Feeling Silly

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I’ll be turning on paid subscriptions this coming week. This means if you choose to remain a free subscriber, you’ll still gain access to my weekly essay; but if you’d like to subscribe for £3.50/month (or £30/year), you’ll have access to the full archive, weekly recipes-not-recipes and recommendations, as well as be part of a SNOA community conversation. Might even throw in a dinner party here and there. I have such an urge to say ‘no worries if not!!!!’, but also yes: this exact sentiment applies. Thanks so much for reading, and hope to speak to lots of you in the comments and perhaps IRL very soon.

Most would not consider feeling silly an emotional response. Perhaps they’d see it more of a lighter shade of shame: banal, a little playful - a certain whimsy attached to its cute little grip. To me, feeling silly is a vicious little beast that holds my insecurities in its grip at the very worst of times.

‘Feeling silly’ is, to me, such an inherently feminised emotion that we’ve been gently conditioned to feel. It’s something I feel the most after a short stint of confidence – almost as if that confidence was unfounded or verging on arrogant. I feel silly for over-committing or assuming the best and it can be triggered by even the smallest of reality checks.

Hot, fat tears escape from my silly little eyes, returning me to that annoying habit of crying in public, which I thought I’d gotten over after a month of doing so in Vancouver. I don’t feel silly all that often, but when I do, a vitriolic rhetoric unravels in my mind.

This week this included: I spin silly little words where others spin cotton, wool, wood or metal. I turn silly little emotions into silly little sentences that I can’t touch. I spit out these sentences like someone would spit out lemon pips they’d bitten into, the unpleasant bitter taste left in their mouth.

This mood lasted a good 36 hours, exacerbated by an email I didn’t want to receive. It was temporarily softened by two lageritas and the softest soy-braised belly pork at Plaza Khao Geng; and finally finished off by a whole smoked chicken, salt-baked Jersey potatoes and minced mutton-topped aubergine at a Pakistani supper club the next night – as well as the unexpectedly brilliant company of three strangers around the table.

I rarely feel silly in the kitchen. It’s the only place where I make things with my hands; tangible things that people can touch, taste and gather around. I adopt a certain focus (that I’m unable to achieve in any other aspects of my life) when I’m decided on a dish to make. The rhythmic chop of a knife, the welcoming sizzle of butter, the smell of garlic and ginger lingering in the kitchen.

Perhaps it’s the control; the single-mindedness and uninterrupted concentration that comes with cooking on your own, which feels inherently rational. Yet there is an irresistible silliness that comes with food – a playful joyfulness, a shapeless lawlessness that softens the edges of consuming food as fuel.

Days later, I’m emerging out of the other end of this silly little mood. I can’t quite grasp at why I felt it so keenly, so suddenly. Only that two days out of the city under a canopy of trees, flanked by two dogs and four great friends, held by the current of a softly flowing river, full from a barbecue of yoghurt marinated chicken thighs, grilled asparagus and a fiery beetroot and feta salad has set my silliness alight.