Love, love me do

Photo from geograph.org

Fifty years ago I was still in school but I do remember the release of Love, Love Me Do by the Beatles.  The news bulletins seem to be full of it today.  I was not especially impressed by the song but presumable everyone else was because within a very short time our biology teacher had to remind us how to spell "beetle" correctly.  Forcibly.  She was possibly the most sarcastic person I have ever come across.  I can still hear her voice even if I can't remember her name.

Some years later, and well after The Beatles left, I turned up in Liverpool as a student to study biology - without Beatles or beetles either.  I never did get to the Cavern.  It didn't stop us feeling we were somehow part of the Beatles era and road signs were regularly removed from Penny Lane to decorate student bedrooms. So I'm told, of course.

Memories were made of this

On 19 June 1994, I remember the day exactly, I went out with an American friend of mine to do some shopping, the same friend who sent me off on a cookery course.  We both lived very near Paris and both of us were coming to the end of our three years' stay in France.

Almost everyone I knew seemed to be leaving Paris that summer but although we had been there three years, we had been offered another couple of years.  Maybe.  I wasn't too happy about staying on because I loved it.  It may sound contradictory, but I thought if I stayed longer I'd never want to leave.

So all in all I wasn't on top of the world that day, and a shopping expedition sounded just the thing to take my mind off things, especially as I wasn't doing the shopping, just observing.  We went to the rue de Rivoli, one of the famous roads in the centre, famous names, famously expensive.  Some of it, it has to be said, is just expensive tourist tat.  It runs past the Louvre and the Tuileries gardens.  Its main advantage to me was that it had the English bookshop, WH Smith, many times rescuing me from certain boredom.

Sue, my friend, asked my advice on a coffee cup she was planning to buy for a mutual friend.  I said I thought she'd love it, that whenever she drank from it, she would be reminded of our times in Paris.

Of course, I was slow on the uptake, and the coffee cup and saucer were bought for me.  Every time I saw them, I did remember Paris, but now they are in several pieces - the cup and saucer not the memories - and about to be consigned to the bin. 

I did consider trying to find a similar set but I can't find any and it wouldn't be the same anyway.  Unfortunately then, it seems as though the memories will eventually follow the same fate, unless of course I record them somewhere.....

Weights and measures

My grandmother and her sister ran a small shop, a bit of an "Open All Hours".  They sold something of everything but especially home baked cakes and savouries.  My grandmother was the savoury specialist and her sister, Kate, the pastry cook.  Kate was a great lover of all things sweet and collected recipes almost compulsively.  She copied recipes on to every possible space in her recipe books as you can see.

I learnt what cooking skills I have from Kate and while I was battling with the measurements for the chocolate cake recipe, measuring everything out to the nearest gram, I remembered that she rarely used a weighing scales.  She used spoons to measure out, and judgement, and there I was worrying about precise grams.

I used to have an old recipe book, very old, it must have been given to me by Kate, and inside the front cover was a conversion table for spoonfuls to ounces for various ingredients.  That book is long gone so I was delighted to find, stuck inside the back cover of the recipe book above, a conversion chart for all sorts of things.

A few examples of 1 ounce measurements

3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon jam
3 tablespoons currants
4 tablespoons rolled oats (for your porridge, no doubt)
5 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs


And these tablespoons weren't special measuring spoons, they were normal everyday spoons we used.


Along with these, there were a number of useful amounts, such as 1lb peas is enough for 2 people but 2 lbs spinach is barely enough for three.  A pint of batter will make 16 fairly thin pancakes while half a pound of flour makes 16 fairly big rock cakes.
I could go on for quite a while but I'll spare you.  Suffice it to say, I'll not be quite so precise on my measurements in future.

PS, since I'm back to adjust the weird spacing that Blogger gives me these days, I'll add that on an inside page I found in tiny writing in a top margin:

"1 cupful measures 10 oz.  In America cupful measures 8 oz liquid. 3 teaspoons go to American tablespoon instead of 4." 

Elaine

I found out today that my long-standing blogging friend, Elaine, has died at the far-too-young age of 67.

She has had poor health for quite some time and reading through her entire blog as I did today, I realise just how much she deteriorated over the two years she blogged. But I don't want to dwell on the sadness, but rather on how much she had to offer all of us who knew her.

She was a great cook, an avid reader (we shared the same taste in books), a Francophile, great fun, and best of all, a loyal friend. She must have been my commenter-in-chief, sticking by me through thick and thin, and there have been many thins. Through her comments and her blog I felt I came to know her and her family, so I will miss her good cheer and good sense very much.

Goodbye, my friend. I wish you knew how many lives you touched.

Memories are made of this

The last few days have been spent clearing my mother's small house. My sister and I have spent a long time going through everything, deciding what we should keep and what has to go, putting everything in boxes and then talking most of it out again as we realised it was impossible to hang on to it all.

The large items, desks and tables and bookcases, weren't too much of a problem. We have our own, with our own memories, and so they are going off to auction and will no doubt be sold to someone who appreciates them.

The problem lies with the bits and pieces. One of the men who came to finish off the clearance apologised for seeming insensitive. It's much, much harder to part with all the tiny things that hold memories but mean nothing whatever to anyone else.

That's not a torn photo, that's my mother, the child who was never wanted, the mistake.

My father was ridiculously proud of that crumpled newspaper cutting and told us endlessly about the day he took down O'Sullivan Roach, even though his two daughters barely appreciated the finer points of rugby.

That's not any old Christmas card, it's the one my father sent to my mother after the war ended and while he was still serving in Italy. After it arrived she set out to join him there, the first civilian allowed into Italy at that time.

It may look like an old duster or a rag, but that was once my "posh frock" which I was allowed to wear on special occasions, sent all the way from grandparents in Ireland to a remote area in Africa.

That worn and cracked bowl was once my sister's favourite, and without it she refused to eat (even though she always managed to look like a little angel).

The ribbon with a rusty pin was once a badge I wore proudly for being top of the class. I had to learn how to curtsy to receive it, much to the amusement of all. That was the school where we were forced to eat up everything, and that almost gave me an eating disorder. It was also the school where I had to endure a reading class consisting entirely of listening to one poor child repeating "wisp" over and over until the teacher was satisfied with her pronunciation. Hmm, a lot of memories stored in one small piece of fabric.

That almost illegible letter on the finest of airmail paper was written to me on my eighth birthday by the minister of the local church. Almost twenty years and many thousands of miles later, he was to conduct my wedding service. We didn't live in his parish then, and had to have a special licence. After all these many years since then, I'm still not convinced it was legal.

How do you preserve all these memories? Will our own children have the same problems letting go?

Mirror, mirror on the wall

The story of this mirror goes back quite a long way. I think it must be tired of life.

My father-in-law rescued it from his workplace because it was going to be thrown away. It moved house with my in-laws at least three times and survived its eventual journey to France with us. This is it just after arrival and partially unpacked from its protective layers.

We put it up on one wall, changed our minds, and moved it to another. That was three years ago.

Underneath we put a small cupboard and on that a glass jar which we thought looked rather attractive in reflection in the mirror.

Last September we arrived back in France, settled in happily and went about our usual everyday business. After perhaps a couple of weeks I asked my husband why he had taken the mirror off the wall.

He hadn't, but it was resting on the cupboard and against the wall with nothing else disturbed, not even the glass jar. We asked the people who look after the place while we are away, but no, they'd noticed it, and wondered, and apparently thought no more about it.

Eventually we spotted the fixings which had fallen down behind the cupboard but we remained mystified as to how it had managed to come adrift and slide down so gently. Whatever the reason, we shrugged and had it replaced with a different method which caused it to lean out from the wall. We knew this meant it would fall forward if it came loose again, but it seemed a better bet than using the old fixings.

So tonight we had a phone call from France.

"You know that mirror?"

Oh no.

But it had been found in exactly the same position, on the cupboard, against the wall with nothing else disturbed.

So do we have a mirror with a mind of its own? Does it want to go back to the UK? Or do we have a poltergeist?

Dover Castle

On our new year trip we decided to travel to France on a Dover crossing , for old time's sake. My parents used to live nearby for a time, so it used to be our preferred route in those days. I took the photo above as the ferry left the harbour. It shows Dover Castle on the cliffs above the town - the keep, the castle wall, and the Constable's Tower on the left.

The castle was a favourite haunt of our sons, and then it became a great place to visit with any of their friends who came to stay.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

While I was looking up some information on the area I found the photo above on Wikipedia, which seems to have been taken from almost exactly the opposite direction to mine. It even has the ferry in the background!

This third view shows the castle church with the Roman lighthouse at the end of it. The arches half way down the cliff are part of the casemate barracks built between 1793 and 1801, and you are just able see an observation platform at the top of the cliff on the extreme right.

The cliffs are riddled with tunnels, some dating as far back as Tudor times and others from WWII. To the right of the casemate barracks are entrances to some tunnels which were converted to shelter the government if it became necessary. Some tunnels, but not the government shelter, are now open to the public.

Plenty of interesting information is available on Wikipedia, Dover Castle: lock and key of the Kingdom and Historic Kent.

PhotoHunter: old fashioned

I was fairly clear in my mind what I was going to use today, and I knew where to find the photographs. What I hadn't realised was that they were wrapped in some old newspaper from 1942 and in the newspaper were these two old fashioned advertisements.

Please note, it was during the war and the above advertisement is for American satin! Such luxury! It isn't only the subject matter that's old fashioned, but the style too.

They are so completely unlike anything we have nowadays.

Then we come to the photos I was intending to show you, the first of my parents' wedding day in 1942, just after my father qualified. Immediately afterwards he went out to North Africa in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

The second shows my mother and a friend in my parents' flat, not long after that wedding. I am particularly delighted with this one because I still have the photo of my father that you can see on the mantelpiece and and my sister has the copper coal scuttle to the left of the picture.

So not only can you see old fashioned clothes, but also an old fashioned interior décor. The question is, when do old fashioned things become period items of some value?

Find other players: PhotoHunt

One year ago

One year ago precisely, I posted my first post. It's hard to tell now, because I've back-dated Papillon's blog translations by a year so that makes it look as though I am older than I really am! I realise too, I've gone fairly off-track as far as my original intentions were, but still, evolution is the name of the game.

It appears that I share my moment of glory with the Queen, who has today posted her Christmas message on YouTube, though I haven't watched it myself. Not only is she now the oldest reigning British monarch, but modern too! She overtook her great-grandmother's record on 21 December 2007. There are some interesting statistics on British monarchs and longevity in Wikipedia.

Surprisingly I remember my staunchly Irish grandmother insisting on the Christmas meal being over in time to watch or listen to the Queen's Christmas broadcast. In the past this was a tradition for many British families though I doubt it's the case nowadays. The YouTube venture is intended to reach out to more people, though I'm not convinced that it will.

Conquered

Now that my mother has moved into a nursing home, I have had to start sorting through her papers. She wrote this piece perhaps 20 or more years ago, and I thought I'd reproduce it here because it follows on from my last post and conkers. It is an entirely true story.

A funny thing happened on my way to my crossword this afternoon. Three small boys came to my door to ask permission to collect conkers in my garden. I brought them round to the back of the house and told them to help themselves. They thanked me and we parted company.

Half an hour later the door bell went again. Could they have a bag please, pockets filled to overflowing were not big enough. I found one ... well, perhaps three bags would be better ... I found two more. They were bigger than they hoped for. Pity not to fill them a bit more. Back they went to the tree.

Ten minutes later the door bell yet again. This time not three but seven little boys were assembled. Fourteen eyes solemnly scanned my dead-pan face, anxiously assessing the barometric pressure of the adult mood, while the spokesman said his piece.He explained that they had seen their friends' conkers and could they have some too, please? I released the teasing and the tension with a smile and the necessary assent and they all hurtled round the corner in the direction of the chestnut tree, which, when I looked out of the window a moment later, was trembling (excitedly I 'd swear) under the unaccustomed assault.

Another five minutes, another ring at the door. There stood a Botticelli angel. I wasn't fooled by the disguise of sweater and jeans. He looked very anxious and was obviously the reluctant emissary for yet another bag. We considered this request together for a moment or two, and thought two bags perhaps, "just to be sure". I returned to my paper.

The doorbell again! This, I thought, was a little too much. The barometer was approaching "Stormy". I opened the door and there, half-way down the path stood the seven children in crescent formation, like a carol-singing party. "We just wanted to say thank you very much for letting us have the conkers," they said in ragged unison, but what a lovely chorus of unprompted courtesy. Their parents would have been very proud of them, I thought, as I waved them goodbye.

My crossword wasn't yet started, but my day had been made.

Walk down the lanes

We've been lucky to have bright if cold weather recently, ideal for going for a wander in the countryside.

The trees without their leaves look totally different of course but lovely in a different way.

This cottage, sheltered by the trees and the brow of the hill, looked very cozy.

Although I noticed the holly trees were almost stripped bare of their berries, other red fruits had been left. Obviously not so tasty!

These are the fruits of Rhus typhina, or Staghorn Sumac, which I always think of as a cultivated plant, but it was here in a hedgerow. There must have been a tree nearby and these were the suckers from it.

Surprisingly there were loads of conkers lying around and left to rot. I say surprisingly because if there had been any children around, they would have been instantly gathered for playing conkers as soon as they fell.

I can so well remember the search for good sources of conkers while my sons were at primary school. We used to spend hours trying to find a tree which hadn't been stripped. Great fun!

Photohunter: small

Once there was a small boy.

He grew up and met a young woman, a small young woman.

They had two small girls.

The girls grew up and one of them had two small boys.

The boys have now grown up. Watch this space .......

Find other players: PhotoHunt

The story of a passport

I was browsing through some old postcards of my father's when I cam across this one of the Holy Shrine of Shiraz. It has been sent by a relative who was visiting Iran in 1976, and it said that he was going to Eshfahan the next day.

That brought back memories of the postcard sent to us by my son a few years ago, from Eshfahan.

To go back to the beginning. That son's first job involved some fairly high security clearance. He subsequently went to work in Kuwait for about 6 months. More recently still, he had an American girlfriend whose family originated in Iran. They visited family in Iran and that was when the postcard was sent.

About a year ago, our son was in transit in Miami. He had about two and a half hours between flights - plenty of time. As he was standing in line at immigration he noticed every so often red lights would start flashing, a bell would ring and armed guards would appear to escort away the person whose passport was being checked. Then he arrived at the desk himself.

"So, you have a visa for Iran? Why is that?"

"I was visiting my girlfriend's family."

Red lights started flashing, a bell rang and armed guards appeared to escort him away.

His hand luggage was taken and he was put in a room, all alone, and left there for two hours. He had no means of contacting anyone and nobody knew where he was. He tells us he has never been so frightened in all his life, and no matter how hard he tried not to think about it, visions of Guantanamo Bay kept popping into his mind.

After what seemed like an eternity, someone opened the door, gave him his things back and said, "OK you can go now".

He resolved never to have to go through that again.

Mother to the rescue, because mother has one of these:

An Irish birth certificate. He was able therefore to apply for an Irish passport. Actually it became more complicated because that birth certificate (I have been using it all my life) wasn't good enough apparently, but eventually he he became the proud owner of an Irish passport.

The whole thing has made me think. It seems so easy to get an Irish passport: all you need is a grandparent born in Ireland I believe. And it wasn't so very long ago that I was the one who was stopped at every checkpoint, every immigration desk, every security check, purely because I was born in Ireland.

Stir-up Sunday

Stir-up Sunday is traditionally the day in Britain for making the Christmas pudding, the name coming from the opening words of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer 1549: "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people". It is the last Sunday before Advent, tomorrow.

Apparently the tradition of making a pudding has been dying out, with two thirds of children never having stirred a pudding. So there are moves afoot by celebrity chefs to rekindle the traditions surrounding it.

We have followed this tradition at home wherever we have lived (sometimes finding the ingredients was harder than others, and as a result it wasn't always mixed right on time). I can well remember my grandmother letting us stir the mixture and make a wish, every day for a week, before its first cooking.

The first recipes included meat, prunes and wine, not unlike the original mincemeat recipes. Apparently Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas puddings as being "a lewd custom inappropriate for people who followed God". Nowadays they don't contain meat, but may have shredded beef suet along with with nuts and dried fruit. It used to be, and still sometimes is, known as plum pudding or even plum duff.

Our family recipe has been changed and adapted over the years, as all the best family recipes do. It uses butter instead of suet, no flour at all, plus whiskey and stout. I can't help feeling the latter two are an Irish influence. The latest change has been to say that anyone tasting the mixture at the same time as making a wish will forfeit the wish. That particular adaptation was the result of certain small boys growing up in the family. Tasting became more and more "generous" as the boys grew up!

Our family recipe is here for anyone interested.

Remember

11 November - Armistice Day - Remembrance Day - Poppy Day

France 1914

Burma 1944

Egypt 1951

Iraq 2006

Afghanistan 2007

Perhaps one day we'll learn

Please to remember the fifth of November

Please to remember the fifth of November

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

We see no reason why gunpowder, treason

Should ever be forgot.

Variously known as Guy Fawkes' Day, Fireworks Night or Bonfire Night, 5 November commemorates the unsuccessful attempt (the Gunpowder Plot) by Guy Fawkes and other Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament when King James I was there during the State Opening in 1605.

Traditionally children used to make a "guy" out of old clothes stuffed with newspaper or straw, not unlike a scarecrow , then take the guy out on the street on a pram or something similar. They would ask passers by for "a penny for the guy" to be spent on fireworks. Ultimately the guy would be burnt on the bonfire. I can't remember the last time I saw children with a guy.

Once families would have had a bonfire and fireworks in their own gardens. Unfortunately there have been so many injuries from fireworks that people are nowadays encouraged to attend organised public events. In spite of the fact that the public fireworks are much more elaborate than anything ever put on in a private garden, it's something of a shame really, because the atmosphere is largely lost. I can still almost taste the burnt sausages and potatoes we used to cook around the fire. Nothing quite like it!

Halloweens I have known

Most of my childhood was spent in Africa where we didn't celebrate Halloween at all. It was celebrated, though, in Ireland when we returned to visit the grandmothers, but really consisted only of a few party games for children, no dressing up in elaborate costumes, no pumpkins - we carved turnips instead, the big yellow turnips which I now know as swedes (with a small s all you sensitive Scandinavians), not the small white ones. I look back with great fondness to our grandmother and her sister who made considerable efforts to "educate" the little heathens in the traditions of our forebears.

The party games I recall seemed to revolve around apples:

• bobbing for apples - you had to try to catch apples floating in a bowl of water in your teeth, no hands allowed. My memory is that you end up getting wet.


• snap apples - again you had to catch an apple in your teeth but this time they were suspended on a string in a doorway. This time you end up with bruised lips.

We would have a special meal which included colcannon (mashed potatoes mixed with curly kale and spring onions) and barm brack (a fruit bread/cake), either or both of which could have a ring or a coin hidden inside.

During my teenage years in England, there seemed to be little celebration of Halloween, instead the emphasis was on Guy Fawke's Day on 5 November, about which more nearer the event.

France in theory disapproves of Halloween as being from another culture. Nevertheless it is creeping in, and the last two years we have had a few little children knocking on the door for treats. I know the family they come from and I suspect ours may be the only door they knock, so they'll be disappointed we aren't there this year. The big day in France is 1 November, a public holiday and a great family day, when everyone puts flowers, chrysanthemums, on family graves.

Barm brack recipe from my grandmother's recipe book (exactly as it is written)

1lb self raising flour
1lb mixed fruit
1 breakfast cup of warm strong tea
3/4 breakfast cup Demerara sugar
1 large egg
1 full teaspoon spice

Put sugar and fruit in a bowl, cover with tea and leave steeping overnight. Next day beat egg and add to tea and fruit, work in flour and lastly spice, beating well. Bake Reg 5, 1 and quarter hours. Cover after 20 minutes and remove cover 15 minutes before finished.

If you try it, enjoy it!

Updated to add that the Halloween header is courtesy of Gattina. Thanks very much Gattina.

Other Halloween celebrations in Sweden, Waterloo in Belgium, Barcelona

Four books

Late again - the story of my life. Or early, I suppose I could be early, depending on your point of view.

I've been tagged by Françoise of Des infos sur les femmes en France et dans le monde, in French, but the answers inevitably will be mainly in English because it's all about books.

Les 4 livres de mon enfance
Four childhood books

Difficult one. I used to read avidly, everything that had writing on it, but ones that I remember are:

• The Tale of Two Bad Mice - Beatrix Potter - and many others of her stories. I also enjoyed them again when reading to my sons.


• The Kon-Tiki Expedition - Thor Heyerdal. I thought this was the most exciting thing ever.


• The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. I wrote a whole post about it here.


• Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome. Another exciting book. I suspect this would seem terribly dated now.

And I won't go into all the many Enid Blyton books.... I know they aren't considered good books but I don't believe they do any harm. I'm a firm believer in any reading being good reading.

Les 4 écrivains que je lirai et relirai encore
Four authors I will read again and again

• Jon McGregor. Since I read If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, I have vowed to follow him to the ends of the earth :) Whether or not he wants me there remains to be seen.
• Kazuo Ishiguro. Something like the Jonathan McGregor experience after Never Let Me Go.
• Fred Vargas. I enjoy the French atmosphere and the stories are good page turners.
• Ruth Rendell. Excellent psychological thrillers, often set in London. I went to a meeting where she was talking about the history of the crime novel and was fascinated, slightly to my surprise.

Les 4 auteurs que je ne lirai plus jamais
Four authors I will never read again

I do wonder how fair it is to make a judgement not to read an author again after only one book, but I frequently do.

• Victoria Hislop. You can read my reasons here.
• Katherine Neville. I read The Eight and found it, hmm, not good. It just did not engage my attention at all. I didn't finish it - that never happens!
• Douglas Kennedy. My impression was formed after reading "State of the Union". In one review I wrote I said, "I would particularly like to give Dan and Jeff each a good slap!" I have no idea why but I did decide not to read his books again.
• Nicholas Sparks. I read Message in a Bottle and thought it was much too far-fetched. I read The Notebook and thought that poor. So he got two readings, but now he's off the list.
  

Les 4 premiers livres de ma liste à lire
The first four books on my to-be-read list

• The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell. Janeway told me it had influenced her. I read a review that said "This is a book about apartheid, about the cruelty of politics and about redemption. There are shades of Nadine Gordimer in The Sparrow, shades of Isaac Singer, but the book this reminds me of most is Jill Paton Walsh's novel Knowledge of Angels, a historical novel that wasn't." Hooked.


• On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan. I've had this waiting a while now.


• Amélie Nothomb - Mercure.


• John Banville - The Sea.

Les 4 livres que j'emporterai sur une île déserte
The four books I would take to a desert island

• The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Are several volumes allowed? I find I am increasingly enjoying Shakespeare now that I have finally got over the damage done at school when I was force fed so much of it (sorry Mrs Heyworth).


• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. Studied for my last English exam but unlike the Shakespeare experience, I loved it.


• The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver. A substantial book which I very much enjoyed and which I intend to re-read.


• Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert. In French, because I should.

Les dernières lignes d'un de mes livres préférés
The last lines of one of my favourite books.

This is tricky because I tend to give away my books once read, but I do have a copy of The Poisonwood Bible:

"Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that used to be my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the night."

In turn then, and really only if you feel like doing it, I tag Tanabata of In Spring it is the Dawn, Elaine of Old Age is a Bitch, YTSL of Webs of Significance, Pablo of La solitude du coureur, là au fond. I will not be in the least offended if you don't.

Scary ......

..... the way your past can come back and bite you. Taken during Rag Week in the late 60s, yes, it does include me, and my future husband was there too. The costumes were "kindly" designed by an art student with an evil sense of humour.

I'm somewhat relieved to see that they did similar things even in 1936, though I grant you they looked less silly.