soup weather

2024 · 12

Cold now, properly. The kind that gets into the flat and just sits there. So the soup thing has started again. Every winter I decide soup is the answer and every winter it works for about three weeks.

Not much at the market on Saturday. It's the lean stretch, all roots and cabbages and the tough green stuff. Which is fine, that's what you want for soup anyway, so I filled the bag with whatever was cheap and most of it was. The flower stall had packed up early. Just the empty trestle with a tarp thrown over it.

Carrots, four onions, a handful of whatever dried herbs were still in the jar. Big pot. It was better the second day the way it always is, and we had it two nights, and the rest went into the freezer in those containers where the lids never match anything.

The walk back was bitter. Park nearly empty, a couple of dog walkers with their collars up, the pond gone that flat grey colour. The big tree by the second bench is bare now, black branches on a white sky. I stood there a bit longer than made sense in that cold and then went home.