Hello, can you hear me?

writing this down so I don't forget

I’ve lost and ruined several phones in my life.

The first loss was in the winter of 2003 when I was stepping out of a minicab.¹ In my pocket was a small silver Samsung flip phone, and somewhere in the exiting, it slipped from my pocket and slid between the seats. I didn’t realize it until later that night, probably when I tried to call another minicab. 

Then there was that magical time on a sailboat in 2016 when I woke up early to capture the morning light. I needed both my hands to maneuver along the gunnel, so I tucked my iPhone into the elastic band of my shorts. Halfway along I felt the phone slip from the bottom of my shorts, and by the time I had spun around to catch it, the phone was tumbling down into the ocean, turning in slow motion, until it settled on the rocky bottom thirty feet below. 

I haven’t lost a phone since that fateful plop into the ocean, but I have shattered screens many times. Like the time I was standing in our paved driveway trying to shut the trunk of the car with groceries on my hip and a phone in my hand. The phone sailed into the air, landed on the broken pavenment and despite its case, the back of the phone shattered into an impressive firework from bottom to top. Still operable, the internet said, but compromised. Then this past summer, after rolling pizza dough outside and using a long paddle to launch the pies into a pizza oven, that same phone fell onto the stone patio from counter height, twice. A thick line slowly grew across the screen, eventually bleeding until all I could see was a tiny dot of colour in the corner. By morning it was dead. 

Nothing is more boring than recounting a visit to an Apple store repair counter. But it is important to note that in the process of transferring old data to a new phone when your screen is cracked, dead, and you can’t access your Apple ID (and you may have had two Apple IDs by accident), things can get lost. That is what happened. Some of my photos were saved on my laptop, and some - a random collection from the summer of 2019 - were saved on my phone. Everything else on that phone was erased. 

I took the news in stride. It was a cleanse, I told myself. A refresh. I rebuilt my contact list. I relished in the minimalism of my screen without all the apps I never used. I felt relief that I no longer had 10,000 plus photos of food bathed in afternoon light. I felt lighter.

Until yesterday when it hit me: I had lost the videos of my boys when they were little, the ones I had saved in a special, favourites file that I looked at when I needed a tender lift. Of course I love them equally, but there was one clip in particular that lit me up, everytime. 

We were in the old kitchen at the back of the house. Rex, age six, was sitting on a stool in front of the window, staring up into the camera. He had gone through his policeman phase by then and had moved into smart casual - he wore chinos and a polo shirt with the collar popped. His blond hair was short and tidy. His legs were crossed and he was holding a carrot for a microphone. “Hello, can you hear me?” He sang, staring off slightly into the afternoon light. “They say that time's supposed to heal ya, but I ain't done much healing.” A garbled version of Adele’s HELLO, Rex style. 

Will time heal the ache of losing a memory? Right now my heart hurts for this little guy, so sweet, unembarrassed and earnest. It’s an ache, a physical manifestation of Marty McFly’s family photo in Back to The Future, where his siblings are slowly disappearing. The only way I can bring it back and to describe it here, to flesh it out. Bring it back in words.

In honour of Rex’s carrot microphone, I’m sharing a roasted carrot and squash soup. It’s full of flavour with just a tinge of angst. We stir ourselves into our food. It makes it richer.

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To make this roasted squash and carrot soup (with a warm, five spiced topping), begin by preheating the oven to 350F / 180C and lining a roasting tin with parchment paper.

Slice a few squashes in half and scoop out the seeds. I had a small butternut squash, two delicata and one acorn squash - it doesn’t matter, you just want enough squash halves to roughly fill the tin. Add one sliced red onion to the mix, a few cloves of garlic and 3 or so peeled and chopped carrots. Toss everything in olive oil and a good pinch of sea salt. Roast the vegetables for 45min - 1 hour until they are soft and yield easily when prodded with a knife. The carrots might need a longer if they are large. Allow to cool a little.

Have 3 cups (750ml) vegetable or chicken stock ready.

Scoop the flesh of the squash into a food processor or high speed blender. The skin of roasted squash can be eaten, so don’t worry if bits of skin land in the blender. Add the rest of the roasted vegetables to the blender ( I had about 8 cups of loosely packed roasted vegetables, you may need to blend in batches) and add 1 cup (250ml) vegetable stock. Blend until smooth. Spoon mixture into a pan with remaining stock over medium heat, stir and heat through. If your tray of roasted vegetables yields more that 8 cups, add more stock to the pan. This is a flexible template.

To serve, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a small frypan. Add 1/2 teaspoon each of cumin, fennel, fenugreek, mustard and onion seeds, along with a pinch of sugar and a good pinch of salt. Stir ingredients into the oil and heat until the seeds begin to pop. Divide soup into bowls and spoon spiced oil over top, along with an (optional) dollop of plain yogurt and a sprinkling of chopped cilantro.

Soup serves 4-6 people.

1. Back in the olden days while living in London, before Uber, minicabs were used as a taxi but had to be ordered in advance because they were not licensed to pick up passengers who hailed in the street.