Nigella, Me and Ramekingate

Ramekin dishes. 

Six red, eight white. How often have I used them in the 30+ years since I bought them?

   

Twice. Actually, I think two of the white ones have never been used. I’m not even sure what ramekins are for, but when my mother told me of a recipe that was so goddamn easy and, moreover, a veritable meal in a tiny pot, I was on that Ramekins4U hit list.

   

So, here’s another dilemma: do I keep the six red and dispense with the eight white? How can I possibly assess how many ramekin loving friends are yet to enter my life? Will these as yet imaginary people prefer white or red? You see? This moving lark isn’t as easy as it seems. The ramekins are top shelf, kitchen cupboard one. I’m already a wreck. Heaven help me when I get to the Pyrex section.

   

I recall supplementing the red ramekins with white ones I bought from the Lakeland Plastics birthpool that became my life when the store opened in the Hayes in Cardiff. The first time I used them was when they transferred to a dinner party that involved Nigella Lawson –  I’ll return to that. But the tiny pots got me thinking: whatever happened to Lakeland Plastics? Were they still in the Hayes? Did they still fill their glorious shelves with things I never knew I wanted until I saw them and then never used because I didn’t know I didn’t want them until I’d bought them?

   

Upon writing that, I just looked them up and discovered that they are, indeed, still in Cardiff (Oh no: “Taxi, please!”). However, they changed their name from Lakeland Plastics to, simply, Lakeland, in 1997, and I’ve just been online to find out where they are on the ramekin issue.

   

Dear lord! There is now an “Elegance Large Ramekin”, which seems to me to defeat the object. Isn’t an ELR essentially a pudding bowl? Maybe it’s not as big as it sounds, as it’s only £1.59 (I’m pretty sure I paid, like, £159 when they were de rigeur back in the Nineties). But now there’s a “Dura 230 ramekin”, which is £5.97. Why am I even looking – and, more disturbingly, considering them, when I am sitting looking at 14 ramekins that don’t even match and haven’t seen a blowtorch in . . . Well, ever.

   

Now, you see, just because I’ve Googled ramekins and blow torch, my computer has decided that I need the Kitchen Craft Deluxe Cooks Blowtorch and Ramekin Gift Set at £15.71. No! Please leave me alone: I’m ramekinned out! They are so going into the Kitchen Cull box.

   

But I will explain the last time they were used. I was in my early thirties in London and I was friendly with people who many might consider the “in” set. But that’s always an illusion: everyone on any In set always has the feeling of being an outsider – that is what, ironically, makes them the In set: the outsiders who have found common ground.

   

I knew Nigella’s first husband, the journalist John Diamond, who was not only a great writer, but adorable company – sharp, funny, a late night hanger-outer at the Groucho Club, as I was. I met Nigella through him and we too became friends, so much so that I decided to throw a dinner party for them and several other In people.

   

It was a disaster. I spent just 20 minutes in the dining room as I was in the kitchen the entire night. My speciality was the starter – some smoked salmon and cream thing baked in the oven – in a ramekin.

   

John had forgotten to tell me he was allergic to fish and I remember rushing down to the local shop mid-dinner party for extra supplies that he might like.

   

Victoria Hislop, hugely successful author and, seriously, the best chef/cook/host on the planet, told me when she received my next invitation that they had come to see me, not sit at the dining table while I entertained myself in the kitchen. The ramekins never saw the light of day again.

   

As for Nigella, we are still in touch, and she uses ramekin dishes to make gooey puddings that I would never like anyway, as I don’t have a sweet tooth. I know her to be a brilliant, beautiful woman who has come through so much personally to forge an extraordinary career; but I was never crazy about her food.

   

I feel so bad saying that - I'm sure it's me, not her. But I used to go round for a meal when John was working and have to go to the local Indian to pick up a takeaway when she served up the likes of broccoli in oil. John hated the smell of Indian food and, upon his return, would throw my leftovers in the bin. I still buy Nigella's books and watch her TV shows, though. With a takeaway in my lap.

   

Funny what comes back to you in life in the culinary eye-bath of a ramekin dish.

  

   

So Long, Farewell

I thought I’d be crying. 

This time last week, I was on a bus in New York heading to JFK airport to catch a flight back to the UK, where I was selling my house of the past nine years. I was fine until I arrived in the UK and caught the train home.

   

Home. Soon, it wouldn’t be that at all - not for me, anyway. Other people, new paint, different pitched voices would soon inhabit it: a space transformed in one swift movement handing over a set of keys. So long, Farewell, as the Von Trapp children in The Sound of Music sang.

   

I started crying at Newport. Twelve minutes before the train was due at Cardiff Central, I phoned my friend Mary and sobbed. I was dreading arriving at my house in Llandaff and seeing the SOLD notice outside it for the first time. And I was dreading putting the key in the lock and seeing over five decades of life getting ready to say goodbye.

   

So much stuff. Where to begin? Top to bottom? Kitchen to attic? Hide under a pillow in my bedroom on the middle floor and just hope that it would all go away without my having to lift a finger?

   

I’m now on my fifth day back and it hasn’t been anywhere near as painful as I had imagined. The first strangers through the door on Sunday morning bought some garden furniture, clothes and a vase; the afternoon, a couple of light fittings went; yesterday, four pieces of furniture.

   

I’ll be honest – and I really mean this: I’m loving it. There is no feeling of loss, just one of incredible gratefulness that I have been able to live a life that is filled with so much happiness – people, travel, experiences that so many could only dream of. Yes, much of it has come at a price, and a heavy financial one that I have documented elsewhere; but far from a feeling of emptiness, I feel, for the first time in years, a sense of overwhelming richness. I have always said how blessed I am in my family and friends and, almost everything I pick up carries a memory that has had me laughing so much. There is sadness among the possessions, too, but that is just the nature of the lives we all lead.

Mainly, it's a garnering the evidence of a live well lived.

   

Today, I found an invitation to my 40^th birthday (17 years ago, ye gods), hand-written by my mother, to Auntie Muriel and Uncle Les, who were our next door neighbours when we moved from Cardiff to Newport in 1962 when I was four. My first party had been in London for my close friends, and Mum organised this one in Bristol, where she lived, for people who had been a big part of my life when I was growing up.

   

I remained close to Auntie Mew (as I called her) and Uncle Les until they both died. Living in 2 Farmwood Close, I was friends with her youngest son, Tim, who was older and very adventurous. He had a guitar he made out of one long piece of wood attached to a square piece. He attached nails to the wood, hooked them up with elastic bands, and sang Beatles songs. When he made me own guitar, we formed a band. Well, a duo. We were great.

   

I was always keen on music, as poor Auntie Mew found one Saturday afternoon when Mum went to town with Dad and left me (eight) and my brother, three years younger, in the house (in the days when children could be left with a neighbour listening through the wall). I raided my parents’ record collection and decided that I would learn the songs in The Sound of Music, which I had seen with Mum, Dad and Nigel three years before, during the traumatic holiday when Nigel had managed to get hold of a bottle of Junior Aspirin (that story’s longer than the movie). 

   

By the time Mum and Dad returned from town, Auntie Mew wasn’t just listening through the walls, she was climbing them. I had played the soundtrack eight times and, worse, been singing along. In subsequent years, we laughed about it every time I saw her.

   

I remember so much from that house: Diane, whose birthday (October 31^st – I have a phenomenal memory) I loved because her mother put tiny silver baubles on her cake; the smell of creosote on the fence Dad built at the side of the house; the rose bush planted in memory of his father that moved with us to Bridgend when I was 11; being carried home from school with glandular fever and Mum answering the door, hysterical.

   

I’ve been crying today, but not in a sad way. 

Auntie Mew replied to the birthday invitation in a poem, and these lines particularly struck me: “I watched this little being/So serious in her play/And smile when I remember/She carried her treasures around on a tray.”

   

I smile so much at that because, in addition to The Sound of Music horror, she always reminded me how I used to carry my things around with me. 

Was that the need for security? The tray that served as my comfort blanket? Was it fear of loss, known but not articulated at such a young age? 

Am I now, at 57, still clinging to my  treasures on my tray? Or, am I finally learning to let go?

   

So long. Farewell.