Cornflower

Passionate

    

    Yesterday I gave a link to a TED talk on creativity, and today I've got one which relates to creativity in the widest sense. I've watched this several times as I find it very entertaining and its point well made; it is the economist Larry Smith on Why you will fail to have a great career.

A question of sport

Click to enlarge - should you have any interest in rugby

    A post about sport is a rare thing here at Cornflower, but I was at Murrayfield yesterday to see Scotland play the All Blacks, and much fun was had - though perhaps not by the Scottish team.

    A quick roundup of the pictures, and top left is of course the haka, top right the Red Hot Chilli Pipers entertaining the crowd before the game (for the uninitiated, their music is 'Bagrock' - don't say you don't get culture here...), middle right, Olympian Sir Chris Hoy brings on the ball, bottom left the home team comes onto the pitch with much fanfare and pyrotechnics, bottom right, the scoreboard in an early moment when Scotland was actually leading (their opponents triumphed, 51-22).

    The match was very exciting, but I was shocked to hear all the booing the home crowd gave to the New Zealanders when they were about to take a kick at goal, and the taunting that ensued when a ball was missed. It was so rude and so unsporting, and even a stadium announcement requesting an end to it was hardly heeded. I'd have expected better, and that was a poor show, as was the fool who broke the Remembrance Day minute's silence with his inane shouting.

    And another thing while I'm at it (though in a different league), why are the teams allowed to substitute players for reasons other than injury? The endless chopping and changing that was going on didn't strike me as sporting behaviour either. Mr. C. says the game is rather more demanding than when he played in the front row for Gosport RFC (3rd. XV), but I say they are all professionals and they should be on the pitch for the whole match unless they are injured - so there!

Friday flowers - a November posy

    Cornflowers, cosmos and ammi majus from the 'meadow', the borage is still going,



there's nigella and a few roses to be had, some honeysuckle, late lavender,



and the first of the viburnum.

Good taste

    While in Venice we discovered the excellent gelateria Grom. Their ice cream is scrumptious (we made sure to do a comprehensive tasting - including this one - and next time we'll try the hot chocolate, too), and as one of their symbols is the fiordaliso, the cornflower (seen here on their farm), need I say more?

English food

   

    If last night's Lucy Worsley programme, Food In England: The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley appealed, here's a book which may bring your interest up to the present day - The Last Food of England by Marwood Yeatman (currently cheaper here). In it the author credits Dorothy Hartley as one of his mentors, and he goes on: "Hartley's honest and affectionate Food In England is an education - leading you out to seek and find. It was published within years of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, gaining a fraction of the recognition. It was not a book of its time, but a book for all time ...

    Dorothy Hartley has not left the rest of us with much to say about country cooking or the chance of saying it any better."

    Nevertheless, Marwood Yeatman does a fine job, travelling the country to meet "the bacon curers, seine fishermen, hunter gatherers, tripe dressers [and the like], and find historic breeds of livestock, home-made butter, medieval pears, summer truffles, discovering that far from being dead and buried, the food of England is a living subculture".

Sweetly nostalgic

    Nigel Slater's Life is Sweets on BBC Four last night was a lovely trip down memory lane. It's available to watch for another six days, so if the mere mention of the likes of chocolate limes, sherbet fountains, humbugs and Caramac takes you back to childhood, don't miss it.

Quote of the day

 

   "To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends." Samuel Johnson.

    I came across that line in the not so unlikely setting of Ros Byam Shaw's Farrow & Ball: Living with Colour, but Gretchen Rubin has written a whole book on the subject. 

Down to earth

    A while ago I promised to make Harriet a cowl, but my search for the sort of pattern we both had in mind was fruitless until I saw this one - simplicity itself.

    I ordered the yarn, Blue Sky Alpacas Suri Merino ('Earth'), from Mrs. Moon on Thursday evening and it was despatched First Class the next day. Thanks to that excellent service I was able to cast on yesterday morning and fit some knitting - the kind that can be done with one eye on the television - into my weekend. Result: happiness!

A perfect weekend

    I read occasionally but with interest the 'My Perfect Weekend' features which often appear in the Saturday papers (for example, here and here) - yes, they are open to parody as their subjects appear to have lives at once glamorous and fulfilling, lived out in beautiful homes with photogenic children and perfect friends, punctuated with thrilling divertissements whether cultural or social. It's all a far cry from the average round of chores and chasing one's tail which tend to go on in a busy family home on Saturday and Sunday, but it's pleasant entertainment, and perhaps even something to aspire to - making two days a week as free of 'work' as possible and devoting them to activities and interests which are important to you.

    So as it's Friday, how about we have a bit of fun and describe our 'perfect weekend', whether entirely a fantasy one - what we would do if money, time and real-life commitments were no object - or a perfectly achievable and ideal one as we live now. Where would you go, what would you do and with whom, which elements would make up a special couple of days?

 

PS. If you're looking for a good book to read on your perfect weekend, I can recommend this one.

No-coffee culture

 

    Our few days in Venice gave us time to see some of the places of cultural interest we'd bookmarked [that sounds awfully pompous!], though we've left a lot for a future visit. 

     Museo Fortuny - although there wasn't a pleated frock in sight - is worth a look for the building itself, and the exhibitions which were on there made a superb contrast to their surroundings. It was there I bought these postcards of amazingly structural/sculptural designs by Roberto Capucci (click there and scroll down to see a short video).

    We went to several churches and marvelled at both the masterpieces they house and their own architecture; places such as Santa Maria della Salute, the Frari, San Zanipolo and the Madonna dell'Orto with their Titians, Tintorettos, Canovas and Bellinis have so much to take in.

    At the Accademia, I overheard the lady behind us in the ticket queue explaining Stendhal Syndrome to her companion - very appropriate in that location. But harking back to Monday's post, we were surprised by the lack of a caffè in the gallery, because a cup of coffee and a sit down would have been very welcome after so much standing and viewing (and that slow walking you do in galleries is surprisingly tiring). Is this lack of eating places and shops (the Accademia had scarcely more than a few postcards) typical? British museums and galleries have both, if space permits, and must value the income they generate while the visitor is often glad of the retail opportunity or the chance to refuel. Surely the Italians are missing a trick, or would such consumerism not sit with their culture?