Ozone and hydrocarbons when a mattock hits industrial slag.
The certainty and precision of technical drawings.
A lungfull of cement dust.
Builders.
Silence at lunchtime when the machines stop.
Talking all day, more exhausting than shovelling.
Sheet-metal buildings felled, revealing pristine green slopes behind.
Evening vegetation.
A day in the office, a day wasted.
A picnic by the sheaf.
Celandine, anenome, every plant a friend.
A carrier bag full of ramsons and ground elder.
Every glance a potential meal: how could you ever starve here?
Bicycling against time, patience exhausted.
A tour of secret art galleries.
Pathetic expressions of privilege and wasted opportunities.
A room full of pure magic.
St. George's day on Devonshire Green: a perfection of blandness.
Waiting, waiting, waiting in a bar.
Reaching exhaustion behind a drum set.
Too little sleep.
The smell of rain at dawn.
Bicycling empty 6am sunday morning city arteries.
Hull.
Mud further than the eye can see.
Mist over spurn head, the end of the world, the threshold. (Song for Our Ancestors)
Plastic pollution in the seas.
25 Apr 2010
18 Apr 2010
Eating Dock
I heard that dock leaves were edible if cooked twice. So, when collecting ground elder to eat (highly recommended) I picked some fresh spring dock leaves to experiment with. There seems to be a lack of reliable information on this subject, so I present my results here. I am not an expert when it comes to the complex Rumex genus so no identification to species level was attempted. However, this specimen seems like a fairly standard English dock to my country eyes.
Raw, the leaves were acceptable, bland, and slightly acidic.
I chopped the leaves into approx. 7mm strips and boiled them in water in a small saucepan on a hob for about 5 minutes.
The resulting liquid was green, pungent and reminiscent of stinging nettle juice (these two plants are often considered to have some sort of affinity, growing in similar habitats. The dock is considered in folklore to be the antidote to the nettle). The liquid tasted acidic, bitter and dangerous. Adding dock to a sauce would make the sauce unpleasantly bitter and acid, and possibly introduce harmful chemicals (I do not know if there is anything harmful in dock) so I recommend firmly against doing this.
After pressing the cooking juice out of the leaves, they were tasted and found to be bland and unremarkable. All traces of acidity were removed to the taste: in fact, all traces of taste were removed entirely. The structure and thickness of the leaf had also been destroyed, and the remnants brought to mind thin seaweed in terms of appearance and texture. These leaves could be used as a spinach substitute, but as it is likely that most of the vitamins have gone down the sink and due to the availability of many tastier alternatives in the English countryside (not least of which nettles), I do not think dock worthwhile eating.
On final comment, the famous Lancashire dish of "dock pudding" is made using bistort, Persicaria bistorta, which, whilst closely related to the true docks, is a different plant.
Raw, the leaves were acceptable, bland, and slightly acidic.
I chopped the leaves into approx. 7mm strips and boiled them in water in a small saucepan on a hob for about 5 minutes.
The resulting liquid was green, pungent and reminiscent of stinging nettle juice (these two plants are often considered to have some sort of affinity, growing in similar habitats. The dock is considered in folklore to be the antidote to the nettle). The liquid tasted acidic, bitter and dangerous. Adding dock to a sauce would make the sauce unpleasantly bitter and acid, and possibly introduce harmful chemicals (I do not know if there is anything harmful in dock) so I recommend firmly against doing this.
After pressing the cooking juice out of the leaves, they were tasted and found to be bland and unremarkable. All traces of acidity were removed to the taste: in fact, all traces of taste were removed entirely. The structure and thickness of the leaf had also been destroyed, and the remnants brought to mind thin seaweed in terms of appearance and texture. These leaves could be used as a spinach substitute, but as it is likely that most of the vitamins have gone down the sink and due to the availability of many tastier alternatives in the English countryside (not least of which nettles), I do not think dock worthwhile eating.
On final comment, the famous Lancashire dish of "dock pudding" is made using bistort, Persicaria bistorta, which, whilst closely related to the true docks, is a different plant.
5 Apr 2010
List
A woman losing control of her heavily-set pony.
The smell of the rain on the moors.
Standing in the sleet.
The frozen heather rubbing my bare calves raw.
A moorland stream in spate.
The perfect camping spot: a patch of flat dry grass: the head of a silted up pond on the moor.
A two centimetre partially articulated bird claw inside an owl pellet.
The threat of the giant dread owl eating hawks.
Two hawthorns: lurking sentinels in the threshold of the city.
Diseased larches thick overgrown with extra branches bending down to the soil and creating rooms underneath.
Two magnificent venerable red deer stags well within the city limits.
A harpist performing in a pub.
Mother of Vinegar.
Conversation.
Storm Cats.
Driving all night.
Arriving at dawn.
Sleeping at a festival.
Setting up the cake stall.
Spiral Navigators.
Dreaming that I was turning left at a junction. A little girl steps out in front of me and I sound my horn. She dashes forwards into the path of a tram and I see her body ripped apart and her flesh ground into the tarmac.
Incestuous space rock bands.
A barbecue on the beach.
Other people's drugs.
Trying to think of more interesting things to do than sleep.
I love my granny.
Spring in Hertfordshire.
Driving to Sheffield on autopilot.
A woman losing control of her slight arab horse as she crosses the motorway bridge.
Arriving home and wondering what it is I do here.
Back up to 12 stone 7.
Having absolutely no idea what to do next.
The smell of the rain on the moors.
Standing in the sleet.
The frozen heather rubbing my bare calves raw.
A moorland stream in spate.
The perfect camping spot: a patch of flat dry grass: the head of a silted up pond on the moor.
A two centimetre partially articulated bird claw inside an owl pellet.
The threat of the giant dread owl eating hawks.
Two hawthorns: lurking sentinels in the threshold of the city.
Diseased larches thick overgrown with extra branches bending down to the soil and creating rooms underneath.
Two magnificent venerable red deer stags well within the city limits.
A harpist performing in a pub.
Mother of Vinegar.
Conversation.
Storm Cats.
Driving all night.
Arriving at dawn.
Sleeping at a festival.
Setting up the cake stall.
Spiral Navigators.
Dreaming that I was turning left at a junction. A little girl steps out in front of me and I sound my horn. She dashes forwards into the path of a tram and I see her body ripped apart and her flesh ground into the tarmac.
Incestuous space rock bands.
A barbecue on the beach.
Other people's drugs.
Trying to think of more interesting things to do than sleep.
I love my granny.
Spring in Hertfordshire.
Driving to Sheffield on autopilot.
A woman losing control of her slight arab horse as she crosses the motorway bridge.
Arriving home and wondering what it is I do here.
Back up to 12 stone 7.
Having absolutely no idea what to do next.
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