Steve_Bamlett_blog

What’s your favorite recipe?

“This just won’t do!”, James sighed. How can I answer my WordPress prompt this morning. I never cook anything that is remotely nice, let alone to favour. Heck, his husband  grunted. HECK has always been called Heck ever since James met him. He supposed it was short for Hector, but he never got round to asking.

In fact the best way for James to describe his knowledge of Heck’s early life, was that it was murky: like what a delightful frog in a fairy-tale might see deep in the muddy waters of a forest pool, staring down from its lily pad. ‘I must write that down’, James said to himself as his thought scrolled before him, for he rarely produced such fantastical imagery, being a rather dry kind of guy.

‘I know you worry about your daily prompts, Jim’, (James bristled – he hated his name to be abbreviated especially by Heck), ‘but, in the long perspective it doesn’t really matter’. Heck’s laugh then might have cut James up had it not been accompanied by a touch on his arm that looked loving. He settled himself, though couldn’t help feeling that though Heck’s touch looked like a warm gesture, it left him cold and, perhaps even feeling damp and perhaps a bit rankly nauseous, inside.

‘I do have a favourite recipe, James’, Heck offered tentatively. James ears pricked. Encouraged Heck continued: ‘It changed me entirely in fact!’ Did you know I once lived with three radical lesbians in Epping Forest’. ‘No!’ said James in an encouraging tone, hoping for more.

‘They were known for recipes that attracted people, even prime ministers and their advisors to their home (even once a Scottish First Minister – Heck always stressed the Scottish aspects especially when he was playful, which was rare but memorable) , a huge mansion they called ‘Cava’ just on the borders of the remaining woods.

‘What were they called?’

‘Weird!’ James pondered, I can’t quire remember though their names were beautiful, as if from a story. I used to call them Prima, she was the oldest, Segunda and Tertius (‘Tertius was non-binary and preferred their name to be ambiguous as far as biological sex was concerned’ Heck added sotto voce).They always loved me, since they adopted me as a young thing but they never talked about my origin, often going quiet and falling into a brown study as they did so. I say ‘brown’ because that’s how the idiom goes, but their mood always seemed to me, I don’t know why, more green than brown’.

Then Heck’s voice went dreamy. ‘That “recipe” that I think of as changing me …’, he paused. ‘They were known as having culinary skills people always called “enchanting”, the presentation of their strange dishes “charming”‘. I supposed to me this passed me by, for all I remember are over-boiled soupy concoctions served from a large (what shall I call it? …) great dish as big almost as a Grecian urn”.

‘But, everything looked big to me back then’, he murmured, as if I was looking up from a position in which I squatted that made me look even less taller than I would be on my hind legs’ Again a thoughtful pause, though Heck seemed to croak back what may have been a tear. ‘They would laugh and say my eyes were bulging too much and that was because I was green …’, I listened no more, became angry: ‘”With envy” you mean!But I don’t envy you. I can jump further, and in my dreams I see a lover so handsome he will take me away to something better’. The ladies laughed louder’. you are going to need a bit more height to achieve that’, they said. “Let’s feed you up with something”.

“I hope it’s what you gave Keir Starmer when he said he wanted to look prime ministerial” I laughed (I soon came round from my moods) for though he called what he eat ‘enchanting’, he still seems the same old same old ….”. “Silk purses aren’t made of sow’s ears’ they said in unison, and laughed again’.

‘The ladies hugged each other then jigged in a circle around an an imaginary oven. I knew I was in for something life-changing, for they said not another word – just bowed their heads consecutively, as they must, for the entrance was low for such tall ladies, as they went into the kitchen’.

‘I was never allowed to enter that kitchen. Whilst the preparations happened I seemed to doze or dream. The wonderful repast eaten some time later, and it was as charming and enchanting as was promised, made me doze even more. I dreamed I grew and the condition of my skin became less oily, more porous, my eyes softer and less staring, and my mouth (that people said ‘gaped’ when I was little, shrunk into those lips you like to kiss. I grew “handsome”!.’

I allowed Heck that, for he was and is beautiful.

‘Do you why I shortened my name to Heck@, said Heck,. ‘It was because Tertius gave me my name when they took me from that swamp of an area in Hackney they took me from (so they said) and it was Hecate!. “That’s a girl’s name'”, I remember shouting, for in those days you might have thought me terribly heteronormative and worse, a bit transphobic’.

I was surprised. “Do you remember nothing?'” To me now Heck seemed the coolest and most beautiful of anytime I had seen him.

‘Nothing really’, except in my dream (it must I have been a dream), I sort of hopped and skipped into that forbidden kitchen. but what what I saw in my dream – that recipe I said I would share with you, bore no reality nor did it fit with the deliciousness fluidity of the soup they served that not only enchanted and charmed whilst eating but seemed to make me grow up’.

‘Tell me, Heck’, I said hungrily

Okay, i wrote it down in my notebook. read it. He passed me a green-backed book whose hinges croaked when I opened them , and I read what I copy below. but by then Heck had hopped off in that delightful way of his, and by the time I went out to find him he was lost in the green murk of the back garden. I knew I would have to kiss him to get my handsome prince back.

THE NOTEBOOK CONTENTS
Thunderous noise  as the machines turned on that air-conditioned the kitchen-hovel. Enter the three Ladies. Heck enters unseen and hides (also unseen) in a corner.

PRIMA
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweltered venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmèd pot.

The Ladies  dance around the cauldron.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SEGUNDA
Fillet of a fenny snake
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blindworm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

TERTIUS
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i’ th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron
For th’ ingredience of our cauldron.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SEGUNDA
Cool it with a baboon’s blood.
Then the charm is firm and good.

Enter Heck (Hecate) to the kitchen's light from the corner he had his in.

HECK
O, well done! I commend your pains,
And everyone shall share i’ th’ gains.
And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

I had to admit Heck had always been enchanting, even enchanted with that wide-mouthed smile, which still gaped – just a little bit!

Well, that’s my WordPress prompt question for today. I will get Steven to put it on.

With love

Steven xxxxxxxxxxx