Selling Up

I pulled a booklet out of my row of cookbooks in order to lean my shopping list on something firm, and as I contemplated what to buy for several days of meals I idly looked at my makeshift table. Kenwood, it said. Creative Food Processor Cooking. I flicked through the pages, and to my astonishment saw illustrated descriptions of how to chop carrots in discs or lengthwise, how to make easy bread, hummus, chutney and pesto. What? How have I not looked at this before? Well, of course I know why. It is my habit to not read instructions until I have broken the thing I am trying to make work. Life's too short, although it inevitably becomes much shorter with this approach. On further scrutiny of the cookery department of my library I found the Magimix Le Duo recipe book which not only lets you juice apples and pears, the purpose for which this appliance was bought when we had a lot of fruit trees, but make cocktails, coulis, jellies, souffles and smoothies. And then, most damningly, there was a DVD of 180 recipes for the Kenwood Chef. Oh good grief, this is all so infuriating. I've been chopping, mashing, grinding, squeezing, slicing, mincing, grating and generally bashing things I could have left a machine to do, for years and years and years. I feel like pulling something over my head and just retiring.

Otherwise I've had a hectic week of parties, bridge suppers and, last night, selling programmes for a concert of the John Wilson Orchestra at Snape. I volunteered for this job because I just love selling things, anything. It's so much fun, watching the pile of merchandise go down as the stash of notes and coins grows. I didn't sell as many as I expected to however. Punters were wary of the Christmas Weekend programmes, knowing from experience the habit of Aldeburgh Music to package several concerts in one form and charge a bit more for it. "Are there any programmes for tonight's concert?" they kept asking me as I stood beside a huge pile of the things, next to a sign saying in big letters "John Wilson Programmes, £3 each". Yes, I replied countless times. These are the programes for tonight's concert. Only £3. But are they just for John Wilson? they wanted to know. No, I told them, but there are just two events inside which includes tomorrow night's Bach concert too. Only £3. Several of them wanted to see the proof of this, and read the programme for the night's music before they handed over the money. I warned some of these doubters that if they memorised the repertoire and didn't buy I'd have to charge them double the price. We had a laugh, it was enjoyable. And when they'd all gone in to the hall and I'd locked away my cash box I headed upstairs to the restaurant for a lovely free meal and big glass of wine. I'd earned it.