Intermission

I seem to be saying this constantly these days, but I have done so little reading recently! At the start of April I was full of intentions: I was going to get the conference that I was organising out of the way, then clear up the loose ends of the old job ready to embark on a new life as a full-time freelance, and I was going to make sure I had time for all the things I had been missing out on - blogging, gardening, going out occasionally. So what went wrong? Well, during the conference I developed a pain in my lower back and hip. I've had trouble with my right hip for years, leading to occasional bouts of sciatica, but this was on the other side. I didn't pay it much attention, to be honest, but next day (after the conference my sons and I were having a long weekend in London) I had to abandon our undemanding shopping expedition to go back to the hotel and lie down. I managed the next day - a visit to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, where there was a wonderful exhibition of Ansel Adams photographs - though I barely got round the exhibition itself, I found a good place to sit and enjoy some boats.

It was the Ansel Adams we'd gone to see, but on the way round to the gallery to see it, all three of us suddenly and completely lost our hearts. Never before have three people fallen in love so instantly and unexpectedly, I'm sure, and our shared aesthetic, though generally pretty similar, has rarely been quite so synchronous. The object of our adoration and desire was this:

The Miss Britain III was the power boat which in 1934 became the first single-engined boat to travel at over 100 miles an hour, a record it held for 50 years. It was powered by a Napier Lion aircraft engine, which is also on display, but it's the boat itself which is the thing of beauty, streamlined and aluminium-clad. It's the boat equivalent of Muzzlehatch's car in Titus Alone, a steampunk dream. Younger son came home with hundreds of photographs, but the two here were mine.

There were other delights at the Museum as well, but nothing else that left us dry-mouthed. Prince William's barge was shiny and entrancing, and I could have happily have spent several hours taking pictures of details like this golden sea-lion.

The figureheads were fun, too - I particularly like the goose, and wonder about the person who chose such such a creature for his vessel.

Anyway, but to the blogging saga (or non-blogging saga). When I got home from London, a month ago, the sciatica got much, much worse, and for some days I was in so much pain I could hardly even concentrate on reading. OH very kindly went out and bought me magazines, and happily, I had a new toy to play with in the form of an Android tablet, so I could keep up with Facebook. Finally, by last Monday I was able to go and hobble round the grounds of Paxton House and enjoy the spring flowers. Only one picture from there, a view of the Tweed, because you need practice to walk with a stick and use a cameraphone, I find!

The result of all this being laid up, and only being able to use the computer for short periods, is that I am still finishing up the old job and have had little time for my own work beyond getting a rudimentary website up to deal with any enquiries, and a bit of following up on some useful leads kind friends have suggested. But at least I'm reading again, and there will be some posts for Once Upon a Time VII shortly. The Barbara Pym reading week is approaching rapidly too, hosted by Thomas at My Porch and Amanda at Fig and Thistle. I've already started reading, with Hazel Holt's biography A Lot to Ask already behind me; I'm re-reading Pym's autobiography, A Very Private Eye, in chunks, too, alongside the novels. Rather eccentrically, I started those near the end, with a re-read of A Few Green Leaves (reviewed here), because I want to compare it to her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, since the setting is very much the same, an English village with various ladies and vicars. I want to see how differently she treated the subject towards the end of her writing life. I think this may become an exclusively Pym zone in June, in fact, so I'd better get in some other posts before then!

Once Upon a Time VII - postcript

After yesterday's Once Upon a Time post, the perfect addition has just arrived from the local library! Bookshelf readers will know that I adore Elly Griffiths' series of mysteries about archaeologist Ruth Galloway, and Dying Fall is the latest. I requested it before it was published and it's only had three previous readers so I bet it's been round the library staff already! This series is the sort to be very eagerly anticipated, not least for their terrifically atmospheric settings.

The Ruth Galloway books always have an element of the unexplained about them - Ruth's friend Cathbad is a druid - and this time she's off to answer a plea from a friend in one of the spookiest places in England, Pendle, home of a frightening series of witch trials in the seventeenth century. I'm sure they will be a theme for this book, alongside modern elements.

This is probably going to scare the living daylights out of me. I can't wait.

Once Upon A Time VII

As I sit here watching the snow gently falling outside my window, with layer upon layer of woollies and the heater switched back on, it is time to think summer-y thoughts of One Upon a Time VII. Our wintry conditions are fairly half-hearted compared to those I know some people are still enduring, and at least there's the odd crocus in the garden now, but my thoughts are still tending towards what I think of as winter books - ghost stories and dark mysteries -- rather than those of faerie which is somehow intrinsically linked for me with summer. For me, the Summer Isles off the coast of Scotland, and Tir-nan-Og, the land beyond the setting sun, are one and the same place. They probably encompass Hy Brasil as well. (Please note, this is my personal mythology - no good telling me I've got it all wrong.)

So my reading for Carl's challenge this year is going to be a bit of a mix of light and dark. The sweetly pretty depictions of the lands of faerie always seemed wrong to me anyway, as though the people who drew them had already partaken of fairy fruit, so that there was a glamour over their eyes. Fortunately, many writers and artists seem to be wise to their guiles. And here in the English-Scottish border country you can't help feeling that, at the end of one of those little lanes that often turn into farm tracks, you might just happen upon the village of Wall, the setting for the start of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Carl is holding a read-along of Stardust alongside OUaT7, and I'm hoping to join in -- it's a lovely book and I'd been thinking for some time about re-reading it.

That's the only absolutely fixed plan, but I have a pool of books to dip into as I feel inclined, and bearing in mind my aim of completing Quest the Second, which calls for reading a book for each of the challenge's four categories: fantasy, folklore, fairytales and mythology. Not long ago I read Lev Grossman's The Magician King and liked it enough to want to read the book that precedes it, The Magicians, if the library will oblige. I've been saving The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones for a special occasion - that will be for towards the end of the challenge, when I've promised myself a bit of gardening leave, a couple of weeks to dig flowerbeds, paint the bathroom (finally!) and contemplate the future. DWJ rarely disappoints.

More immediately, I've downloaded to Quoodle-the-Kindle two books by Phil Rickman, his foray into writing for young adults. The first is called Marco's Pendulum (also published under the nom-de-plume Thom Madley) and is follows one of his adult novels, The Chalice (hope I'm going to remember what happens in that one!). It's a Glastonbury-and-the-Grail book and I'm sure I've said before how much I like Arthurian legends. I have high hopes and may even start it tonight. The sequel is called Marco and the Blade of Night. If more darkness is called for I have all of Rickman's Merrily Watkins books on Quoodle now (although those will undoubtedly last me until this year's R.I.P.), and also his two historical creepies about Dr John Dee.

This year I'm adding an extra element for myself -- an audiobook. I know lots of people just count that as reading but I've always been a purist. In fact, I've only taken to them at all recently, as the result of insomnia, where they work fairly well, so I'm always backtracking to where I can remember before I fell asleep. Because of this, I rather like books that I've previously read (it's easier to find my place) and the next one on my wishlist is Good Omens, a joint venture by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.I also have The Once and Future King (T.H. White) and may start that too.

So, that's the plan. But no doubt I'll get sidetracked by amazing discoveries as people post their reviews, and/or not manage to post about all my reading, despite all my good intentions. One thing is certain, I'll enjoy myself, and wish everyone happy reading!

Patience by John Coates

Edward had definite ideas about money. He didn't like her to fritter it away, as he called it, even her own; and as she found herself quite unable to keep accounts that balanced, however hard she tried, he had made her have two different banks. Every month he paid a fixed sum into the ordinary bank, out of which she had to pay certain bills, like the butcher's, and the gas, and the electric light, and find the odd pound she used for flowers and taxis and the babies, and out of which she should pay all the other bills, like clothes and new curtains for the house. However, if she got seriously behind, Edward might help her with the second lot of bills, though never with the first, on what he called principle. She had to manage to pay those. The money in the special bank was rather a mystery. It was hers entirely in a way; and in another way it wasn't.

It's clear right from the start of Patience that our leading lady is a rather downtrodden wife, even if she hasn't yet realised it. She's appropriately named, and she regards herself as happily married until the day her self-righteous brother comes to tell her that he's seen her husband Edward with another woman. Patience's world has revolved around Edward and her home and "the babies" and, to be fair, he's a kindly tyrant, pompous and unimaginative. Her brother Lionel is much more immediately loathsome, solely concerned with the fact that Edward is committing Sin - he doesn't really care about Patience as a wronged wife, but busies himself with Edward's "spiritual welfare" and worries that the children will be disgraced if they don't have a father. Lionel has already more or less disowned his other sister, Helen, because she got divorced -- she has remarried and had a child, but Lionel refers to him as a bastard. Lionel is a staunch Catholic, Patience a rather less fanatical one, but sincere, and Helen is lapsed, of course. But Edward's infidelity is only really a catalyst for the events which follow, leading to a what should prove a shattering discovery for Patience. Only it isn't, quite -- it's not nearly as earth-shattering as some of the other discoveries Patience is about to make. And to her, they are really much more interesting....

As befits its title, Patience is a very quiet book. There was a point, reading it, where I stopped and thought "This is written by a man!" In fact, I had to look back at the cover to be certain. Because although it's also very funny, it is very delicately so, and Patience's at time bemused but nonetheless gratified exploration of her thoughts and feelings is handled with a gentle irony and deftness. Compared, say, to Denis Mackail, of whom I am exceedingly fond, this is a much more subtle work, with the quality of a fable about it.

I see, however, that some readers have found Patience as a character irritatingly naive and passive in her seven-year marriage and self-absorbed in her desire to extricate herself. Hmm. I can't say I agree -- yes, she is an absolute innocent and has been very complacent thus far in her life, but I saw that as more to do with the period. It's difficult, from the twenty-first century, to appreciate just how sheltered an upbringing could still be, in the 1950s, when a girl could go straight from living at home with mummy and daddy to a husband who expected to be the authority in his home. And to those who find it too pat that she instantly falls for someone, well, I'm still a believer in love at first sight, and this is, after all, a comedy.

Back to the Roots by Richard Mabey and Francesca Greenoak

 As thoughts turn eagerly to the possibility of spring and the promise of something green in the garden, here's another bit of recycling from Cat Musings while I I try to meet deadlines elsewhere!

Back to the Roots is a little book which has been rather overtaken in this age of the worldwide web. Written to accompany a Channel Four series in 1983, it is divided into chapters on herbs, flowers, vegetables, fruit and trees. Each chapter is followed by a directory with bibliography, list of suppliers and other information such as places to see plants, courses etc. Much of the directory information is, of course, hopelessly out of date (even telephone numbers have changed in the interim) but, with the advent of search engines, anyone with a little application will be able to discover what listings are still valid and will quickly find contact details for nurseries, gardens and suppliers.

The rest of the book is selective but interesting. My personal favourite is a section entitled The sloth's vegetable garden, which offers suggestions for creating a perennial vegetable patch. I shall be turning to this over the coming weeks while I plan this year's crops. The emphasis throughout is on traditional and forgotten varieties, and it would provide an excellent starting place for establishing a historically-themed garden. Brief cultivation details are given for each type of plant, and even pruning instructions for fruit are included. The back-and-white illustrations are clear and come from an entertaining variety of sources.

Long out of print, it is nonetheless readily, and cheaply, available from the various second-hand book sites (including for 1p on Amazon). Primarily intended to encourage a growing interest in cultivated plants which are threatened by new regulations, this is a book which still meets its purpose and would make a good introduction for any new gardener who would rather spend their money on seeds than on glossy coffee-table books.

Opening lines....

"The carriage gave another lurch, and Maria Merryweather, Miss Heliotrope, and Wiggins once more fell into each other's arms, sighed, gasped, righted themselves and fixed their attention upon those objects which were for each of them at this trying moment the source of courage and strength.

"Maria gazed at her boots, pushing them out from under the carriage-rug for that purpose. Miss Heliotrope restored her spectacles, jolted from her aquiline nose by the jolting of the carriage, to their proper position, picked up the worn brown volume of French essays from the floor, popped a peppermint in her mouth and peered once more in the dim light at the wiggly black print on the yellowed page. Wiggins meanwhile pursued with his tongue the taste of the long-since-digested dinner that still lingered among his whiskers.

"Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment and those who find comfort in food; and Miss Heliotrope, Maria and Wiggins were typical representatives of their own sort of people."

The opening lines of Elizabeth's Goudge's The Little White Horse, my favourite book. It's one of the small collection of books that always lives next to my bed. I love the illustrations by C. Walter Hodges - I have just acquired a new, hardback edition  (not the Folio one, though seeing that was what inspired me to find a new copy), but I'll always keep my battered old Puffin edition with its bad but loving handcolouring as well.

Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll

I wrote this 5 years ago and posted it on the other blog I was writing at the time. Since I no longer post there, I thought I might recycle the occasional review that might still be of interest. This was for Agnes Jekyll's superb Kitchen Essays, in the beautiful edition published by Persephone.

A syren’s tea-party of two

Clarify 1 lb. butter. When cold beat to a cream, add 12 oz. sugar, 1 lb. potato flour (sieved), 4 whole eggs and the yolks of two, the zest of 1 lemon. Beat the whole mass for 1 hour, when it should form bubbles. Bake in a buttered and finely bread-crumbed mould in a moderate oven. Halve these quantities for a small cake.

[M]ight be served with honey-dew and the milk of Paradise when procurable.

I should think that if I beat a cake by hand for an hour, I would form bubbles.

Lady Jekyll’s charming and amusing book of essays offers all sorts of culinary advice, from preparing shooting lunches to managing without your cook (goodness, unthinkable – but it is she who would beat the Venus Torte for an hour, not the lady of the house). First published in 1922 (and reprinted by the redoubtable Persephone Books), the essays combine humour with practical information, thereby ensuring our lady housewife’s dining table will be a pleasure to all comers, young and old. Should you need to provide a light supper for artists and performers, Lady Jekyll will be your guide:

Mrs Gladstone’s practice of sending her husband into battle on an egg-flip, cleverly produced at the psychological moment, can be imitated with this Frothed Wine Soup, good for a prima donna or pianist soon going into action, and can be made simply by anybody who can whisk an egg.

I have informed OH that, should I be ill, a better recovery will be aided by regular small and tempting meals. For lunch, Lady Jekyll advises a “nicely cut and fried bread canapé, on which may be placed partridge breasts resting on softly-mashed potato and “some mushrooms buttered, grilled and added piping hot”. OH reassured me that he will do his best, and added that he hoped for my sake I would be stricken soon.

I am determined that, over Christmas, we shall dine en famille in grace and elegance; recommended for a first dinner party, for example, is a “very small Selle de Pré Sâle (Saddle of Welsh Mutton) in winter”. The recipe begins “For a saddle weighing about 8 lb. . . .”. We might start with home-made foiegras, perhaps, and finish with Cold Lemon Soufflé accompanied by some delicate Cat’s Tongue Biscuits. Now, if you will excuse me, I am just going to telephone The Lady to place within its pages an advertisement for a good, plain cook.