Take Yesterday

It’s strange adjusting back to shopping for one, now that my son has started his second year at university. But Chorlton is a good place to shop for one. You still feel included. Next (and don’t tell Unicorn) I go to my local fish shop, Out of the Blue, which is a wonderful fish shop, all the fish bought from sustainably British inshore fleets. The eyes of the fish look very bright, and the men are very friendly. I buy one single Cornish red mullet, just to make me miss Matthew more, since it is his favourite fish! There’s something very sad about buying a single small fish; but I have to face up to it. He’s gone. I return home with my shopping and pull open the empty sock drawer in his bedroom. He is not here.

I decide to go back out again, and treat myself to lunch. I take Dinks, my dog, with me and head for Cafe Cilantro which is my favourite eating place in Chorlton. The chef there is a genius, and the prices are extraordinarily reasonable. Today on the specials lunch menu, there’s plantain fritters with green papaya salad. The chef at Cilantro specialises in fritters; all of his fritters are good, impossibly light and tasty. These are flavoured with lime chilli and coriander. I can’t imagine how he can make any money having this on the menu for £5.50. My favourite is on the regular menu – it’s Nepalese dhal with vegetable fritters and a delicious yoghurt dip. I usually, if I can catch the one hour of available sunshine, sit outside. They bring my dog a bowl of water. Occasionally, when my willpower lets me down, I indulge in their wonderful almond, lemon and polenta cake. There’s a slightly gruff and yet very friendly older woman who is often outside too with her dog. She usually orders nothing except a cup of tea and a slice of toast, which she shares with her dog. She’s driven by the issue of global warming and the weather, and we often get talking about that. ‘How people can think that it’s nothing to do with the way we are treating our planet, when all the evidence is in front of them beats me,’ she says, handing her dog another wee bit of toast.

Cafe Cilantro is cheering. The decor is green and there are lots of Caribbean and African wall hangings. The music is good too. It used to be called Diamond Dogs and the seats were too high and the place was pink. But it is better as Cafe Cilantro; the food is much improved. And then again, before Diamond Dogs it was a brilliant fruit and veg shop. Shops have more lives than people. It’s funny to think of their previous incarnations; if you’ve lived in a place long enough, you remember what used to be where. I’ve lived in Chorlton now for over ten years, I suddenly realise. And I love the neighbourhoody feeling of the place, how I can get anything I need in the small shops on my doorstep and never need to go into the ghastly hell of Morrisons. It’s also cheaper, if you’re worrying about money, to shop in wee shops, buy daily, and buy what you need, than doing a big bulk shop in the Supermarket, and throwing the other half of the buy-one-get-one-frees out on a Saturday.

Take yesterday, for example: I went out and came back and my son was gone. I put the fresh food in the fridge and the cupboards knowing I would be cooking for myself from here on in. My son phoned me to check how to cook a chicken. Do you stuff a lemon inside it and some garlic and thyme, he asked, and what temperature. Maybe try 200 degrees, I said. That’s hot. Then I put the red mullet in the oven with some garlic and some fresh bay leaves and a generous amount of the Palestinian olive oil and cooked it at 200 degrees for twenty minutes. And I sat in the kitchen and waited for tomorrow to come.

Jackie Kay’s short stories WISH I WAS HERE won the British Book Award; her new book The Lamplighter, has just been published.

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