I have a pal who is a magazine journalist. She called me to say
that she was working on a story about what baby boomers still had on
their "To Do" list. Normally she works on big business
stories. You know Christmas can't be far away when journalists
start working on stories like these.
An opportunity like this is not the moment to confess that the top of
your To Do list involves cleaning out the kitchen cupboards, or
re-organizing your CD collection. A grander gesture is clearly
called for, so I give it a lot of thought.
I decide that regaining my keyboard skills is important, and that when
that harpsichord comes out of the garage, I'm going to learn the 48
Preludes & Fugues of J.S. Bach.
I also decide that I'm going to read In Search of Lost Time. It's
been languishing on my book shelf for years now, and I've made several
attempts to get started, to no avail. (What was Proust
thinking? By the time I get to the end of a sentence, I've
forgotten how it started.)
So that's two tasks from the two things I love to do most - books and
music - and between them I reckon that's the first five years of
retirement planned out.
But I'm worried that just those two things will make me sound
pretentious, so I need a final thing on my To Do list that's light and
fluffy, which brings me to today's topic, which is sponge cakes.
I'm a good cook of almost everything, but I've never been much of a
baker, and now that I'm living in the country, I think I should learn
how to bake a sponge.
So I send my pal the list of the three things on my Still To Do list,
and horror of horrors, she calls back and says they want to take a
photograph - not of me seated at the keyboard, or curled up in a
library chair - they want a photograph of me making a sponge cake.
Even worse, they want me to wear a business suit while I'm doing
it! By this stage, I'm hyperventilating. I'm not
going to confess that my current success rate with sponges is no more
than 50%, and that even on a good day, I seem to end up wearing more
flour than ever ends up in the cake.
By the time the photographer has arrived, I've quietly consigned one
cake to oblivion, and have two aprons totally covered in flour.
Mercifully the second attempt succeeds, but somehow I haven't got quite
enough flour over me to disguise the fact that the third apron has
"Will Cook for Sex" emblazoned on the front. I ask the
photographer does this matter, and he suggests that I wear my pearls,
so that I don't come across as cheap.
Make mental note to self: Next time journalist pal asks for a list of anything, flee shrieking.
|
Change of Life 
