Jane Brocket's Blog, page 6
April 24, 2014
season finale
2014 will not go down in the annals of tulip history as a great year. Not here, at least. There have been some good pickings but nothing like previous seasons.
Wisley didn't do too badly, though.
April 23, 2014
hello again
tulips at Wisley, would make good wallpaper
I'm so pleased TypePad have sorted out the problems that were the result of an attack. So pleased that I'm posting quickly just because I can. And to say hello and thank you for your patience and for the emails asking where I'd gone and telling me that my email has been hacked. Oh yes, it's all happening here.
April 18, 2014
once a year day
very hot and very sticky
This is our once a year day. One of the favourite films in this house is The Pajama Game (we are going to see it at the theatre in June to celebrate end of A levels and the end of school all round) and we love the Once a Year Day song (and dance and wonderful palette). I make hot cross buns once a year, so this is an apt theme tune for this post. This year they were without crosses but with nutmeg and allspice, and they were particularly pillowy and soft and delicious. Seriously, I could eat these all year round but if I did I wouldn't be able to do the high lifts and twirling around that go with the song.
10 minutes later
(I always use the recipe in Baking with Passion by Dan Lepard but I've never used the mineral water he stipulates - tap water is fine for me, and I don't include dried apricots or mixed spice, and I don't wait two hours for the sponge to rise, and I use less flour. In fact, it's not really his recipe any more.)
April 17, 2014
forget-me-nots
forget-me-nots and me, in the garden*
One of the greatest pleasures in the world for me is to not have to wear socks. I don't care about make-up, hair colour, manicures, facials, spas, perfume or anything like that - being able go barefoot or in Birkenstocks is my idea of luxury. Every winter I try not to forget that warm weather will come again, that I will be able to wiggle my toes in the fresh air, that my feet will be warm enough to be sock-free. But it's not always easy to remember.
Then, suddenly, one day in spring around the time that something in the air and light tells me it's time to sow flower seeds, that same something also tells me that Birkenstock weather may be coming soon. It happened earlier this week so I acted and bought a new pair (almost forget-me-not blue) from the very efficient Birkenstock website. Then I retrieved my favourite nail varnish from Phoebe (who wrote a lump-in-the-throat post on Monday) and had a little dress rehearsal to remind me how good it feels to go footloose and fancy free.
[I can't believe fashion writers are now hailing the return of the flat shoe as some kind of amazing discovery. Why wouldn't you wear shoes that enable you walk and move like a normal human being instead of staggering about in ludicrous heels that give you blisters and bunions and are the modern equivalent by choice of foot-binding?]
*ironically, I can't remember how we came to have so many forget-me-nots, as I don't recall growing them from seed and they weren't here when we moved in.
April 15, 2014
wild bunch
After dismissing the 'anything as long as it's red and yellow' style of tulip planting on Facebook, I looked at today's bunch and saw that, yes, many of them are red and yellow. Speaking too soon and all that, maybe. But not quite.
There are yellow tulips and yellow tulips, red tulips and red tulips, and even red and yellow tulips. So many of the red and yellow tulips I see around are the very simple, tall, upright, classic, child's drawing tulips. Nothing wrong with them, but when you see what else you can get in the way of red and yellow tulips, it's a shame to go with the type that appear in children's books and illustrations and on Easter egg pacakaging and Easter cards (since when did we send those?). There are all sorts of shades of yellow (primrose, butter, lemon etc) and red (vermilion, scarlet, maroon, ruby, port etc) and all sorts of shapes and heights (lily-flowered, double, parrot etc). So many in fact that if you only grew red and yellow tulips, you'd still have brilliantly varied bunches and effects. But I like mixing it up more and find that bright lemon tulips set off deep purple tulips beautifully, and that red work wonderfully with peaches, pinks and oranges, and red and yellow tulips are great on their own. And so it goes on until the end of the season, as I make as many wild bunches as possible.
One day I'm going to write a short and simple book on tulips. It will be colourful, full of details of all the varieties I like, with lots of wild and mixed bunches, tulip stories, and all you need to know about growing them (ie a short section, not like some tulip books which make growing them sound incredibly difficult and fraught). It will not be dry and botanical, or full of lists, or try to cover the whole tulip world, but it will go way beyond red and yellow.
April 14, 2014
development
The sock's colours are developing very slowly. I almost wish they'd stayed in the watermelon range and had little black dots as well which would make them nicely fruity. I'm not so keen on the new sulphur-yellow shade that's appearing. But, still, it's good to be knitting socks again and this one has gone well with the rugby on TV this weekend. The yarn is Schoppel Zauberball 1391. Modern Knitting, which is a great site for sock yarn, has many more Zauberballs.
April 12, 2014
toast rack for sale
This not your average eBay toast rack listing, though. This is the famous Manchester Toast Rack which has recently been put up for sale. It was opened in 1960 and Pevsner called it 'a perfect piece of pop architecture' (surely that should have been 'pop-up architecture'?) and it's one of those buildings that is both loved by those who see it every day, and taken for granted by the same people.
I know I did. I went to senior school opposite the Toast Rack (and the circular building with a shallow dome next to it known as the Fried Egg). We walked past it every week wearing our ultra-short gym skirts on our way to the playing fields for our hated hockey lessons (I associate this walk with being utterly freezing and feeling exposed and ridiculous - we also had to walk past the boys' school). The building was there all the time I was growing up and I never really thought about its amazing design although I did like the fact that it housed the Domestic and Trades College (aka Hollings College) which taught cookery, amongst other things. Yet I have never thought to take a photo of it.
This morning I've been reading that MMU has now moved out and the Toast Rack is on the market. I feel I should dash back to Fallowfield with my camera. It's hard to imagine it not being there, a building to look at from the top of the old 42 bus, a landmark to point out to visitors, a novelty design to be proud of, so I really hope it finds a buyer and a new purpose.
(The Manchester Modernist Society which has some interesting publications has a Toast Rack blog and has published an unofficial history.)
April 11, 2014
starburst tulips
The pointy and lily-flowered tulips make this bunch look like a starburst. The orange, lemon, strawberry, lime colours are very Starburst, too.
The bulb/tulip season is still discombobulated and I've come to conclusion that this year is simply going to be an odd year, and definitely not one of the best. Still, an off-year serves to highlight just how fortunate we are and how much we take for granted in good years. That's my Pollyanna tulip thought for the day.
April 9, 2014
happy colours
The skies may be grey, the mornings may be cold, the rain may be coming down, the phone company may be driving us mad, the daffodils may be past their best, the tragedy of Jude the Obscure may be preventing me from finishing the book, the latest episode of Rev may be a real disappointment, my most comfortable shoes may have come apart, the book shelf problem may still not be fully solved...
...BUT the tulips are big and colourful and exciting, and the sock yarn I started knitting with last night is equally exciting. Happy colours, indeed.
April 6, 2014
conversations
Spring in St John's Wood (1933) Laura Knight, in the the Walker Gallery
Spring in Eskdale (1935) James McIntosh Patrick, in the Walker Gallery
I start to rebel when I hear or read a curator saying that works of art are having 'conversations' in an exhibition or display. I first heard this pretentious claim (and curatorial aim) in relation to the Modern British Sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy* and rolled my eyes at the radio. I'm all for comparing and contrasting and talking about works of art, but the idea that we are supposed to guess at, and appreciate the conversation between two inaniamte objects made by different people often at different times and even in different countries is just too fatuous.
But I love it when I come across a gallery where curators have chosen and displayed paintings carefully in order to help you think and talk meaningfully. The Tate Britain rehang is all about groupings and themes to show developments and styles. And I found these two paintings sitting next to each other in the Walker - but without any hint of gallery bossiness about a 'conversation'. So you could wander past and not even notice the connections, or you could stop awhile and enjoy them.
Here are two paintings painted only two years apart using similar palettes and realistic styles. Town and country, modernity and tradition, London life and farm life, movement and solidity. I like the way the whole Laura Knight painting seems to be on the move, full of spring rush and dash and breeze and energy and motion, with a flash of tulips in the foreground and the contrast of smoking chimneys in the distance. Next to it, the Lake District looks so still and slow and unchanging, with locals who don't hurry and dry stone walls that last forever. They are both snapshots of a pre-war world, and I'd much rather have a real conversation about them than try to double-guess some nonsense I can't even apprehend.
(*I've just found this article which tells me that I am not alone in bridling at the idea of 'conversations' in this sculpture exhibition and, more importantly, that it just didn't work and people didn't get it.)
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