuda, bought a loaf of whole wheat bread, thicker slices than I prefer, once a week. Actually, because the Crow Lane Bakery was not close enough for Grandmother to walk to once she became truly elderly (she lived to be 104 and ate bread till the end), I was the bread-buyer. The Crow Lane Bakery was situated in the middle of a traffic nightmare and I hated trying to get to it by vehicle or on foot. However, I do understand my grandmother's dedication to the small-town bakery product.

Amble's Bread Bin Bakery is smaller than Bermuda's Crow Lane. The bread is better. Like the Crow Lane, there are other items: Sausage rolls, scones, pies, fairy cakes, fruit loaves, sandwiches, waters and fruit drinks and colas, honey, jams and marmalades, and gingerbread cookies, and more.

I sometimes get a sausage roll for lunch, or a prawn sandwich, and an orange drink. If I'm having company I'll buy some plain cake and a Victoria sponge. But I'm really a bread customer. The girls know what I'll be wanting, I think. I should ask for something completely different: Perhaps a tea cake for toasting. I don't have much time left to bamboozle them with that request, the building the Bread Bin is located in was sold to a developer last week, the new owners did not want the business, and the employees have just been told they will be out of work at the end of January.

I shall miss the counter staff, certainly, but it is the small town, right-out-of-the-oven whole wheat loaf on a Tuesday and Friday that I shall really miss. My Dad had a bread-making machine at the end of his too-short life (he'd have been my present age when he got it). If I could get the recipe for the Bread Bin's whole wheat loaf, and got a machine…

I wonder. I'm not very mechanical, but necessity being...

CAILEAN'S FIRST CHRISTMAS

WE WENT TO BED EARLY last night, and then woke at midnight. A quick walk outside (cold, a bit foggy), then we settled in the front room, the little fibre-optic tree switched on, and the electric fire that looks like burning coals (those were the days!) taking the chill off.

I gave Cailean his very first-ever Christmas present. A fuzzy, green slipper of his very own (hopefully mine will no longer go missing and turn up under the bathroom mat or nudged behind something) which he ran around with, at top speed, for about 15 minutes. I made a mug of Horlicks, for I am old.

Then Cailean napped on the sofa, keeping the slipper close by, and I watched the movie The Narnia Chronicles: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe which is a favourite (remember reading the stories 45 years ago?) and is certainly relevant to the Christmas season.

The people upstairs were awake. They had some rather glorious Christmas carols playing on their stereo, but not too loud for comfort down here.

A couple of hours later, we went back to bed with the soft buzz of Horlicks, slippers and Aslan to send us straight off to sleep.

I'm going out to Christmas dinner with friends just after noon. We will, no doubt, watch HM The Queen's Annual Christmas Message on the telly at three o'clock. We got our first television in about 1959. I'm not sure whether the Queen's Message aired in Bermuda that year, but I've watched it in Bermuda and in England for about 50 years. Before that, we listened on the radio. It's a very nice tradition.

Growing up in Bermuda, Christmas dinner was on Christmas Eve: my grandparents, my Uncle Harry and his family, and our dear friends Margaret & Joe came every year. Turkey, ham and vegetables, roast potatoes, then sherry trifle. I recall the year I moved up from the small table to the main event. After dinner we walked through the citrus orchard to my Uncle Jack's house for eggnog and a slice of cassava pie. My sisters and I opened our gifts on Christmas morning. Always a big tin of Quality Street Chocolates from Mr & Mrs Coddington. The choccie in the purple wrap was, and still is, my favourite. Our spaniel of that year usually had a red or green bow attached to her collar. Not something my little dachshund would tolerate in 2008.

Christmas Day was quiet, leftovers to pick at, books to read, telephone calls and the Queen's Message. Sometimes my father would come by and we'd visit with him for an hour or two ... a drive in his car and we'd find a little cafe open somewhere and have a milkshake (usually too expensive an option, but it was Christmas).

On Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, we'd be ferried somehow to my Uncle Harry's home for the afternoon. More eggnog and cassava pie, and another sit-down meal in the evening.

It's a wonder my sisters and I were not fat children, you might think. However, be assured that this was probably the only time of year when we exceeded our RDAs of anything.

My parents have been dead well over a decade, my grandparents are gone, Harry's and Jack's wives, my Aunt Anne and Aunt Brenda, have passed away, Joe left this life in the 1990s, the Coddingtons as well. Our spaniels were brief candles.

Of course, I returned to the UK, as did my youngest sister and her family. My other sister is anticipating (most keenly) her first grandchild in a few weeks' time, her daughter lives in the south of England and I wonder if my sister and brother-in-law can stand to be 3,000 miles away for long. This baby, a girl according to the ultrasound, would be my parents' first great-grandchild had they lived, and my grandparents' first great-great grandchild.

For Cailean, this is a first Christmas. He's only nine months old. In just a moment, we are going to walk out in the village for an hour. We'll most likely bump into some of his friends, dogs and people, as they get their exercise before lunch.

My flat is next to a little Catholic church with a very long name (let's not leave out a single local saint!) and I can hear singing there, through the fog. Christmas morning mass.

Isn't it remarkable that in this crazy world, the only sounds at this moment are carols in the mist? Christian or not, you'd have to like that.

Merry Christmas, Cailean. Merry Christmas, one and all!

BANAPPLE LOAF

Not for those on a strict diet, I'm guessing

YIELD
1 loaf, 15 servings/slices

INGREDIENTS
2 ¼ cups self-raising flour
¾ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup light brown sugar
¼ cup butter (softened)
2 large eggs
1 cup mashed well-ripened bananas
1 cup softened, diced apples (Bramley, if possible)
¾ cup crème fraiche
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

PREPARATION
Well-butter and flour a loaf tin (8 ½" x 4 ½")
Preheat oven to 180°C (350°)

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl.

Place sugar and butter in another large bowl; beat together with a mixer, at medium speed, for a minute. Add eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Add banana, apple, crème fraiche and vanilla; beat until well-blended. Add flour mixture gradually, beating at low speed until just moist. Spoon the batter into the buttered/floured loaf tin.

Bake at 180°C for 1 hour, then check to see if a wooden pick inserted in centre comes out clean. If not, give it another 5 - 10 minutes, resting some aluminium foil over the top of the loaf if the crust seems well-done. After removing loaf tin from oven, cool 10 minutes on a wire rack before removing loaf from tin. Completely cool loaf on wire rack. Wrap in cling film and store in refrigerator. It tastes better a day later, spread with butter.

Pie

MY MOTHER HAS VISITED ME a few times this past fortnight. When she turns up I'm always aware that, even as we converse and interact, she is quite dead and has been since September of 1992. Death has not calmed her down; she's as manic as ever and just as difficult to cope with. Still, I enjoy the visits and I appreciate that she's always gone by the time I wake up. No lingering ghost steaming up the mirrors or making the curtains billow when there isn't a breeze.

When my mother was alive, she was something of a responsibility, rather than responsible. Manic depressive, with periods of complete fantasy and what was, at times, insanity, my mother struggled to be any sort of a parent at all. As bad luck would have it, she was forced to be a single parent long before that was a common, almost popular, way to raise up one's children.

I'm not sure that my mother did anything wrong, at least not intentionally, and not of her own volition. She was manoeuvred by her family members who felt she needed to be more assertive. My mother also tended to believe, having been told to do so, anything that was said by someone who appeared to be in authority. She believed that titles and badges and signs on office doors were everything, perhaps not bothering to really evaluate the person behind them. So she did not question things, or draw her own conclusions, but acted on those pressed upon her. That's how it goes.

Looking back now, at an age my mother only surpassed by about six years, I think I can safely say my mother was not a capable parent, and some might say she was not a good parent. My opinion is that she did her best, which was a real struggle for her emotionally (she was, after all, mentally ill), physically (she was a grand-mal epileptic, relying on considerable amounts of drugs), financially (at times she was penniless), and ability-wise (she couldn't cook, didn't drive, didn't read after she left school).

My mother would get ideas into her head and wouldn't let go of them, no matter how annoying, peculiar or unhealthy. When we were quite young, she suddenly decided that it was easier to fling the kitchen trash, item by item (cartons, bottles, bags, vegetables that had gone off, egg shells) onto the back patio. There was a bin in the back garden for these items, but my mother thought they could be gathered up every few days and binned, there was nothing wrong with letting things lie about on the lawn. I did not, and do not, understand how anyone who had a trash-can only 15 feet from the kitchen door could come to such a conclusion about refuse disposal. Particularly when she chucked the things over the top of the bin to get them to land on the patio.

We also had to live with African violets. My mother was mad for African violets, though she had no success in growing them. There were pots all over the house. Now, I have a few plants in my flat now, I like indoor plants, but I do not have my kitchen counters covered in dozens and dozens of plant pots, crammed up against each other, so that there is hardly any room on the counter for something useful, like a cutting board or bread-bin.

Dish-washing was interesting. My mother believed that washing-up water should be boiled and poured into the sink (this was before machines, of course). On the face of it, boiling water for the dishes sounds healthy. However, that's where she lost the plot. Our electric kettle was small, probably holding less than a quart of liquid, which was hardly enough to wash dishes, so my mother then topped up the sink with water from the tap. Which was cold. Dishes were not, by the way, rinsed. They were washed with a bar of Ivory Soap, and our dishes and utensils seemed to have that flavour.

I could go on and on. Perhaps I should not be trashing my mother at this stage of the game. I offer the information more as a warning to others. Given modern medications, treatments and social programmes, chances are few people need be quite as peculiar as my mother. If you or your loved ones, or not-so-loved ones, seem to be acting a tad odd from time to time, have a chat with someone about it. What? Me crazy?

For all the hassle, most of my memories of my mother are fairly bland. We got away with a good deal, we had wonderful days as children, we attended the best school, we had clean clothes (though often hand-me-downs or second-hand store purchases), we had books and record albums, money for the movies, we were hardly reined in. I have, personally, some splendid memories of my mother having fun, which she only ever did, it seems to me, away from Bermuda. I'm going to say it: Away from her own parents. She really could fall about laughing at times, found things fascinating, took dares and while she lived totally in the present, never speaking of anything that had happened before, seemed incapable of doing so, she could chatter on about something we might be looking at (a film, a play, an animal in the zoo, a gravestone, a monument, a view) intelligently and in great detail, at that moment. It would be gone the next day.

My mother, if I was not in the same country that she was in, or was some distance from her, wrote to me at least once a week. Telephone calls were too expensive. I am a writer of letters, perhaps as a result of her example or influence, and I'm glad about that. I use the telephone as well, but that's the difference between 1968 and 2008.

A memory that tells something about my mother that I'm not sure she was aware of herself. We were not at all well off and our diet, I think, suffered from variety and my mother's failure as a competent cook. She could not make what food we had tasty or interesting, perhaps because she used no herbs or spices. She made do with a great deal of salt, and a very little white pepper. That was it. No flavourings, extracts or essences. No powders, granules or leaves. Just salt. The rare and special dish we'd have was a meat pie, made in a shallow Pyrex dish, lined with my mother's own plain pastry, using hamburger, a few sliced potatoes, an onion and maybe a pat of butter, pastry over the top. The pie was pretty dry, but it was beef and I like onions. Some gravy would have been fabulous, but it didn't happen. Ever.

My mother would slice up the pie amongst the four of us (I have two sisters that I grew up with) and she would always, always, cut a very small piece for herself, nowhere near a quarter, and then cut the remainder into three equal portions. Did she do that on purpose? Was she aware that beef was a treat for us? That we probably could do with the nutriments in red meat? That we might otherwise become anaemic on our diet of boiled chicken, over-cooked cabbage and tatties?

I made a meat pie last night. I use almost two pounds of Angus beef that I cube, fresh mushrooms, onions, parsnips and baby carrots. I make a sauce using beef stock and double cream, I use lots of herbs and spices and little salt, and my crust is flaky pastry. I prefer a deep clay dish to a Pyrex pie dish. The first serving is more than sufficiently moist, but when I reheat the leftovers (I have plenty, I prepare food for several meals at a time to save time, energy and money), I usually have an onion gravy as well. Served with chips or rice.

I wish, I really wish, my mother could stop by long enough for a slice of pie, a big, generous slice. However, in my dreams I don't seem to make pies when my mother is visiting. It may be that, after all, she made the better pie.