Dust - If You Must

 

Dust if you Must by Rose Milligan Next

Dust if you must, but wouldn't it be better To paint a picture, or write a letter, Bake a cake, or plant a seed; Ponder the difference between want and need? Dust if you must, but there's not much time, With rivers to swim, and mountains to climb; Music to hear, and books to read; Friends to cherish, and life to lead. Dust if you must, but the world's out there With the sun in your eyes, and the wind in your hair; A flutter of snow, a shower of rain, This day will not come around again. Dust if you must, but bear in mind, Old age will come and it's not kind. And when you go (and go you must) You, yourself, will make more dust.

 

That poem sums me up. I don’t live in a messy muddle, but I won’t lose any sleep over dusty shelves that can wait until tomorrow, or the next day. There is more to life. There’s a saying about ‘boring women have tidy houses’, something like that. It might be on a fridge magnet. I declare, I am not boring.

It is a bit disconcerting to read that household dust is composed of 20 – 50% dead skin cells. The rest is hair, fur, pollen, fibres from fabric and various other materials in the environment. I won’t dash for the anti-bacterial spray and a good cloth just yet. I’ll finish writing first, unless I see a dust mite or start to feel itchy. If it’s true, the layer of house dust doesn’t look any worse after five years. I’m not going to purposely run that experiment. I admit to being a teeny weeny bit embarrassed recently when we needed help to move a large sideboard and hatch style unit. The top surface of the hatch could have been a five year science exercise, but I know it wasn’t as long as that, I promise.

Soon, some remedial building work will create more than the average layer of dust. I’ll wait until it is all complete before I clean up.

Outside, the dry weather has made everywhere dusty. We spent the weekend enjoying some caravan time at one of our favourite places in Garstang. Passing vehicles, as slow as they were on the site, churned up powdery clouds with the dryness of the road tracks. Cars looked like they’d been through a sand storm.

Now, I’d like some help, please. Who wrote the poem ‘Dust if you Must’ credited above to Rose Milligan, but I also have the same poem in a book by Pam Ayres, showing her as having the copyright?

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Sauce - Keep It in the Fridge

 

Most of the door compartments of my tall larder fridge are taken up with sauces. Apparently, everything needs refrigerating when it has been opened and must be used within six weeks or sometimes only four weeks. We often go beyond that, with our general rule of ‘no fur, its fine’ unless it is obviously curdled or changed colour. Mint sauce, full of sugar and vinegar, in a jar with a two year ‘best before’ or ‘use by’ date, would surely not just ‘go off’ if left in the fridge for seven weeks instead of six? If you don’t hear from me for a while, I might have poisoned myself. Joking apart, nothing hangs around for too long, except the seafood sauce that I bought too much of one Christmas. I’d over-estimated the prawn cocktails, again. The name ‘Seafood Sauce', when did that happen? I searched the shelves in our massive, well-stocked Tesco looking for Thousand Island Dressing, in vain, on a rare physical food shop for last minute Christmas stuff.  Seafood Sauce would have to do. Anyway, I’m melon, not prawn cocktail, it is for dinner guests. Someone suggested mixing mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. I haven’t tried it.

Like lots of people, I was brought up in a family which had two sauces, red and brown. My dad loved tomato ketchup and plastered everything with it. He would have swamped his Sunday dinner if he could have got away with it. My mum liked H.P, Brown Sauce, or mustard, but mustard was a powder that needed mixing and that was a lot of faffing for one sausage butty. I was with dad on the ketchup, but only a small amount on the side of my plate and when it was gone, that was it. The glass bottle took ages to pour and my dad would push a knife in to get it going. Those were the days.

I blame Mrs Bridges, the cook from Upstairs, Downstairs, for my desire to make homemade sauces. I’m not a domestic goddess, I’m more for feeding a family or just the two of us these days, by affordable, practical means and I haven’t got a kitchen maid to help either. I love my own cheese sauce, perfect for cauliflower, broccoli or both, but my favourite is seasoned onions and mushrooms in cream with steak or pork. It is from a recipe for Boeuf Stroganoff but seems to work well,

Amongst the fridge door contents is the irreplaceable Heinz Tomato Ketchup, no other will do, and the H.P. Sauce. They were kept in a cupboard when I was a child. I keep Soy sauce and Worcester sauce in a dark cupboard with the vinegar, salt and pepper. I hope they are alright.

Here is Lake District, from Sir John Betjeman,

I pass the cruet and I see the lake
Running with light, beyond the garden pine,
That lake whose waters make me dream her mine.
Up to the top board mounting for my sake,
For me she breathes, for me each soft intake,
For me the plunge, the lake and limbs combine.

I pledge her in non-alcoholic wine
And give the H.P. Sauce another shake.

Sprint of Grasmere, bells of Ambleside,
Sing you and ring you, water bells for me;
You water-colour waterfalls may froth.
Long hiking holidays will yet provide
Long stony lanes and back at six for tea
And Heinz’s ketchup on the tablecloth.

John Betjeman  (1906 – 1984)

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and keep well, Pam x

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