Hot Buttered Toast – nourish + flourish
A new format 'on Toast', things missed + gained, a lot of food + the best novel ever written
Checking the email for the Yin Yoga class I signed up to this evening. At 8.03pm, after reading one more, then a third, then another, then one final poem to my youngest, from I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree, a beautiful collection of children’s poetry, and a gift to the girls from their Nan. “No latecomers will be admitted.” Crap. 7.55pm was the cut-off point. I’m eight minutes’ worth of poetry late. So, an evening without Yin.
For a moment, I hesitate. ‘Go downstairs, empty the dishwasher, straighten up the front room,’ says the head. No. I have an hour. Yin or not, I have made this time. I shall take it.
One’s tucked up, the other is watching Hunger Games with her dad. I am not, for this hour at least, needed. Strange sensation in the evening, when I’m so accustomed to the bath, bed, story, cuddles, settling routine, even now, ten years since my youngest was born. But she’s a creature of habit… loves repetition… the safety of a sentence, set in stone.
Something shifts. I have been reading more. This is always a revelation to me – how delicious it feels to be reading more. Even as someone who spent three years at university with her nose in a book, and most of her teens gobbling her way through 100s of texts… an English Lit degree the perfect, bona fide excuse for those who’d choose a solitary book over a bustling bar, every time.
I love how reading shifts my thought patterns. How it ripens my language. How it seeds ideas only half-sown, or not yet conceived, into saplings of wonder and awe. How it sharpens my thinking… how I make much more sense to myself, the more I read.
I have a stack of unread books on the chest at the base of my bed. Placing them there always tickles that part of me that enjoys delayed gratification. There they wait for me. A few favourite magazines that I’ve not had the chance to catch up on – Juno, The Green Parent, The Simple Things, Resurgence. I love how I can be physically still – reclining, supported – while my mind is off on a guided tour… love how something so transporting can also be soothing, stilling. Pleasurable paradox.
Tonight, my free hour, is spent, instead, writing. These ideas have been forming while I’ve been reading, while I’ve been travelling, while I’ve been walking the Pup.
I realise they’re not original… but, they’re here to keep me on track… every Sunday, this slice of Hot Buttered Toast will make a little more sense, and bring with it something you can come to rely upon. That story set-in-stone, inspired by the 10-year-old… repetition and consistency… like the lines of a favourite lullaby… ever-comforting, never forgotten.
So, as below, each week I’ll pour out the things that have startled, tickled, held, supported, nourished me… the 5-6 categories will shift when they need to, but for the most part, stay the same, for all the reasons listed above.
Funnily enough, and probably because my life since joining Riverford has become even MORE about food than it was before, it was only when I read the list back that I realized how much of it centred around eating!
May it whet your appetite and spark a few new ideas for the week ahead…
Something I’ve read…
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
An icy night, the log burner raging, a record playing, and Mr R sat silently, stroking the Pup, while I sip wine and wonder at the quietness of this full house. And pluck this volume from the shelf – a well-read, dog-eared old friend – and fall, head-first, back into its sandy pages… Hana and Almasy, Katherine and Kirpal (Kip). Which I believe to be, though wholly subjectively, the very best novel ever written.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to MOTHER NOURISH with Emine Rushton to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.