A group of us meet at Chocolate Notes* every New Moon to tell a story.  When the New Moon happens to be on a Sunday (when the CD shop cum café is closed), we meet on the evening before or the one after.  If it’s not too crowded, and Jan is there to help out, Fiamma joins us.  We’re still trying to persuade Jan, but he does that little wave of his, his long fingers undulating like those of a ballet dance or a QiGong practitioner, and protests that he is a visual, not an auditory person.  I guess that explains his passion for painting, sculpture and architecture.  I’m still not entirely sure what his Ph.D. thesis is supposed to be on.  I know it has something to do with art.  I really must ask one of these days when he’s not busy and we’re chatting.

Fiamma, on the other hand, however much she may insist that [she is] a musician, not a wordsmith, she is a natural storyteller.  Her Basque ancestry infuses her tales with elemental entities, and, more often than not, she manages to weave a Basajaun (the wild man of the woods) or an Iratxoak (imp) into the tapestry of our plot.

Our small group (affectionately self-christened Weavers & Spinners) is made up of literary translators.  Translation is a solitary profession, so something of a social life is important to remind you that you are a social creature.  Moreover, even if you love translating, it can be frustrating, if not repressing, for those with a burning urge to write stuff of their own.  After all, you do spend all day writing, only it’s writing in someone else’s voice, channelling someone else’s emotions, unravelling someone else’s thought processes, living in someone else’s head.  And that’s before the copy editor – an outsider who has not lived in close mental-emotional intimacy with the book – charges in with their opinions, motivations and intentions for you to deciper in Track Changes.  Literary translators are authors, yes, but – and this is the crucial difference with writers – we do not start with the freedom and possibilities of a blank page; we have a text to guide us (when we’re lucky enough it’s actually written well enough to guide us), and this guidance can, on occasion, feel like a leash.  

Speaking for myself, no matter how determined I am to work hard on translation all day so that I can reward myself in the evening by doing some writing of my own, by the time Big Ben chimes in the 6 p.m. news on BBC Radio 4, I am like a ventriloquist who can no longer remember how to produce my own voice.

All that to say that one of the Weavers & Spinners house rules is, during our monthly meetings, not to mention translation.  These New Moon evenings are all about our own storytelling skills, our own voices.     

We always sit around the table in the corner furthest away from the counter.  There is a framed sepia photograph of Gabriel Fauré as a student hanging on the wall next to it.  Once we are all gathered, we decide who is to begin.  That person starts telling a story.  This can be a first-person account of something that happened to him or her that day, a ghost story, a fairy tale or whatever takes the speaker’s fancy.  The narrator speaks for a few minutes, then passes the storytelling baton to the next person, who continues the story before nominating their successor, and so forth.   

Depending on the evening and on how many members turn up (though it’s rare for someone to miss this monthly get-together), we generally go around the table two or three times, while Jan fuels our inspiration with a range of hot chocolates.   Towards the end of the evening, Fiamma has so far never failed to leave the table for a couple of minutes, go into the kitchen behind the counter and bring us back something to nibble on.  So far, she has also always refused to add these snacks to our bill. 

Last month, when the temperatures hinted at a possible, albeit timid, start to summer, Fiamma came out of the kitchen and placed in the middle of our table a bowl with a yoghurt dip, standing on a large plate with crispbread and polenta strips.  

The next New Moon is tomorrow.  I don’t know what treat Fiamma will spoil us with this time.  We Weavers & Spinners are taking her a large bunch of pale rose peonies.  

YOGHURT DIP

A Greek-Armenian-inspired dish developed over the years.

(all measurements are approximate, see https://scribedoll.com/2023/01/15/new-blog-feasts-fancies/)

For the dip:

❧ Full-fat Greek yoghurt (the real stuff as far as possible)

❧ Carrot

❧ Cucumber

❧ Garlic

❧ Fresh tarragon 

❧ Fresh mint

❧ Extra-virgin olive oil 

❧ Salt

❧  Sultanas

I have not specified any measurements here because you can choose the proportions of ingredients depending on your taste.  Dried tarragon and mint can be used instead of fresh.

At the bottom of a large-ish bowl (there will be a lot of stirring to do), sprinkle a generous pinch of sea salt and pour a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.

Crush the garlic (or chop it very finely), chop the herbs, grate the carrot and dice the cucumber as finely as you can manage.  Throw everything into the bowl, adding as many sultanas as you like.  The sweetness of the dried fruit counteracts nicely the heat of the garlic.  Stir.

Spoon in the yoghurt, stirring as you go along.  Try a little to see if you need to add any ingredients.

Serve with celery sticks, carrots, crackers, toasted pitta bread, tortilla chips or, like in the picture, boiled polenta which is then spread thinly on a baking sheet and roasted in the oven.

*https://scribedoll.com/2023/02/12/feasts-fancies-chocolate-notes/