Cornflower

Hide and seek

     If you're in the market for a family drama full of secrets from the past, complicated relationships and plenty of romance, place your orders now for Adele Geras's latest novel A Hidden Life which is rolling off the presses as I write.

     Adele excels at story-telling. Her novels are peopled with fully realised characters involved in well-constructed plots and there's always a wealth of detail on clothes, food and interiors which makes for rich, satisfying reading. Her books have pace, style and narratives which pull the reader in and keep them there until the very end. Adele is masterly when it comes to dilemmas, too (she produced a very tough one in her last book Made In Heaven but resolved it expertly and with a real flourish), and in the latest she's again put her protagonists in tricky situations.

     The book begins with wealthy Constance Barrington making a new will on her deathbed, intent on causing trouble within her extended family after she's gone. Not a woman capable of forgiving and forgetting, she orders her affairs in such a way as to mark out her favourites and cut out those against whom she bears an unreasonable grudge.   Granddaughter Lou's inheritance is apparently worthless: she's been left the copyright in long out-of-print novels written by her beloved grandfather. But is there more to this bequest than meets the eye, and what was the real-life story behind John Barrington's best known fictional one?

     The theme of 'hidden lives' - secrets, alternatives, fantasies - underpins the book, from young, single mother Lou wondering how she could "justify the luxury of having dreams" to happily married Matt contemplating "a deliciously forbidden possibility". As the story unfolds, Adele cleverly 'flips the coin' of the relationships and situations she depicts, revealing contrasts and other interpretations, showing how there are two sides to most things, but ultimately giving her readers what they will be hoping for. Her legions of fans will not be disappointed!

Food for thought

     I've written here before about "The Desk of Power" and its position in my "Nerve Centre"/"Control Room" study. I've shown one or two pictures of the desk but not the room as, frankly, it's a tip and no aspiring domestic goddess or global dictator (benign or otherwise) would be seen dead in it. The bare bones of the room are good: it has a high ceiling, large window, a pretty cornice, panelled dado and a black limestone fireplace, but it is sorely in need of redecoration, de-cluttering and re-organisation. The plan is to tackle it next month. Hence the mackerel. The fish pictured here were not just Saturday's supper but the colour scheme for the new-look study.

I want those silvery, pale sea-greens and blues that contrast so beautifully with mackerel's black stripes and which occur in the pot pictured here, and in a painting of a Scottish loch which hangs above the mantelpiece.

     Apart from all the decorating, the carpet and curtains have to be replaced, a settee moved or recovered and bookshelves fitted, so we need to make a start [do you hear that, Doc? - forget the golf clubs and fishing rods for a week or two].

     What shall I do while the room is out of commission? Move my power-base elsewhere, of course. I may be spattered with emulsion but I shall still have one eye on my world domination map.....

Treading a measure

 

  "The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle; unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance."

So begins Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing, the first novel in his twelve-volume series, "A Dance to the Music of Time". I read this book many years ago, and it failed to make any impression on me other than that it was sub-Waugh - which undoubtedly says more about me than the book. I scarcely remember it and didn't go on to read any more Powell, feeling I just didn't 'get' him. However, having a friend who reads the entire "Dance" every year and says he constantly finds new delights in it, I thought I'd have another go.

     I'm still not sure I'm getting it. To stretch the terpsichorean metaphor a bit, the book seemed to me like a dance being walked through, the steps essayed, rather than truly danced and interpreted. Anyone who has ever been in the thick of a reel will appreciate the difference between the dry run and the energetic, enthusiastic abandonment of the real thing. Imagine Stripping the Willow or weaving your way through an Eightsome but at walking pace and without music - tame and disappointing. That's what I felt about this book: it is precisely circumlocutional, drily, formally unemotional, at times archly attenuated. Following Jenkins, Widmerpool ("so wet you could shoot snipe off him" - yes, the line is there) Stringham and Templer from Eton to a spell in France and on to Oxford and beyond, the book reads as what it is, in effect: a long chapter of a much longer work, and I got the distinct feeling that as such, it hadn't really got going. Perhaps the afficionados out there will point out where I've gone wrong.

     One character says, "I like Kipling. That is, I like him up to a point", and I'd say the same about Powell after this reading. There were many elegant and eminently quotable passages, there was the sense of this being just a small part of the pattern of a very carefully and cleverly worked larger design which needs the scope of further volumes to reveal itself, but was there any emotional engagement (other than a slightly embarrassed acknowledgement) between the writer and his characters, and by extension, the reader? Is there more to it than social posturing? If so, please persuade me otherwise, and if one ought not to read this book in isolation but as part of the whole, then tell me when the tempo begins to pick up and things really start to swing.

    

Beetroot

 

From The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater:-

"Two of us ate the beets and their greens with slices of crumbly goat's cheese, hacking off bits of cheese and pushing them on to the still-warm beetroot with ruby-stained fingers. After the fudgy, chalk-white cheese and sweet, claret roots, we filled up on slices of thickly buttered soft white bread cut from a cottage loaf. Oh, and I bought pinks too, a fat bunch of them, and sat them in a creamware jug on the kitchen table."

 

Shadowy figure

     Cornflower has been in existence for almost eleven months now, yet the 'About' section in the sidebar remains blank. I could have removed it altogether but I've kept it there, intending to write something for it one day. I know that visitors to the site do click on it, presumably because they want some details on the person whose tastes and passions fill these pages.

     But what to put? How to give a C.V. in two or three lines? I, who am supposed to be good at getting to the essence of things and expressing myself concisely, am stumped when it comes to this brief autobiographical note.

     This is when some good labels would come in handy, some identifying tags. I can legitimately append a few letters to my name but with their diminishing relevance to my current life, what do they say about me now? I am entitled to call myself housewife, mother, company secretary, book reviewer - all roles I currently fill - but as with most people, there is much more to say: the 'rich, inner life' which is hinted at here encompasses enthusiasm for and a certain level of knowledge of many subjects.

     Being by nature a shy person, I tend to listen first and talk later; so, surprisingly for someone who is backwards at coming forwards, here I am with a very personal website, daring to venture my opinions on things without knowing quite who is reading them! As someone only too ready to defer to others' superior learning, this could be disconcerting if I thought about it too much.

     "Who am I?" is a big question and one I cannot easily answer, so better to ask "What, if anything more, do you want to know?" What about 'About'? Hints and tips for filling in the blanks, please. Or, if not in so many words, has it all already been said?

RBGE II

      In the middle of Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden sits Inverleith House, built in 1773 and from its elevated position having a superb view of the city skyline. That's the south front above; the north side has a less austere feel about it with a rounded stair-tower rising behind a gable-fronted porch. The house was built for James Rocheid and his mother who "rode abroad in a mulberry-coloured coach with two liveried footmen...the coachman and the splendid hammercloth loaded with lace".

     "Up there in the centre of Edinburgh... the houses bulge outwards on flimsy brackets... a gable and a few crowsteps are printed on the sky.... here you find a great old mansion still erect....come suddenly on a corner and see...woods and villas and a blue arm of the sea..." Robert Louis Stevenson

An archway in the immense beech hedge to the north of the house with a view to the herbaceous border beyond.

Ilex aquifolium Golden Queen

A 'secret' doorway; clematis trichotoma.

Dierama and bee.

The rushy glen: the burn which runs from the Rock Garden to the Pool of Peace.

Larix kaempferi.

Of ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties

"Watersprites in a Stream", General John Chamberlayne, c.1865   

I'm re-reading Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings, and feeling as though I've strayed into Hagrid's "Care of Magical Creatures" class, so familiar are some of these fantastical and mythical 'things' from Harry Potter. What is interesting is that all cultures are represented in this book, and that the mixture of religion, philosophy, superstition, literature and anthropology makes it of universal interest and appeal - if you like that sort of thing!

"Vanity", Tony Gibbons, C19th.

     Take fairies, for example; they are not confined to any particular place or period but can be found in cultures as diverse as those of the Ancient Greeks, the Inuit, and the Native American. They figure particularly, of course, in Celtic countries, and here in Scotland at the end of the seventeenth century, the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle wrote The Secret Commonwealth; or an Essay on the Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and for the most part) Invisible People heretofoir going under the names of Faunes and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the second sight. Sir Walter Scott - who was keen on these things - had the book reprinted in 1815. Borges says "Of Mr. Kirk it is told that the Fairies snatched him away because he had revealed their mysteries."

"The Fairy Wood", Henry Meynell Rheam

     Brownies are "helpful little men of a brownish hue... while the household sleeps... they perform domestic chores". Tell me, somebody, where I can find them! Robert Louis Stevenson said he had trained his Brownies in the craft of literature. They visited him in his dreams and gave him Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Maybe RLS had been patronising Edinburgh hostelries a little too assiduously?

     Elsewhere in the book Borges covers creatures we are all familiar with like the unicorn, trolls and the phoenix, but there is plenty to discover such as the shy, singing dog in C.S. Lewis's "Perelandra", and (another Scots character) the rather sinister 'fetch'.

"Brunnhilde implores the Valkyries", Arthur Rackham

     A quick search through the art library shows the extent to which these imaginary beings have inspired painters. I've mentioned writers above, and as for music on the subject, what could beat "The Ride of the Valkyries"? Unfortunately, it wasn't available, but Wagner fans may nonetheless like to listen to this: 

Ex libris

     I'm not sure what made me pick up a history of Magdalen College, Oxford, from our shelves, but when I opened it I found it contained the bookplate pictured above.

Looking more closely I saw not just the name of the book's earlier owner, but various 'cyphers' or clues to his interests or field of study. Note the scientific equipment, the scholarly texts, the bear crest. Then there's the peacock, a musical instrument (is it a square piano?), oriental objects. What about the view beyond the be-urned balustrade?

     Who was this man? A second or two on Google told me. Gavin Rylands de Beer (1899-1972) was a student at Magdalen from 1917-1922. He went on to become Professor of Embryology at University College London, a Fellow of the Royal Society, Director of the British Museum of Natural History, and he was knighted in 1954. Interestingly for an evolutionary embryologist, he adopts the motto "In deo spes mea", and I'm glad to see he includes a dog in the picture! Those of a scientific bent may read more about him and his work here.

     What interests me about this - apart from the fact that G.R. de Beer turns out to have been an eminent man - is the design of the bookplate itself, how it was thought out, what it said about him. I used to write my name inside my books and occasionally date them. I no longer do that, nor do I possess bookplates to mark special volumes as mine, and not everything I read will merit a permanent place in my library, anyway.

     Let me pose some questions: if you already have bookplates of your own, what do they look like, and if you were to have some made especially for you, what might they include? Are you a keeper or hoarder of books, or are you (for reasons of space constraints, say) more ruthless in passing them on as soon as you've read them? What's your bibliophilic personality?

     The current owner of the Magdalen history is in London on business today, and he'll be staying the night in this particularly bookish household where, along with a discussion of cricket, there will be talk on matters literary and the swapping of obscure quotations, I'll warrant ! But does "L.B." go in for bookplates, and how well-organised is his collection? I expect a report later.

                    ~~~~~~~~~~~

Note: You can find the engraver Rosie mentions in her comment (see below) here. He is well worth a visit. Thanks, Rosie!

Still waters run deep

     Dr. Kate Morrison, assistant professor, invertebrate ecology (University of Toronto), grew up in the Canadian wilderness with her two elder brothers and young sister. A visit home to celebrate her nephew's 18th. birthday requires her to confront her present in order to make sense of her past.

     Mary Lawson's novel Crow Lake is the story of Kate's brothers and their response to tragedy and to choice. Two incidents shape the lives of the family: one accidental, the other deliberate - an impulse determining a fate. But it is Kate's interpretation of the consequences of the choice that has caused her detachment from her family, and when she realises "I have become familiar with books and ideas.... and somehow, in the process of acquiring all that knowledge, I have managed to learn nothing at all", it takes an outsider with a clearer view to put matters right.

     I am indebted to Peg for sending me this excellent book, all the way from Canada. Its quiet, unassuming style and easy pace draw the eye away from the real skill and integrity with which it's written. Mary Lawson is particularly good on the interplay of sibling relationships, the delightfully 'true' toddler, Bo, and the contrast between the young Kate's family life and her later academic one. Throughout the book she maintains a sense of balance and proportion, and her unforced, natural voice and perceptive treatment of the story make this a compelling novel.

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

Some pictures from our morning walk in the Royal Botanic Garden. Click to enlarge the one above and you'll see Edinburgh Castle taken from the lawns in front of Inverleith House.

The Rhododendron Gates

Acer shirasawanum aureum

Eucalyptus coccifera

The Victorian Palm House

Cedrus atlantica

Cone by Andy Goldsworthy with the New Town beyond.

Prunus serrula

"What would the world be, once bereft

of wet and wildness? Let them be left.

O let them be left, wildness and wet:

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

Gerard Manley Hopkins (who hadn't seen my garden when he wrote that).

More from the RBGE soon.

Made in .....

     I was asked for the recipe for Cranachan the other day, so here it is and made with only local ingredients.

Double cream, raspberries, pinhead oatmeal, heather honey and whisky.

The whisky is from my mother's home town of Tain in Ross-shire. A word on the pronunciation of Glenmorangie: the stress is on the second syllable, not the third!

The Malt Whisky Companion says the 'nose' of the 10 yr. old is "spicy with some flowery sweetness, fresh, a whiff of the sea, enticing", while the palate is "Spicy, flowery, with malty-sweet tones that are creamy, almost buttery". The 'finish' is "long and rounded".

    

Toast 3-4 ozs. of oatmeal and stir into 1/2 pt. softly whipped double cream. Add 1 tblsp. of runny honey and 1 tblsp. of whisky, then fold in 4-6 ozs. raspberries.

Annette Hope in A Caledonian Feast says Cranachan is "a perfect example of the marriage of simple local ingredients, each element tasting of itself yet contributing both flavour and texture to the memorable creation of  one of the world's great desserts". It was traditionally served at Hallowe'en with small charms hidden in it.

Hardy annuals

     This post ought to be viewed through sepia-tinted spectacles as it's nostalgia time! While searching for music to add to the site I found a version of the theme from "The Man from U.N.C.L.E", one of my favourite programmes when I was a child. The series must have gone on being aired long after it ceased to be made, because I remember having a crush on David McCallum, who played the enigmatic Illya Kuryakin, when I was about fourteen.

     I knew I had some UNCLE pictures in an old annual, and I found it, complete with a rather orange Roger Moore on the cover (note the knitwear, girls), so I can tell you that those initials stand for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, Robert Vaughn, who played the dashing Napoleon Solo, switched from journalism to drama at Minnesota University, and David McCallum narrowly avoided music college (he played the french horn) to go to RADA. Trivia apart, it was a great series.

    Beside my copy of "Star TV & Film Annual 1967" [I was a mere babe in arms when it was given to me, of course], I found these two old favourites:

I used to practise twitching my nose like Samantha in "Bewitched", desperately hoping that I could work magic, (hands up who else did that) and I loved "Daktari" with Dr. Marsh Tracy and Clarence the cross-eyed lion. Which leads me to ask all of you to name your favourite programmes from childhood. We once spent a great evening with a group of friends reminiscing about things like "Pogles Wood", "Noggin the Nog" and "Tales of the Riverbank" - remember the wonderful Johnny Morris, and the little hamster going up in the balloon? Any more nostalgic highlights to share?

[Re-reading the above, it occurs to me I ought to get out more....]

And all that jam

     My parents live in the heart of soft fruit country in Perthshire, and despite our atrocious summer weather, they managed to pick pounds of raspberries the other day.

While we like strawberries, they can't beat rasps, in my opinion, and whether you eat them sun-warmed straight from the cane as you pick them, or with cream and maybe a little sugar, or dress them up in a version of Eton Mess or - even better - Cranachan, they taste wonderful.

     My mother made jar upon jar of jam on her return from the fields, some of which has come our way.

Thanks, Mum!

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Blueberry and Pear Cake I mentioned a couple of days ago came from Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries. It's a basic Victoria sponge mixture (4 oz. each of butter, caster sugar, plain flour, a tsp. baking powder, 2 eggs) topped with 2 ripe pears (peeled, cored, diced) and around 8oz. blueberries, sprinkled with 2 tblsps. caster sugar. I used a 1lb. loaf tin, lined, and baked it for 40 mins. in the middle of the Aga baking oven/ 180C/gas 4.

Rosy posy

This is the Damask rose, Ispahan. It's a single-flowering lax shrub with beautiful scent.

It is glowing, pinkly, from a darkish corner of our garden.

The buds are delicate, and though the flowers look blousy here, they are not really very big.

"The Rose of Ispahan" is, I discover, the title of a song by [accentless] Faure.

I also discover we have thistles!

Tea, cake and very big plans

     My friend Sophie came to tea the other day. Sophie needs a little introduction: she is 6ft. tall, Swedish and a force to be reckoned with; in fact, I defy anyone to say "no" to Sophie, so determined is she and so driven by a large-hearted desire to make the world a better place. Sophie is the power behind Mindroom, a charity concerned with not only the diagnosis and treatment of learning difficulties of all types, but also vital research and education to improve the lives of children and young adults with a range of 'differences', not just now but far into the future.

     I've been involved with Mindroom almost since its inception, brought in by Sophie's enthusiasm and vision, and over tea and Blueberry and Pear Cake, Sophie and I discussed our collective plans for the biggest project yet, a diagnostic, assessment and treatment centre to be set up in collaboration with Professor Christopher Gillberg, Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Universities of Gothenburg and Strathclyde.

    So far, the charity has held international conferences and masterclasses to reach parents, teachers, doctors and other health professionals, but the next step is to put knowledge into action and provide a single destination for families who so badly need comprehensive guidance and clear answers in this fraught field.

     Mindroom has a marvellous and highly experienced adviser, Mig, who deals with all the enquiries and requests for help which come in to us, but there is a need for more than even Mig can provide, hence our undertaking a feasibility study with a view to setting up the first Mindroom Centre, as there is currently nothing like what we envisage anywhere. Big dreams and even bigger plans.

 

     The Mindroom website is being extensively updated, so check back towards the end of July to see the new version, and stay tuned here for occasional reports on how my very tall Scandinavian friend is slowly but surely changing the world - I reckon it'll be a piece of cake!