The Unscripted Carer – 28th February 2008
The world is full of odd coincidences, or as some of my Maltese friends say – “you are only four steps away from someone famous”.
In my case the coincidence revolves around the humble Butternut Squash. I had never heard of this vegetable until before Christmas, when I encountered an absolutely fantastic Butternut Squash and red pepper soup. I know it is polite to ask your hosts about recipes, but I really wanted this one! The recipe duly arrived, hand delivered, by someone that vaguely reminded Nicola about the Master Chef series. However, I did not know what a Butternut Squash looked like, and could not find it in Tesco. After a few weeks of searching, I asked one of the staff, who pointed me in the general direction, and then walked my there when I admitted that I had no idea what it looked like. I went through a similar trauma to find “fromage frais”, which was also in the recipe. So I was quite happy with these two new findings and I did know what red peppers looked like! Having hunted down the ingredients making the soup was relatively easy, and the taste was as good as I remembered.
We were recounting this to one of our friends in the village, and I casually wondered where they came from – expecting some exotic location. Imagine my surprise when she said that one of her cousins was the largest grower in this country, and she does not like them!
Today, I was on a “creative writing” course and so I left some of this soup to be warmed up by Nicola’s “sitter” for lunch. There is now another convert to the recipe and it’s fame has now escaped from Rugby to the wide world! Apparently there are other things to do with a Butternut Squash, such as roasting, so I think this is the start of a long running experiment!
The creative writing course was something I had been looking forward to for a while now – it promised distance learning and hopefully I could drag Nicola into the writing experience. We both enjoy a wide range of books, perhaps my preference is science fantasy drifting into “cowboys and Indians in space”, while Nicola is more into “more serious” work. Both of us read books as a form of escapism, and do not enjoy the “old masters” that claim to depict the dark and grim side of life in times long ago.
“Creative” writing clearly suggested “fiction” and “writing” had a hint of how to publish, etc. A couple of days before the course, the official instructions arrived – very different, suggesting Autobiography and Non-fiction, and an overview of the other “distance learning” courses available to carers at a huge discount.
Nicola persuaded me to go anyway, so not knowing what to expect I turned up on the day – fortunately with pens and papers. Incredibly this “introduction” did not provide the necessary material for the day, and did not advise us what to fetch with us. At this point I very nearly walked out, but considered this to be too ill-mannered and unfair on the organisers at Guideposts, so I persevered. This turned out to be a very wise decision! The day was an extremely interesting and totally unstructured general discussion, and we were all invited to write something about “rummaging through your grandmother’s drawers” (for a man???). Strangely, I managed to use this as an idea for something totally different – reluctantly abandoning the idea of writing a sex romp through the eyes of my grandfather!
I enjoyed the day and learned a lot from the day.
Firstly I cannot imagine me doing this sort of distance learning that has no “one to one” meetings with tutors. I am afraid that accepting criticism from someone who is totally faceless and does not know me seems to be a recipe for total conflict. It may work for some, but not for me!
Secondly, I still quite fancy being encouraged to write, but I do need to find suitable encouragement, and not send items to be “marked” by some anonymous person – I stopped doing exams year ago, and even then I had the support of teachers that knew how to get the best out of me.
I think my final concern is that having made my living from technology I cannot comprehend how a published author (the tutor for the day) is unable, and unwilling, to use the Word basic spell and grammar checkers!
My aim is still to write for my own pleasure and to be encouraged in this aim, maybe with the odd item published in some obscure publication. Strangely, having to write something about such a bizarre topic (for a man) has encouraged me. Ideally, I want to share this with my housebound wife. Now the search is on to find such help!
Bye for now
Graham
