Jane Brocket's Blog, page 49

early one morning..

...just as the sun was rising.*

The sun coming up behind Hammersmith Smith. Me standing a few yards away from the very handsome Kelmscott House in Hammersmith where William Morris lived for 18 years from 1878 to 1896. An early but very beautiful start to a long day's photoshoot in an amazing and very London-historic location close to Morris' house.

*A folk song we learned at junior school. Nicely sung version (strange cowboy video, though).

it's a date

[Tulip Quilt, pattern in The Gentle Art of Quilt-Making. My photo, taken at the photohsoot location. A welcome burst of spring colour.]

I shall be at the Persephone Open Day (a little more information here) on Thursday 15th December. This is a lovely informal event, with people milling around the shop, mulling over book purchases, and enjoying the free mince pies, mulled wine, and book gift-wrapping on offer on the day. I'll be there for the whole day, from 10 to 8, and will be bringing books to sell (Quilting, Knitting and, I hope, copies of two of my children's books), as well as home-made madeleines to share. You'll find me not wearing a red carnation and carrying a copy of The Times, but sitting, hand-quilting, and no doubt talking a lot.

Do come if you can. It would be lovely to see you. If nothing else, you can get a copy of the wonderful Greenbanks wrapped in fuchsia-pink tissue paper to give away as a present (although I recommend you buy a second, unwrapped copy for yourself. As the book opens on Christmas Day and draws you into the family story in the same way that the family is drawn to the warm fireside in the novel, it's the perfect holiday reading.)

capital cake: hummingbird bakery (notting hill)

11. Hummingbird Bakery (Notting Hill branch) 

It's hard to believe that the Hummingbird Bakery opened as long ago as 2004: its genuinely American-style looks and baking are still as fresh, sweet and appealing as ever, and the London market is showing no signs of cupcake fatigue.

The original branch in Notting Hill is still the real McCoy. Tiny, hectic, and often with a long queue outside, it's a little haven of truly American pies of cartoonish proportions, tall and pretty layer cakes, and rows and rows of sprinkled, pastel cupcakes. These legendary cupcakes come in classic flavours (vanilla, chocolate, red velvety, carrot etc) with soft sponge and sufficient sugary buttercream topping to give you a severe sugar rush. There are also highly photogenic seasonal specials (mostly vanilla and chocolate but with different decorations), plus a new range to coincide with the recent book Cake Days including a date-filled sticky toffee version (above). Pies are the ones we know of from reading classic children's books and watching old cartoons, and prove to be just as good in real life as imagined: Mississippi Mud Pie, Key Lime Pie, Pumpkin Pecan Pie, and Banana Cream Pie.

The bakery will also fulfil all sorts of special orders. There's a big business in ordering on-line for delivery within London - the maximum of 312 cupcakes per order gives an idea of how many cupcakes are now being consumed by Londoners. It's all very flexible with options on icing colours, flavours, various size whole cakes (sold by the diameter), and a range of commissioned celebration and wedding cakes that look like the sort of thing customers might wear on their heads to Ascot.

The Hummingbird is now well established as part of London's cake history and a must-see on the cake trail, and as long as you remember that they are the epitome of the sweet, high-bicarbonate and high-frosting style, they won't disappoint.

[Good news: there is now a branch on Old Brompton Road near the major museums in what has been for so long a cake wasteland.]

133 Portobello Road

London W11 2DY

Tel: 020 7851 1795

Website: www.hummingbirdbakery.com

Open: Mon to Fri 10 – 6, Sat 9 – 6, Sun 11 – 5

Commissions taken

The Bakery also has a wide selection of cake in its 'without' ranges which are all gluten-free.

And a slice of culture: Portobello Market, Portobello Road antiques shops, Electric Cinema (most comfy seats ever), legendary Books for Cooks, Piers Gough's 'Turquoise Island' which houses public toilets/Wild at Heart flowers, colourful Notting Hill terraced houses, various classic NH film locations. 

when

When I have time, I have a plan for my yarn. It involves crochet and colour. It is something to look forward to.

When the photoshoots have finished (they are for a book I am working on), I won't have to work every day of the week. This is also something to look forward to.

When Simon takes two weeks off at the end of the year, we have planned two things: afternoon tea in London with the teenagers as a late birthday treat, and nothing else. These are both things to look forward to.

When the new Hockney biography comes out, I shall be reading it. Reading about his Yorkshire background and his colourful Californian life is definitely something to look forward to in drear November.

When possible, I want to see the Power of Making before it closes. I'd also love to see the Cadell exhibition, because I have admired his elegant use of black and white for a long time. One to look forward to, one to imagine.

When the tulip bulbs are in the ground, I'll be happy. This is something I look forward to more than the planting, although planting has its rewards in the form of seeing the empty bags and feeling suitably virtuous.

When I think about what comes next, I have lots of new ideas, and putting new ideas into action is always something to look forward to. 

So. Lots of whens to look forward to.

 

piles and piles

 

I don't file, I pile. It's my preferred method of organising stuff: books, plates, fabrics, textiles, papers, notebooks. I even pile my files. Not that I have many files - who would when a pile is much easier to manage - but recently I bought a multi-pack of wallet files in nice colours which are still empty but in a colourful pile on a book shelf.

There is a photoshoot here tomorrow (and the following three Mondays, and a couple of Mondays ago) which means I need to tidy up and get the house ready. It also means that on Sunday afternoons I begin to realise just how many piles I have around the place that must be moved. Piles of books being read, books already read, books to be read, magazines, newspapers, torn out pages of magazines and newspapers, fabrics, tablecloths, and stacks of cut out fabrics.

Simon looks at them, sees a mess, and claims I was a mole in a previous life. I look at them and see a system, organisation, careful categorisation, and an evolving way of grouping of ideas and resources. And now I see how very attractive piles can be, too. How they make interesting patterns, suggest colour combinations, happy reading coincidences, and create serendipitious collisions of ideas. At last, I have an aesthetic justification for them, and I shall be moving them all back to their rightful places as soon as each photoshoot is over.

memory aid

Unlike Monty Don, I don't keep a garden diary, so I can never check dates and remind myself when I should be planting, pruning, sowing, and scattering. I have vague timings in my head, but in fact I have come to rely on a more basic feeling for when something should be done (probably to do with light levels and temperatures), and find this works pretty well. The internal indoor hyacinth alarm has just gone off, so yesterday out came all the hyacinth vases for forcing, and out came the camera for the obligatory annual hyacinth bulb photo.

Partly because I love the look of the bulbs. But mostly because a visual aide-mémoire on the blog is a great back-up to my hazy, date-free timing.

[The tulips aren't in the ground yet. It just hasn't felt cold enough. Nor are the narcissi, which technically should be planted in September, but they are so good-natured and obliging, that they wait and go in with the tulips.]

IAQs ii

[magic pencil cross stitch]

More Infrequently Asked Questions. (For the first batch, see here).

Q: Do you still do radio?

A: I do, indeed. For two years until last September I was a fortnightly guest on BBC Radio Berkshire's Family Phone-In, discussing the ups and downs, ins and outs, highs and lows of family life. One of the best moments was when Alice, who was listening at home, texted in a question for me, and I didn't realise it was from her. These days I sometimes take part in the Culture Panel, and I do phone interviews from home whenever they need someone's opinion on TVs in children's bedrooms (no), 'yummy mummies' (spare me), and teenagers at Reading Festival (don't be naive).

Q: Have you ever been on TV?

A: I was just about to say how much I love doing radio precisely because no-one can see me. But yes, I have been on TV once, on Market Kitchen. It went very well, all done in one take, and I even consented to wearing a tiny bit of make-up (a lot, lot less than I imagined Iwould be asked to slap on). It wasn't bad in the end, but I can only say that now, three years after the event, having finally watching myself for the first time last week.

Q: So do you not wear make-up?

A: Not if I can help it. When I was little I was always fascinated by the contents of my mum's friends' make-up bags (yes, I asked to look), especially pan stick. Later, I went through a Biba phase of smoky eyes and dark nails - but only in the house. I couldn't actually go out with it all on. Lipstick makes me look like a corpse so I have never worn any, ever. I suffer badly from hay fever and allergies to cats etc, and eye make-up is impossible when you rub your eyes constantly. I prefer the 'natural' to the 'dead panda' look. (Of course I take something to prevent the sneezing, but eye-rubbing is still a fact of my life.)

Q: OK, so you are not keen on cats, even though your best friend at infant school had a Russian Blue whose colour fur you liked. By the way, can you still speak Russian?

A: Нет, я забыл почти все. Quick answer: no. But, I have discovered a fantastic set of Russian language CDs produced by a native Russian speaker who has a fabulous accent when he speaks English (just the ways he says 'conversation' makes my day). Now my car journeys are all about Gagarin, Pushkin, and the verbs of motion. I can't say it's all flooding back, but at least I can once again buy tickets for the ballet in Russian.


Q: Any other languages in your batterie de langues, as it were?


A: Can I just say that I have never understood the point of the phrase 'as it were', unless it's to make people like me ask 'what's the point?'. Good, thank you.  Yes, Latin (five years), French (degree), and four attempts at learning German (sixth form, twice for export marketing, and three years in Germany). In the end, I took lessons in knitting-pattern German, having-twins-in-Germany German, and shopping-in-markets German, so I became fluent in those subjects but couldn't buy tickets for the ballet.


Q: Have you actually ever bought any tickets to the ballet?


A: Yes, Phoebe and I have seen the 'Nutcracker' a couple of times, and I would happily learn how to buy tickets in any language to see the Trocks.


Q: Will you be going to the ballet again this Christmas?


A: I'm sorry, it's still November. I don't want to appear rude, but I don't dicuss Christmas this early (or, preferably, at all). But I haven't been able to avoid the new John Lewis advert. Please, please, let me not have to endure it again. 





Q: And finally, did you do this cross stitch? I thought you didn't like cross stitch.


A: Yes. Isn't it wonderful to be able to change one's mind?

at last

At last, some sensible, open discussions about internet abuse are taking place. After years of deafening silence on the subject in public (as opposed to the internet which has been awash with self-righteous claims to freedom of speech from the abusers for years), the floodgates have opened in the last week. It started in The Guardian and New Statesman with the question of misogyny , but has widened to include general abuse of women on the internet. Eventually, I would hope that it broadens into a full discussion about any internet abuse directed by, and at, both men and women .

I've just listened to the subject being tackled on Woman's Hour (available on the iPlayer very soon). (Ironic that the WH's forum was shut down a couple of years ago precisely because of the widespread abuse it generated - but they didn't mention that on the programme, which was an opportunity missed.) It did what WH does best, and presented the issue calmly and intelligently, giving courage  to anyone who has been the target of online abuse, and encouraging them to get rid of the trolls. They also made the chilling point that the people who leave appalling comments are often ordinary people - not all psychopaths - living ordinary lives. I know this to be true, because I've had it happen to me.

So, at last, we are no longer in denial about the abuse and the effects it can have. About time, too.

light fantastic

Taken during our Sunday constitutional.

[Wonky bridge]

[One red leaf. Maybe two]

[South-facing dahlia]

[Fungi, unidentified]

 

[My glowing shadow]

Catching the light fantastic while I can.

frozen ice

[Herbert Ponting and his amazing moustache. And camera.]

 When the teenagers were much younger, they had a game in which they produced their own radio programme. They used an old tape recorder and microphone, Alice put on a posh voice to be the presenter and continuity announcer, and Tom and Phoebe were the interviewees on all sorts of subjects. I have no idea why, but their programme was called 'Frozen Ice' (or, because this was showbiz, 'Froooooooozen Ice'). Simon and I used to hide behind the door, listening and doing our best to suppress our laughter.

Having been to an exhibition of photographs of the Antarctic, I imagine this could very well be the sort of thing you'd end up doing at the South Pole  in an effort to amuse yourself. In fact, Scott and Shackelton's men produced their very own, very wonderful South Polar Times, copies of which are in the exhibition. These are startlingly beautifully produced and demonstrate just what can be done despite spectacularly difficult Antarctic limitations (see previous post).

Herbert Ponting's photographs never fail to impress (they are very large prints, too), and although I love looking at the snow, ice (very frozen), bergs, and glaciers, I am fascinated by the photos that show the men at work, at rest, in their cramped living quarters, and doing all sorts of everyday tasks.

[Scott's last birthday]

I spend far too much time imagining what life would be like in Antarctica. I have no desire to go there, but the place occupies a large part of my imagination. (Even with the acclaimed BBC series, Frozen Planet, I fast forward through all the wildlife stuff to get the last ten minutes which is when we see how the cameramen live and work, and the lengths they go to get their shots.)

I like to imagine what the atmosphere was like at Scott's last birthday party. How they boiled the peas, and what the sherry tasted like at the South Pole.

[Pianola]

And why they lugged a pianola all the way to the Antarctic (I don't suppose Amundsen had one with him). Just think of all the extra food/sherry/books they could have brought instead.

[Ponting's magic lantern show]

How they arranged formal and polite events including a series of lectures, and how Ponting maintained his luxuriant moustache (and didn't it freeze every time he went outside?).

[Mending sleeping bags]

I imagine how many different skills each man had to have (they were all multi-talented).

[Clissold making bread]

And just what it was like baking bread for 25 men in the most cramped and difficult space (although Clissold seems to have set up a well-organised bakery corner).

[Dr Edward Wilson]

There is a very cheerful photo of Dr Edward Wilson, possibly my joint-favourite member of the ill-fated expedition (the other is Apsley Cherry-Garrard who wrote a brilliant book but never recovered fully from his Antarctic experience). It is so full of hope and good humour that it is terrible to see the him with the party that reached the South Pole, only to discover that Amundsen had beaten them to it. They look shattered and broken, and we all know how the story ends.

Ponting's photos are magnificent. You wouldn't think that photos of a few men in an vast, empty, frozen landscape could provoke such a range of responses, but he captured it all.

[Sara Wheeler has written two excellent books that fuel my frozen ice imagination: a travel book and a biography of Apsley C-G.]