In no hurry

Today I had a moment that I am going to describe as an epiphany and it all started because I needed some thread for my sewing machine, which has been placed lovingly on the dining room table, dusted down and opened up for the first time in ages. OK, so I was only planning to make cushion covers but at least I was about to use my sewing skill.

I needed cream cotton for the job in hand and it says a lot about my sewing box that I had masses of black, several shades of red, several shades of pink and a few blues but no cream or white of any description. My sewing machine (a relic of around 30 years old, bought second-hand at least 20 years ago) is fussy. It won't sew with anything other than Gutermann and I only know of one place to buy it, a little craft shop in our local town so I set off to buy a reel.

DM said to me as I left home "can you buy some sugar" (feeding baby bees in bad weather is essential to the long-term good of the colony). So, I popped into the small grocery store in town for a bag.

There were two checkouts open, both with someone being served and both with one other customer waiting so I just picked one and queued. After a few minutes, I noticed that the other till had cleared all its customers and was standing empty, while the lady in front of me was still sorting out her money. Then I realised she was a very old lady and she was clearly struggling with either seeing her money or comprehending what money to hand to the cashier. She had the help of a uniformed nurse so didn't need any more help other than not to be hassled.

As she completed her transaction, she turned to me and apologised for keeping me waiting. I replied "don't worry, take as long as you like, I'm in no hurry".

Ping.

I suddenly wanted to scoop the lady up in my arms, give her a hug and a quick dance around the checkout because I realised this was the first occasion in my adult life when I've been able to say those words and mean them.

Feel the grass grow. Learn to breathe.

My "old self", living at 100 miles an hour, would never have wished her any harm but would have been fretting about getting out of the shop as quickly as possible so I could get on with the 50 other things I needed to achieve today.

My GP, psychiatrist and now my psychologist have all told me (along with all of my friends and family) that I can't go on like that. That I must learn to live in the moment without worrying about what happens next.

So how many things have I achieved today? Only one important one. That it's OK to not be in a hurry.

I suppose deep down, I am worried that I will need to face up to the future soon but I don't need to allow that to stop me from learning about simple pleasure and about nurturing peace in my soul today.

MOF, MOF!

I have twin passions, both are closely related. One, as described yesterday is my garden and the other is food. I love food (as my size surely testifies) and I am evangelistic about "real food". I really don't want to eat pre-processed foods and never did, not even before reading books like "Eat your heart out" or "The vitamin murders". These books have just strengthened my resolve to cook from fresh ingredients and to try to always buy packet foods that only contain ingredients that I'd recognise from my own store cupboard.

So, if a pack has hydrogenated vegetable oil or E-whatever or inverted sugar syrup or aspartime or any other man-made "nasty" then it doesn't find its way into my supermarket trolley.

Of course this means that "convenience food" is almost impossible to buy. The only company whose products I trust totally is Covent Garden Soups. Read their ingredients and compare them to the wannabes in similar packs on shelves and in theirs you'll see real ingredients and in the wannabes you'll see toxic chemicals.

So, I cook.

I cook from raw ingredients and our diet is better for it. I make pasta from eggs and flour, bread from flour, yeast, sugar and water and sauces from fresh, seasonal vegetables and local cheeses.

Why then do I not "love" any of the telly chefs in the way I love Monty and Geoff? I don't know. I admire many of them - you can't fail with a Delia Smith recipe even though I'm appalled at her latest series, Jamie Oliver has some great ideas and is good at the simple stuff and Gary Rhodes is clearly a terrific chef, despite his somewhat dubious hairdo! Others I can't abide - you can put James Martin and Anthony Warrell-Thompson in this category. To me, they are the Alan Titchmarshes of the food world - they seem more interested in celebrity status than food.

So, this morning, when I was woken up by Antonio Carluccio using the phrase MOF, MOF on Radio 4, it stuck in my mind. Maximum of Flavour, Minimum of Fuss - yep, a good philosophy and a good way to remember not to get too clever in your food preparation, even if the English is a bit Italian if you see what I mean!

Depression has caused my passion for this principle to grow because I've been reading scary "save the planet" books although Claz, who has just gone home after a few lovely days here, says that I need to ditch them in favour of pulp fiction because I'm getting so disturbed by what I read. She's probably right so I'm going to go out and buy a pile of chick lit books and immerse myself in nonsense for a few weeks.

I've learned that food for the soul isn't always in the places you expect and that sometimes the "good and worthy" can be dangerous when you're already struggling to find a way out of the abyss.

To begin.........(again)

OK - let's get one thing straight - I never have and (in all likelihood) never will raise a starling by hand. Well, I would if push came to shove but thankfully, I've found that the starlings raised by me by proxy all have excellent parents who raise them beautifully with a little help from me. I provide food and shelter, along with a starling-friendly environment and they provide me with hours of joy in return.

The title of this blog could just as easily have been "raising yellowhammers", "raising butterflies", "raising buttercups" or "raising apple trees". Basically I've set this up to give myself a voice again while recovering from clinical depression. I'm going to try to concentrate on the things that give nourishment to my soul and "raising starlings" seems like exactly the sort of subject that is about nourishment, nature, nurture and hope.

For five years, I completed a daily blog using pbase as my vehicle. I did my blog religiously, day-in and day-out, no matter whether I felt like it or not, no matter how busy I was and no matter how much of a chore the task sometimes was. One of my reasons for this was that the website is a photographic one and my blog was also a "photo-a-day" and, not wanting to let go of the daily nature of it, I found myself locked into an hour every day photographing and writing. Ultimately I broke the cycle because I was finding the commitment of an hour a day shooting and processing a photo, then writing a piece to accompany it too much in the face of deepening and prolonged depression.

Now I feel ready to "put pen to paper" or perhaps "finger to keyboard" would be a more accurate description as I rarely write with a pen any more other than shopping lists or "ideas".

So, this is the start of a new journey. If you want to see the life, loves, joy and despair of my daily blog on pbase all you have to do is visit www.pbase.com/lindarocks. It's all there, dip in and out or start at the beginning if you like!