Grass

More ramblings. It is still murky here. No islands appear. The hills and granny's land are no longer green, but yellow. Her land, in particular, all its wild grasses blowing in the rising wind, is yellow. Some of these grasses are wild oats - unsown by granny; more of them are once cultivated now feral barley. The once staple diet on this island, barley was and is ground into a flour called gofio and used in many variations; usually these days it is made of maize, wheat and so forth or mixtures of the above. Nor does it ever any longer consist of mere grass, as resorted to by the poorest in the past. The ever adventurous Beloved does things with gofio sometimes; his versions are better than most. Haute cuisine, it isn't. It makes you realise just how boring food for the poor once was. Think of all those poor Scottish crofters, wrapped in shawls, shoeless even in mid winter - and with not much in their diet beyond oatmeal. At least it was never so cold here. But hard enough.

Anyway: this blog like the last is all diversion tactics. Granny has trawled the internet newspapers, read other blogs and written two posts, All of it to avoid the serious writing; ie getting back to the piece about her mother, for one; trying to dredge out further plot for a new book, for another. The weather does not incline her. Dreary within and dreary without. Well that's her excuse, reader, and she's sticking to it.