Cornflower

From the sublime to.....

     There is simply no way I can follow yesterday's post with anything comparable, so I'm not going to try. Instead, I shall share with you the generous gift brought back to the family from Monte Carlo by Mr. C.

    I ought to point out that over the years, Gareth has found many delightful things for us on his business trips. I've had a hand-marbled scarf from Japan, a beautiful leather-bound notebook from Czechoslovakia, textiles from Hungary, chocolates from Switzerland, various goodies from Chicago, a wonderful silk shawl from Italy,  macaroons from Paris... the list goes on.

     I'm not a particularly 'material' girl, but these tokens of his undying love and affection are always well received and appreciated. We had high hopes for what Monaco might yield. He told us all the women were dressed to the nines, almost every car on the street was a Ferrari, his hotel had given him a guide to shopping in Monte Carlo, so the children and I thought a little upmarket bijou-giftette might accompany him home. It did. Ladies and gentlemen, meet

Spongey the Sea-horse!

He brought back a pen and pencil as well - how much excitement can a person stand?

     Today he's still 'working', as he's at Scone Palace, entertaining clients at the Game Fair. It's the sort of event where you can buy tweed handbags and waxed jackets, posh wellies and smart knitwear, try your hand at casting a fly or clay pigeon shooting, watch a gundog demonstration or terrier racing. You won't find any Ferraris there as they'd get stuck in the mud, but there is a wide range of trade stands and a large craft fair full of interesting and unique decorative items. Gift ideas abound, but it wouldn't surprise me if he came home with Aberdeen Angus steaks.

No stars so lovely

     You'll forgive me, I hope, if this post is more than usually self-indulgent, for yesterday we were at the launch of a particularly special book, a collection of poetry written by our daughter Alice.

    Published by Maclean Dubois and with illustrations by Iain McIntosh, the book's foreword has been written by someone who needs no introduction:

     In addition to last night's signing session, our young poet has also given her first interview, and an article about the book is due to appear in The Sunday Times Ecosse section this weekend.

 

     The whole family is enormously proud of Alice.

    

    

    

Listen up

     Thanks to technical assistance from our in-house computer expert William (who recently solved in three minutes a problem the 'help desk' couldn't fix in an hour's telephone consultation), I now have iTunes on my computer, and a vast library of music to browse in. Combining that with my other new discovery, youtube, means I can see whole performances of pieces and compare versions before reverting to iTunes to download them. This is a revelation to me!

     In case there's anyone reading this (yes, dear friend, I mean you) who thinks my musical tastes are confined to Freddie Mercury (but what a voice, what a showman, what stage presence, what...OK, enough), I must say that last night I was in full-blown Wagnerian mood as I listened to four recordings of a favourite piece, the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. Two were orchestral (Solti and Rattle), two featured major sopranos; of these, one was pretty disappointing, but the other - Jessye Norman - is stunning. I'm not an expert on opera as Elaine is, but I've seen Jessye perform on several occasions at the Edinburgh Festival and she has never been less than sublime.

    If you've followed the link above and listened to her sing, there is nothing more to say and certainly no other music I could offer here 'in the same breath'. Further aspects of my eclectic tastes will get an airing another day. Bet some of you can't wait to hear what they are!

    

Why do squirrels go sailing?

     I once heard a book described thus: "Nothing happens, but it happens beautifully". The same could be said of Tove Jansson's stories, particularly those collected here in A Winter Book, so spare and seemingly inconsequential are they.

    Written almost 'style-lessly', in a conversational or thinking aloud form, Jansson's dismissive attitude and slightly absurdist humour come through with great charm. Every scene is rendered in close-up, like detail seen through a microscope, and with the same fascination a small child can find in a single leaf, a daisy or a puddle, but the ornery tone, bluff matter-of-fact delivery, the 'take it or leave it' insouciance almost draws attention away from her beautifully atmospheric writing.

     The longest story here, "The Squirrel" sees an older Tove aware of her mortality, struggling a little as she warily shares her island home with a solitary squirrel. It best reflects, perhaps, the poignancy which overlays the collection, but to find out more, go and see what Simon has to say on the subject in his post of a few days ago.

Compare and contrast

Dufy's "Baie des Anges, Nice" (just round the corner from where Mr. Cornflower is this week).

Adam Bruce Thomson "Edinburgh from the North West" (about a mile from where I am).

Now ponder these words and see what images they conjure:

lagoon-like pool, early morning swim, the scent of jasmine wafting over the water, a soft breeze ruffling the palm trees which fringe the Mediterranean, blue sky, warm sea;

exposed playing-fields, school sports day, sharp north wind over damp grass, drizzle, wellington boots, winter coats, standing for three hours, numb extremities, general greyness enlivened only by sweatshirts in house colours.

Yes, The Doc. is in Monte Carlo and I am in Edinburgh. There's something wrong with that sentence, don't you think? Granted, he is working - or at least that's what he calls giving a speech, attending a few seminars and a black-tie dinner, having an afternoon off to go on a yacht. Meanwhile, I'm holding the fort here at home, and doing my maternal duty by braving the cold to attend the twice-postponed sports.

And there's more: the day after his return from Monaco, jet-setting Mr. C. will be going to another exotic location - Glasgow. I doubt I'll get to join him on that trip, either.

Brendon Chase

[Mr. Cornflower is en route to a conference in Monaco, but before leaving he drafted this long-promised post on one of his favourite books.] 

     Brendon Chase is the story of three young brothers who, instead of going back to boarding school at the end of the summer holiday, run off to the woods where they hole up - literally - in a hollow oak tree and live by hunting, trapping and fishing. The book has stirred the imaginations of generations of readers since its publication in 1944, and continues to exercise a powerful, almost emotional grip.

     It was written by Denys Watkins-Pitchford who chose to write under the pseudonym "BB" ( a grade of shotgun pellet used in shooting wild geese) while illustrating his works under his own name. The subject-matter may suggest a bluff, red-faced squire; in fact he was a diffident, introspective man who called his own brief autobiography "A Child Alone". Not robust enough to fight in the war, he was teaching art at Rugby school when "Brendon Chase" was published.

     We all have "a land of lost content", patched together from fleeting memories of past happiness and fragments of an idealised world. On one hand we know this world never existed as we remember it and we acknowledge that the reality of life is change; on another, less rational but more powerful level, we cling to illusions which we know to be illusions. Many of us find comfort in the idea of a world where deep in the English countryside a village policeman bicycles through the dusty lanes to the sanctuary of a whitewashed cellar and a tankard of beer drawn from a wooden barrel; where three boys, their parents thousands of miles away administering a now lost Empire, live like Robin Hood's outlaws in eleven thousand acres of deep forest amid the deer and the butterflies; where winter brings knee-deep snow and the boys huddle down under rabbit skin blankets inside their oak.

     I could write much more - in particular I wonder if anyone agrees that, just as Brendon Chase could only have been written by an Englishman, Calvino's Il barone rampante (young aristocrat quarrels with family and climbs into the oak groves of Liguria, never to descend) is quintessentially Italian - but I will stand out of the way and let those of you who have not read "Brendon Chase" enter this magical world.

Let the sun shine

For what feels like weeks now, we've been blanketed by the east coast haar and drenched by relentless rain. Though I love the latter, I'm not so keen on the former, and when the sun has crept out for odd moments it's had a transforming quality about it.

Humble vegetables on the kitchen counter look very different with this sort of illumination!

And this is just a colander catching the light:

                                   ~~~~~~~~~~

I'm delighted that yesterday's post caused a flurry of excitement. By popular demand, here's another clip. In Scotland we'd say "he's gi'in' it laldie!"

Classic FM

No, it's not the radio station, but it is music. If you want to hear something quiet, subtle, understated, don't follow the link I'm about to give. If you're feeling like the dramatic, the over-the-top, the completely wonderful, then click on this, turn up the volume and listen (the best bit's about four minutes in) here.

It's all the fault of my children who introduced me to this source and are now accusing me of entering mid-life crisis mode because I've also been looking at this example of the man's work.

I'll go back to being sensible tomorrow (maybe).

The wedding march

     It is a sure sign of an involving story when a reader is thinking about the plot of a book while going about their daily business. I am around three quarters of the way through Adele Geras's Made In Heaven, and I'm fascinated to see how Adele is going to resolve her story. I'm glad I'm not the one who has to decide the fates of the various characters because she has created an immense and very real dilemma for one of them, and others are facing tough decisions, too. How will it all end?

     I suspect that readers of this book will fall into two camps: some will be longing for the story to go one way, and an equally opinionated faction will be hoping for the opposite outcome. I'm reserving judgement for now, and am simply observing how Adele has most skilfully brought things thus far.

     Without giving away too much of the plot, as a dream wedding is being planned, family relationships begin to unravel and long-buried truths are exposed. There are characters to love and loathe and a wealth of detail on clothes, food and interiors, but to use a musical analogy, what's important here is not so much the tune with its harmonies and embellishments, but the rhythm and the pitch, the pace and the dynamics. So, as we reach the finale, will it be along the lines of Ravel's "Bolero", or more Chopin's "Raindrop Prelude"? 'Crescendo/fortissimo/furioso' or 'diminuendo/piano/largo'? Either way, my money's on 'lacrimoso'!

    

    

Wash day blues

     I have a ton of washing to do today and more than a week's worth of business shirts to iron. Unless rain stops play, I shall be out all afternoon at school sports, so duty sternly calls, but before I closet myself in the laundry, here are some 'wash day blues' (and purples), all from my parents' beautiful garden. 

     Monty Don says in his book The Sensuous Garden, which is full of stunning photographs, "blue resists definition, avoids description: the Greeks had no word for it; and in all the hundreds of references to the sky in the Bible never once is blue mentioned."

     "Birds cannot see true blue - only an oily yellow substitute. Bees see only in blue and yellow."

     "Blue evades us, is out of reach, is nowhere."

     "Why is blue the one colour with which we can label a feeling? We know exactly what having 'the blues' means, yet at the same time we can be elevated by the beauty of blue. But it will be through admiration rather than intimacy."

      "Violet is purple edging to blue and mauve is purple overloaded with red. Mix them all together in a border and you have a shimmering, shot-silk mixture."

    

     Gertrude Jekyll may have disapproved of purple as a dominant colour, but surely she'd have appreciated the glorious shades of this iris?

For the love of books

     Desperate times and desperate measures in the city yesterday as public booking for the Edinburgh International Book Festival opened - or should have opened. So great was the demand for seats that the phonelines and website collapsed under the strain. Some hardy souls waited for hours on the pavement outside the box office, intent on nabbing the scarce-as-gold-dust Alan Bennett and Andrew Marr tickets. With the queue apparently nearing the outskirts of Glasgow ( I exaggerate slightly, but Mr. Cornflower did join it at one point and was a very long way from its head) many were destined to be disppointed in their quest for a place in the marquees of Charlotte Square Gardens in two months' time.

     Being a Friend of the Festival, I was able - by dint of several very long waits to get through on the phone - to buy some tickets in the priority booking period, but alas, no Bennett or Marr for me. However, amongst other things I did manage to secure a couple of seats for :

and he is as delightfully funny in person as his books suggest.

    

Five a day

     With the book pile on the bedside table (and the one on the table beside the bedside table) reaching teetering proportions, I feel the need to have even more books than usual on the go. So I've been flitting from one to another, enjoying a chapter or so at a time, which must be the literary equivalent of having one's cake and eating it.

     From the bottom up: The Shuttle, Frances Hodgson Burnett's warp and weft of turn of the century Anglo-American marriages, has got going after a lengthy scene-setting. A strong female lead and - potentially - a choice of equally attractive male characters, plus villain, keeps me firmly woven into this excellent material [groan, if you will].

     Mary Lawson's Crow Lake, most kindly sent all the way from Canada by Peg, is shaping up well. "The Pye nightmare was destined to become entangled with the Morrison dream" - who wouldn't wish to read on?  

     Adele Geras's novel centred on a grand wedding has me gripped already. Made In Heaven looks beyond the confetti and the favours, and the protagonists' resolution of their various compelling dilemmas will be more than just a piece of cake.   

     Having enjoyed The Summer Book, I'm reading A Winter Book: Selected Stories by Tove Jansson in tandem with Simon; that's if he can squeeze it in beside his Cornish pasties and cream teas (lucky fellow!).    

     And lastly, a biography of a great food writer: Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher. Her omnibus, The Art of Eating, is one of the best books about food I've ever read. "She wrote", says Joan Reardon in her biography, "with every intention to seduce" and "made domestic life so sensual and intimate". She was "the Dorothy Parker of the kitchen and the Katherine Hepburn of culinary arts and letters".

     Much as I'd love to settle down with all the above and indulge myself this morning, I have to go to a meeting instead, and no I can't sneak a book or two into my briefcase and read under the desk!

    

Tomato tart

Cherry tomatoes, puff pastry, cheese.

Roll out the pastry to form a rectangle, cut off half-inch strips all round, moisten with water and use to form boundary edges. Prick the base and leave to chill for 30 minutes.

Spread the pastry with soft goats' cheese or Boursin, then top with the tomatoes which have been sauteed in very hot olive oil and sprinkled with black pepper and a dessertspoon of caster sugar to caramelise.

Bake at 220C/425F/Gas 7/floor of Aga roasting oven for 20 minutes, covering the tomatoes with a generous handful of grated Parmesan half way through cooking.

Serve hot with salad.

Sunday best

     How will you be spending your Sunday? Is it a day of rest, reflection, recreation, or just an extension to the working week?

     Aside from the matter of religious observance, what are your rituals - if any - for making Sunday a special day? Do lie-ins feature, traditional lunches, an afternoon walk, a visit to a gallery or museum?

     I'm conscious of the fact that Sunday is for me much as any other day and I ought to change that. I have a list of jobs to do, beginning with three book reviews to write, and moving on to the usual never-ending household chores. Having picked these flowers a few minutes ago I'm aware that the garden is sorely in need of attention - impenetrability wasn't a feature we were consciously including in our small city patch.

 

     Modern life means boundaries are blurred: people work at or from home, our culture is a twenty-four hour, seven day bonanza of opportunity and access to all manner of activities, informality rules and the structure of a 'timetabled' day has gone, certainly at weekends. All of this seems to add up to an erosion of the separate-ness or specialness of at least this one day.

     If you have a 'Sunday best' or a 'best Sunday', please tell us what it is.

Eleven o'clock and not a dish washed

   

Finding myself late to the laptop this morning  - and with much to do today - I automatically thought of that saying about being behind with things. It was uttered often by my former colleague G., when we shared an office and would keep each other entertained with commentaries on our respective cases and gripes about the inefficiencies of others. If phone calls or other interruptions held us back from the business of the day, the dish-washing exclamation would be invoked and we would then get on.

     People often assume that life within a legal practice is dull, but my experience was far from that. Entering a partner's room you might find anything from a brace of pheasant hanging on a filing cabinet (we acted for the owners of large tracts of rural Scotland), to the ashes of a deceased client sitting on a mantelpiece waiting to be scattered according to the terms of their will.

     Working in litigation brought me into contact with all sorts of people, though not the criminal fraternity (unsavoury perhaps, but the theoretical side of criminal law is actually fascinating), and it would be true to say that with regard to the files on my desk, "all life was there". I dealt with grievances, tragedies and even comedy, as when I was the instructing solicitor on a possible action of passing-off involving the Loch Ness Monster. Consulting counsel at the Old Town premises of the Faculty of Advocates late on a dark, dreich Friday evening about what was actually a very serious business matter, I couldn't keep a straight face, and nor could the QC.

     We didn't need actual clients to bring drama into the office, however, as we had our own in-house master of the art. My boss at one time was the legal equivalent of this man: maverick, irascible, irreverent, very clever and almost impossible to work with. Maddening he may have been, but he knew his stuff and was refreshingly straightforward in a world where deviousness often figures.

     I left the profession to be a full-time mother, and aware that I couldn't do justice to both occupations at the same time, have never returned to the law. Yes, I sometimes miss it and the professional standing which went with it, and it's almost time I replaced it with something else, but for now, I'd better get on with those dishes.....