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Thursday 26 July 2012

The Way of the Kaftan

My new blue linen kaftan arrived.
Cornflower Blue.
When I wear it I will be Talitha Getty on a Marrakech rooftop.
Or Kate Winslet in Hideous Kinky ( minus kids).
My obsession with kaftans has a long history.
I once made an orange kaftan from an old hessian curtain.
Wore it to a dark smoky party in the Seventies.
It was hot dusty and itchy and I had to leave early.
We buy clothes for the lifestyle we aspire to.
The woman we long to be. You know.
That's why they hang in the wardrobe, unworn.
While we pull on our jeans, scrape back our hair and get the kids to school.

Ode to Hairy Feta



Someday I will go back to Amorgos, to a tiny mountain village .To eat a raw slab of proper goaty feta. With  goat hairs embedded. In a puddle of thick dark oil and sprinkled with pungent leaves. Accompanied by a metal tumbler of rough piney retsina.
You will always find feta in my fridge. Some people hate it. You know who you are and you can never be my friends.Seek the company of Olive Refusers. Supermarket feta is vacuum-packed, sterile, smooth textured. It bears little resemblance to the feta of my memories.