For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.
There is a plant in Scotland called the nettle. You may know it. If you touch it; it will sting; it will give you an unsightly red rash and the irresistible urge to continually scratch every minute of every day for the next bloody fortnight.
Any sensible person would avoid the nettle, not my mum, she made nettles into a soup.
But, it didn’t stop there. The nettle’s cousin is the thistle. The thistle is just like a nettle except it has long sharp pins, leaves a bigger rash, and it leaves you with an irresistible urge to scratch every minute of every day for the next bloody month. What did my mom do with this? She made it into a soup.
I knew then it was a mistake to have bought her a liquidiser for Christmas.
She wouldn’t stop. We lived in Stornoway in the Western Isles. We were surrounded by seagulls, and when nettles were scarce she’d run down to the cliffs with her liquidiser, a soup pan and a Wily-Coyoteishly large avian net.
If you could pick it, pluck it, catch it, snatch it, hold it down and liquefy it, it could be made into a soup.
But, even though we had more soups than Heinz has varieties (58 rather than 57), she would not share that soup with any man, child or Free Church minister, who dared darken her doorstep around dinnertime. Before they were even ushered into the kitchen, while they waited in the front doorway to remove their green wellies, my mum would pounce upon them and say with a disingenuous smile:
“You’ll have had your soup then.”
This being considered a respectable greeting/warning to any visitor arriving at or near tea-time; it being considered impolite to say “no” to whatever was being eaten that night, even 100 years after the last time there was a famine on the island and the need to protect your croft and feed your family first was at it’s strongest. Then, and only then, were they ushered within sight of the kitchen stove.
Some people may consider this exchange impolite; maybe, even downright rude; but, this is just the way of the islands.
We didn’t greet each other with joy. There were no Parissean air kisses, no hearty backslaps, if you were lucky, when you entered a room no one would acknowledge you at all. If you were unlucky, you were greeted with the standard island greeting of:
“So, it’s you then.”
Said with the manner of someone who is expecting someone better, or someone else, or someone who was anyone but you. In Lewis, meeting a stranger, or even a friend, was like playing the lottery and always getting five numbers right.
That’s why I love soup. It’s both a drink and a warning. Like Buckfast but with less aggro. Or lager without the shouting.
Today, I had soup.
Bread: the last of my M&S White Rolls
Soup: can’t go wrong with Cream of tomato
Taste: like a begrudgingly welcome.
Twin brothers swimming, cycling and running in Scotland 