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BEST BELOVED

  I can’t remember   when it was I stopped really   looking at you, but here beside me in bed, I am shocked to see that you have turned into someone old. Lying facing me, your head on the pillow, I can see how the loose flesh has distorted your face into   a melted waxwork   facsimile of someone I used to know. Your mouth, half open and relaxed, your exhalation deep and rhythmic, I can smell the night’s sleep on your breath. Your eyes closed in sleep allow me to   examine your lashes which even now, are longer than they should be on a man. Your eyebrows are barely visible as like your hair, they have turned snow white. I never knew you when you were young, but you often talk of how red your hair was and how proud you felt for it being so. The only concession to your   heritage now being the golden tinge to the hairs on your arms, and your temper when crossed. You tell me you had freckles as a child, and although your skin suggests a vulnerability to the sun, all I see are the l
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Woodland farewell

  She wanted no fuss. No ceremony, no gathering of people wearing their ill-fitting, moth balled best. No one there out of duty   and the hope of a cup of tea with cake afterwards. Just her family- meagre at that- and me. It was the farewell we had talked about for several years on my trips to see her. It had been a game of sorts initially, both of us making light of the day that was approaching as if on the incoming tide that twice a day covered the salt marsh near her home. An ebbing away from life that little bit more each time I saw her. Then as her illness progressed and the certainty of her going felt more real to us both, the laughter gave way to a silence in which her thoughts and mine met and danced together in the sunlit room overlooking her garden towards her “ blue remembered   hills” in the north.    She loved her garden, a rebellion of wildflowers and ivy cloaked trees. A small patch of woodland dropped into the pristine neighbourhood which caused disgust to those w
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Life and Times of Someone You Might Know

Amanda Small never really got on with her name. The fact her family name was Small was always a bit of a joke in the neighbourhood as there was no getting away from the fact that they were a family of large people.   For as long as Amanda could remember, her name had been changed by those around her. She had been known as Mandy Moo, Amanda the Panda, Manda, Mandy and Mand. Her life story defined through each variation of her name.   Mandy Moo, sometimes shortened to Moo had been the name her brother Rob   had given her when she was three and stayed with her through primary school. However, once she had started growing breasts,   being called Mandy Moo often came with a request to see her udders and as such lost its charm. Once she started senior school, Amanda became Amanda the Panda and she was never sure whether this related to the fact her mascara inevitably ended up as black rings around her eyes or that she was by this time, a lot bigger than most of the girls in her class.
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A long time away

I cannot believe that it is nearly five years since I last posted anything on this blog. In fact today I was trying to create a new blog but somehow I kept getting sent back to this site and so, I guess I am going to just carry on using it although possibly in a slightly different way. Since I last wrote anything, I have retired from work and moved with my partner to a different part of the country. The word 'retired' makes me sound so old and even though I am going to be 60 next month, I don't consider that to be old at all. If I am being honest, my enthusiasm for my work had started to ebb which in turn, caused me to worry that I was no longer being a effective or for that matter empathic in what I was doing. I found myself wanting to find solutions for people's problems and as any therapist will tell you, that isn't what it's about at all. I wonder in part whether the need to do that was because I no longer felt capable of staying with people's pain.
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Cheese "Pling Plong" and the empty love bucket

I think I may have mentioned a bit about the idea of comfort cooking and comfort eating and how food can often be a way in which we have internalised early life care and nurture. For me and I suspect many others too, it is also a highly symbolic way of demonstrating love to others. If I am honest, I find it far easier to show how much I love someone by offering them something good to eat, than by telling them in words. Therefore anyone who has  ever shared a meal  in my home, or been eaten food that has been prepared  by me, be aware that that is what it meant! I am conscious that whatever I make is open to criticism and not everyone likes to eat the things I like to make.However,  if I am being really honest, it can often feel like  rejection, almost as if it is me they are saying that they dislike.  I am also aware that when I discover someone shares the same taste in food I do, I feel a real connection. It's mad, but true! I am sure that most people have early childhood mem
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A weekend of cooking

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Do you sometimes find you have days when the thought of cooking is a real drudge? I have to admit to having felt this way these past few days. It's just as well that the freezer is filled with stuff made on days when I am keen. I think perhaps this happens when cooking for pleasure or fun becomes cooking under pressure. When I think about this a bit more, I suspect the pressure I am talking about is entirely self made and can be compared to performance anxiety. This weekend we had friends over for a meal. It's a fairly long running arrangement in which over the course of a year, each couple takes it in turn to cook a meal. It started out that the meals were 'themed' dinners where the cooking was shared; the hosts choosing the 'theme' and preparing the main course and the others cooking the canapes,  first course and pudding. However, what happened then was that we ended eating enormous meals and collectively falling asleep at the table. We started with the us
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Why CBT cook

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Okay so you might have noticed that I have changed my name fro Mindful cook to CBT cook.  I hadn't realised how many mindful cooks there are in the world  and I want to make sure I don't get mixed up with someone else.  My background in therapy has introduced me to the world of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and so whilst I am not sitting round meditating all day, I have begun to take much more notice of  and real pleasure in the 'here and now'. Certainly cooking and baking in particular is something I have discovered enables me to tune in to the moment and tune out worries. Cooking creates so many sensual experiences; smell, touch, sound( have you ever listened to a cake baking?) and of course taste, that it is hard not to become totally engrossed. I wonder if like me, the days seemed much longer when you were little? The reason for this, experts suggest is that as young children we are very often experiencing new things and so totally focussed and engrossed
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