The Good Life
Chutney-making on the warmest day of the year is a lifestyle move to turn the air blue.
Somebody asked the other day whether we were “lifestylers”. I am not at all sure what a lifestyler is, but I am fairly sure that we do not qualify. Lifestylers, I imagine, are those people who live in the country, as we do, on a nice slice of land, as we do, and who post on social media pretty pictures of weed-free vege plots with rows of beans and fancy lettuces that have not been eaten by bugs, as mine have been. Lifestylers have, presumably, style. They wear fetching straw hats and casually creased linen overalls bought from that posh shop in Greytown and drink blood-orange gin and boutique tonic on the wisteria-shaded verandah while grilling their organically grown corn over a suitably rustic, hand-built, charcoal-burning barbecue.
I, on the other hand, am in my kitchen, which bears no resemblance to the sort of country kitchen, with Aga and copper pans, you see in those dreamy pictures of country life. It is 33°C, and I am making plum chutney. This is not humble bragging. It is an admission of madness. It is not a picture of Instagrammable country bliss.
The chutney has to be made now because the lawn is a sea of very fat blackbirds and starlings. They are stuffed to whatever passes for gills in birds with my plums. I do not want to be making chutney on the hottest day of the year and my language reflects this. The air is blue and the kitchen red with splatters of chutney. I’m not sure I even like plum chutney, but I’m buggered if those greedy birds are going to get all my plums. So I am, with ill-temper, making bloody plum chutney. Anyone want a jar?
None of my life in the country is fit to be pictured on Instagram. I have been getting about in a daggy old cloth hat that I soak with cold water in a mostly futile attempt to cool my badtempered head. I wear very old T-shirts that have nibbles out of the bottoms because sheep like eating very old T-shirts. I have sheep poo on my shorts. This is, I suppose, one sort of lifestyle.
I am going to build a wall. And, I promise you, the evil chickens are going to pay for it. The reason want a wall is that – just as Sarah Palin can see Russia from her place – I can see Mexico from my kitchen window. We have taken to calling the inside of the house the United States of Masterton and the outside of the house Mexico.
Our house has four sets of french doors. When it is 33°C out there in Mexico, it is nice to have all sets of french doors open.
Unfortunately, if a chicken sees an open door, it takes it as an invitation to cross the border. So we have had to barricade ourselves in and them out. We do this with sections of the baby pen we used to house the lambs at night when they were tiny and lived in the garage. We do not have enough sections so we use an upended kitchen chair to barricade the kitchen door. The chickens breach this barricade on a regular basis. They are nothing if not tenacious. They have 5ha in which to range, but they think the food (from the cat’s bowl) is better on this side of the border. I haven’t quite figured out how they are going to pay for my wall. I could try selling their eggs, but I believe it is illegal to sell eggs without some sort of licence. Perhaps I could sell my plum chutney. Anyone want to buy a jar?
Just as Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, I can see Mexico from my kitchen window.