Sweet potato and goats cheese mash

Chance dictated that my partner on last week’s first-aid course was someone that I got on with quite well. The physical intimacy of touching each other from head to toe each morning – to practice checking a casualty for injuries – was beyond that with which our nascent acquaintance ought to have been comfortable, particularly as my partner was a young woman my own age, Marianne. There wasn’t any romantic attraction between us, but I thought that we’d make good friends. After the course ended, most of us students took the same tram home. Marianne and I got off at the same stop, but we didn’t exchange contact details, we just said goodbye. I regretted it immediately, but didn’t do anything about it.

I’d arranged to go for a walk with Clare this morning, but I found myself awake long before I thought she might stir, so I decided to do two walks, one without Clare, and one with her. I set off on one of my standard routes - down Palatine Road, along the Mersey, and around the lake at Chorlton Water Park, listening to “Black Holes and Revelations” as I left the house, NWA and Rage Against the Machine along the back end of the river, and switching to something more jangly as I arrived at the lake, “Dear Catastrophe Waitress.” It was beautiful out - a clear, bright morning.




There was a pair of young ladies walking ahead of me on the path that I’d not really noticed. As I moved to overtake them, one turned and said, “Can I give you this?” It was Marianne.

“Hello! Sure, what is it?”
“It’s a leaflet. We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses? The associations I immediately make when I hear that phrase aren’t positive – knocking on other people’s doors uninvited, not celebrating Christmas, something about refusing blood transfusions – but I think I did quite well at hiding my gut feelings and maintaining a smile. We chatted a little longer, and exchanged surnames – or rather I gave mine up to her – so that we could get in touch through the internal email system at work. Then I bounded off.

Fear crept over me, founded in my own ignorance. I’m not religious; in fact I’m slightly wary of those who are. Could I be a friend of someone whose values are so massively different to my own? I’m being presumptuous - being a Jehovah’s Witness is a particularly involved approach to religious practice, but I should judge people on their merits, not on my prejudices about their beliefs, shouldn’t I? I ought to be more concerned that Marianne reads the Times and doesn’t like the Guardian.

Of course, I don’t have her surname, so I can’t look her up on the internal email system. We’ll have to see what happens next.

I met Thom and Ed in the Vic for the Liverpool derby, with their friends Ozzie, Sam, Ali and a handful of others. After the game, Thom invited me to his house for Sunday dinner. This is what we had.
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Roast chicken, in bacon
Roast potatoes
Sweet potato, mashed and creamed with goat’s cheese
Roast butternut squash, with cinnamon, five spice and star anise
Wilted spinach, with garlic and onion
Steamed green beans, with chopped tomato

Rhubarb, apple, prune, apricot, walnut and pecan crumble, with custard.
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I made the crumble.




These two jokers were there.