Apricot and Coconut Teabread and 9/11

Monday

23^rd July 2001

Apricot and Coconut Teabread

At this time I was still teaching in London and struggling in every day, spending the weekends and evenings lying on the sofa because my back was so painful due to the accident we had in August 1999.

Oven: 170 Middle shelf for about 1 hour

Ingredients:

12 oz SR Flour

pint salt

4 oz sugar

5 oz chopped (snipped) apricots

2 oz desiccated coconut

zest of 1 lemon(originally I had written rind but I now have a zester and it is better!)

4 eggs

150 ml cream/yoghurt/milk

2 oz melted butter

1. Mix the flour, salt, sugar, coconut, apricots and lemon zest in a bowl.
2. Whisk together eggs, cream and melted butter.
3. Add to the dry ingredients making a soft dropping consistency adding more milk if necessary.
4. Bake in a well greased 2 lb loaf tin.
5. Turn out and drizzle icing over (icing sugar and boiling water mixed to a smooth consistency) and add snipped apricots on top.

This is a lovely cake eaten warm. It is very crumbly and moreish and very good with a cream tea.

This must have been the beginning of the Summer Holidays as I am cooking on a Monday, and probably celebrating the fact that I don't have to hobble into school. Shall I tell you the story of how I left teaching?

It was the 11^th September, 2001, just after this summer holiday. I was teaching in my classroom on the ground floor.

I had insisted that they move my classroom as it was becoming so difficult for me to climb the stairs, and I had also insisted that they let me have a chair for assemblies as I couldn't stand for more than 5 minutes without pain. At this time things were going from bad to worse. Every now and again I would have a muscle spasm in my back that was so painful I would cry, and one day in the supermarket … well never mind. All you need to know is that things were getting worse.

In the afternoon one of my students came into my classroom. Beside teaching, being Head of Humanities and having a form class, I also taught student teachers, he was one and not one of the best. It is best not to have silly hair when you are trying to become a teacher, especially if you put a bag over the braids every day. I am not joking. Only in London – right on chaps!

He said 'Some Arabs have highjacked a plane.'

I said 'Grass is green, sky is blue, Arabs highjack planes. Why are you telling me this?' Now he looked shocked and it is only recently that I have come to realise that there had been precious little highjacking of planes in the 90s, it was a 70s and 80s phenomenon and I was old enough to remember it.

The lesson finished and I went into the office to watch the planes hitting the towers. We all watched in silence, over and over again. I picked up my coat, said goodbye and went home.

I went next day to the doctor who had been telling me for a good while to stop work, as my back was getting worse. He signed me off to Christmas, then to Easter and I finally got my pension at 51. God is good.

The planes that day changed so many lives. I myself realised that life was too short to keep on keeping on at something that was making me worse. I had been spending lots of time dreaming about a bed and breakfast in Glastonbury, planning the rooms, the colours, the names. At the time I had been studying with Kathy Jones – year one was the introductory priestess course (1999-2000) and year two was ceremonies and rituals (2000-2001). After I left the school I began the devotional course, which was wonderful, and then in 2002 the course for bringing imagination into reality – I had already used this for the bed and breakfast. But I had left by Imbolc 2002.

Sometimes I miss the Goddess Movement a lot. I wish I could find a way to bring the strands of my beliefs together, to teach the good stuff from each. What would I have?

Worldwide Faith Cake

Buddhism – concentration, calm and awareness of the present moment

Hinduism – devotion, goddesses for all, non-violence, Gandhi

Goddess – the Divine as Feminine, the Wheel of the Year, women sitting in circle, the land

Sikhism – community, feeding the hungry, courage

Catholicism – mystery, deep scholarship and spirituality,

mysticism, prayer, saints and angels, freely giving teaching, service to all.

All these divisions, it is very sad indeed. I was very happy with the Goddess Movement until I realised that they too were bigoted and lacked peace for all. Shall I tell you that story too? Well I will, but later on.

Gooseberry and Redcurrant Jelly and Cailleach and the Getting of Wisdom

Now we have the recipes and the stories!


Sunday 24^th June 2001
Gooseberry and Redcurrant Jelly


'Today we picked the gooseberries and it was a lovely crop – 5 pounds already from one bush. (Stoke Road)
I froze 4 half pound bags, made a crumble with some and added 2.5 lbs of gooseberries to 1.5lbs of redcurrants with 1.5 pints of water. I boiled it for ½ – ¾ hour and am now straining the juice for jelly though a pillowcase into the big glass bowl. More later.'


'Today (Monday) I boiled the juice (1.75 pints) with 1.75 lbs of sugar and it made 3 pots of jelly. Very wasteful of fruit but a beautiful colour and very clear. Tip: Never squeeze the jelly bag it makes the juice cloudy.'






You will be glad to know that I bought a jelly bag after this, consigning the pillowcases to the beds, or the rubbish bin, and have made good use of it over the years. Sometimes there is a glut of apples, especially here in Avalon, and I made apple jelly and add mint with spiced vinegar, or sage, or other herbs. They are better left for a good three months so that the herbs infuse through the apples.


Shall I tell you my apple story? At one time, when we first came to Glastonbury, I was in the Goddess Movement before I went back to the Church. After we had moved into AppleTree House in Autumn 2002 to run the bed and breakfast we had made some apple nectar with the last of the Bramley apples and I had taken it all to a ceremony for Samhain that year.




I was Cailleach that day, and stirred the apple nectar in a cauldron over a fire. One by one the priestesses came along a line of black veiled and gowned figures who were scrying into the future and speaking prophetically to each woman.


Finally each one came to me, sitting alone behind a screen, to be given apple nectar and Cailleach's words, or not. Sometimes I didn't speak at all to them. Anyway, as I was sitting gowned in my black velvet cloak with my hood up and stirring the cauldron I heard a Voice in my head.



'What do you want?'


This Voice had not been heard so clearly by me for a long, long time. It wasn't asking 'what do you want?' as if you had knocked on a door, but more 'what is it you need – ask for anything and you can have it.'


I knew what the answer to this question should be, I had read my Bible a lot as a girl and I had been an R.E.Teacher. Even so, I kept on thinking – money, health, grandchildren, etc. etc.


Finally the voice spoke again with huge impatience -


'Hurry up.'


This made me laugh a lot inside and I said


'Wisdom',


which of course is always the right answer to this question – see Solomon!


Wisdom is also Sophia, the Female energy principle, the Holy Spirit within Judaism and the place where the Goddess Movement meets the Church, and one day the men in dresses will recognise this!


Within four months I had left Kathy and the priestesses and had been welcomed back into Mother Church. She always welcomes you back, and sighs when you leave again. But She knows you will one day come back for good.



Always ask for wisdom, if you are given the choice, that is my recommendation! As with Solomon, everything else will probably come along with it, eventually anyway, God be praised.