A Fading, Fleeting Rose

Comments on 'change' after yesterday's post prompted me to search out Steve Hagen's excellent book Buddhism: Plain And Simple and see what he had to say on the matter (I've quoted before from this book here and here).

Pick up a flower - a beautiful, living, fresh rose. It smells wonderful. It reveals a lovely rhythm in the swirl of its petals, a rich yet dazzling color, a soft velvety texture. It moves and delights us. The problem with the rose is that it dies. Its petals fall; it shrivels up; it turns brown and returns to the earth.

One solution to this problem is to ignore the real rose and substitute a plastic one, one that never dies (and never lives). But is a plastic rose what we want? No, of course not. We want the real rose. We want the one that dies. We want it because it dies, because it's fleeting, because it fades. It's this very quality that makes it precious. This is what we want, what each of us is: a living thing that dies.

Your very own body and mind are also precious, because they're just as fleeting. They're changing - always, in every moment. In fact, you are nothing but change itself.

Let's examine this closely for a moment. It's easy to see that you don't have the body you had when you were a small child. Nor do you have the same mind. If you look carefully, you will notice that you don't even have the same body and mind you had when you turned to this page a few moments ago. In those few seconds, many cells in your body died and many others were created. Countless chemical changes took place in different organs. Your thoughts changed in response to the words on this page and the circumstances around you. Thousands of synapses in your brain fired thousands of times. In each and every moment, you changed.

Like the rose, our bodies and minds are fleeting. In fact, everything in our experience - our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our wants and needs, our relationships - is fleeting. Changing. Subject to death. We die in each moment and again, in each moment, we are born. The process of birth and death goes on endlessly, moment after moment, right before our eyes. Everything we look at, including ourselves and every aspect of our lives, is nothing but change.

Vitality consists of this very birth and death. This impermanence, this constant arising and fading away, are the very things that make our lives vibrant, wonderful, and alive. Yet we usually want to keep things from changing. We want to preserve things, to hold onto them. As we shall see, this desire to hold on, to somehow stop change in its tracks, is the greatest source of woe and horror and trouble in our lives.

As Hagen says, change is a process which is happening to us continually; it's an inescapable feature of our own and of the world's chemistry and biology. I like this perception - it accords nicely with both Science and Buddhism. (After all, Buddhism is a philosophy - in essence not a religion, I think, like other world religions, which posit a God 'out there'; buddhas and boddhisattvas are human beings, albeit enlightened ones - yes, Buddhism is a philosophy which encourages and teaches one to comprehend Reality, to see things as they really are.)

Change is something over which we have little control. We are born. We live by the hazards of chance and destiny. We experience desire. We experience suffering. We die. Our loved ones die. As Anita Brookner says in her new novel Strangers, reviewed in today's Guardian, Fate is rarely kind, and nature never. So, if change is inevitable, we might as well welcome it. Embrace it even. Defiantly. Acceptingly. And I truly believe this attitude can be exhilarating. And liberating.

Things Change, Things Stay The Same

Although it may look fanciful, this is a real garden (probably with real toads in it). It's the garden at Blickling Hall, a Jacobean house in North Norfolk open to the public.

Near Blickling Hall lies Pensthorpe Nature Reserve and Gardens, where this picture of avocets was taken. Although they may look wild, these particular birds were fairly tame and mildly captive.

Sometimes things look imaginary that are real; sometimes things look real that are fake.

Sometimes you have to get out of the garden; sometimes you have to get out of the birdhouse.

As I predicted in December at the end of my last Camino walk, changes are on the way this year. But that's fine. I try to welcome change. I think change is something to be embraced not feared, if possible. I'm starting a new job very soon - and this job will take me away from the house more, and will involve long, sometimes bizarre hours (no, I'm not going to be a cat burglar).

But I intend to carry on blogging, and enjoying my favourite blogs, and to keep on walking and reading and thinking and doing all the things I love doing. It's just that my posts, and my comments on others' posts, may be a little more sporadic. But please do continue to visit. I will blog when I can, and when I feel I have something to say.

(Both photos were taken by myself on a trip to North Norfolk last year. A trip I didn't blog about at the time. But we don't blog about every single thing that happens us. Or do we?)

Bufo Bufo

With all this talk of toads in blogland at present - as instanced by my striking Marianne Moore quote yesterday and Rachel Fox's recent tribute to Philip Larkin - I'm coming round to thinking the common toad has had quite an unfair literary press.

Just consider the most famous literary toad - Mr Toad, Toad of Toad Hall, in Kenneth Grahame's immortal children's book The Wind In The Willows. He's conceited, vain, egotistical, pompous, reckless, lacking in common sense, foppish and insufferably rich - a warty but lovable rogue, a kind of post-Lottery-winning Del Boy of the amphibian world.

Then we have Larkin's famous poem Toads itself, as referenced in the last line of Rachel Fox's poem, Larkin Is Home. Larkin's poem begins: Why should I let the toad work/Squat on my life?/Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork/And drive the brute off?/Six days of the week it soils/With its sickening poison -/Just for paying a few bills!/That's out of proportion.

I'm sure most of us have experienced to a greater or lesser extent the desperate tedium of working for a living - but it's a biological fact that the toad's poison neither soils nor sickens. The relatively mild toxin in its skin is of little harm to humans. Indeed, sadly for the toad it's often of little harm either to its chief predators, the grass snake and the hedgehog, who regularly make a meal of poor toad with few harmful after effects. Yet, despite these demands of the food chain, toads may commonly live for 40 years or more if left unmolested.

A far cry from the bombastic creature of Kenneth Grahame's imagination, the toad is actually quite a shy beast, fond of burrowing down into garden compost heaps and quietly retiring there for long periods (please bear this in mind, everyone, when airing your own compost heaps with a fork this spring).

So I make a heartfelt plea for the common toad. Though it has a warty skin, there's no truth in the rumour it can give you warts too. That's an old wives' tale. It won't scare the pants of your nervous wife by leaping up her skirt, as is the tendency of the mercurial frog - toads' legs are shorter, and toads crawl not jump. Have pity on and repect for the humble toad. It's harmless, it's undemanding, it's meditative. It's not going anywhere fast. And it may live longer than you.

Writers and poets - a challenge. How about a pro-toad-ode for a change?

Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads

Poems are imaginary gardens with real toads in them. MARIANNE MOORE.

I've always loved poetry - as this blog bears witness - and when young used to write a lot of it. And a lot of it was, I suppose, pretty mediocre. I'll never forget the opening 2 lines of a poem I wrote in early adolescence which embarrassingly began like this: Harpsichord rain resonant rattled/In the purple moment... Definitely a 1960s, denims, long hair and loon pants kind of poem. I'm sure it was inspired by a quip my school music teacher told about the sound of the harpsichord being like 2 skeletons copulating on a tin roof (or was he quoting a Sir Thomas Beecham anecdote?) Lately I've been trying to write seriously again, though I'm afraid perspiration is a more constant companion than inspiration.

I was quite pleased with this poem about my dentist which I wrote after a tooth extraction last August; and this I wrote on my last Camino (probably under the influence of a manic high induced by French wine or altitude sickness). But it's all too often easier (for me at any rate) to descend gratefully into the safer comfort zone of Light Verse as I did here, here and here.

To write on 'spiritual' (for want of a better word - see how shy we are about this term, how we hedge it with qualifications) subjects, to describe a world beyond phenomenology, is difficult these days, though I did try here, here and here.

Anyway, what brought on this purely self-indulgent poetry post was yesterday's golden sunlight and springtime promise reminding me of my poem Aeolian, which is partly about the melting of the snow and the flowering of the crocus.

Finally, recent talk about birds, herons and suchlike brought to mind my short heron poem Yang And Yin, and another 2 haiku which I don't think I've published on this blog before:

all night long two owls
shivered their cries
in and out my dreams

heron at dawn
stalking the slow stream -
hungry ascetic

And, still on the birding theme, for something shockingly different, twisted and cynical, you could always try this... ;)

February Sunset

Live blogging! Looking west from my back door a few minutes ago...

Crocus

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? From Ode To The West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The slanting winter sunlight was so beautiful and so welcome this morning that I just had to go out into the garden and take a few photographs.

Books, Birds And Bill Oddie

While going through my father's bookcases the other day, discarding some books, keeping others, I came across my old copy of The Observer's Book Of Birds (published by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1965). This was my very 1st bird identification book. (When I was chatting once to comedian and ornithologist Bill Oddie at a publisher's sales conference, he told me that this was his 1st birding book too. In a previous incarnation I used to sell to bookshops in the English North and Midlands Oddie's own field guide, Bill Oddie's Birds Of Britain & Ireland, published by New Holland in 1998.) There used to be a whole series of these pocket-sized Observer's books, and I owned a small range of them - including Birds' Eggs, Weather, Pond Life, Common Insects & Spiders and Architecture, I remember.

This is my favourite page from The Observer's Book Of Birds. I love the placing of the golden oriole, one of the most exotic and rare birds you could ever hope to see in the UK, next to what until recently was one of our commonest and taken-for-granted birds, the humble house sparrow:

In common with many natural history books back then, many of the illustrations were in monochrome not colour - as, for example, this page which shows another exotic visitor, the hoopoe, the bird my reader Jay saw once and once only (Jay's blog is at http://www.thedeppeffect.com/):

Here's a picture of the treecreeper, the bird I was lucky enough to see edging jerkily up the trunk of our flowering cherry tree recently. On the left is the nuthatch, another beautifully marked, trunk-creeping bird:

Although this morning the 1st starling I've seen in the garden all winter was clinging acrobatically to the half coconut shell at our bird feeding station, I still haven't caught a glimpse of those lovely goldfinches:



If anyone wants to read my other post about Bill Oddie, it's here.

Feeding Station

The snow came and the snow went. With the advent of this spell of colder, at times freezing weather, a greater number of birds alighted at our garden feeding station. Our daily list was blackbird, robin, dunnock, chaffinch, greenfinch, wood pigeon, collared dove, great tit, blue tit. But then the coal tits and long-tailed tits arrived. Here are 3 long-tailed tits on the half coconut shell:

And just yesterday, while I was taking a quick scan through the binoculars, I was lucky enough to spot a treecreeper corkscrewing up the trunk of the flowering cherry tree in the picture. This is the 1st I've seen in the garden. They're delightful birds - white below, speckled brown above, with a slender, downcurved bill.

I've also seen the occasional wren, and thought I glimpsed a sparrow hawk out of the corner of my eye. There are no sparrows or starlings at all this year, though there were plenty in the garden of my father's isolated house in the country where I've been staying recently to sort out his things (lots of fieldfares there too). Often we get goldcrests in the winter, but they seem to prefer the Corsican pine in the back garden (in the spring linnets sometimes use the very top of this tree as a song post). I'm surprised we haven't seen the odd pheasant or green woodpecker as we do some years (there are plenty of pheasants in the fields and spinneys on all sides of the village, but we're right in the centre). What I'm longing for is to hear the springtime song of the song thrush - for me the most evocative song of any British bird, apart from the nightingale.

I'm suddenly reminded of the time last July when a grey heron walked into our house and started confusedly tapping at the french windows of the utility room - photos and description here!

Mysticism And Resistance

As I've mentioned before, one of my favourite radio programmes is Something Understood. It's a weekly half-hour themed medley of words, music and commentary on spiritual subjects. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts it on Sundays at 6.05, and it's then repeated later that night at 23.30. Yesterday's programme was called Mysticism And Resistance.

As it says on the programme's website: Mark Tully considers the link between mysticism and resistance. He tests Thomas Merton's suggestion that the monk is essentially someone who takes up a critical attitude to the world, and the German theologian Dorothee Soelle's insistence that authentic mystical experience always leads to resistance to the world as it exists now.

Starting yesterday's programme was this gorgeous song by Celtic-influenced, Canadian singer songwriter Loreena McKennit - inspired by the mystic writer and visionary, St John of the Cross: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclLF473XtA

Living

A final selection from my mother's commonplace book. It has been good to linger a while with this. But I think it's also a good thing not to linger too long - with anything. Life constantly moves us onwards and forwards.

Just what is this thing called life all about? One thing's for sure - you can't live your children's lives for them. A 3rd century Persian poet wrote this:

Children

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls.
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.
You may strive to be like them,
But seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Thomas Burke thought that living was to do with hunger, with continual renewal, with suffering, with the serving of love (Agape rather than Eros) and the recognition of beauty:

He showed me that I must go back to Lavender Hill and go on writing and stop being a damned young fool. That all living is hunger and that without hunger we perish. That each man's city of refuge must be built within himself - of broken toys. That the only people who truly live are those who are always beginning again. That it was not I, or Cicely, who mattered, but love itself; not my suffering that must be eased, but love that must be served. That only by love do we come to understanding and truth. That the mocking magic that comes and goes is the lamp that is lighting us to beauty. That this beauty is the happiness of God and is not in clouds or on hill tops, but everywhere about us.

Thomas Carlyle thought that living was to do with cherishing the present moment, embracing love now, seizing the day:

Cherish what is dearest while you have it near you, and wait not till it is far away. Blind and deaf that we are; oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living, wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust clouds and dissonances of the moment, and all be at last so mournfully clear and beautiful, when it is too late.

This Celtic Rune of Hospitality embraces the action of extending hospitality to a stranger - the kind of hospitality and generous welcome I myself encountered from time to time on the Camino:

I saw a stranger yestreen,
I put food in the eating place,
Drink in the drinking place,
Music in the music place;
And in the sacred name of the Triune
He blessed myself and my house, my cattle and my dear ones,
And the lark said in her song:
Often, often, often, goes the Christ in the stranger's guise.

This American Indian prayer affirms life in the presence of death and urges a clear-eyed, positive relationship between the dead and the living:

When I am dead
Cry for me a little.
Think of me sometimes
But not too much.
Think of me again and again
As I was in life.
At some moments it's pleasant to recall
But not for long.
Leave me in peace
And I shall leave you in peace
And while you live
Let your thoughts be with the living.

Yorkshire And Kent: The North/South Divide?

Some more quotations from my mother's commonplace book. The 1st is a poem by Vita Sackville-West: Bloomsbury-ite, bisexual, wife of Harold Nicolson, and lover of Violet Trefusis and Virginia Woolf.

Full Moon

She was wearing the coral taffeta trousers
Someone had brought her from Ispahan,
And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms,
And the coral-hafted feather fan;
But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight,
And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.

She cared not a rap for all the big planets,
For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran,
And all the big planets cared nothing for her,
That small, impertinent charlatan;
But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight,
And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.

I think this is a perfect gem of a conceit of a poem: the devil-may-care lightness of touch, the well judged repetitions, the exoticism (bringing the East and the romance of Space to the humble Garden of Kent, where Sackville-West lived in the not-so-humble Sissinghurst Castle), the sheer delicious exuberance.

And now for something completely different, as the saying goes, and one specially for The Weaver Of Grass...

Creation - Nobbut God

'First on, there was nobbut God...' Genesis 1.1 (Yorkshire Dialect Translation).

First on
There was silence.
And God said:
'Let there be clatter'.

The wind, unclenching,
Runs its thumbs
Along the dry bristles of Yorkshire Fog.

The mountain ousel
Oboes its one note.

After rain
Water lobelia
Drips like a tap
On the tarn's tight surface-tension.

But louder,
And every second nearer,
Like chain explosions
From farther nebulae
Light-yearing across space:
The thudding of my own blood.

'It's nobbut me,'
Says God.

From Seasons Of The Spirit by Norman Nicholson.

Proverbial

Continuing the exploration of my mother's commonplace book, I'm struck by how fond she was of writing out proverbs and aphorisms from many different world cultures. These proverbs are from the Chinese:

A man thinks he knows, but a woman knows better.

If fortune smiles - who doesn't? If fortune doesn't - who does?

Armies are maintained for years, to be used on a single day.

In misfortune, gold is dull; in happiness, iron is bright.

If you fear that people will know, don't do it.

Long visits bring short compliments.

The highest towers begin from the ground.

Free sitters at the play always grumble most.

Gold is tested by fire; man, by gold.

No image-maker worships the gods. He knows what stuff they are made of.

It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all possible doubt.

In our haste to deal with the things that are wrong, let us not upset the things that are right.

God gave man one mouth and two ears, so why don't we listen twice as much as we speak?

There is much truth in all of these, I think. As there is in this gypsy proverb:

If people do not know much do not laugh at them, for every one of them knows something that you do not.

In a similar vein, St John of the Cross wrote:

Do not despise others because, as it seems to you, they do not possess the virtues you thought they had: they may be pleasing to God for other reasons which you cannot discover.

Before I leave with reluctance this treasured cache of proverbs and aphorisms, I really must quote just 2 more. Plutarch quotes Simonides as saying that he never repented that he held his tongue, but often that he had spoken; and Confucius, coming from quite a different tangent, wisely states: He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not remains a fool for ever.

This final quotation is a poem which was handed to a regional organiser of Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, by a woman who had just become homeless. Living as she did in a remote rural spot, she had turned to the only person whom she thought would help her in her predicament - the local vicar. He was unable to give her even the most elementary advice, but promised to pray for her. Her reaction is expressed in this poem:

Shelter

I was hungry
and you formed a humanities group to discuss my hunger.
I was imprisoned
and you crept off quietly to your chapel and prayed for my release.

I was naked
and in your mind you debated the morality of my appearance.
I was sick
and you knelt and thanked God for your health.
I was homeless
and you preached to me of the spiritual shelter of the love of God.

I was lonely
and you left me alone to pray for me.
You seem so holy, so close to God.
But I am still very hungry
and lonely
and cold.

Devastating stuff.

Mothers, Nuns And Country Pie

Oh me, oh my/Love that country pie. BOB DYLAN Country Pie. (Bob Dylan performed this song continually as part of his 2000 concert repertoire in tribute to his mother, Beatrice (Beattie) Zimmerman, who died in January 2000.)

I inherited from my own mother a love of books, poetry, country churches and the countryside. Her commonplace book, which I rediscovered in my father's house the other day, is so redolent of her literary likes and loves, her beliefs and preferences. She almost seems to be speaking directly to me through it. She had a yen for a rather sentimental, nostalgic, Olde England - as exemplified in writers such as Walter de la Mare, Hilaire Belloc, Rudyard Kipling and G. K. Chesterton. She was also very heavily influenced by the popular Christian thought of people like C. S. Lewis, Michel Quoist and Jean Rees, and evangelists like Billy Graham. I have a strong memory of her as being a slightly detached and intensely spiritual being - almost aloof - and her quiet yet strong personality resonates deep within me still, and will always do so.

I found the much anthologized piece Desiderata in my mother's commonplace book. Although once thought to have been unearthed in Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore, in the 17th century, it's now known to have been composed by Max Ehrmann (1872-1945).

Go placidly amid the Noise and Haste, and remember what Peace there may be in Silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be; and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

I also found in my mother's commonplace book the slightly less well known - but for my money more authentically sounding, even wiser, less pious, more knowing and drily humorous - 17th Century Nun's Prayer.

Lord. Thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and will some day be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody's affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody: helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others' pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessing cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a Saint - some of them are so hard to live with - but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so. Amen.

Now, is that not wonderful?

In My Father's House

I've been away at my father's house. I've been trying to sort out his things. It's been distressing and time consuming. I had to cut off, be dispassionate. If I built up the courage to throw something in the rubbish bin, I could almost hear his voice behind me scolding: "How could you? I've had that for 50 years!" But I'm getting better at it. It's good to sort things out, bring some order into the chaos that his house has been in for the last 10 years. He began to "lose the plot" when he started caring for my mother, who was showing the initial signs of Alzheimer's disease, about 10 years ago. I've discovered he's kept everything: old cheque book stubs, used envelopes, company reports, broken ornaments and figurines (which he'd no doubt intended to mend one day but never did), legal correspondence, cereal packets, worn-out clothes. The larder was full of 1950s kitchen equipment that hadn't been used for decades, a lot of it chipped, cracked and dirty: huge saucepans for jam making, heavy kitchen scales with the old imperial weights, enormous platters for the Sunday joint, burnt and blackened baking trays, cake tins and Yorkshire Pudding tins (for making real Yorkshire Puddings - the ones 6 inches wide we used to eat with gravy as a prelude to the main Sunday roast). Amongst his haphazardly organized books, letters, papers and bank statements I was delighted to come across my mother's old commonplace book which I hadn't seen for ages and thought was lost for ever. Over the next few days I'll continue with some observations about and quotations from this meticulously typed binder of nostalgic memories. In the meantime I leave you with this - which I find specially apt, as I myself quoted The Beatitudes recently:

Some Modern Beatitudes

Blessed are those who can doubt - for they shall know.

Blessed are those who can dream - for they shall see.

Blessed are those who can give - for they shall receive.

Blessed are those who know how to read between the lines - for they shall understand.

Blessed are those who know how to run risks - for they shall be secure.

Blessed are those who do not do what is reasonable, decent and convenient - for they shall be followers of Christ.

Blessed are those who know how to listen - for they shall be listened to.

Blessed are those who do not give way to fear - for nothing will happen to them.

Blessed are those who read foreign nespapers - for they shall know what is happening.

Blessed are those who know how to lose a little time - for they shall have all the time in the world.

Blessed are those who want to be useful - for they are.

Blessed are those who get to know the neighbours on their staircase - for they shall be called human beings.

Taken from my mother's commonplace book.

Source unknown.

Soda Bread

Inspired by Riverdaze's simple, authentic recipe for soda bread, I thought I'd give it a go. Soda bread is an Irish staple food. It's been made in Ireland since 1840 when bicarbonate of soda (soda powder) was first introduced into the country. The kind of wheat produced in the wet Irish climate was not ideal for breadmaking using yeast as the leavening agent - so bicarbonate of soda was used instead. Buttermilk reacts with the baking soda to form bubbles of carbon dioxide and - hey presto - you've got a risen loaf.

There are 2 basic kinds of soda bread - the traditional round loaf, and the flatter griddle cake or farl cooked on a griddle. I tried the loaf. No messing about with lengthy kneading and waiting, and kneading again and waiting, in this recipe. It's quick and straightforward. You could make some when your friends drop in for coffee and they'd be eating it before they left. It's great warm and fresh, and fried in bacon fat, or served with jam, cheese or marmite (yeast extract) - anything sweet or salty.

Based on Riverdaze's recipe, I mixed together 4 cupfuls of strong white bread flour with a teaspoon of soda powder and a teaspoon of salt. So far, so easy. And it doesn't really get much more complicated than that! I stirred in nearly a pint of buttermilk (actually I didn't have enough buttermilk so I used half ordinary semi-skimmed milk) and formed a rough, sticky dough on a floured surface - just as you would in ordinary breadmaking. But I only kneaded it for a few minutes before it was knocked flat, shaped into a circle and placed on a greased tray in a very hot oven. After 40 minutes or so it was ready. Delicious!

At Riverdaze's suggestion, we ate some with a beef casserole I'd made earlier (diced stewing beef, onion, carrot, potato, swede, parsnip, celery, garlic, a little oil for searing and a little flour for thickening, beef stock, beef extract, some passata with basil, seasoning.) They worked pretty well together. Double delicious!

(Authentic soda bread has a cross scored on the top. Although thought by some to ward off evil spirits, the cross probably has a more practical purpose - to aid the cooking process, and to facilitate cutting the bread into 4 quarters when ready to serve.)

Read my other breadmaking post here.