My dear friend

I hope this letter finds you in a spirit of FriYAY.

When I texted FriYAY to Adrian, he texted back, ‘Have you been on LinkedIn?’

I had not, as it happens, been on LinkedIn, although I have visited it regularly over the last little while. I (re)joined LinkedIn a month or so ago because apparently that’s where you have to hang out when you’re looking for a job these days. No job has yet revealed itself to me as the job in which I will be employed; and I am certain that the general truth that women in their fifties find it hard to find a job is also my personal truth.

Not that I had time for a job this week anyway, because I was too busy lying on the couch and feeling sorry for myself. My body was tender and my spirit melancholy. And while I tried to use the time to finish Wolf Hall I still have 150 pages of that endless book to go. I am determined to finish it before the end of FriYAY. Which leaves me just a few hours after I get this in the post to you. I will sit in front of the fire and read until it is done. I thought I might finish it last night, but I made the mistake of ‘going to bed early to read’ which meant I read a few pages but then went to sleep.

While I did spend a lot of time on the lounge this week, I did also do a bit of writing work. I am starting on a New Writing Project. And because I have a lot of ideas and concepts in my brain, I am trying to get all my thoughts In Order. I have scraps of plots, lightly sketched characters, turns of phrase, themes, topics, formats, all of them fighting for space and me not quite knowing how they all fit together. To try and help myself on my way, I am sifting through all of my notes (hardcopy and virtual) trying to work out exactly what it is I want to Finish next. (I didn’t say Start because goodness knows, I’ve started enough things, it’s time to get some finished).

As I was sifting through things, I came across a little piece that I wrote for my blog. I must have had a plan for it to go with something else because I’d copied it into a document which is enormous and called—accurately but unhelpfully—A Lot of Things.

This little piece is from 2006, back in the days when my life was much, much harder than it is now. Back in the days when I most definitely did not have the head space to read Wolf Hall. Back in the days when I would have loved an opportunity to lie on the couch and recover. It is, as they say in the classics, a piece that has gone from the charts but not from my heart, because as hard as those days were I’m grateful for them. I’m not grateful for their hard-ness, but for the many moments of softness that you somehow only get when life is hard. Life, eh?

The plan I had for this has long since been forgotten, though I do remember that I had half a mind to get it printed on tea towels. Instead of making that ridiculous idea come true, I thought I would instead share the little piece of writing with you. Here it is:

White Sauce

To make a really, really crap white sauce you should first spend the entire day shouting at your children. You should take care in particular to shout such things as ‘I said don’t shout at me’. This last should be done in the backyard so that you can be sure you sound like a complete idiot to people you have never met. Your hair should be at the exact length and at the exact time in the washing cycle where it hangs in your eyes but can not be brushed away. You should be wearing clothes which did not have one last wear in them, and should have been put in the washing last night.

Take your saucepan out of the sink and wash out the guck from two nights before. Use the dishcloth which is starting to get that certain feel and that certain smell. Don’t make the saucepan sparkling clean, just clean enough so that you can be fairly sure you won’t get botulism. Leave the cloth in a wet mess on the bottom of the sink to be dealt with later on.

Just before you are about to pour in the milk, answer the phone even though no one you know or love would be ringing at this time. Let the person on the other end make you feel badly for cutting them short. Have another glass of wine, even though you have told yourself that this is the week you will not drink, of course you do not need wine to get you through the night.

Return to the saucepan, add the milk, watch the lumps form, make a half-hearted effort to squeeze them out, pour a bit more milk in. Rinse the spinach while the sauce overheats. Give a half-hearted stir with a metal soup spoon. Let the sound grate on you, but do not stop straight away. Allow every black thought you have ever had about yourself to swirl between your ears. Invent a few new ones. If you have trouble with this, you aren’t trying, and your white sauce will not be truly crap.

This white sauce will destroy your lasagne. To end the evening, curse yourself for ruining a dish which takes a fair amount of time and a large portion of your week’s best vegetables.

On the other hand, to make a good – a very good – white sauce you should take the perfectly-sized saucepan which you will find washed and put away exactly where it should be. As is the lid, although you do not need it tonight. Turn the radio down. Further down. Just a little bit more.

Do not worry that the children are being exceptionally loud. They are enjoying each other’s company and spending the kind of time from which they will one day draw their motivations to succeed or otherwise, the strength they will need to mend their first broken heart, and the odd dinner-party laugh.

Heat the saucepan over a gentle flame, and scoop the butter in at exactly the right time. Watch its colour change as it melts. Take in the smell. Close your eyes if you wish, but only for an instant. That is all you need. Sprinkle in the flour, and although you have not measured either the butter or the flour, you will get it exactly right. The flour does not have the maggots of pantry moths. Pour in half a cup of milk and watch as no lumps appear. Feel it thicken. Add a little more milk, and then a little more. Listen to the gentle rub of the spoon against the bottom of the saucepan and watch the trail of the spoon through the sauce. Stir and watch and stir and watch and stir and watch some more. Listen to the sound of the flame and for no reason at all think of camping trips.

Remove from the heat at exactly the right time. Use to make a tuna mornay. Pay no attention to the parts of your brain which normally tell you that the oceans are over-fished and that tuna have dangerously high levels of certain heavy metals which you would prefer that your children didn’t ingest.

Enjoy your meal.

Thank You for Indulging Me And an extra thank you from Adrian for saving me from printing it on tea towels and adding yet another box of tea towels to the storage room. We already have enough tea towels to pass down to many generations of our descendants.

My dear friend, I will write again next week with a less self-indulgent letter. I intend to spend less time on the couch and, with Wolf Hall finished, I will have more time to think more carefully about what I want to say.

I will write again next week, but until then I will think of you often and with love,

Your friend,

Tracy xx