Cornflower

Taking steps

  

                                                               

     Both Elaine and Harriet have mentioned the BBC's dramatisation of John Buchan's The Thirty-nine Steps. I haven't read the book (nor any Buchan, come to that), and have only the vaguest recollection of the Robert Donat film so I came to the new version with no expectations or prior knowledge whatsoever, but found it really quite fun. It looks as though for now at least you can see the whole thing here; the theme music is fitting, it has old-fashioned trains, a high tweed quotient (always reassuring, rather in the vein of the stage set of a play attended by a lady who, when the curtain went up, said "oh, goody, a chaise longue!"), there are plenty of beautiful Scottish locations, including the village of Culross in Fife, and there are even some shots of Edinburgh posing as London!: if you click on the link to the programme and get to the 1.17 mins section, the building you see is Register House, where I used to spend many hours in the Legal Search Room, only the steps were sadly devoid of Richard Hannay.
   From what I read, the film appears to be a loose adaptation of the story  - 'creative' was one description - with great liberties taken including a rather forward and bossy suffragette who isn't in the book at all, and much that was implausible to say the least. Still, as someone who watches almost no television (I'd never heard of Rupert Penry-Jones, though apparently he's famous) I thoroughly enjoyed it. Would it draw me to the book? Yes it would, but I shall watch this documentary about Buchan and learn more first.

Frosty books

  

The post below set me thinking about books with 'frost' in the title, and the first one to come to mind was Antonia White's Frost in May (surely that can't be out of print?). A quick search then produced The Frost Fair by Edward Marston, which I hadn't heard of before but looks very good - a "circuitously-plotted" seventeenth century crime novel. And then I found a children's book which is due out soon and which has that very line from Coleridge as its title: The Secret Ministry of Frost by Nick Lake.

The secret ministry of frost

   The title comes from Coleridge's Frost at Midnight; the photographs were snapped this morning before the sun was fully up. Most people would have more sense than to wander round a frozen garden at crack of dawn taking pictures, but I've got a new camera (thankyou again, dear Mr. C.) and I just have to keep trying it out!

Onwards and upwards

  

    Cornflower has been quiet for a few days, but I haven't been idle. I have been doing a bit of preparation for a move - not a big one, just a step I feel is necessary to make things simpler here. In a few days' time, there will be a second Cornflower blog up and running. The one you are reading now will continue pretty much as before, though its emphasis will revert more to the general 'domestic arts', which is where we started over two years ago. However, the books side of things has grown far bigger than I ever imagined and it now needs a home of its own, which is what it will have from Thursday.
   There are various reasons to do this: the first is to gain a bit of space here, but more importantly, it will be easier to classify each site, as I know the mixture of subjects covered can be misleading - it makes the blog hard to pigeonhole, and readers can be confused if they come here expecting a Britlitblog, say, and they find raindrops on roses and whiskers on....maybe not kittens, but my favourite non-bookish things!
     I hope very much that everyone who visits regularly will go on doing so, perhaps popping in to both sites to see what's new, though if you've no interest at all in baking, knitting, flowers and dogs then you may be giving this one a wide berth in future! Each site will of course be linked to the other, posts will continue to appear daily if I can possibly manage it (though I doubt I'll have a new one on both sites every day), books will feature here if they are relevant to cooking, gardening, and so on, so it's not a radical move, just a small step up to house the growing library! I hope you will join me to launch it on January 1st.

Christmas thoughts

    I must thank Margaret Powling for sending me the following passage from Sir Roy Strong's A Country Life; it will have particular resonance for many of us.

“Christmas is Janus-faced. One side is joy, the other grief.  It opens gates of memory firmly locked into a corner of the mind for the rest of the year.  But when the festive season beckons those gates open and the past comes back to take us in its embrace. Christmas is always as much about those not there as about those present.  The card no longer received because the sender is no more, the telephone which does not ring this year to remind us of a friendship around the globe, the person who is not at the table, the visit which is no longer made.

            “But then the sadness fades, for that gate lets in not only tears of grief but those of joy, and thankfulness, too.  Memory’s sacred role is to hold in the mind all those whom one has loved.  At Christmas they come tumbling back in a season when recollection pulls strongly on the emotions.  How often over these days leading into the New Year does the conversation harken back to times past, to people and events long since gone.....

          “Always the twelve days of Christmas take on the character of a garland of friendship through time, for not only those of yesterday are recalled, but those of today rekindled. We are reminded of their centrality in any life. Age and bad times make them a bedrock, giving us strength to go forward into whatever the new year will bring.”

Happy Christmas.

Wreathed

      Take the bottom branches of the Christmas tree, cut them to size and pin them to a ring of florists' foam with 'staples' improvised from lengths of whippy red dogwood,

add whatever the garden can provide ( in this case ivy, box, hebe, euonymous, lavender, rosemary, a couple of honeysuckle flowers, some shrub with red berries whose name I don't know, and a few pine cones) and arrange as best you can.

Voila!

A mere trifle

  

 

The mention of Whim Wham (or Whim-Wham) yesterday excited some comment, so here it is, made by the excellent Mr. C (who was a touch over-zealous in his almond-browning!).

This is a very simple pudding, delicious and rich, perhaps not for everyday, but a treat now and again. The recipe is by Shona Crawford Poole and came from Country Living magazine ages ago. She says of the dish: "Whatever the origins....it is a very good  and very nearly instant trifle to be made on a whim. It certainly packs a wham."

 

     Reading the fascinating Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun, I see that Whim Wham was the apogee of the trifle. She explains its genesis: "Cream was the Georgians' darling, and new metal whisks made its transformation into desserts easier for the cook. Some were subtly flavoured by rubbing citrus peel with a knob of rough sugar.....Chocolate also nudged its way into creams, along with seductively scented essences like vanilla, bergamot, burnt almonds [the Georgians would have appreciated Mr. C., then!] and coffee. Junkets were made by curdling milk, flavouring it with flower waters, sweetening it, setting it with rennet and decorating the dish with comfits. Everything was in place for the final development of the trifle - or whim wham - a supposedly inconsequential mixture of biscuit, jelly and cream concealing a powerfully alcoholic punch that would become one of the great classics of the British table."

    There is much more in the book on such desserts, the emphasis on cream, the fashion for romantic pastoralism and the craze for darying, or having a dairy. Unfortunately, our kitchen lacks marble work slabs supported on cast iron cows' legs, as the Duchess of Lauderdale had in her dairy at Ham House, nor am I often seen in sprigged muslin or mob caps, but still, we can pretend....although I think that for our Whim Wham we shall omit the "rural idyll of sheep and swans fashioned from sugar which ....must be put on top at the very last minute 'or they will sink into it'".

Minus sinking sheep, the recipe follows:

A little of what you fancy

Biscuit-making was slotted, if not seamlessly, then with minimal disruption, into the morning's schedule, which otherwise involved the fairly mundane. But I rather fancied these when I saw the recipe in Sarah Raven's Complete Christmas so while I made them for all of us, I can't deny there was a little self-indulgence involved.












They are Chocolate and Ginger Crisps, rough in texture due to chunks of dark chocolate, slices of stem ginger and chopped hazelnuts, with ginger syrup added to deepen the flavour. Do I tempt you?

     Sarah Raven suggests, in addition to eating them with tea or coffee, serving them with simple fruit puddings such as poached pears or ice cream, and for variation she recommends pecans instead of hazelnuts and white chocolate in place of dark.

     It's as well I did my baking in the morning as Mr. C. is now ensconced in the kitchen making brandy butter, cranberry jelly, and - if I ask him nicely - Whim Wham!
 

Words

    If you're excited by the richness of language, are a lover of words, consider dictionaries treasure houses and are interested in children's reading and their acquisition of a large vocabulary, then do go and read this post on Juliet's blog and follow its links.
    But, plus ca change, etc., for in an article called "Once upon a time", which I've read in The Bread and Butter Stories, but which must have been written around fifty years ago, Mary Norton discusses writing for children: her editor has read her latest manuscript and says, "Now, I'd like you to take this home and rewrite it in language intelligible to eight-to-ten year olds. You see, we really must..."
    'Must we', thinks Mary, 'Must we really? With all the richness of the English language to choose from must we only use the words which are completely intelligible to a specified age? Do not stories compounded entirely of such words resemble those light, digestible dishes, the invalid diet of childhood, which are too quickly assimilated and which leave one's hunger vaguely unsatisfied? Richness and variety of impression cannot be achieved on a paucity of material. Could we not give the child, within sensible limits, the right word in the right place? How else can we lead him towards his heritage?'
  

Vesting

     Anyone interested in textiles and embroidery might like to visit the Woman's Hour website to hear the programme's item about the new vestments made for the clergy of St. Paul's Cathedral to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the cathedral's rebuilding.

    I read an article about this astonishing project yesterday - it referred to some of the pieces being of "Liberace-like ostentation", not surprising considering they incorporate thousands of (donated) Swarovski crystals and a mile and a half of gold and silver thread, but in the vast and grandiose setting of St. Paul's they fit in, apparently, and are seen to advantage both from a distance and closer to.
    The skills involved in their creation are many, from the designs - which complement the baroque interior - to the weaving of the silk and the specialist embroidery done by a team of volunteers. Of the finished vestments, one member of the clergy said "They're not just bling....but even from a long way down the nave you catch a little sparkle"!

Shelling out

 

   

There's nothing seasonal about these pictures - unless you are in Australia and preparing for Christmas on the beach - but the shells' simplicity and stillness may provide a moment of calm amidst the festive hustle and bustle.
    I am still writing cards, and yes, I know I'm very late and I should have done them ages ago, but hectic is the word for things chez Cornflower just now as we wait for the tree which should have arrived yesterday, contemplate a supermarket shop and single-handedly keep online retailers in business and our friendly parcel postie fully occupied.
    On the present front, even at this late hour I am stumped as to what to get for certain people, and despite being pressed to make a wishlist of my own, can't think of anything to put on it except books. "No!" cry the family, "you have too many already". "Au contraire!" say I, "there is no such concept". 
     So as you see, far from the super-efficient, effortlessly organised person I might wish to be, I am seriously behind, and all too willing to be distracted by any handy displacement activity I can devise (such as writing this post - well, it's only a little one, a 'bijou postette' as Random Jottings would say).
     As to the shells, all but one were gathered on the East Lothian coast the other day. The exception has travelled just a bit further, from a region known to the local man who wrote this -
"It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire."
And with that thought I'd better stop now before my husband starts tut-tutting and giving me pointed looks.

 

 

Cornflower Blues 2008 - part 2

  

   

  

     Trying to pick the choicest morsels from the literary chocolate box isn't easy. How to compare the light and fluffy with the dark and bitter, the soft buttercream with the rich ganache? You can't, as it's a matter of taste and the fancy of the moment whether you're reading literary or popular fiction (though distinctions can be invidious), something for the beauty of its prose or the skill of its story-telling, a work of rigorously researched fact or one of pure imagination.

    Over the year I've read the undistinguished and the outstanding, the perfectly passable and the prize-winning, but I'm reminded of a remark made by Barbara Taylor Bradford: when asked by an interviewer whether the lack of critical acclaim for her books bothered her, she said "Not at all. You see, I have these things called readers....". If a book works - on whatever level that may be - then it ought not to be dismissed,  and I'm wary when someone says, "Oh, X can't write" as they are so often taking a short-sighted view of X's strengths and damning them for their weaknesses alone, forgetting that there's more to a book than just a finely-turned sentence.

   But preaching over, offering you the books I've enjoyed most this year (and that's not a complete overlap with the best novels I've read in 2008, but is pretty close) is what this post is about, though I have had to omit some other excellent ones to keep it to a manageable length, and choosing has been very difficult.

First, an old favourite still delighting me after countless re-reads: Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm (with which I began the year).

Rosy Thornton's Hearts and Minds was a great treat of a book (though as with so many others, its cover does it a disservice). I wrote about it here.

In the comfort read category comes Adele Geras' Hester's Story (now that cover is spot-on!).

Linda Gillard's Star Gazing is here again and deservedly so (this was its first mention).

A great hit of the summer was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer.

It's hard to single out one book by Alexander McCall Smith as they all give so much pleasure, but I'll plump this time for The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (you can get the gist here).

The writer's vast knowledge of and passion for her subject were evident in Justine Picardie's Daphne (my thoughts are here).

Next, an impressive first novel, Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney (more in this post). 

Another misleading cover but a first class book - Deborah Lawrenson's Songs of Blue and Gold.

Then two read by the book group: Sue Gee's The Mysteries of Glass (it got my vote, if not everyone's) and just the other day The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham (a big hit).

Congratulations if you're still reading, but I can't leave out The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams, another outstanding first novel (which I've reviewed elsewhere).

That's it for now, though who knows, I may find something to add to this lot before the year is out!

Cornflower Blues 2008 - part 1

  

It's time to pick a few of the best from a great many superb books read this year, and that isn't easy. I'm starting with non-fiction, and the "Cornflower Blues" of 2008 are:

Robert Macfarlane's The Wild Places (which I wrote about here)

A favourite re-read, Deborah Devonshire's Counting My Chickens: and Other Home Thoughts (impossible to do it justice but I did try)

Katherine Swift's The Morville Hours: The Story of a Garden impressed me in many ways (there's a lovely passage here)

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale completes the list (my thoughts on it are here).

If you have a favourite non-fiction book or two this year, please do tell us. Fiction is coming up next, and it is even harder to choose the winners!

Alternative fairy lights

Friends of Cornflower

   I hadn't anticipated, when Cornflower was beginning, that it would grow quite as it has done; nor did I dream that I would become friends with so many people I'd 'met' on these pages, but that has been a marvellous, unforeseen benefit of writing here every day and of reading other sites created by lovely people with similar interests.
    Yesterday was further proof of the beneficial side-effects of blogging as I got together with Cheryl and Isobel, here in Edinburgh on - quite literally - a flying visit, but most welcome guests in the flesh rather than as their virtual selves. And they came bearing generous gifts which included this perfect "Ribbons and Cornflower" porcelain mug from Mount Vernon, inspired by a late eighteenth century original made in Paris and used by George and Martha Washington. I was delighted!

    I like the idea of 'Friends of Cornflower', as in Friends of ... museum/gallery/charitable institution, support being given in this instance by visiting here regularly, leaving comments and generally contributing to the life of the site, but it's even better when 'Friends' become friends and ethereal links become tangible ones.