Mar 21, 2000
My mother-in-law sent us curranty bread (what American's call
soda bread) for St. Patrick's Day. She's French Canadian. Anyway,
the loaf of love that arrived via Federal Express had me thinking of
what I suspect might be a genuinely pastoral memory. My first
boyfriend was, and is as far as I know, a farmer. I went to stay
with him one early summer on his family's farm. I don't think the
family took to me, I had child bearing hips but I think they smelt
my intention not to utlise them for reproduction. However, James,
the farming boyfriend, had a much younger brother who the family
had adopted as a sort of spare heir in case a combine harvester
devoured the other son. This brother was the only other family
member who took to me and he would walk me out to the fields
to where James was working each afternoon holding my hand.
We would take the workers warm curranty bread in linen tea
towels and bottles of warm, milky tea in glass milk bottles. It was
a Laurie Lee-like idyll. James would always return to the boarding
school we attended late each autumn because his manpower was
requried for harvesting; we all thought it a little barbaric that he
was forced to miss school to bring in the harvest. Sometimes I
envy him his farm on the rich alluvial plains of Kildare.
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My mother-in-law sent us curranty bread (what American's call soda bread) for St. Patrick's Day. She's French Canadian. Anyway, the loaf of love that arrived via Federal Express had me thinking of what I suspect might be a genuinely pastoral memory. My first boyfriend was, and is as far as I know, a farmer. I went to stay with him one early summer on his family's farm. I don't think the family took to me, I had child bearing hips but I think they smelt my intention not to utlise them for reproduction. However, James, the farming boyfriend, had a much younger brother who the family had adopted as a sort of spare heir in case a combine harvester devoured the other son. This brother was the only other family member who took to me and he would walk me out to the fields to where James was working each afternoon holding my hand. We would take the workers warm curranty bread in linen tea towels and bottles of warm, milky tea in glass milk bottles. It was a Laurie Lee-like idyll. James would always return to the boarding school we attended late each autumn because his manpower was requried for harvesting; we all thought it a little barbaric that he was forced to miss school to bring in the harvest. Sometimes I envy him his farm on the rich alluvial plains of Kildare.
- rachael 5-10-2000 4:44 pm