Cornflower

Working lunch

     The parcel I've been waiting for all morning still hasn't arrived, and I doubt it will come now. The photographs I was trying to take to illustrate an idea in The Architecture of Happiness just would not work out, so bang went that post, and as for this one, the "Cannot find server" message has appeared with maddening frequency (has the rain got into the 'wires' or whatever they are?) so no pictures here either.

     Feeling quite fed up, I decided I'd better be literally fed up, and I now am. You can rely on mashed potato when a little consolation is required and today it was in the form of a Stilton and onion pie. It's from (yet again) Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen, and is the perfect dish for a dark, miserable November day. I've just had what remained after a simple supper a day or two ago, but it doesn't suffer from being revisited for a quick lunch here in front of the misbehaving computer with one eye on the road for the Royal Mail van.

     Make a batch of mashed potatoes in your preferred manner (NS involves himself in boiling milk and using a mixer to get the right consistency; I add cold milk and plenty of butter and I use an ordinary masher and a bit of effort, but I do 'bree' the potatoes when they are cooked which is to leave them on the stove for a few minutes after they've been drained with a tea towel kept especially for the purpose laid on top of them to absorb the steam). Put half the mash in a buttered baking dish, cover it with a good layer of caramelised onion (add a teaspoon of sugar as the onions are slowly cooking to help them along) and then crumble a generous wedge of Stilton over that and top with the remaining mash. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan and bake in a hottish oven for about half an hour. Consume without guilt when the day is otherwise devoid of comfort.

    Now I'm having chocolate ice cream.....

Arthurian legend

     I've just finished reading five hundred pages of biographical detail, bizarre criminal activity, inept investigation, courtroom drama, clever deduction, romance, personal travails and reputations made and lost, and all so smoothly, neatly and beautifully written that it feels like only fifty. There's not a dull paragraph in Julian Barnes's wonderful novel, Arthur and George, a true and remarkable story recounted here in an elegantly muscular style.

      While at school, Arthur Conan Doyle told stories to classmates for a pastry or an apple and so "discovered the essential connection between narrative and reward". Becoming one of the most famous men of his age through first his writing and then his espousal of various causes, he used his persuasive personality, his powers of deduction and his narrative skills to enormous effect, seeing himself almost as a crusading knight whose reward was the simple yet complex one that others would ultimately share his beliefs.

      His involvement with the case of George Edalji, a Birmingham solicitor wrongly accused of a series of crimes, was typical of his wholehearted championing of the underdog or the person who has suffered at the hands of a blind and blundering system. He used his fame to make "a great noise" about the miscarriage of justice and used his great creation, Sherlock Holmes, as a "skeleton key" to gain him access to the people and the facts by which he could set the matter to rights.

      The narrative is often present tense which gives it an immediacy or even an urgency which draws the reader on. Barnes's portrait of Sir Arthur is - as far as I can judge - accurate and attractive; his depiction of the almost unknown George, touching and sensitive. He has put himself so successfully into the minds of two very different men that the result is a triumph of a novel which I can't recommend too highly. 

The real thing

     Having made my prototype sock, I'm now working on The Real Thing! The pattern has been typed up in draft form and will be checked as I go and posted as soon as I'm happy it's as clear as I can make it.

     Meanwhile, here's the yarn I'm using for this special project. As the finished articles will be called The Willow Pattern Socks (because they incorporate a willow leaf motif) and as my favourite colour is blue and I love blue and white china, I wanted a willow pattern plate palette.

What's pictured here isn't willow pattern, but it's the idea I was after and shows the various shades of blue from intensely, richly dark to lighter and brighter.

To interpret this I chose Posh Yarn's Lucia 'Alto' (merino/cashmere),

and the cuff is now done; the lavender and royal blue tones lift the midnight blue just enough to get the effect I wanted. Apologies for the disappointing picture of the work-in-progress, but it's a very dreich day here, and despite waiting and making several attempts, the light isn't good enough for a decent photograph. 

Rebel without a clue

     

      I am a good girl, really. My threats yesterday to let my family fettle for themselves as far as food was concerned were so much hot air. I did, of course, put down my book, and served them roast chicken, etc., and I did all my other chores besides, because I am pretty dutiful.

     My children say that like Mary Poppins I am "practically perfect in every way". I wouldn't agree with that at all but I will say that I've never seen the point in disobedience for the sake of it. My three are amazed that I was never in trouble at school, did all my homework, handed it in on time, and generally just did what was expected of me. Not that they don't, but they seem to take the occasional slight slippage as par for the course, while if I had had to suffer the ignominy of "lunchtime prep" I'd have been mortified. I probably sound like an absolute prig who is no fun at all, but I think that standards are worth aspiring to, rules usually exist for a good reason and if people just did as they were supposed to do the world might be a better, and safer, place. Am I hopelessly old-fashioned, or does anyone agree?

     However, sometimes even I admit to feeling like a little light rebellion - nothing that would do any harm, you understand, just a kick against the traces, a stamp of my small foot, a quietly spoken "no". One of these days, maybe....

I shan't put it down

     Everything on my "to do" list for today is going to have to be squeezed in around a book. I'm reading Julian Barnes's novel, Arthur and George, and I'm completely engrossed in it, so family take note: if anyone asks what's for supper, they'll be told "a run round the table". (You think I'm joking? You all know where the kitchen is).

     With a strange irony, I bought this book last March and took it on our skiing holiday in Switzerland, but despite many hours off the slopes, I didn't get around to starting it. It was only the other day when I was blaming poor old Sir Arthur for his part in causing me to have to learn to ski that I decided to pick up the book and read it now. It's a compelling account of the true story of Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement in the case of George Edalji, a solicitor accused of the crimes which came to be known as The Great Wyrley Outrages and thus is part mystery, part legal drama, part biography (At the point I've reached, Arthur has just given his account of his famous slide down the mountain to a 'significant' woman).

     This is my first Julian Barnes but will not be my last - any suggestions from Barnes fans as to which to read next? Meanwhile, I'm trying to identify just what is making this book so good, but I think I'll leave that until I've finished it. Got to go!

Pass the parcel

      Andrew Wilson's novel The Lying Tongue is still going the rounds. I wrote about it here, and elsewhere opinions diverged! It's currently with a friend in London, but he's willing to pass it on (within the UK only), so if you would like to read it next just email me (the link is in the right-hand sidebar) and I'll arrange it.

Shy and retiring

     Nigel Slater refers to the apricot as a 'shy' fruit and suggests - if eating them as they come disappoints - baking them with sugar or a drizzle of honey, some orange-flower water, and serving them with thick yogurt and pistachios.

     Edward Bunyard, in his Anatomy of Dessert, quotes a Dr. Muffet : "Apricots are Plums concealed beneath a Peach's coat" and says "of their virtues, medical and otherwise, he had much to say which was permissible in the seventeenth century but which cannot be repeated in the [twenty-first]"!

He goes on, "There is a certain richness about a tree of apricots in fruit; the dark leathery leaves serve as an admirable background to the fruits....For the complete picture we need an old brick wall, mellowed by sun and rain to a rose tint, and we have a colour effect which the flower garden will not easily surpass, and the added charm of anticipation leading to that complete absorption of the subject which Samuel Butler thought to be love's highest expression."

     And then, "...the apricot has a certain Eastern lusciousness, a touch of the exotic...In some Persian Palace whose quiet garden hears only the tinkle of a fountain it would seem to find its right setting, fitly waiting on a golden dish for some languid Sharazade".

     From the Arabian Nights to French bread and jam. Jane Grigson's Fruit Book mentions "the peach-apricot", an apotheosis of the 'alberge', and tells us that "In Eugenie Grandet ...Balzac placed alberge jam at the height of the things one could spread on bread, the most recherche and delicate, at the opposite end of the scale from butter which was the commonest, most everyday." 

     These [Spanish?] apricots are sweetly succulent enough to eat just as they are, without being transformed into a conserve or a pudding, and in the absence of golden dishes, fountains, and the warmth of a mellow garden wall. One can dream, though....

Well thankyou very much, Sir Arthur

   

     I've written before about my lack of aptitude for skiing and the fact that this makes me the odd one out in the family, and I've mentioned that I shall have to subject myself to the whole awful ordeal again in Switzerland in a few months' time. Well, I read in this morning's paper that it's Sir Arthur Conan Doyle I have to thank for my discomfort for it was he who popularised skiing in Switzerland!

     I quote from "The Telegraph": "It was a common means of transport in Norway, but few Swiss practised it (they preferred snowshoes) and those who did travelled under the cover of darkness to avoid the ridicule of their peers. [Hah! See?!] Doyle arrived in the country in 1893 and realised that the conditions were perfect for the sport. He taught himself the rudiments, crossed an Alpine pass and wrote up the experience in the Strand Magazine. The article not only helped make skiing less embarrassing for locals, it also established Switzerland as Europe's premier destination for a fashionable new hobby."

    And all that from a respectable Edinburgh doctor? I'd have expected better of you, Sir Arthur, and wonder why you didn't just stick to writing books.

 

     That thought may have crossed his mind when on one perilously steep descent, he lost his skiis and had no choice but to go down several hundred feet on his bottom, finding that the seat of his Harris tweed breeks sadly couldn't withstand that sort of rough treatment. For the remainder of the day, he admitted, "I was happiest when nearest the wall." (See Daniel Stashower's book Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle.) "Today, a plaque in Davos pays tribute to Conan Doyle's role in bringing the attractions of the Swiss Alps to the attention of the world. It concludes with a fitting testimonial to the man in the distressed knickerbockers....'The pattern of a perfect gentleman'."

Elementary, my dear Watson.

(The pictures are all by Carlo Pellegrini, 1866-1937, and are to be found at the Bridgeman Art Library website).

Four by four

     I've been tagged by Laura who writes the deliciously foodie blog Eat Drink Live to reveal a bit more of the Cornflower history and tastes (if you haven't had quite enough of them already), so here goes:

Four jobs I've had:

Surveyor of the electoral register. Before this was done by post, I spent a couple of university long vacations walking round Edinburgh knocking on doors to check that all those who were entitled to be were listed on the register. I visited some of the less salubrious areas of the city and also some of the smartest. I 'interviewed' a well-known Q.C. in his pyjamas, dealt with my share of fierce dogs and odd characters, and got plenty of exercise in the process.

Shop assistant. While still at school I had a Saturday job working in the record department of the then John Menzies store on Princes Street. I'd wanted to be in the book department but was unlucky. I had to wear a ghastly nylon overall and listen to mostly dreadful music all day. I didn't do it for long.

Tutor in criminal law, University of Edinburgh. To supplement my meagre income I taught undergraduates once or twice a week while I spent the rest of my time conveying property in my real job.

Lawyer. My proper career - though long since abandoned in favour of motherhood - was as a solicitor specialising first in civil litigation, where I 'encountered' the Loch Ness Monster and evicted widows and orphans, and then later as a conveyancer, happily up to my elbows in dusty title deeds.

Four places I've lived:

The Isle of Man. I was born there. We lived mostly in Port Erin in the south, right beside the sea, so I'm bound to say that's the best bit, but actually it's all lovely.

Neckargemund, Germany. A small town on the River Neckar about three miles from Heidelberg. We spent six months there, our children in German schools (and that's another story). The experience made me truly appreciate home.

Edinburgh. This will have to make up the balance of the four, but I have lived in four different parts of the city from leafy Ravelston to comfortable Comely Bank, studenty Marchmont and our current home on the north side where there is to be found, according to Alexander McCall Smith, "an occasional miasmic mist which snakes in from the shores of the Firth of Forth" (but not today!).

Four places I've been on holiday:

The US and Canada. While in Boston, in the law section of the Harvard Coop bookstore, I got talking to a man who was the spit-image of Robert Redford - we had a long and interesting chat - and then I received an offer of marriage from a handsome farmer at the Plymouth Plantation!

Australia and New Zealand. Highlights there were swimming in the Indian Ocean and standing on the deck of a ship in NZ's Doubtful Sound for five minutes of complete and utter silence but for birdsong and the rush of waterfalls.

The Scottish Highlands and Islands. Countless holidays in remote locations have included fishing from a boat on Loch Stack in Sutherland in atrocious weather (the water was being whipped up, tornado-like, in front of us), getting sunstroke on Skye having spent too long lying outside reading Mary Wesley, swimming in invigorating Atlantic breakers off Coll, and sailing to Fingal's Cave on Staffa when staying in a haunted house on Mull.

Paris. A few days in the Lancaster, reputedly Dirk Bogarde's favourite hotel in the world and the place where they spend more on flowers than on electricity. I like luxury from time to time!

Four favourite foods: Scallops. Chocolate. Mashed potatoes. Fish.

There's one more category which I'll leave for now as I've gone on long enough. I shan't tag anybody specifically, but anyone reading this who wants to do their own 'four by four' is welcome to follow on.

Books do furnish a ....

     How many books, roughly speaking, do you read in a year? Fifty? Seventy-five? It will depend on many things, of course: how fast you read, what other claims there are on your time, whether or not you have to read books as part of your job, but let's take a round figure of one hundred per annum and say that is pretty good going.

Now we'll give our model reader a lifespan of ninety years and suggest he read at the rate of a hundred books a year for eighty or eighty-five of them, giving a total of 8,000 to 8,500 volumes in a lifetime. Does that sound like a lot?

     The diaries of British Prime Minister W.E. Gladstone, written over seventy years, make reference to his having read something approaching 20,000 books, and at his death his book collection amounted to 32,000 volumes. Bearing in mind that he held high office for most of his adult life, his reading was a prodigious feat. As an elderly man, he gave his books to the nation, founding St. Deiniol's Library at Hawarden in Wales, and moving many of them himself, by wheelbarrow, with his valet and one of his daughters to help, the quarter mile from his house to the new building: "What man, who really loves his books, delegates to any other human being, as long as there is breath in his body, the office of introducing them into their new homes?", he said.    

     I've delved into the "extremely dusty books" section of our collection to find this three-volume Life of Gladstone which reveals that even at the very end of his life "[his] power to read for a considerable number of hours daily, thank God, continues. This is a great mercy." He mentions that on a recent excursion he managed twenty volumes: "Novels enter into this list rather considerably".

     I've never counted our books and although I do keep a reading record nowadays, I haven't always done so, but I know I don't come anywhere near "The Grand Old Man's" total or his rate of approximately three quarters of a book a day. What about you, and as a supplementary question, do you catalogue your books in any way, and if so, how?

Wordy

     I've been up in Edinburgh's Old Town this morning, on an errand which took me to the vicinity of St. Giles' Cathedral (above and below).

As you'll see from the pictures, it's a 'gey' dour, dreich day here, in fact it's been pouring with rain for hours and the streets are running. Little did I know as I walked from the High Street, down the Mound and north through the New Town, that I was being "a dub-skelper", that is one who goes his or her way regardless of mud and puddles. Such was my umbrella-less disregard for the wet conditions that I've had to change nearly all my clothes on arriving home, and can almost claim to have heard "jorg", or the noise of shoes when full of water. I didn't quite go as far as to splash in mud but had I done so I'd have been "splerging"!

I found these great words in an article about the book Toujours Tingo: Extraordinary Words to Change the Way We See the World. The ones I've quoted so far are Scots, but the book draws on 300 languages to celebrate linguistic diversity.

Sir Walter Scott, whose monument is there behind the Ferris wheel, would have been familiar with many of the terms listed and I wonder if he ever used the word "netty" of a character in his books. That is, apparently, a woman who traverses the country in search of wool (perhaps those of us who shop here or here should be called "inter-netties"?)

     'Furth' of Scotland, however, are more marvellously expressive and interesting words such as "elmosolyodik" (the Hungarian for to break into a smile), "latterkrampe" - Norwegian for convulsive laughter, and one which I hope a friend who is soon to be visiting Namibia doesn't find himself doing: "gegemena", or muttering while sobbing!

The shock of the new

     

     Is it just me, or does anyone else get sentimental about things.....their car, for instance? I know it's just a metal box on wheels which takes you from A to B, but I find (as with most things) that I get rather attached to them. I've just said goodbye to our comfy old navy blue car, and shall have to quickly get to know a very shiny, unfamiliar pillar-box red one (but not the stylish thing pictured above, which would have been rather fun). The new one is the same make and model as the old one, just more up-to-date, but instead of a handbrake lever it has a button on the dashboard, and there isn't even a proper key - you have to put "a thing" into a slot, depress the clutch and press another button. Watch out north Edinburgh because I'll be driving it this afternoon!

     If I'm soppy enough to take pictures of the old car this morning on my last outing in it, think how I feel about other more personal possessions, or houses I have lived in - I'm impossibly 'stuck' where things are concerned. But then I feel that objects and places can have a resonance about them, and if our reponse to them is based on associations or fond memories, they are more than just the sum of their parts, hence the attraction they hold for us and the attachments we create to them. It follows that I have a lot of things in my house which belonged to my grandparents or my late uncle, and I treasure those. I also find it very difficult to part with things my children wore, used or played with when they were small - they are such poignant reminders of "the little them" that to get rid of them is a dreadful wrench.

    I know in these days of simplified living, de-cluttering, making space for the new, my mindset is old-fashioned and possibly unproductive and I do try to be sensible about it, but I can't help the way I feel (and please can I have my old car back!).

Restorative powers

      "I have learnt that there is great power in words, no matter how long or short they be."

     Proving the power of words is an utterly magical book which Harriet loved and told me I must read, and now that I've done so I'm very glad I took her recommendation. Sally Gardner's novel for older children I, Coriander, is the story of young Coriander Hobie who grows up in a loving and prosperous family beside the Thames in seventeenth century London. Her mother is a herbalist and maker of remedies whose gifts, it seems, go beyond the purely scientific. But forces from outwith Coriander's settled world destroy her happiness until she is able to discover her own power and win it back. Then, torn between love and duty, she faces an impossible choice.

     The book is set in the time of the Commonwealth and the Restoration and displays a real feel for the period in its social historical detail and its treatment of the wider issues which prevailed, but at heart it's a fairy story about good and evil, beautifully and richly written and quite delightful. Sally Gardner could have come a cropper with her combination of fact and spell-binding fantasy, but there isn't a false step in the book, to my mind. She depicts puritanical zeal, an extreme religious sect, witch-hunts, a Frost Fair on the Thames, London life and much more besides, but all so beautifully and grippingly that it has to be one of my reading highlights of the year.

Exhibitionism

      Off to The Queen's Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse recently to see the exhibition of Flemish paintings, "Bruegel to Reubens", comprising over 50 works painted between 1500 and 1665.

No interior shots were possible (nor any of the paintings, of course), but it's well worth a visit, and the gallery itself is quite beautiful.

     Then just this morning we went to the Royal Museum in Chambers Street,

whose galleried halls, fish ponds (only just visible - with fountain - below)

and exhibits of all sorts are a great draw for visitors and locals alike. A wonderful string orchestra (all of them children of various ages and all tremendously accomplished) was playing as we wandered round.

We'd gone particularly to see the Gifted exhibition of contemporary crafts from textiles to jewellery, ceramics, metalwork and glass, and yes we did buy something but it's a Christmas present so I can't reveal it!

     There was time for a quick look into the adjoining National Museum of Scotland whose modern architecture is as impressive as that of its Victorian neighbour:

Volume I

      I am delighted to launch the Cornflower Book Group following the tremendous response to the suggestion on yesterday's post, and while in future I hope title selection will be a collaborative effort, I've chosen our first book, and here it is:

Vita Sackville-West's 1931 novel, All Passion Spent. I haven't read this so it will be a discovery for me and I hope for many of you. Here is the synopsis from the Virago Modern Classics edition: "In 1860, as a young girl of seventeen, Lady Slane nurtures a secret, burning ambition: to become an artist. She becomes, instead, the wife of a great statesman, and mother to six children. Seventy years later, released by widowhood, she abandons the trappings of wealth and retires to a tiny house in Hampstead....She revels in her new-found freedom, and in an odd assortment of companions...[including] Mr. FitzGeorge, an eccentric millionaire who met and loved her in India, when she was young and very lovely."

      This edition includes an introduction by Victoria Glendinning whose biography, Vita - The Life of Vita Sackville-West, I have read and can recommend. To set the novel in some sort of context, around the time of finishing it Vita and her husband Harold Nicolson had recently acquired Sissinghurst and ' "planted 500 daffodil and narcissus where the cherries are to go at the end of the moat. Six wild geese flew over. A lovely afternoon. Planted roses and the Persian peach. Saw a big white owl..." Everything in the garden was becoming lovely; and in the same month the Nicolsons dined with Albert Einstein, and met Charlie Chaplin at luncheon.'

      Victoria Glendinning goes on to say that "All Passion Spent" was Vita's best novel and "it has moved tens of thousands of readers who found and still find Vita's fierce simplicities inspirational". It was dramatised a few years ago with the wonderful Dame Wendy Hiller playing Lady Slane.

      I hope this will be a good choice to start us off and it should be available internationally. I'm going to set up a separate section of the site for the book group (there will be a link in the sidebar later) and please feel free to suggest titles for future reading there. Meanwhile, I propose we give ourselves four weeks to read the current book, reconvening on Saturday, 15th. December to begin our discussions. I'm looking forward to it!