Amid a scene resembling something from a splatter movie, I was thinking of him.
I am reasonably confident, however, damson and gardening guru Lynda Hallinan would be on my side, regarding the mayhem at least. Didn’t she say when dealing with damsons, if your kitchen does not look a murder scene, you are not doing it right? I hope that’s correct because it’s advice I have taken to heart, and if I am imagining it, well where does that leave me? (OK, I can hear the chorus answer from the offspring now, "with a dirty kitchen and one more step along the way to the home for the bewildered".)
The gore was caused by my attempts to rid the pesky blighters of their many stones. This involves donning rubber gloves (essential for any crime scene), plunging your hands into the cooked damsons and squeezing. The idea is that you are left holding the stones which can then be discarded while the flesh returns to the pot. Except, of course, that is not always what happens. Badly behaving pulp may splurt without warning on to anything nearby. It’s the most exciting thing that happens in my kitchen.
Charles was on my mind partly because I envied him having minions to clean up mess. Also, I had quite a few damsons to deal with and I may have run out of more interesting topics to ponder during the lengthy process.
My Taieri damson supplier (oh, how I want to call her my damson dealer for the childish pleasure of the alliteration, but that wouldn’t be accurate), had given me several hefty bags of frozen fruit. To free up some freezer space, I thought rustling up some damson and tomato sauce and roast damson coulis was sensible. (I thought coulis sounded posher than puree — my vibe for coronation week — but my enthusiasm faltered when I realised it involved pushing it through a sieve).
As I squished my way through the goo, I thought how weird it must be to be Charles, having spent your whole life surrounded by bowers and scrapers and people who must do your bidding. Expecting him to be an everyday sort of bloke when he has spent 74 years divorced from the daily grind of life most of us experience is a bit much. It might be comforting, in an odd way, to realise all the royal family’s considerable wealth does not seem to have made them happier than the rest of us. Dysfunction goes with the dynasty.
It is hard to imagine how it would feel to know from an early age that instead of a proper job you will have to hang about shaking hands and cutting ribbons for decades waiting for your mother to die so you can do some more shaking hands and cutting ribbons, but with a new title and the bonus of weekly earbashing the British Prime Minister.
The British Royal Family is a bizarre business where controversy, not just involving the sad and self-important Prince Harry and sleazy Andrew, is never far away.
The lead-up to the coronation, an occasion regarded as a jolly affair full of pomp and ceremony for those who hanker after such nonsense, seems lacking in pizazz. The coronation quiche was a fizzer and the Big Help Out project inviting people to sign up for volunteering on the coronation holiday seemed an incongruous thing for Charles to promote when he has been sucking on the public teat all his life. The idea we might want to solemnly simultaneously shout out our allegiance to the new monarch during the ceremony in a mass kumbaya moment is an idea which might have gone down a treat if it was proposed for Liz, but it is no longer 1953.
And then there was the controversy about whether Queen Camilla’s crown would contain the stolen Koh-I-Noor diamond.
Around here, the closest we come to a crown is a plastic monstrosity — bent, missing bits and held together with sticky tape, from when the Last Born was crowned king of his school formal. He was close to being born to rule because one of his best friends was behind the selection.
Pre-coronation it has been usurped by my construction of a requested hat for a forthcoming birthday, featuring radishes. By adapting designs from Charlotte Stone and Amanda Berry I have managed one radishy looking thing on it so far. Two to go. The fiddly bit is knitting individual leaves and then not losing them before sewing them on.
So, on Saturday night I will be knitting and sewing. I might be swearing, but I doubt it will involve allegiance to the new King.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
