Sunrise Vignette No1
& Fig Leaf Syrup
It’s awfully easy to let things come between you and writing, especially when you’ve just moved house and are a self-confessed busy body. In an attempt to still flex and flick something into words, I have hijacked the precious morning hour where I sit in bed doing nothing but feeling the linen on my skin, sipping jasmine tea, and listening to seagulls. I’m trying to jot down ‘vignettes’ that capture the tone for the day ahead. Here are some of them, as well as a very simple recipe for fig leaf syrup since it’s the season and a few of you have asked.
05.06.2025
Waking up this morning was damp, and grey, and seagulls, and I was happy about it. I lingered a while in bed, linen against my bare skin, in this tiny box room where nothing happens but sleep and wondering. There’s little room for else. My friend has messaged and she’s scared again, with good reason. Why are so many men like this? Did something happen to this generation, or has it always been this way? Making coffee, I realised the bonsai in the windowsill might really be dead, and wondered if its gnarled trunk could yet make an intriguing centre piece. The sound of boiled eggs rattled the sides of the saucepan over my shoulder like restless prisoners.
06.05.2025
Waking up this morning was fresh, and wet, and peaceful, and I marvelled that I was still here, not because I don’t want to be, but because I’ve woken up a lot of times now. I used to wake up to the east and watch cars crawling along the downs road like lemmings in the sunrise, but here it is the west and I have a wall and an apple tree for contemplation. The living room is full of the east though, which slants soft slots through the tangled braids of my gigantic spider plant. I sip my jasmine tea and decide I must change her name to Juliet because she is the God-sent sun, and I am her Romeo.
07.06.02025
Waking up was dry, and heavy, and listless, and I floundered beneath the surface to deny a new morning. My brain felt too big for my skull and pressed against my right eye as if it wanted to be anywhere but here. Why drink so much rosé when I know I don’t have the money and why don’t I learn. I have to make a birthday cake today. It’ll be lemon curd and elderflower. As if each swirl of the palette knife might plaster over my each and every crack.
08.06.2025
Waking up was somewhere else with blackout curtains, pigeon coos, and normal brain. I waited for my friend to stir so we could go to the boot fair but she was sleeping as if her peace depended on it. We spent ages getting ready last night only to go for one beer in the rain. On the way we reenacted the same selfie from when we were 21 by a Wincheap lamppost, except we’re nearly 40. Was it better when we had no idea and danced until our feet were sore, or now that we eat chocolate on the sofa and we know too much? I’m not sure, but I can still blow Malteasers into the air and catch them in my mouth.
09.06.2025
Waking up was grey, and damp, and Monday. I’d like the hands on the clock to slow down so I can stay in bed and quietly contemplate the mercury on my martyr meter so my ankles don’t buckle under the rising scale of self-sacrifice. When I’m out of my crab shell, I’m soft and easy and I lavish time and love indiscriminately until I’m under the boot of gravity and have to crawl back inside where it’s quiet and just me, where every knock echoes that I drained my own fucking soul. Again. Good thing I’ve made a beautiful shell to hide within. Shame I have to go to work today.
10.06.2025
Waking up was soft and blue and mallow tufts. A cold breeze moved along the folds of the duvet and over my shoulders. Planes marked chalk in straight lines across the sky and there was nothing in my head but gentle probing light. Wake up, wake up, your river path waits with birdsong and elderflower and new green walnut nubs to rub and sniff like the drug of June, the call of the cuckoo rising and falling on the horizon’s line.
Fig Leaf Syrup
This is such an easy and rewarding one. You should try to get the leaves while they are still fairly young but the trees this year have been so quick to flourish that I recommend doing it as soon as you set your eyes on a fig tree. I had to do just that mid-first-date this week, reaching up into the tree with my bitchy little pen knife and handing the leaves over one-by-one to a bemused comrade. I had asked an old love to get me a big stonking one but, instead, he gave me this tiny little thing covered in daisies, complete with toothpick and tweezers. It’s just about useful and it always makes me laugh when I pull its effeminate body from my back pocket.
500g granulated sugar
500ml water
6 fig leaves
Bring the water and sugar to the boil and stir to dissolve. Turn off the heat, add the fig leaves, replace the lid of the saucepan and leave overnight to cool and infuse. In the morning, wring out the leaves to get the most of their goodness and discard. Add the syrup to a bottle and refrigerate. Consume within a week, though it will likely last longer. It tastes really good with sparkling water and ice, or in a gin and tonic, and also makes a wonderful addition to a Matcha latte (I use AVANTCHA Organic Matcha Cocktail Grade Kagoshima because it’s brilliant). You might also like to drizzle it over strawberries.
Love this! Reminds me of the Violette de Bordeaux Figs with calabrian chili oil & cured lardo recipe I adapted from California cuisine restaurant Rustic Canyon! check it out:
https://thesecretingredient.substack.com/p/get-rustic-canyons-recipe-violette