As Jars of gold
Just like her mother before her, Sam Woulidge needs to feel prepared. At the start of the lockdown this meant big-batching cooking and turning anchovies, garlic and olive oil into a fridge staple fit for kings
I type this I have many silver streaks in my hair. Solid silver streaks. I have gone grey in the same way and pattern that my ma did; temples first and eventually a wide silver halo framing the face. I don’t recognise myself in the mirror. I see my mother. I’m uncomfortable with the way I look but I am also strangely attached to it. Level 5, then level 4, and now level 3 means that I cannot visit my dear friend Ellen, who also happens to be my hair stylist and, yes, confidante, too. I have the required colour potion at home and just need to apply it. But I’m not ready to do that yet. I keep putting it off. Perhaps because when I look in the mirror I see my mother.
During lockdown, on the morning of Seb’s birthday, I received a message on Instagram from Vicki Sleet, the talented journalist who I like enormously but with whom I have only ever really spent time with socially at those lovely warm, bighearted press thingies that used to be so much a part of our pre-COVID world. “Darling,” she wrote, “this is really weird – I had the most bizarre dream. It was Karen Dudley’s birthday but your mom came through on a screen at 12 pm to wish you love and to tell you that she’s with you all the time. Felt like I need to tell you! Lots of love xx.”
Now Vicki never knew my mother, nor could she have known that Marie adored Karen, thought she was wonderful and loved going to her place, The Kitchen in Woodstock, which has recently and devastatingly closed. Yet another COVID casualty. Karen also made the most delicious feast for my mother’s funeral.
And right there in my kitchen, while removing prepared bacon cubes that I had fried the previous day and stored in plastic freezer bags in the fridge to save time and effort, just like my ma taught me, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.
“Hallo ma,” I said.
I have a lot of my mother in me.
The good and the bad. I try and tame the bad and do more of the good.
The weekend before lockdown began, I cooked frantically and portioned everything into individual freezer bags. Kilograms of Seb’s favourite Afrika Burn Bolognese sauce loaded with vegetables and warm, beautiful memories of his first trip to Afrika Burn. And bags of a fiery chilli con carne for Jacques and I, with beef and pork and spices to drive away all evil.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Jacques said, looking at the chaos in the kitchen. “The shops will be open,” he reassured me. And then he said it. He said those words … “This is the sort of thing your mother would have done.” And I wasn’t sure if he said it to discourage me, or if he meant it admiringly. “I am being proactive. I am controlling what can be controlled,” I told him as I nudged the large pestle and mortar towards him, pointing to the bulbs of garlic and the small jars of anchovies. “Squish those with big glugs olive oil,” I instructed. “That’s for the fridge.”
confessionsofahungrywoman.com, @samwoulidge
Serve it with a variety of tomatoes and a smattering of salt and ground pepper”