I’m always fascinated at the supermarket – every time we go there’s a new range of goods – often variations of what we already have – seven or eight varieties of canned beetroot. 101 varieties of salad dressing. 202 varieties of breakfast cereals, as used by every cartoon character ever known, including every sports person in the history of humanity. Macro-biotic organic home-made gluten free carbon friendly not tested on animals condoms. Now with lime. Not licorice.

It’s been my experience that people are generally pretty conservative about what new tastes they are prepared to try. They go to restaurants and order the same as what they’d have at home. I’m the same too, I guess – new flavours take some time to be bedded down into our taste bud’s repertoire. The comfort zone.

By the way, speaking of comfort zones, should you need the recipe for licorice bagels, it is the same recipe as used for ‘Burn the House Down’, ‘Another Crisis Averted’, and the ever popular, ‘Lucky Escape’.

Manifesto
02. Every day is an opportunity for a new beginning.
09. Every day learn something new.
21. Every day seek the support of others. You are not alone.

Fear is a slinking cat I find beneath the lilacs of my mind. — Sophie Tunnell

Every year we would take bunches of lilac flowers to Bestamor for her birthday. My father loved them too. Given that she, he, and I share the same birthday it seems perfectly reasonable that I should love them too. We used to have a huge bush of them – I can remember lying on the grass and staring up at the leaf canopy with the pinpoints of sunlight spotting through. Lilacs are deciduous, and yet I don’t remember the bush being anything other than leaf green and flowering in time for our birthdays.

Mum used to make us a cake for our birthdays – how she found the time to do this I do not know – the things you do for love. The cake was always a legendary work of cake decorating art – driven by my obsession with detail and fidelity. So there was the seal cake. Yes, Mum somehow carved cakes into a seal and iced it, complete with a ball (see also: xmas decoration) on its nose, with licorice slivers for whiskers. There was a pineapple cake – it stood upright and incorporated an actual green leafy bit off a real pineapple. To make the the patterns in the ‘skin’ Mum dipped the spoon end of a teaspoon into some sort of food colouring and then pressed the shape into the yellow icing. Imagine!

We would load the cake carefully into the boot of the car, along with the bunches of lilacs, a couple of cowboy novels for my Bestafar, and whatever other treats and trophies were to hand, and head off to my grandparent’s farm. Their farm provided a fantastic opportunity for me to go off by myself (for hours) exploring. If I work at it I can recall the morning smells of the lilacs, Bestafar’s Havelock Dark tobacco, the lemon oil of the furniture polish, and Bestamor’s coffee, and transport myself back there. When I do, the slinking cat is gone.

Manifesto
18. Every day express love. Some people need to hear it. Most people need to see it. Don’t take it for granted.
30. Every day use all your senses. Touch. Smell. Taste. Hear. See.
44. Every day remember how far you have come.