A slice of life from the cabin fever world besieged by Storm Emma
OH, how we laughed! We laughed at the pictures of Irish supermarkets stripped of all bread. Young Persephone nearly gave herself a hernia laughing at a video of thieves robbing slices of white from bird tables. Eldrick cracked up at another video showing a high stakes casino card game played with burger buns instead of poker chips.The national obsession with having lashings of toast for breakfast and sandwiches for snacks was played out hilariously on our screens.
I tried to introduce a note of seriousness, recalling a story told to me by my late grandmother, a teenaged resident of Northside Dublin in 1916. The disruption of the Easter Rising meant that, just as in the great Storm Emma crisis of 2018, there was no bread in the shops. Famine was averted when some enterprising van owner drove up to Belfast and returned with a full load of fresh Ulster loaves.
The emergency rations had been packed so tightly that they were wickedly distorted when pulled out on arrival back in Dublin. In her old age, still Granny vividly recalled the wonderful smell wafting out from the van when the doors were opened. No word of complaint about the mangled state of the merchandise was heard from the desperate housewives of Clontarf and Raheny queuing to make their purchases…
Storm Emma confined all of the family to base and we had a great time unworried by any possible shortage of bread. We inhabited the Independent Republic of Medders Manor, our own little bubble, merrily sitting out red warnings and orange warnings safe in the glow from the great fireplace in the dining hall.
We sang songs and read books and completed jigsaws and learned how to knit. We discovered that cold weather is the enemy of lean diet and Lenten fasting, obeying primitive urges by eating massive fried breakfasts before lorrying into cake with added jam at lunchtime and then eating all around us in the evenings.
Our only exercise comprised an occasional snowball fight on the front lawn. All efforts to bring The Pooch for a walk were abandoned after he refused to leave the house once the snow was deep enough to rub cold against his belly.
The one serious point in the day was when we gathered around the television for the weather forecast with its warnings of ‘blizzard like conditions’ (the phrase consistently used by the forecasters). It remains a mystery to me whether blizzard like conditions are any better or any worse than blizzards.
‘Let’s have a hand of bridge,’ I said turning off the telly and attempting to enthuse all around me. Four people, one pack of playing cards – the circumstances appeared ideal for learning the best indoor game in the world. But young Persephone wished to revert to ludo. Eldrick suggested Chinese chequers. Hermione listened to the bickering before she producing the trusty old Monopoly set without saying a word. Monopoly it was so, until deep into the storm lashed night.
I rose early next day and made to prepare another gargantuan, high cholesterol breakfast for my fellow besieged. And then I discovered - horror of horrors – no bread. No bread in the bread bin. No bread in the freezer. No laughing matter. Eldrick must have had the last slice with peanut butter after he went bankrupt landing on Shrewsbury Road once too often. Real crisis. Snow up to the window sills. Shops all closed. No bread.
I searched high and low before eventually finding a peculiar little packet of bread mix at the back of the larder press. Phew! It came with a promise of a fresh loaf baked in half an hour and a best before date of April, 2015. I cranked up the oven and pretended not to see any little black mites as I stirred in some milk and set it to cook.
What emerged smelled strange, the colour more grey than white, but it was all we had that morning.
‘What are these little black yokes?’ demanded Persephone suspiciously.
‘Protein supplement,’ I replied, slipping my slice slyly to The Pooch waiting under the table. He left it on the floor, liking it no more than he likes snow rubbing his belly.