05.09.2008

I remember the first time I ate an artichocke, and how it seemed, in front of my first boyfriend's parents, like running some sort of class gauntlet: another thing to add to my inadequacies, along with mnot speaking french or playing tennis, ever having been inside an Italian church, or more than a handful of times inside a theatre. It was also a revelation, a first falling in vegetable love, and every time I remember it I want to go to a market straight away and buy an artichocke big as a fist and go home and eat it in private, oil and vinegar smeared all over my face and a growing pile of leaves around me like a halo.

04.10.2008

I remember the first time I had a barbeque, and my irrational fear that it would result in the death of one of my friends.

1.09.2008

I remember taking on the back garden like a machete-man takes on the jungle, all flailing limbs and determination. Somewhere near the back, half strangled by a honeysuckle gone ferral, was a quince tree my mum had planted and trained up against a wall. Standing there in weak march sunshine, sweaty and scratched and tired and triumphant, I noticed the plant ties she must have put there once and I felt close to her like I haven't since before she died, since I was a child nestling against her on a sunday morning with the smell of sleep and instant coffee.

27.08.2008

I remember what it was like to be small enough to fit in a washing up bowl. The washing up bowl was red and had a ridge round the edge just big enough to run a toy car along, with handles making nifty little hump-backed bridges.