Cornflower

Happy Christmas!

      We've been icing and decorating the cake this morning and it's a family effort with everyone having a hand in it.

On goes Santa and his tree, then we each make something to add to the scene. This year we've had an igloo modelled using a golf ball as a mould by Mr. C., then Will's seal, Harriet's snowman and Alice's version of Bess and Mollie in typical sleeping pose. 

The figure on the left with his feet over the edge and a backpack for his North Pole essentials is Michael Palin. He appears on the cake every year without fail - the reason now lost in the mists of time - but another of those family traditions we always observe.

   

From all of us here - happy Christmas everyone!

Greenery

      I do enjoy the creative side of Christmas, and this afternoon I postponed the cleaning and the laundry to make the wreath for our front door. Out to the garden with trug and secateurs, then back in to arrange the greenery. The light was nearly gone by the time I hung up the finished article, so the pictures could be better,

but here's what I used: ivy, rosemary, choisya, skimmia, hebe,

pine, rosehips and rose buds,

red dogwood to act as staples to help fix the sprigs into the oasis. The pine is very resinous, and the choisya and rosemary are scented too, of course, so it has some fragrance as well as colour.

Now it's back to the more mundane jobs.

New York times

     One of the lovely things about having this website is that, because they know my taste pretty well, people tell me about books they think I'd like. Today's popped through the letterbox courtesy of Adele. She'd read it and thought it would appeal to me and most kindly sent it on, and I'm indebted to her because it was a great read.

     There are two less than favourable reviews of Anna Quindlen's Rise and Shine on the book's Amazon page, but I don't share those opinions and I enjoyed it immensely. It's the story of two sisters, Meghan (the elder) is the star of America's most popular morning television show, "Rise and Shine", and as such is one of the most famous women in the US. She leads a charmed life, apparently, happily married to Evan and devoted to their teenage son, Leo, but then a verbal indiscretion on-air changes everything.

    The story of the consequences of that error of judgement is told by Meghan's sister Bridget, single, a social worker with a women's aid charity who sees the other side of New York - poverty, crime, deprivation and injustice - in contrast to Meghan's privileged and secure world. Bridget is content to live in Meghan's shadow, being a second mother to Leo when Meghan can't be there, and quietly getting on with her life, but she's acutely aware of the difference between herself and her sister saying at one point, "She's the colour picture; I'm the sepia version".

    The book is smart, clever, full of sassy New York humour and social nuance, but it has more to it than that. The sisters' close and mutually dependent relationship is finely drawn, there are meaty supporting roles in the shape of Bridget's lover, the tough cop Irving, and her wonderfully-named assistant, Tequila, and there's a perceptive picture of the two sides of the city, with NY itself becoming almost another character. To go back to those Amazon reviews, I don't agree that this book is superficial, or boring or bland, but I'd be keen to hear what anyone else who's read it thinks. Meanwhile, thankyou again Adele!

Quick post, quick pud

     I've just made a list of all the things that have to be done between now and Monday night, and it's rather long, but I am calm (for the moment at least) and no doubt everything will be finished on time. Thinking of how to simplify preparations - and that's rarely done here as we tend to do most things from scratch - I remembered Mr. C.'s super-easy but extremely good sorbet which would make a great alternative to rich, dark Christmas pudding. You can find the details here.

Still point

     While holly might be more appropriate just now, this narcissus seems to have its relevance, too. It's a reminder that we are nearing the shortest day and it's almost time to look forward.

     Does anyone know the Bryan Ferry song "As the world turns"? I've been trying to track it down and all I can find are the lyrics, but I remember liking it very much, and as the world is about to turn towards the light once more (at least in this hemisphere) it came into my head.

     In the strange way that mental pathways work, that led me to think of T.S. Eliot's "still point of the turning world" (you can read "Burnt Norton" here). We each need our own still point, I think.

Bedside manner

     

        Today we go "through the keyhole" for a look at Mr. C's current bedtime reading (and can't you just hear Loyd's incredulous "who reads books like these? David, it's over to you" ?). As befits a man of his academic background, The Doc. has at all times a certain number of boring books on his bedside table, in fact if someone opened a shop and called it "Dull and Dusty", he'd be in there like a shot. He reads very widely, and we often read the same things and enjoy them equally or respond similarly, but then he has a tendency to wade through tomes which look to me more penitential than pleasurable. But that's up to him and his intellectual conscience!

    So what do the following say about him, I wonder? Some recent copies of "Trout and Salmon" magazine, a Latin/English dictionary to go with a couple of volumes of Virgil, some poetry in the shape of  By Heart: 101 Poems to Remember, Selected Poems by W. H. Auden, and 'A First Sighting' by Henry Marsh. Non-fiction - which always seems to predominate -  includes Peter Ackroyd's Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History by Philip Bobbitt, What If?: Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been by Robert Cowley, and Consilience by Edward O. Wilson. Mr. C. admits that one of those really is boring.

     To fiction next, and besides Reina James's This Time of Dying which I read recently and think he'll enjoy as much as I did, he has The World According to Bertie which is filling the humour gap usually occupied by Bertie Wooster, Jeeves and co. Curiously absent from the table just now, P. G. Wodehouse is one of Mr. C's all-time favourite authors (might we have a guest post on him??) and there's scarcely a gap in his collection; perfect for all occasions, they are especially welcome when the boring books have finally palled.

    Taken altogether that probably gives a pretty accurate picture of my husband. A poetry-loving historian with a very British sense of humour, a yearning for the river and the loch and a mind that likes to be stretched in many different directions. And he can cook, too!

Evergreens

     A bit more of BooksPlease's Christmas meme today, and on to the subject of the tree. Pictured here are a few sprigs of ours - it's about 10 or 11 feet tall and it came home from Glentress Forest tied to the roof of the car. It's in situ but so far has only lights on it (and not enough of those because, guess what, one set doesn't work). The old favourite decorations will go on today - maybe - and will remain until Twelfth Night.

     Next, music. One of my favourite carols is this one, but then I share Simon's taste for this !!

Truly, madly, deeply

     This book is quite mad, and yet it sparkles - and I don't mean with a sort of deranged glint in the eye! Dee mentioned recently that she hadn't got on with it at all,  and I can quite see why - I too found it hard to get the hang of and it took a good hundred pages before I really did get it, but then I was off and very keen to get back to it yesterday when far too many chores deprived me of precious reading time.

    The Brontes Went to Woolworths, by Rachel Ferguson, is the story of an eccentric family. The three Carne girls, their widowed mother and their governess, Miss Martin, live in 1920s London. Deirdre, the eldest daughter, is a journalist and would-be novelist, Katrine is beginning a career on the stage, while Sheil is still in the schoolroom, but their lives are peopled by all sorts of imaginary friends and characters around whom they create bizarre flights of fancy, pretence and running jokes.

     When reality overlaps with their elaborate fantasy and they actually encounter their unlikely 'pin-up', the very real Mr. Justice Toddington, and his wife who have been part of their imaginings for some time, the story takes an engaging turn as the made-up "saga" must now be lived out. "The main trouble lay in the fact that I came to Lady Toddington aware: primed with a thousand delicate, secret knowledges and intuitions, whereas to her I was ... merely so much cubic girl, so to speak". And "Toddy, from a negative, had developed into a print." But the Toddingtons, once they - like the reader - get the hang of the Carne girls, play along with true spirit and add much substance to the girls' lives. Whimsical and fey it may be, but there's nothing wrong with that per se , and there's a deeper, darker side to the book (and that's where the Brontes come in) which balances the froth and fancy.

     A.S. Byatt writes in her introduction that it affected her whole writing life, and that's because it's about the power of imagination, "curiosity about details of other lives, and about the invention of new worlds, new patterns." It's quick, sharp, more than a touch batty, but ultimately rather endearing. It makes me inclined to dream up a "Toddy" of my own!   

All Passion Spent

     A few words from me to start our discussion on Vita Sackville-West's All Passion Spent and then it's over to everyone else. I found this book delightful, touching and perceptive, and its premise that life - or at least a new, and more authentic life - can begin at any age is an intriguing and heartening one. The submissive Lady Slane, ever the listener, described as no more than "an appendage", decides in old age to arrange her life to please herself. And then, happily ensconced in her small Hampstead house, and by means perhaps of Mr. Bucktrout's "geometrical designs of destiny", she becomes reacquainted with Mr. FitzGeorge whom she'd known briefly fifty years before.

     It was the resolution of the love affair which had existed in a moment and in a thought which appealed to me so strongly:- "...the man-to-woman mainspring still coiled like a cobra between them", and "This conversation is only a sequel to the conversation we didn't have then." And then a superb and poignant description of Mr. FitzGeorge's passion: "... just too wise to let himself float away on a hopeless love .... just unwise enough to remain remotely faithful for fifty years".

    There's much more to say, of course, but that will do from me for now. I loved it. How about you?

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

Later: For the avoidance of doubt, all comments concerning the book should go on this post;  I'll then link the whole thing into the Book Group page proper.

Books and cakes

     I promised cake to go with our Book Group discussions, and here it is.

As we're reading "All Passion Spent" what else could I make but a Passion fruit custard cake?

It's a pity you can't all pop in to have a piece, but you can find the recipe here and I urge you to give it a try because it has worked beautifully. I used fewer passion fruit than specified as they were pretty expensive, but the flavour (and perfume) still come through and Mr. C's comment just now was that it is one of the best cakes he's ever eaten.

Might Genoux have served this when Mr. FitzGeorge joined Lady Slane for tea?

Back later to talk about the book.

Volume 2

     Before we begin our discussion of the first Cornflower Book Group book - "All Passion Spent" - tomorrow, I wanted to choose the title we'll read over the next few weeks. All the excellent and varied suggestions you made were put into a hat and one was drawn out by the blindfolded (but totally unbiased anyway) Mr. C.

     Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace will be our second book, and the first of her fiction for me, so I'm looking forward to it. Here's what it says on the back cover: "Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery". Hilary Mantel in the Literary Review writes "Brilliant.... Atwood's prose is searching. So intimate it seems to be written on the skin", while Julie Myerson in the Independent on Sunday says, "A sensuous, perplexing book, at once sinister and dignified....I don't think I have ever been so thrilled." There are many other rave reviews on the book's Amazon page (follow the link above).

    I suggest we allow five weeks to read this, given the demands on everyone's time just now, so we should aim to talk about it on Saturday, 19th. January. Meanwhile, I'll put all the other suggested titles in a special section of the sidebar for easy reference and we can add to them as ideas occur. 

Gallery portrait

     As I mentioned yesterday, I was following in the footsteps of Domenica Macdonald when I walked up from Scotland Street to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for coffee (and an excellent brownie). Baking apart, the building alone is worth visiting. It's Venetian Gothic, designed by Robert Rowand Anderson and built from 1885-90.

Above is the two-storey central hall, taken from the balcony,

and here is the first floor with some of the murals by William Hole.

The decorative iron-work balustrade.

Only just visible in the dim light is the ceiling decorated with the stars in their constellations picked out in gold.

One of the most powerful pictures in the permanent collection is this one by Ken Currie - not perhaps something I'd care to hang in my own house, but technically marvellous and conveying so much. I first saw it in a fascinating exhibition called The Healing Touch which covered the history of medicine in Scotland, but its gallery neighbours yesterday were 'just' the great and the good from all walks of life. 

A note on comments

     I learned yesterday that some kind of technical problem had occurred whereby a comment apparently vanished from an earlier post. The commenter was quite naturally concerned that their words had been edited, but in the end we discovered that it was gremlins who were at fault, not me!

     I feel, though, that a word on the subject is in order. Only twice have I deleted a comment. The first occasion was an example of blatant self-promotion on the part of the commenter and was completely irrelevant to the post in question. The second time - rather more serious - was when a commenter (who'd clearly arrived here by way of a name search) cited an article about someone I'd referred to in a post. This article was misleading, ill-informed and based on malicious gossip; it was at best a slight to its subject and at worst libellous. I happen to know the person who was being attacked and could not let a reference of that nature stand on my site.

     Minor editing has taken place on two other occasions: once - at the behest of the commenter - to correct a typing error, and once to delete a remark which had gone a little too far off topic and which - again - the commenter herself asked me to remove. Otherwise, everything appears exactly as it was written.

    However, as we saw yesterday, technical problems do occur. I know that some readers cannot comment at all and they contact me by direct email when they have something to say. At other times comments do not 'go through' successfully and may not appear on the post, or they are mysteriously duplicated, in which case I delete the superfluous ones. Until recently it was my policy to reply directly to every comment I received, but two things make that difficult now. One is time constraints, but more relevant is the fact that though I should get every comment as a direct email, in practice I do not. This means I don't always know a comment has arrived  - though I usually do discover it later - and replying to it is a cumbersome procedure.

    The comments I get here are overwhelmingly positive, pleasant and help make the site what it is, so they are very important to me. I hope that they will keep on coming, and that readers will understand that I exercise my editorial prerogative in that respect only if something is offensive or inappropriate. Gremlins, however, are beyond my control!

Scotland Street

     My route into town this morning took me to a place which has become famous to booklovers all over the world. Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street series is set in a real Edinburgh street, part of the Georgian New Town, and here it is.

    Below is neighbouring Drummond Place, a douce 'square' which is home to the painter Angus Lordie and his dog, Cyril. Not visible here but just to the right are the central gardens in which Angus takes Cyril for walks, which leads worried readers to ask: what of Cyril's puppies, apparently handed over to a mysterious stranger in this very spot?!

     Though slightly less grand than Drummond Place, Scotland Street still boasts fine architecture, described in Edinburgh (Buildings of Scotland) thus: "Begun in 1823 as Caledonia Street. Chiefly four-storey tenements, their main cornice at third-floor level.

"Austere droved ashlar fronts stepping downhill with a similarly unadorned splay meeting Royal Circus ..."

     Scotland Street runs north-south, and if you carry on up through Drummond Place and then Dublin Street - as I did - here's the view from the top:

This was taken from Queen Street, looking down Dublin Street, over the trees in Drummond Place gardens, on down Scotland Street itself and over Inverleith and Trinity to the Firth of Forth and the hills of Fife beyond. (Click to enlarge it).

     I was following in Domenica's footsteps this morning, making my way as she often does in the books, to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for coffee. More of that anon.

Traditional

      

I've been tagged again, this time by Booksplease for a Christmas meme. There are five questions in all but as I fear my answers may be long I'll just do one for today. It's about family traditions at Christmas.

     We begin on Christmas Eve when Mr. C takes the children skating on the outdoor rink in Princes Street Gardens, then they have a go on the Ferris wheel and pay a visit to the crepe stall while I stay at home and wrap presents. Cooking preparations go on throughout the day, then the evening often sees us at the service of nine lessons and carols at St. Mary's Cathedral where there is standing room only and the music is sublime.

     Stockings are hung up later on. We each have one (even the dogs, who get chews in theirs), but mine is the most venerable as I've had it since I was very small. It's made of red felt and still has its original bells.  Mr. C. has to make do with a large fishing sock. Mandarin oranges go in the toe of each one with small gifts on top.

     Santa is catered for next. A mince pie and a glass of port are set out for him, together with a carrot for the reindeer. The plate is always inspected for crumbs next morning.

     The turkey is put in the oven to cook very slowly overnight, and the children go to bed, instructed not to get up before 6.00 a.m. Whichever one is first up (and it will be at 6.00 on the dot) wakes the others and everyone piles onto our bed and opens their stockings, then we go and see what's under the tree and unwrapping commences. I am known to be the slowest in the world at this as I like to make my surprises last, so I have long pauses between presents and usually spin out the opening of my gifts for most of the day.

     Having got up early we eat around 1.00. There will be champagne and canapes beforehand, then a very traditional meal which Mr. C. cooks from scratch. I do kitchen porter duties, but he does all the hard work. Afterwards we watch the Queen, then go for a walk. By evening, with the work of the day done, we'll sit by the fire, have turkey sandwiches on a tray and read the books we've been given.