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.

lagged

Air-travel without the journey, plane, airport or destination - NEW for this summer time!

Get all the holiday-induced jetlag you could ever envy by living in the UK when the clocks change. For optimal results, make sure you are domicile (or on a long-term visit) over the last weekend of March when, all of a sudden, hour hands across the nation unceremoniously slide an extra hour down clock faces.

I had to scrape myself out of bed this morning – my maladjusted bodyclock thought it was 06:15, afterall, and getting to sleep last night was a long process, my mind refusing to shut down an hour earlier. I am not hungry but the flashing red digits on our oversized newsroom clocks tell me it is time for my lunch break.

On one hand, this is the beginning of the loveliness that is BST – lazy afternoons that slip idly away at 10pm and busy, bright mornings that awake youthfully early.

On the other hand, one hour’s time change means it’ll take 24 hours to recalibrate my internal rythyms and feel normal once again, according to NASA. It’s jetlag, without the jet. But, like most holidayish components, it’s worth it.