Jacket potatoes and time travel
Lately, I’ve been thinking about time travel. Mostly, how it lacks all the urgency of Doc Brown’s race to channel 1.21 gigawatts of energy and 88 miles per hour into the DeLorean with a single strike of lightning, and how really, it’s much quieter — almost indiscernible. It creeps up gently and softens the edges a little. A vignette: remember this? Now, I don’t even remember what I thought of Back to the Future before I knew it was his favourite film.
My recipe for time travel is this: one generous Maris Piper potato, at least three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, a liberal serving of sea salt, a similar amount of black pepper, a pinch of chilli flakes (optional), and a single lemon. You’ll also need a fork, a baking dish, and some tinfoil. Preheat your oven to 200°C and line your baking dish with the foil. Real jacket potato connoisseurs will balk at what I’m about to suggest, but there’re thousands of films waiting to be watched and books yearning to be read, so pierce the potato evenly with a fork, plate it, and put it in the microwave for five minutes.
The microwave beeping is your next cue: settle the potato on the dish and sprinkle your preferred amount of seasoning on top, rolling the potato over for consistency. Once you’re confident your potato is flavoured to perfection, stick the dish in the oven for up to 45 minutes — checking on it every so often to measure for optimum crispiness. The final step is simple: slice the potato gently in the middle and squeeze fresh juice from the lemon over it — plus added seasoning as you please. Don’t waste the lemon. Maybe use the excess to garnish a G&T. You’ll need it.*
There. Do you feel it? An ever so slight shift. The ground steady beneath you, but a memory that winds you so forcefully you almost lose your balance. The last time I laboured over such a simple dish was when he and I were we and that was indiscernible. Limbs tangled together during long car journeys — in bed, on the sofa, laying on grass. Even when the line was drawn between us, our bodies still awoke wrapped around the other; sometimes, I think I’ll still be untying these knots years from now.
Right about this time last year, we’d opened the French windows in the flat and drank exactly the amount of beer an evening with sunlight stretching beyond 7pm calls for. I was boiling water for cups of tea with nothing on. The only other person I know who drinks tea at his rate is my dad; maybe that’s why I tried to make a home out of him. I used to think typical when he’d switch the kettle on straight after sex, now I find myself offering the same thing to different lovers. Anyway, I had nothing on. He screamed and said the neighbours will see, and when a man walked past looking straight at me, we bent double — holding onto one another as we laughed ourselves to the ground. Limbs tangled.
When we stopped sharing a life but carried on sharing a bed and a flat and I wasn’t eating or sleeping and I probably looked like hell but my god, I was skinny, I wandered the flat with nothing on and thought look at me, take me back take me back take me back. I homemade a pasta sauce with tins of chopped tomatoes and “found” items in the fridge like chilli chutney and soy sauce, and store cupboard items like garlic cloves and basil and thyme and oregano and bay leaves and salt. He said it was incredible. I thought for sure this pasta sauce will save my relationship. It didn’t. I don’t remember the recipe.
* Repeat when loneliness settles in your stomach like a sickness and the evenings rise to meet you like a threat. But be wary of too often. There isn’t enough time travel in the world to cook jacket potatoes for a man whose face you won’t even pick out in a crowd come five years from now.