I knew I was going to be flat out at the end of January. I have our first Midlifechic Retreat at the end of next week to prepare for and life on the work front is busy for this time of year which is strange… but then the world is a strange place right now isn’t it? However foresight can be a wonderful thing and I found a note in my blogging diary for this week that said “pans – refer to notes from Nov train trip to London.” I find I do a lot of this messaging to self these days. Sometimes I find these reminders and don’t have a clue what they mean whereas others like this one are a soothing hand held out to a future frazzled me, self-parenting in its finest form I suppose. So let’s talk about the life-changing magic of pans and a whole raft of emotions invoked by a simple email in November.
It was Black Friday and Mal and I had just collapsed into our seats on a train from Newcastle to London. You see a very old friend of mine was holding his 60th birthday party – and only somebody that I worked with before my retail days would have planned it for that date, oblivious to the madness that is unleashed as discounts change by the hour and marketing messaging has to be revised on the hoof. However he’s someone who matters more than work and the opportunity to plunge back into what was the intensely close friendship group of my 20s was rare and special. In fact there’s a whole blogpost that I could write just about that night… and I will if I get the chance. For now though, pans.
We’d settled down on the train and opened our laptops, picking though the endless emails when my attention was snagged by a discount from a pan company that I’d been lingering over for a while. I interrupted Mal to see what he thought… and so began one of those conversations that peels things wide open.
You see he didn’t want to talk about pans, he had a lot to do – and even if he hadn’t, pans would not have been a topic of interest. That’s not because he isn’t a good cook, in fact he often does more cooking than I do. It’s just that he couldn’t see what was wrong with the pans we had… and he didn’t know why anyone would want to spend the kind of money I was talking about on pans anyway… especially just before Christmas. And suddenly I was thrown straight back into one of the first wobbles of our relationship.
Back then we’d just moved in together, setting up a home from the fallout of two established relationships that encompassed two fully equipped houses. It was a bittersweet time, filled with the excitement of starting out anew but also riven with difficult feelings of guilt, grief and endless change. In the agony of dividing our existing households we hadn’t thought things through very well and we found we had far more furniture than we could possibly fit into the tiny place we’d rented but very little equipment. And no pans.
It made sense that they would be the very first thing we’d buy together and of course we worked at Selfridges with a generous 35% staff discount so I suggested we meet at lunchtime to decide what we wanted. I felt excited all morning, full of hope and dreams of everything those pans represented – the meals we’d cook together for high days and celebrations, for family and friends, for the children I hoped we’d go on to have. When I arrived at the Cookshop Mal wasn’t there so I browsed the selection which I already knew very well because every year I’d have to include pans in one of my magazine articles, analysing their respective features.
Finally he arrived looking flustered. He was busy, his department ran on endless production deadlines and he never usually took a break for lunch so he just wanted to get the purchase over with and go back to his desk. And that wasn’t what I had in mind at all, I’d imagined us lingering over the pans together, discussing the benefits of each one and how it was going to be part of our exciting new life together. When I tried to explain that to him he took one look at me, sighed and said, ‘they’re pans, they just cook stuff,’ and suggested I just show him the ones I liked so that we could go to the checkout.
And so, feeling a bit overcome, I did. He picked one up, turned it over, saw that it cost £120… and that was the first time that I realised that we would have differences of opinion when it came to things like this. My argument was that £120 was only £78 in actual money so it was a bargain. His response was that in Newcastle they’d call that ‘female logic’.
Of course we bought the pans (and that was another clue as to how out relationship would turn out) but it wasn’t the Nora Ephron scene in our fairytale that I’d imagined. I’ve often thought about it over the years as I’ve pulled one of them out of the drawer and eventually I concluded that it was a good early lesson on our differing ideas of ‘value’. Those pans lasted for over 20 years and would probably have carried on longer but… one day during lockdown a delivery arrived with a box of new ones (and who’d have thought that a story about pans could have a plot twist!).
Some of you will remember that Mal kept himself busy during those long months by buying and restoring Ercol furniture. Often when he was deep in auction bidding he’d see something else that he couldn’t resist and as a family we have many hilarious stories of the weird things that started turning up. One was this huge case of pans, there were enough to replace everything here, stock the flat in Newcastle… and the boys’ university kitchens… and all of our friends… and we still have spares in the cellar. So my bashed and battered but still cherished originals had to go.
And do you know what? None of them matched or stacked together – some had lids, others didn’t, lots had wonky bottoms that didn’t sit properly on our induction hob. They didn’t fit in the drawer properly and they had hot spots where food burned. I missed my old pans and so now you can see why after five years of putting up with Mal’s version of a bargain I was hankering after new, good ones.
And who knew that as I went though the second pan decision-making process of my life it would, yet again, turn out to be poignant – unearthing moments of discovery about myself, my stage in life, my future? When we were buying our first pans together I felt I needed a huge range because in the same way that I imagined my future self being an accomplished gardener, I envisioned myself being a cordon bleu cook, juggling multiple recipes to create intricate dishes with specialised equipment. However that version of me has never emerged. For years I’ve put it down to having little time and large boys who required quick, hearty, nourishing dishes. As I thought about what I needed for the future though I recognised that I don’t actually like faffy food… and I never willingly spend time in the kitchen that could be allocated to reading. And so I made peace with the fact that I’ve turned out to be a cook not a chef – highly accomplished at hearty nourishing dishes that can be produced quickly, ideally in one pan.
At the same time it occurred to me that the days of doing a roast every Sunday are over, they continue to be family occasions but they don’t happen as predictably any more. If friends and family come over we cook casually – a curry or a stir fry – we’re there for the conversation not the show. So that was another reason for not needing a raft of pans and it led me to look around the rest of the kitchen, at the crystal wine glasses that we never use because we opt for the easy ones that don’t have to be washed and dried by hand. And that took me to the oversized plates that we were given as a wedding present that were such a big thing in the early 2000s but nobody uses them now that we’re aware of portion size and dishwasher space.
And so it went on until I realised that actually I could probably free up half of the cupboard space in the kitchen now. I needed an extensive collection of equipment when life was expanding but we’re heading in the other direction now. The great downsize and declutter is in sight.
So you see when that offer came in triggering a conversation about pans on that grey November morning once again it wasn’t just about something that ‘cooks stuff.’ Just like the first time around it was about so much more. And yet in the strange parallels that life holds we were still engrossed in a frantic retail calendar – and Mal was both as uninterested and disinterested as he was in 1999. The difference is that this time when he sensed a brewing storm in me he stopped… and listened… and understood. He even looked at the website and showed a flicker of enthusiasm!
So yes it might seem strange that I’m writing a blog post about pans but somehow the whole thing felt like a metaphor for marriage and the way it ebbs and changes. It was also representative of the slow realisation that creeps up on you, whispering that life is moving on. And that can pretty much be summed up by the switch from a drawerful of pans to just three. It’s bittersweet but there are upsides too – those three pans symbolise the end of juggling too many things that don’t fit together. The end of living in a mad rush. The beginning of getting things just right for the two of us as we go forward.
That is what those of us on the Retreat will be doing next weekend – thinking about how life is changing, who we want to be and what will make the future feel just right.
The new pans arrived and the eldest and I celebrated by using them together for the first time on Christmas Day – and that felt symbolic too because even though they’re for Mal and me as a couple, the boys will forever be dipping in and out of our lives. And I haven’t thrown all of the others away because I realised over Christmas that we do sometimes still need more and so they’re in the cellar to be brought up as and when.
The new pans have come with a sense of freedom though. They’ve unburdened me from feeling that I should be someone I’m not – in this case a more complicated cook which is just one facet of the self-pressure of perfectionism that I’m learning to release. When I said that it made me feel lighter, Mal (as unPC as ever) reassured me that he was perfectly happy with the way we eat and referenced the wisdom of Jerry Hall: “my mother told me it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen, and a whore in the bedroom. I said I’d hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit.”
And it’s true, there’s a lot more to midlife than cooking…
The pans
I know somebody will ask – so these are the pans in question. And they're so lovely to use, not only do they look and feel beautiful but they're non-stick without using any carcinogenic coatings. I was tempted by the other pretty colours that they do but then decided that if these are my pans for life, they need to go with any kitchen I may have in future.
Book recommendations
It's always good weather for reading but particularly now when the wind is howling outside. I have to tell you about the last two books I read because they were SO good. They've been on my Kindle bookshelf for ages – I'd downloaded them because they came highly recommended but from the blurb I just didn't fancy reading them. Anyway Twixmas came around and I felt I needed to tidy up before buying anything new and so in I went. I grieved after finishing the first one, lost myself in the second and now don't know where to turn.
The problem with this first one is that the concept is really difficult to describe which sounds offputting but it was such an uplifting and restorative read that I immediately ordered two paper copies – one for Mal and one for the youngest because it's a book that will touch everyone. Fundamentally it's about the way that love transcends hardship – the love between friends and the love between lovers. It shows how the bond between strangers can overcome the pain of living outside society's norm. And it describes the purpose and process of art in a way that touches you more than any teacher could. That probably doesn't make you want to read it but it's an unusual book very simply written so it's accessible and yet it changes the way you feel – in a good way. It's just what you need for the dark days of January and February – the perfect way to start your reading year.
The second book isn't quite as uplifting but it's engrossing and the twist at the end is just superb. On one level it taught me a lot about life and society as The Netherlands rebuilt itself after WW2 which isn't as dry as it sounds because it's so different to the British experience that we're more used to hearing about. It tells the story of the way the war completely ruined some lives there but barely touched others and worked to the advantage of a few. At a deeper level it's about love and forbidden attraction as well as unforeseen, uncontainable passion. It underpins the lot of women such a very short time ago and it feels shocking to us now that they had so little agency. Again it's very readable – I couldn't wait to get back to it every time I put it down. And now it's over and I don't know anybody else who's read it which is frustrating. I'm not surprised that it was shortlisted for the Booker – I'm sad it didn't win – and it makes absolute sense that it won the Women's Prize For Fiction last year.
And that's it for today – have a lovely weekend – reading I hope… or maybe readdressing your pan drawer! UK readers of a certain age – sing along with me… "why don't you switch off the television set and go and do something less boring instead…"
I really hope you remember that and don't think Im going mad.
