A Romantically Adventurous State of Mind

Here is a great example of reading the right thing at the right time. I had been feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of planning a summer holiday with our baby-now-toddler. Though I’d been fantasizing about a family vacation in, say, the South of France, with Lucy building sand castles, the prospect of getting on a transatlantic flight and all of the logistics and unknowns involved felt more and more insurmountable in my current state of general exhaustion. Time is slipping away, now it’s summer, and it seems like we’ll be staying put (unless I get a burst of energy). It was in this state that I came across the intro to a couscous recipe written by Rachel Roddy:

“Lick your arm, then bite.” I remember being taught this by a Greek friend when I was about 10: to lick a salt-streaked forearm, then to take a bite of watermelon, enjoying how salty and sweet got on, before flinging ourselves in the sea, using the melon skin as a sort of float.

Years later, I watched my tiny son alternate between his arm and an ice-cream lolly with a chocolate veneer (called a cremino), untroubled by any sand that got between them. Then, last week, while I moaned about spending more time in too small a space, that we wouldn’t get to Sicily or to Dorset this summer, my son was busy swirling salt into his bath, tightening his snorkelling mask and checking the freezer for cremino.

So, taking a lesson from my now eight-year-old, I have been salting my bath water and enjoying the crack as the veneer of chocolate on a cremino shatters. I have also been cooking some dishes as a form of travel, and not tripping myself up with the sabotaging: “But it doesn’t taste the same if you don’t have five kilos of just-picked tomatoes or a pint of Dorset cream.” Of course it doesn’t, and so we adjust; we swirl salt in the bath.”

Just perfect. I’ve had the tab opened all week to read as a reminder.

Now, here’s a list of other things, both frivolous and necessary, that have been on my mind for the beginning of summer:

• Babies love bubbles. This is the champagne of bubble solutions (according to me), non toxic and pearlescent. You can buy a larger refill bottle here. We have the bubble pipe which is cute - but how about this bubble trumpet?!