Inscription

I was in a second-hand bookshop yesterday, a usual haunt for me and I was just browsing cookery books, a usual occupation for me, and I came across a ‘Cranks’ recipe book. It wasn’t that old, 1982, but it was obviously well used and well-loved.

There were no little notes in the margins as there sometimes are, and I think these are delightful, even if its only adjustments to the recipes, less salt, more salt, thyme instead of sage, a squeeze of lemon, higher or lower temperature, longer or shorter cooking time. Sometimes there are little messages ‘Mrs Smith tried this and said it was delightful’, ‘James didn’t care for this’, or even little notes ‘I used the blackberries we gathered by the castle wall’, ‘I made this for dad’s birthday meal’, ‘Sylvia visited and luckily I had baked this which she enjoyed very much’.

Sometimes there are totally random jottings, as if the spare margin round the recipe was what was handy when a message or thought arrived, ‘must ring the college about Simon’, ‘there are three chiffchaffs in the garden!’, ‘the library bus comes on Tuesday afternoon’.

In the book I was looking at in the bookshop, there was an inscription on the inside leaf, something like, ‘To My, from Sy, for when you have a real kitchen! xxx’. It wasn’t exactly that, but it was something similar. Obviously My had really appreciated the book and used it… although I didn’t find any notes from him or her. There was no way of knowing whether it was a gift from a parent to a son or daughter, an aunt to a niece or nephew, a friend to a friend, a lover to his or her beloved… I think it might have been the last one.

From this brief inscription, a whole inspiration sprang up… and I wondered if My and Sy, who in my mind were lovers, were still together. Did they marry and have little Mys and Sys? Did one of them leave the other and either leave or take the cookery book and keep using it, ignoring its inscription? Was it not as dramatic, and they quite happily went their separate ways. Did the cookery book come to the second-hand shop with regret, or with fond memories, or with indifference. It’s a vegetarian cookery book so were they both veggies? Did one of them stop being? Were they omnivorous but just loved vegetarian food?

The inspiration from these ponderings was of someone acquiring a cookery book, and finding the story behind the inscription and the notes jotted around the recipes… there could be a whole new fiction about to be created… and you’ve heard about it first!