Roast chicken salad

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca¹

Except instead of a spooky building in storm-tossed Cornwall, it was the suburban semi in Woking where I grew up. I dreamt of my Isis-cat draped across my chest, purring so hard she drooled, while I tickled under her chin.² I told her I missed her, and how much I had wanted to hear her purr again, and I woke up with tears dampening my pillow.

Dreaming of my childhood home inevitably had me thinking about my childhood, which was not a particularly happy one thanks to years of bullying and a hyper-critical mother, which combined to leave me feeling like I would never be good enough for anyone.

One of the few places I was happy was in the kitchen with my dad, a keen cook, learning how to prepare various veg, flip pancakes (“oh dear, that one didn’t work, we’ll have to eat it”), fry sausages, and dozens of other crucial tasks.

Dad was also an enthusiastic gardener, with a fondness for rare and heritage vegetables, particularly if they came in non-standard colours. I fondly remember salads of red lettuce, purple carrots, yellow tomatoes, and pink spring onions: normal coloured salads strike me as lacking in creativity to this day.

Autumn was always a race against time to freeze, pickle, or otherwise preserve the garden’s bounty. Even now, autumn to me has the scent of boiling vinegar. (For the record, summer smells of frying chips, sea air, and a hint of raw sewage (that’s 20 years of living in Portsmouth), winter of mincemeat and hot plastic (the first is obvious, the second a mystery to me too), and spring of nothing in particular. I had a while to think about this while trying to get back to sleep after my Isis dream.)

Today saw lots of complaining from mum about there being too much going on, and to be fair she had a point. I am, as usual, pretty knackered, but can record the wins of getting and setting up my new phone (I’m writing this on it), hosting mum’s friend, with whom mum chatted quite happily despite not really remembering who she was, seeing a nice engineer get our internet speed up to something vaguely usable, and putting away lots of groceries.

On that last one, after squeezing our freezers full, we were tragically left with half a tub of coffee ice cream and a fruit cheesecake that just didn’t fit in round all the ice. (We really do need to get a new freezer.) What were we to do? 🥄😋

Dinner was a butter-basted chicken breast joint from Iceland (tasty, but small enough that the leftovers are just enough for sandwiches tomorrow and not for the curry I was planning) with salad, followed by the aforementioned cheesecake. Minimal effort for a decent amount of yum.

Sadly no photos as I forgot, which is a pity as one of the main reasons I got this phone was because it has a good camera. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow.

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1. Which might give the erroneous impression that I’ve read Rebecca. It’s on my list. ↩︎
2. Which is what gave away that it was a dream, as Isis’ mother’s mother was probably barely born when I moved to Portsmouth. ↩︎