Cornflower

Out of the box

    I wrote a bit about this workbox ages ago and promised a follow-up post with the rest of the story; now thanks to Carol's gentle prompting, here it is.

 

I bought the box in an antiques shop in Ballater, on Deeside, and I was intrigued by the inscription on the lid: it had come from Oldmeldrum (not far from Ballater) but who was Elizabeth MacPherson and why was there a school prize, and a handsome one at that, awarded in her memory?

 

 I got in touch with the village through their website and asked if anyone knew anything at all about Maggie Innes or Elizabeth MacPherson. They were eventually able to tell me that Maggie's niece had recently sold the box, but that was all they knew. However, it seems I started something as the Meldrum and Bourtie Heritage Society got involved, and coincidentally a dilapidated seat bearing the following inscription was discovered on the outskirts of the village just after my inquiry: "Elizabeth MacPherson Memorial, gifted to the town of Oldmeldrum, 1906, by her husband and children in Manchester".


      The seat and its immediate site were then restored and the Heritage Society set about discovering the identity of this lady who had left her mark on the community. Research has revealed that Elizabeth was born in Oldmeldrum in 1860, and in 1886 she married Evan MacPherson who later became a cotton manufacturer in Manchester. She died there in 1904 leaving her husband and two children. Apart from one or two other facts, little else had been discovered about the family, though research was continuing when I was last in touch with Oldmeldrum, but I'm happy that my curiosity prompted a bit of delving and the unearthing of some facts of local interest, and I continue to use the workbox with great pleasure.

Book trailer

    

I didn't know that there were such things as trailers for books, but there are, and why not? Last week I raved about this book - one of the best reads of the year so far -, and you can see its trailer here.

The dark side

     When I saw Claire Macdonald's recipe for Frozen Raspberries with Hot Chocolate Sauce in a newspaper at the weekend, I earmarked it to try a.s.a.p. Then a friend gave us a punnet of rasps from her garden, and despite our miserable weather they are tartly sweet and delicious, so there was our pudding.

I can't find an exact copy of the recipe but here's one that's pretty close - just omit the coffee.

I froze the berries in a single layer for an hour or two, then put them straight into bowls and poured the hot sauce over them. The contrast between the unctuous, warm, dark liquid and the sharp but yielding fruit is wonderful.

Lost boy

  
     As is the way of these things, you go to read one article and another catches your eye, and before you know it you're saying "eleven o'clock and not a dish washed". But at the risk of detaining you from whatever you should be doing just now, here's another link worth following: a fascinating article by Justine Picardie about J.M. Barrie.
The striking portrait of Barrie is by Sir William Nicholson and is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.

Watching the detective

     I mentioned that Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House is on my book mountain just now and I hope to be moving it nearer the summit as soon as I can. Having just won the Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, it is featured in this article in today's paper, and as it is about not just one notorious crime but the beginnings of criminal detection and the man - written about by Dickens and Wilkie Collins - who became the model for detective fiction, I think it will be jumping my reading queue.

Not Provence...

.... the Scottish Borders! I can't claim that rolling fields of lavender are a common sight around here (how lovely if they were) and yet the plant does well despite our cool, damp climate and no summer to speak of so far. The top picture is from a friend's garden, overlooking the Eildon Hills, while the other two are here at home.

Interestingly, I read in Suki Urquhart's envy-inducing book The Scottish Gardener, that in the largest roof garden in Europe (which is very close to here), the Mediterranean-type plants such as lavender do very well, despite Edinburgh's arctic winds.

Does anyone happen to know what my pale variety (above) is? Although you can't tell from the picture, it is a single plant which has grown to be the most enormous lavender bush I've seen anywhere.

Later: as Peter has asked for a picture of the foliage, here it is-

It's wonderful...

   

     As a dog's coat is to burrs from the plants it rubs against, so is my brain to the tunes it hears - it hooks them in the musical memory and they remain firmly stuck.

Years ago I was taken by the catchy song used to back an advertisement for investment trusts but I didn't know what it was. Earlier this week I heard it again, in a restaurant, and now thanks to Youtube, I've tracked it down. And for your delectation, ladies and gentlemen, here is a true renaissance man: poet, painter, musician and lawyer (yes!), it's Paolo Conte, performing his wonderful Come away with me (the rest of the world probably knew this, but I didn't). Go and listen, and don't tell me you didn't tap your feet to that!

Unenamoured by my musical taste, my children thrust headphones at me, pointedly shut doors and caution me not to snap my fingers in time to the music even. Huh! They're used to the pattern, you see - Mum gets a craze and listens ad infinitum. They don't understand my capacity to hear the same piece over and over again (the youth of today have no staying power...). We had it last summer with Astor Piazzolla's Libertango (first heard on a programme about physics, then rediscovered on Tower of Goo the computer game) now here it is 'for real' with YoYo Ma. Then there was Music for a Found Harmonium (Terry Wogan chat show, Irish seaweed piece in the series Coast), and previously The Divine Comedy's Songs of Love (Father Ted - of course -  and accompanying a Gary Rhodes dish involving cabbage, as I recall).

But now I have the rest of Paolo Conte's oeuvres to discover (and I feel a CD purchase coming on...)

Bespoke posting

 

  This site would be nothing without its loyal visitors so I thought I'd do a bespoke post or two based on what you the readers particularly want to see appearing here. For instance, has your appetite for books been sated or do you want even more? Would you like Cornflower in the kitchen or outside with the camera? A look at the knitting basket or something completely new and different for a change? There's a thought!
   Please just ask and I'll see what I can do. To steal a line from House: " As the philosopher Jagger once said, 'You can't always get what you want' ", and I can't promise what the results will be, but let's have a go.

Green and pleasant

 
   I wrote about the beautiful and inspiring Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook a few days ago (you can see some of the pictures here), and since then Mr. C. has nabbed it and tested Sarah's recipe for French Onion Soup (the best I've ever eaten!), but I've grabbed it back and made a quick dish from it -  simple, effortless, fresh and flavourful. It's a courgette salad which we had with fish but could accompany many things; it tempted the less enthusiastic courgette eaters amongst us and I shall certainly make it again.

I used a potato peeler for the courgette ribbons, piling them in a shallow serving dish and adding grated zest of lemon and lime, toasted pine nuts and a citrus vinaigrette sweetened with a little honey. It works perfectly and looks very pretty, too.

A little light reading 6 - dark deeds

  Last from the TBR pile, but not least, three books of dark deeds.
Sophie Hannah comes very highly recommended by many of my book-blogging friends, and as The Sunday Times calls her "a rivetingly original arrival in crime fiction", I know I'm promised much. I shall be in the  audience when she appears at Edinburgh's Book Festival next month, but shall try to do some prep. beforehand and read her second novel, Hurting Distance, "a superbly creepy, twisty thriller...."

   Next is teenage fiction from a new and talented writer, B.R. Collins. The Traitor Game mixes fantasy and reality and explores friendships, bullying, fear and weakness as one world mirrors the other. Linda Newbery writes of it, "The cleverness and virtuosity of the writing is matched by page-turning urgency, memorable characters and the acute sense of living vividly in the moment".

   I'll finish this gentle stroll up the higher slopes of the book mountain (which I hope to reduce to a Munro, or even a Corbett before long) with a prize-winner: Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House has just won The Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. This is an analysis of a real murder case from 1860, described by Susan Hill as "A really terrific read in the Wilkie Collins tradition", and by Sarah Waters as "absolutely riveting".



Treats in store indeed!

A little light reading 5 - flights of fancy

    Two more novels from the pile, both recently published but one of them written forty five years ago.
Katie Hickman's The Aviary Gate is "a tale of ancient alliances, and intrigues, of forbidden love and dangerous secrets. Lush, magical and utterly absorbing..." the story moves between the present day and sixteenth century Constantinople. I'm interested to see that it's prefaced by some lines of T.S. Eliot from Four Quartets  - they make an intriguing beginning but I shan't give them away just yet!
You can watch a brief interview with Katie Hickman here.


   Published only now (at her request it was to be brought out posthumously) but written in 1963, Janet Frame's Towards Another Summer is a closely autobiographical novel about exile and return, homesickness and belonging. Maggie O'Farrell says it is "...a joy to read, with ... poise, inventiveness and clarity".

And later on, a final selection from the book mountain: dark deeds.

A little light reading 4 - naked knitting

    There's nothing if not an eclectic mix on Cornflower today and here are another two books from the pile to prove the point.


Forever Nude is a novel by Guy Goffette, translated from the French by Frank Wynne. It's about Bonnard and his lover and muse, Marthe, and in "impressionistic, jewel-like sketches...Guy Goffette conjures the artist and his model; visits the gardens, houses and landscapes that Bonnard so gloriously depicted in the radiant colours, the sensual shapes and forms of his genius".


I 'm looking forward to reading this and talking about it soon.
    Then in a complete change of pace, place and mood, we have the first person, present tense narrative of  Divas Don't Knit by Gil McNeil. Here's where we begin: "Jo Mackenzie needs a new start and jumps at the chance to take over her grandmother's wool shop in a small seaside town..." "Warm and wonderful" is how this book has been described, but will it help me learn fair isle? Again, more later.


Coming next: flights of fancy.

A little light reading 3 - cooks and chickens

    Two very different books next: Bethan Roberts's novel The Good Plain Cook and Robyn Scott's autobiographical Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: The Story of an African Childhood
The novel begins: "Wanted - Good plain cook to perform domestic duties for artistic household. Room and board included. Broad outlook essential". Set in Sussex in 1936, this is loosely based on Peggy Guggenheim and the time she spent in Sussex in the mid-1930s, so there should be much of interest in this book which was serialised on Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.
   And then to Africa, and also broadcast on Radio 4 as Book of the Week, Robyn Scott's memoir is the account of her remarkable childhood in Botswana. Described by Alexander McCall Smith as "a gem of a book", that's good enough for me  - and I love the cover picture of the calf on the bed!



Next off the pile: naked knitting (it's not what you think....).

A little light reading 2 - scones and servants

  I'm delighted to be back in Edinburgh's Scotland Street with Alexander McCall Smith's latest "44, Scotland Street" novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (and how about that for a title?). Poor young Bertie, forever six, wants to join the cub scouts, but his dreadful mother Irene classes them as a para-military organisation and won't hear of her son's involvement. Bertie's friend Tofu thinks the way round this would be to tell Irene that they're actually joining the Young Liberal Democrats, but I fear they're on a sticky wicket even there.   Meanwhile, Matthew and Elspeth are on an eventful honeymoon, the put-upon Big Lou is obliged to give hospitality to Jacobites, and Angus must find homes for Cyril's six puppies. Needless to say, I'm laughing out loud.

   And being read at a more sedate pace alongside the contemporary novel is Richardson's eighteenth century bestseller Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded. I must say that I am enjoying it, from its elements of farce and broad comedy to its serious issues of freedom and the misuse of power, and although thus far it is much of a muchness, I shall carry on quite happily.

And later from the book mountain: cooks and chickens.
 

A little light reading

    I know that a lot of people visit this site in the hope of getting some good reading recommendations, so I thought I'd show the current TBR pile(s) here on my desk, and in a series of brief posts, say a little about each book that's waiting for me to get to it.
    But first, hands up anyone who, on seeing a book mountain of this size thinks "Yippee, it's just like Christmas!" - that's certainly my reaction, and long may I feel that excitement and anticipation; I can't wait to discover what delights each one may contain.

I'm well on with the first couple of these, so please come back later for tales of scones and servants.

Lady of letters

    

Mary Ann Shaffer's The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is an utter joy of a book, beautifully judged, witty, lively, almost Mitfordesque at times, sparky, extremely touching, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
     In early 1946 the popular writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a Guernsey farmer, who happens to have acquired a book she once owned. So begins an extraordinary correspondence between Juliet and the various members of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to which the shy but dependable Dawsey belongs, and in which the details  - both funny and tragic - of the German occupation of the island come to light.    
     So enamoured is Juliet of her new pen-friends and the life that they describe that she determines to write her next book about the island in wartime and she takes up residence there to begin her research. She soon realises that the person who should be at the book's heart is the one islander she has yet to meet: the spirited, much-loved Elizabeth McKenna, transported to a concentration camp for her bravery and defiance in the face of the enemy, leaving behind her infant daughter Kit  - to whom Juliet becomes close - and the secret of the child's paternity. 

 
     Written in epistolary form (and it does bear comparison with Helene Hanff's wonderful 84 Charing Cross Road), the book is both a love story and an unemotionally honest picture of its subject matter, but yet it has a light touch and is full of distinct and engaging characters such as Isola Pribby with her passion for the Brontes and her homemade potions, John Booker the wine-loving valet who's a fan of Seneca, Jonas Skeeter and his dim view of Marcus Aurelius : "...[he] was an old woman - always taking his mind's temperature...." and Clovis Fossey, who is much taken with poetry since joining the Society, and writes "Mrs. Maugery lent me a book last week. It's called The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935. They let a man named Yeats make the choosings. They shouldn't have. Who is he - and what does he know about verse?"   
     Sadly, Mary Ann Shaffer died earlier this year; her legacy is this simply lovely book which has been a great pleasure to read.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

     I've used the cover of our older edition of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to illustrate today's post as it shows the girls of the Brodie set in their violet uniforms on their long walk through Edinburgh's Old Town. 

The city itself is a character in the book and deserves a mention before we get on to the story proper for there in the background is "....the Castle, which was in any case everywhere",