Jane Brocket's Blog, page 41

a book and a film

[t. 'Black Beauty', the blackest tulip I have ever seen]

The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas

I'd never read any Dumas before and am not a devotee of historical fiction (although I keep meaning to read a Georgette Heyer), and wasn't sure what to expect. So I was delighted to be swept away by a rip-roaring romp through C17 Dutch history written by a C19 French writer. There's pace, gore, royalty, melodrama, intrigue, romance, and a lot about tulips. I wouldn't rely on Dumas to guide you through the growing of a black tulip (there are some glaring errors), but he's excellent on the passion that tulips arouse. The po-faced introduction in my edition makes no mention of the sexual sub-text, but Dumas must have been laughing mightily to himself when writing the outrageously innuendo-filled chapter 21.

Le Havre

We went to see this film - in French but directed by a Finn - a couple of weeks ago, but it has stuck in my mind. It's quite unusual - very flat, very slow, very stylised -  and really wonderful. It's a kind of Chekhov-meets-Jacques Tati via 1950s French cinema, and in fact it's quite hard to tell in which era it is set. The acting is superb, the colours deeply matt and beautifully controlled, and there is plenty of gentle humour as well as pathos. It's utterly absorbing, and as far from the noisy multiplex blockbusters as you can imagine.

 (We also saw Goodbye, First Love at the weekend. Beautiful to look at - Simon thought it could have been made by the French Tourist Board and was keen to visit the Ardèche as soon as we left the cinema. But after the first intense hour of the heroine's teenage angst and miserable demeanour, we hoped for some kind of growth and, dare I say, a laugh or two (a smile would have been good) but no such luck. This trailer gives an idea of what I mean.)

dripping

[iPhone photo]

There are worse places to go to than Hampton Court to kill an hour before a concert; even when everything else - the palace, the maze, the formal gardens - is shut for the day, the gardens remain open until dusk. Yesterday evening everything was dripping: the sky, the trees, the lilacs, and especially the wisteria.

rose tinted lenses

I read with interest about the sale of Instagram for squillions of dollars, and how its huge appeal lies in a kind of instant nostalgia. A contradiction in terms, I know, but it seems the clever manipulation of photos turns what can be a very ordinary moment or subject into something retro-style, evocative, and definitely less pedestrian.

I quite like some of the Instagram/Hipstamatic effects and if you don't want to carry a camera (or forget to), it can be good fun playing with your smartphone. London's a great subject because it's hard to tell in some places that have hardly changed whether you're in the present or the past. I was in Bermondsey this morning; London Bridge, Borough Market, the little streets and pubs and churches of Southwark are all great subjects for playful photography.

I went to a very good wine tasting on Bermondsey Street (more on winestorm anon), so made a quick visit to the Fashion & Textile Museum to look at the work of C20 women designers. The exhibition focussed on 1950s/1960s fabrics which look great through a Hipstamatic lens because this is how we often see them reproduced elsewhere. But I wondered if the current interest (obsession?) with the mid-century/Festival of Britain look isn't just a touch too rose-tinted?

There were some seminal designs in there (by Lucienne Day and Jacqueline Groag, and this fantastic 'Cottage Garden' fabric - above - by Mary White which I'm sure would sell madly if reprinted as a quilting fabric), but there were also a lot of fabrics which reminded me why the 50s were not always as highly regarded design-wise as they are now. The use of viscose (rayon) and deep, dark, dull colours and repetitive abstract motifs make some fabrics dreary and very rooted in the post-war moment rather than forward-looking. The exhibition is really just a collection of lengths of fabrics plus some magazines and photos; I would guess no-one can cut into these precious pieces which means that it's all a bit two-dimensional.

But it is interesting to see the fabrics and to revisit the 1950s. And although I used instant nostalgia settings on the my phone camera, I didn't have too rosy a view of  most of these designs. (I grew up in a house which was built in the 1950s and have memories of 50s fixtures and fittings which I wouldn't choose to replicate now.)  This exhibition jumps onto the midcentury bandwagon, but its real strength lies in acknowledging the work of talented women designers in the post-war era.

 (The Hipstamatic app also makes the ultra-modern, almost finished Shard look pretty dramatic. The top was in the clouds this morning.)

water, water, everywhere*

[the water tower in very early morning sun]

It's not on the beaten bulb track, but it's a fine place to stay if you're in Holland. Villa Augustus in Dordrecht is a converted C19 water tower and is surrounded by water, although the original water ponds have been drained and are now wonderful gardens where food and flowers are grown, and guests are free to wander, wonder, and rest.

The history is fascinating (there's information on the website) and, as with all these sorts of endeavours, the scope and scale of the work that has gone into transforming the site and the buildings are quite amazing. Something very special has been created here.

It's a serious gardening enterprise as well as a hotel and huge restaurant in the enormous former pumping station (I particularly liked drinking coffee at the 'reading table' which is like something in a library, but packed with magazines and journals in many languages).

And even though it's south of the bulb fields, there was some inspired tulip planting. The species tulips above match the brickwork of the water tower, while the modern variety of  t. clusiana below demonstrates why there are more of this type of tulip appearing these days.

[*Simon's favourite poem is 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. He'd be in his element at Villa Augustus]

 

billionaire's shortbread

We've been meaning to make billionaire's shortbread (ie millionaire's shortbread with edible gold leaf on top) for ages. Today we finally got round to it, and I discovered how tricky gold leaf is to handle. With it sticking to fingers and brushes and ripping so easily, it brought back memories of science lessons, and being warned by our teacher to be careful with gold leaf electroscopes in which a little strip of gold leaf flapped at the slightest hint of static electricity. We thought that if we touched it and it broke, we'd be charged ££££ to replace it.

Yet I can't quite believe we have put real gold on chocolate, especially as it doesn't make a difference to the taste. But it does look quite glamorous. I guess this is how things are when you are a billionaire.

for hands that do dishes

Something to look at while washing up.

And close-up:

The low temperatures and wet weather are doing the tulips n0 favours at all, and in fact they are causing the late ones lots of problems. The thing that struck me when I was in Holland was the exceptional health of all the tulips there. I know the extremely sandy soil there is very different to the clay soil here, and that this makes a big difference in any given year, but the incessant rain and cold of this English spring seems to have wreaked havoc in a way that the Dutch weather clearly hasn't.

So I have some double late tulips rotting away outside, and fringed tulips that have refused to open, and too many lovely lily-flowered tulips too damaged to pick. There are just a few good, tall, single late varieties that remain unscathed, and I think I'll be picking them sooner rather than later for the kitchen windowsill.

field trip

[field of dreams]

I went back to Holland for three days to see and find out more about tulips.

[field of gold]

[trial field]

[an attempt to get as many patches of tulips in the frame as possible]

[tulips from the pick your own field, in a plastic cup]

[historic tulip field]

The more I see of the fields, the more I am in awe of the Dutch bulb growers. Every year the colours and plantings change; every year North Holland is an enormous annual floral installation or Rothko/Bridget Riley painting. It's quite breathtaking.

 

tulip madness

When I first discovered parrot tulips 20-odd years ago, I thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I'm very keen on sliced bread. Since then, one of my favourites has been 'Estella Rijnveld' which is like an exploded raspberry ripple ice cream, and I ordered some bulbs for this spring. So I think these 'Bastogne' parrot tulips must be a packing mistake as I didn't include this variety in my order.

I was reading Michael King's book earlier this week, and in it he describes parrot tulips as 'grotesque'. A little harsh, I thought, until I picked these today. The problem with this parrot in particular - not all parrots are as wild as this - is that they have ceased to look like tulips and started to look like some badly contorted flower that has gone a little mad. In fact, 'as mad as a vase of Bastogne parrot tulips' would be a good alternative to 'as mad as a box of frogs'.

To show you what I mean, here are today's other, saner tulips:

(the mauve tulip at the bottom is 'Blue Parrot', possibly the least mad parrot tulip of all)

cornucopia

[minus the goat's horn]

Nothing at all to do with tulips apart from the fact they I've been reading while they've been growing, and the fact that tulips also reveal their complexity over time, I must recommend In a Lonely Place as one of the best hard-boiled novels I've ever read. I'm not linking to any reviews as it's a slow-reveal book, with a brilliantly modulated and controlled narrative and some wonderfully atmospheric and disorientating Californian fogs. I love the way the story unfolds slowly, with plenty of ambiguity and some classic thriller/noir writing. (The film starring Humphrey Bogart is nothing like the book.)

For more cleverly constructed and gripping novels which keep you wondering about the truth, see The Expendable Man (also by Dorothy B. Hughes), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and, on a very different subject but absolutely fantastic, The Wife by Meg Wolitzer.

wetnesday tulips

Something a little different. Deeper, darker, duskier. To match the sky.