summer haze

I sometimes forget how beautiful a southern summer can be.  Yes, it’s an oven out there.  But first thing in the morning, after emerging from the shower (I’m not alive until I’ve stood under water for a while), I throw open the balcony door and let in the freshly-baked morning air.  Yes, after breakfast there’s a necessary return to the air-conditioned cocoon, walking from building-to-building is sticky business, and getting in the car feels like inhaling steam, but every morning it seems the world wakes up again all blue and warm.

When evening comes, I can have a glass of wine on the balcony with the sunset, and leave the screen-door closed but the glass door open while I eat my dinner and read into the night.  The evenings smell like the onset of a storm, damp and earthy, and the cicadas roar.

I’ve been experimenting with new dinner ideas.  Right now, the plan is a new fish each week.  I’ve never been much of a fish-eater, but that’s based mainly on ignorance about the differences between types of fish and the best cooking methods.  Last week it was halibut; this week (last night) was sea bass.  So far, halibut wins (I’m resisting puns about which one is swimming out ahead, etc).  I baked it with just a little butter, some lemon juice, and black pepper, wrapped up in a little foil tent.  For a side: red peppers, snow peas, mushrooms, onions, spinach, beansprouts — all stir fried together with a little seasoning and a tiny splash of balsamic vinegar.  My problem is that when I enjoy a meal, I want to cook it every night for a week before I end up getting a little tired of the tastes.  So I’m trying to restrain myself to one or two fishy nights a week (substituting shrimp — in the stir fry — for baked fish).  I love to cook, but sometimes coming up with vareity is a chore.

It’s almost time for lunch, and I’ve done very little work this morning.  I’m in one of those stare-out-the-window moods.  The lure of the summer-soaked view.  When I first arrived in my apartment two years ago, I fell in love with the tree outside my balcony.  And each summer it’s deep pink blooms reach just a little higher.  Sitting here in my study, they’re in full view, occassionally nodding heavy heads in the dull summer air.  My apartment complex is freshly painted, each building a different earth tone.  I was somewhat disconcerted to come home and find myself no longer living in a creamy-colored block; it’s now a dark beige.  I miss the view of uniform pinky-cream apartment buildings.

Time for lunch.  Salad: baby romaine leaves, feta cheese, pecans, balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  With brie and French bread from Guglhupf’s.

summer sunset

The fourth of July was a perfect English summer’s day.  As the evening closes and the sun begins to set, the sky is every colour a summer evening sky can be: deep blue, baby blue, yellow, green, pink, red, purple.  Thin slivers of grey cloud are skirting the horizon as I watch from an upstairs window.  Alone in this big quiet house I can hear the laughter and conversations of villagers at the pub across the road.  They are drinking a pint to a long warm Saturday.  The pigeons are vying for attention with the barks of the blind village dog.  He haunts the pub scrounging for food every night.

When I was young, pints at the little village pub were only pulled for tired old men who used The Eagle as an escape-valve after work.  Now, under new ownership, it’s the heart of this little Hampshire village.  Children play in the grassy back garden.  Teenage boys play pool on the bar side.  The village eccentric, dressed in green overalls, brings his own engraved silver mug for a pint.  Every few minutes he steps outside to puff on his pipe (always complaining under his breath that the smoking ban has ruined his evenings).  Last year he got married, and the whole village took part.  He owns the village donkeys and collects Aston Martins.  He tips his cap to me whenever he sees me, accuses me of slipping into a terrible American accent, and stands when a woman enters the room.

Friday night is curry night at The Eagle, and last night my Dad and I shared poppadoms while we listened to locals debate the new drafts.  Not enough bite.  Too bitter.  Not deep enough.  It took forever to order a drink; they had to change the barrel.  Everyone knows each other here, but I feel like a stranger now, a foreigner in the village that has been home since I was two.  When my parents first moved here from the north, they were warned that you remained a newbie until you’d been around for at least 10 years.  After 24 years here, everyone knows my Dad, who used to be known as “slippers,” due to an unfortunate tendency to forget to change his footwear when heading out for a pint.  You can hardly blame him; the pub is just at the other end of our garden wall.  We commonly have a collection of Guinness glasses in our dishwasher — why buy cans of Guinness when you can nip across the road to get take-away on tap?

It’s a beautiful evening for a pint outside the village pub.  Wimbledon finals weekend.  It’s a pity there’s no British win to toast.  But on July 4th, I can’t say I’m too unhappy that there’s an American contender.  I have divided loyalties now.  I’m a bit of a foreigner here.