It’s a pleasure to hear the giggling and chatter of two sisters filter from the bedroom down the hall into the kitchen where I am. The journalist loves her siblings and they love
her. I cook a mean breakfast and within an hour they have flirted with the mirror, are fully dressed and leave through the front door in a flurry of goodbye kisses and see you laters.
It’s a pleasure now, to watch the scruffy litter of red flags disappear from my email inbox as I walk through the streets of Admin. I’m playing music mainly from The Promised Land. After cleaning up the city (Admin) I make asparagus soup. If you grew up as I grew up, there’s nothing twee about making home made asparagus soup. The clue is in the
two previous describing words.
At mid day the composer and producer Pete Moser arrives. “I was sat in this meeting” he says exasperated “… that I have given up my weekend for… and .. and I just thought” he looks to the ceiling as if to God “why am I here? So I just got up and left”. He’s visible shocked, not it seems by the meeting, but by the fact that he had “just stood up and walked out”. Was another person growing inside Pete: A person who just leaves meetings against his will!
Pete Moser is a music producer and composer who for the past ten years has worked at more music morcambe. We are doing a project together called The Long Walk. He is respected in his field and beyond it. Although he doesn’t live in a field, he lives beyond it, in Morcambe. His father is a composer who lives with his mother in Camden, in one of those beautiful Georgian Town Houses. He had given up his weekend, family, art, and all to attend The Open Source meeting at The Arts Council. We’re in the kitchen and the asparagus soup has just perfected itself – Pete tastes it. “Nice” he says appreciateively. “Do you want some” I ask “no” he replies.
He doesn’t want tea or coffee either. I got some freshly baked bread and some great Blue
Stilton. He doesn’t want that either. I really want him to eat. The event today has stolen his hunger. So we sit in the garden. Pete suggests I could make tomato chutney from the abundance of green tomatoes that if left will be eaten by slugs. So I begin picking them and chatting, all the green tomatoes, while my Nigerian neighbours laughter spills over the garden fence.
The thing about chutney is, it’s sweet and sour. I’m still smarting from the lack of love for the asparagus soup. The he tells me again he is just not hungry. The ingredients alone in Chutney are pretty disgusting but when together something happens. I pass the green tomatoes to Pete and he places them on the kitchen table. As I pick the last one “I should take a picture of this mountain of green tomatoes and put it on my blog”. I say. But I didn’t photograph the inedible green tomatoes.
The Journalist returns with her sister ladened bags from Camden and the soup disappears in a new york minute. That along with the freshly baked bread I’d made. I want to stand outside and announce with a loud hailer. Ladies and gentlemen “THE SOUP HAS LEFT THE BUILDING”.
In our Kitchen we’ve got a small wipe book that says DO NOT FORGET. There’s a magnetic pen attached to it and Pete has written on it LOVE. Now I know what was missing from that meeting.