Ash in Amsterdam

'The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity' - Bob Dylan, Things have Changed.

Today I could write about a million different things.

I could write about Paris in the springtime, Sacre Coeur in the sunshine, walking, walking, walking, eating, drinking, loving the warmth on my skin. I could tell about the finest meal I've ever eaten or about sitting on a park bench at Pont Neuf or walking along the Seine. I could tell you how far away it feels from where I grew up and how I'd look at my mom's cosmetics and see London-Paris-New York on the labels and wonder if I'd ever go to any of them? I've crossed off two. Next stop, New York?

I could write about Queen's Day in Utrecht - my first and it was fun!

I could write about the car accident I had on Tuesday evening and the details of what happened, but I'm not into disaster-tourism (well, just a little maybe). Your past doesn't flash before your eyes, your future does. You think you'll think about everything you might have lost, but what you really think about is everything everyone else might lose. How quickly things can change.

I could tell you that one of my best girlfriends is expecting her third baby and I'll be living in the same building as her, three doors down, when the new baby comes. Simultaneously overjoyed and terrified . New babies are so very very small.

I could tell you I haven't written anything in a lifetime, but you know that. So what I will tell you is that the sun is out, life is short, it's time to have fun.

Anything could happen ...

Now it's all or nothing. - Simple Minds, Alive and Kicking

I've been reading a lot. It's a 'Yes!' to A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Words and how they express how you feel and how you never have enough, regardless of the language you try to express yourself in. Words and what they mean, how to interpret them, how they feel when you say them, how they make other people feel when you say them.

Regardless. The other book I've been reading is Zoe Heller's Everything You Know. Meh. Not so much. This one is hard work - I can't identify with the main character, whereas it was simple to identify with Z in the other book. I find the protagonist annoying and his manner irritating. Unlike Jack Nicholson, who I just watched in the Bucket List, Heller's lead character has no charisma to carry him through.

One concept from the book sticks though and that's at the end when he's contemplating life and how it plays out and he considers how people precis their lives, how they assign crib notes to sections of life and then use those crib notes until they believe what they've written about themselves.

I got to thinking, as you do, about life and what my crib notes have been. The things I say to people when I meet them and they want a recap of my life, or like recently at work, when I needed a magazine introduction - how I condense myself into one short paragraph. It was a really interesting exercise. The one for work came up with something like :

'Ashleigh has worked in the educational and governmental sectors in Southern Africa and Europe and brings a wide background of experience to her position as xx at xxx'

Obviously nothing like the truth which is:

'Random jobs until bored speechless at university position after which she had an 8 year break before getting really lucky and re-entering corporate life.'

Which one is the real version? When I'm 60 am I going to believe the magazine version? Hope so. 

And the rest of it? This is how I could condense my life so far:

0 - 10 : Grew up in a warzone in a sanctioned country.

10 - 20 : Boarding school. Teen pregnancy. Failed marriage.

20 - 25 : New marriage. New baby. New country. New house.

25 - 30 : Another new country. Another new baby. Another new house.

30 - 35 : Kids go to school. Lose lots of weight. Find out what I want is not what I wanted before.

So where are the details? Filtered into static.

What are your crib notes? 

'but it's ok, I'm a supergirl and supergirls just fly.' - Reamon, Supergirl

One month down in the working 40 - 50 hours a week. How am I doing?

I have no time no time no time....no time to tell you anything...

Happy though, so there's that.

What makes you a supergirl?

'Lead me into the dance, give me no chance to reconsider.' - Ida Maria,  Queen of the World

Fabulous isn't it? Got it via the Ida Maria mailing list today. I love Ida Maria.

Otherwise, pms sucks. A lot.

Please, fate, give me back my good humour sometime sooner than the four days time when it's scheduled to return.

I shall be eternally grateful (and so shall everyone around me).

'Will you still recall my name, and the month it all began?' - Liquido, Narcotic

A rush from the 80's, (remember this song?) and a quote for you.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.

Tony Robbins

What do you think?

I think it's a bit simplistic. Of course you do have to change what you've always done so that you can get something different to what you've always gotten, but it's the keeping it changed. The trick of not slipping into patterns and rhythms that you've always been in because they are there and you can and it's easy and simple just to do what you've always done.

I talked the other day to someone about the motivation for change. They thought that the motivation for why we do things was important, and that having a poor motivation (like fear) would affect the outcome of the change. Again, not convinced here. What does it matter what the reason is that we release ourselves from the couch/stop drinking/stop overeating/leave unhappy relationships?

What really matters is taking that first step. After that it's just one moment at a time and I believe that by the end of the 'change journey' the initial motivation is often completely irrelevant. When I think back to my own motivation to lose weight I can't even remember what the spark was that got me off the couch, but I know damn well what my motivation is now. I've had people ask me what the 'click' was that made me do it and I can't remember. I don't think there was even one. It was more a case of plodding along, one tiny step at a time.

What do you think about change? Is there some big change you've made in your life that you are trying to keep afloat? Or did you change something and then slip back to how it was before? More importantly, if you slip, do you think you've failed, or is it just a slip and you'll carry on tomorrow?

'There's nothing left for you to fear' - Robbie Williams, Let me entertain you.

... Robbie can.

Thanks for the emails asking what happened. I'm still alive, still in one piece, no big dramas. I won't be posting every day anymore. Something had to give and this was it.

'The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago.' - REM, Nightswimming

This month's Daring Baker challenge was hosted by Morven in New Zealand and she chose Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake. Dorie Greenspan's recipes popped up all over the internet last year when this book was first published and it's been on my cook book wishlist ever since. So I was pretty happy to get a chance to make one of her recipes as part of something where I absolutely had to get in the kitchen and do something.

It's funny actually, thinking about life in retrospect, I always associate it with food. Growing up we had a cook at home who did all the 'boring' cooking, so anything my mom or I made was more complicated or a dessert or a cake. I got to mess about in the kitchen and someone else got to clean up. Perfect huh?

When I started dating Nick, my first love, I was a little less than enthusiastic about him. He wasn't my type. I thought he was all wrong for me and that he would break my heart (which he did). He was rather persistent about getting me to go on a date with him though. He called me one evening while I was baking a cake, which needed taking out of the oven. After a few minutes talking, I said 'I'm sorry, I really need to go now, I'm baking a cake', to which he replied 'and I'm flossing the cat' and hung up! I don't know if that was the moment that I stopped being resistant to being pursued but it was pretty funny. He never believed that I was really baking a cake, even after we'd been together a while. Obviously I have no doubt at all that he really was flossing the cat.

Back to Dorie's cake. I enjoyed making this recipe, but I think the differences in ingredients here in Europe vs. the USA really came to the fore in this recipe. First off, I used English baking powder and the cake barely rose, which is why it's two layers instead of four.  The flour was also a problem I think. Even though I used patisserie flour the texture was somewhat grainy instead of the superlight texture the cake should have had.

The buttercream split when I was beating it, and it separated a little on standing, but I think that was because I didn't cook the egg white/sugar mixture long enough over the double boiler. I've made swiss meringue based icing before, but this one was a little more difficult to achieve a very smooth result with. I'll be trying it again though to see if I can improve on it.

Those things aside, this cake actually improved with standing. The buttercream was much lighter than I expected it to be and the texture of the cake was no different on the Friday after baking than on the Monday when it came out of the oven. I especially appreciated the opportunity to use up half a jar of raspberry jam that had been standing in the fridge for ages.

My only complaint is that I ate almost the entire cake on my own! Definitely a thing to make for a group of people or to take to work. I just don't want my colleagues to get too spoiled, especially after the hot cross buns of the week before. And let's be honest, I liked eating the majority of the cake on my own. Not sure about my hips and thighs though ...

You can read other daring bakers' adventures in cake baking over here. See my last challenge here. You can find the recipe here.

'Larger than lifesize we become, great in the eyes of someone.' - A Fine Frenzy, Lifesize

That's a photo of S. looking at the snowball he's making. How happy is he? It was sunny this morning and it's been snowing on and off all day with the sun shining through in between. This morning the kids played and made a snowman while I watched them for a while. Later I talked to my neighbour on the balcony in the sunlight and their dad went to play with them downstairs.

March is an odd month. It's a month that doesn't really know what to do with itself. Neither here nor there. A bit adolescent I suppose. I heard someone say once that in Holland from the spring onwards it's all a buildup to Queen's Day and then just a disappointment. I disagree.

My favourite month is September, when the days have started to draw in a little and the light is golden and faded. In September I feel like every sunny day is a splendidly unexpected gift, but between March and August I'm full of expectations and I don't enjoy them as much as I should. Less expectation, more enjoyment, maybe?

The poetry of Colin Morton sneaked up on me on a snowy afternoon. After I read the first poem, I breathed a sigh and settled in to read the rest.

My favourite because of the way it made me feel is forty-five years from now. I also liked today we both phoned in sick. Isn't that the most romantic thing you ever read?

This one made me sad.

Over Coffee

You say another year of marriage is
another cup of coffee in the morning
~ some kind of addiction
safer to continue than to quit.
Each one requiring a little more
sugar, stops the pain
in the head anyway.

Your bitter smile through steam
is the grimace of boredom
on the fourteenth floor ~ really
the thirteenth ~ boredom
the safest expression you know, each day
a strategy of postponement.

Rising and descending in the elevator

eyes forward clouded with sleeplessness,
you keep escaping your dreams
and finding them in wait around corners.
You could just turn your back, you say,
walk out on the badly played scene,
but life is no technicolor movie
with credits and no debits at the end.

Evenings at home are only more memos
you say, in a language of indirection
you are afraid
you have come to understand, and speak,
swallowing your words with that dull
insensitive frown you make
with each gulp of sweetened coffee.

--------- Colin Morton

Read more about Colin Morton here, and buy his books online from Abebooks.