we’re all animals, afterall

Who’d have thought it? Eleven girls – sorry, ladies – one leisure vessel, optimistically named the “Random Harvest” and one very happy skipper, Andy.

A choppy sea, bolshy skies, a bucket full of Pimms. Bouncing pink balloons, jostling along the bow. Random it may have been, but as for harvest? All signs pointed to a guaranteed drought.

Mackerel hunting rods launched and spinners flickered weakly with the prospect of a dunking in the English channel – autumnal on an August day.

Fishing, they say, is a waiting game. A sport of patience, calculated idleness, concordance with mother nature and the grace to know when a day is a day and that an empty net means an empty plate.

Ah, so you thought.

No sooner had the hen whipped up her shirt and flashed her sunkissed baps at the passing fishermen did the harvest come tumbling in. Oh how we feasted that evening.

Nature is, indeed, a bountiful giver.

jam making junkie englishmen

Last night was spent making my first ever batch of elderflower cordial and a few rounds of sinful, puffy elderflower fritters. I did everything they say you shouldn’t and they turned out amazingly. Beginners’ luck, I suppose. The cordial should be ready to strain tomorrow, golden and summery and very, very English…

One of the (few) ingredients in the cordial is citric acid. It’s not as easy to buy as it once was, on account of it being one of the (few) ingredients in a heroin junkie’s teaspoon of dark joy. The trouble with this is that, whilst clearly a necessary piece of legislation, it also means that every jam-maker, cordial conjurer and summer-fruit potting wizard must queue at the pharmacy counter to secure their little 50 gram baggy of the not-so-hard stuff. Up and down the country, apron-wearing jolly pudding makers and possibly not quite so rotund junkies stand in the same line, waiting in turn for the same potion to make their different spoonfuls tastier. Or maybe this only happens in city pharmacies.

The irony wasn’t lost on me as I stood and waited. I looked around for surveillance, searched for an immigration-hall-type trick mirror and generally built up jam angst. How can they tell, anyway? When my turn came, I – inexplicably overcome by naughty shame – completely over-compensated for not being a junkie and excused myself for being a cordial-making beginner at citric acid procurement.

The 16 year old behind the counter mumbled something and disappeared into the hallowed area where the huge rotating Christmas tree of drugs is kept. Bingo.

The elderflowers were easier to find, once out of London – a geographical situation that, I imagine, is the exact opposite for class A narcotics. Gripped by early summer fever and fresh from picking our bounty (along the main road, oops, but in the countryside nevertheless), David, overcome by the poetic loveliness of an English June day, came up with the ultimate appropriate anathema to the picturesque scene: Chap My Ride.

Roll over pimps. It’s time to tweed the steering wheel, Chesterfield the seats and install the G&T hamper. Eldeflower cordial and teaspoons optional, old chaps.

ZULU TIME

The Met office always operates on GMT – their clocks never move forwards nor backwards: in the summer their lunches are slightly late and they always miss rush-hours.

In the Forces, time is alphabetical – GMT is Zulu time, continental Europe (+1) is Alpha time and so on. It helps to be both a numbers and words man there. It also helps to carry a bottle of Tobasco on exercise.

In the Islamic mindset of the Middle East, the year is 1430. A little behind spiritually, perhaps, but with such futuristic vision (architecturally, or perhaps just acquisitionally) that things balance out nicely. They are, like the rest of the world, firmly gripped by the recession of 2009.

In England, we shift time so that farmers can plough and little children can get to school safely. Big nights merge into bigger days in the summer and ‘days’ in winter are best endured, fuzzy and warm, in the dark belly of a pub.

In India, once upon a time, many stamp wielding men with thick glasses and lacquered side-partings decided to set a single, national time at half past the hour. This makes little difference to the rest of the non-air-travelling world but all the difference to, oh, say, Pakistan.

In Ecuador (and Gabon and, um, Halmahera and so on) there are disconcerting places where you can stand at midday without casting any shadow. Like ghosts, memories, acid trips and daydreams.

How is it that I know all these tick-tock timey facts and am always, yet always late? It is, to me, one of life’s great quantum mysteries.