The next morning, I sit at my desk at home and try to ignore the fact that we have yet to tidy away a lot of the household stuff. Recipes, I think, staring at the blank sheet of heavy, unlined paper in the giant notebook in front of me.
Recipes need to be written, and now.
When in doubt, get out the serious stationery.
So to help myself out of myemotionally-blocked state, I decided that a fancy notebook with lovely, expensive paper would help.
I’d even sprung for a pretty purple ink pen to assist. I’ve decorated my new notebook with pretty wrapping paper and labelled a whole section: ‘New Ideas’.
Inexplicably, none of this has helped. I am focusing and the magic has not happened. Bad things have not helped me to grow. They’ve just made me reliant on sleeping tablets.
Where are you, bloody Mildred, when I need you for ideas? I demand. Quiet now, huh? Only pop up to belittle me.
Real chefs don’t get blocked, Mildred says.
The inner voice is right. I am not a real chef, clearly. I am an imposter. Poster girl for Imposter Syndrome. Sorry, posterforty-two-year-old woman, I amend. When I look in the mirror, Mildred rarely ceases to remind me that younger, far more talented chefs are rising up behind me in a great wave. My career could be over in a flash.
And whose fault is that? Yours. Moping around. The world is in chaos – you were only mugged. Stop whining.
Mildred knows how to draw blood, I can tell you.
I wish she were like Alexa or Siri or one of the computer/phone helpers and I could just tell her to shut off, but with inner voices, you can’t: they keep at it.
I never had such a vicious inner voice till Dad’s stroke and then my mugging, but somehow, the combination of the two have turned the normalwould it kill you to learn how to dress better?into a critic who turns my worst fears into words and bounces them into my mind. Bitchily, I might add.
In order to distance this inner voice, I started calling her Mildred.
A name like Mildred – sweet, fond of floral dresses and cardigans she knits herself – would neutralise things.
Wrong.
Mildred is lethal. She could rip the world’sself-help gurus apart in half a day.
I sigh, look at my paper and draw a flower, then a couple ofbadly-shaped eggs in the top corner. Then a wonky chicken. Unlike Liam or my mother, I have never been God’s gift to art.
Chicken. What else can we do with chicken?
I have spatchcocked it, roasted it, doused it with lemon, olive oil and vine tomatoes. I have taught people how tostir-fry healthy, speedy foods for when they race in from work tired and need good food for their families. I have made it with Asian and Indian influences, bashed lemongrass into it and shredded it for healthy grain salads complete with bulgur, quinoa and jewelled pomegranate seeds. I have done everything with bloody chicken except serve it raw, which is never a good plan.
Once upon a time, the ideas for recipes flooded in without me having to make an effort. I could magic a new chicken twist out of my head with half an hour of meandering in my pantry and some glorious cookery alchemy. I did not appreciate that at the time. Now, when theflooding-in bit has gone, I am like an icing bag with all the icing squeezed out.
I fiddle around a bit with ideas but I am borrowing from other people and I know it. That is the kiss of death for my career.
I have to phone my agent about this.
Paddy, who runs a big agency between Dublin and London, has time for all his mainlynon-fiction clients, and disproves all those jokes about agents being tough as old boots. He would give me a kidney if I asked, never mind giving me sound advice.
But if I phone Paddy, if I actually say: ‘I have no recipes: my mind has dried up,’ then I would be making it all real. I would be saying that my career is in trouble. That I am not going to be able to fulfil either of my contracts, TV series or book. And I can’t do that. I have a family, responsibilities. I need to sort this out on my own.
That’s how I do things. On my own.
Still, when the phone rings, I drop the pretty purple ink pen like a shot and answer it.
It’s Dan.
‘Hi, love,’ he says and I can hear the gulp in his voice. ‘Adele Markham was on to me this morning. Themake-up, whatchamacallit, launch is this weekend and that’s when Elisa would love to see Lexi.’
‘Well, she can’t,’ I rage. ‘She’s doing herend-of-term exams.’
