Fields of Gold

It’s Christmas!!!  Awoke to snow falling from a grey ski which put an end to any thoughts of skiing and nicely averted the fondue or turkey lunch dilemma.  I have been cooking up a storm for the last two days in any case, my Jamie Oliver’s Christmas DVD playing from my laptop perched on top of the kitchen bar.  In previous years my mother has been on hand to do the Mr. Bean hand up turkey palaver but this year it was me and Jamie and a 6kg bird.  Did you know that the French word for wishbone is le bréchet?  Me neither.  I persuaded the butcher to take it out as according to Jamie it makes for easier carving – it does.  I like to cook in the mountains for some strange reason as the kitchen is tiny and I have to lug all the food by foot through the snow, over the baby piste and in through the balcony door.  Maybe it’s a ski-avoidance tactic.

When not cooking or ski-ing I’m reading.  I’m reading my writing friend Francesca’s book Mucho Caliente see www.francescaprescott.com.  Francesca and I met at a yoga class many years ago, I was in awe of her suppleness and then discovered we both loved to write.  I’m so proud of her.  Mucho Caliente is a romantic comedy set in Ibiza and hilariously funny.  I’m also re-reading Martha Beck’s Steering by Starlight.  I’ve got mountain insomnia or whatever waking at 2am is called and so dip into this book and ask myself some big 2am questions.  I think about my plans for 2009, what I was most proud of in 2008 and what I learnt about myself.  Terrifying 2am stuff but I have found a sentence which sums up my amazing, terrifying, brave, sad, joyful, frustrating, fabulous year of change.

Beck quotes from the Sufi poet Rumi:

  “Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field.  I’ll meet you there.”

That’s my kind of field and it is the place I go to when I am trying to figure out my own personal big picture.  If you are reading this then perhaps we are in the same field.  Thanks for the company. 

It’s my turn on Guitar Hero now.