jane brocket

back in the saddle again

I'm listening to Gene Autry singing Back in the Saddle Again and imagining how it would be to knit while riding a horse - in a gentle John Wayne-swaying-into-town motion rather than at full gallop, you understand. These musings and croonings have been prompted by the feeling of pure pleasure to be knitting after a long period of quilting. I have a new a new pair of socks on the go, I'm knitting all sorts sorts of swatches and I have a whole book synopsis full of ideas and plans. And it's good be wielding my needles once more, even if it's if only on the settee in front of Wimbledon (hasn't John McEnroe mellowed and improved with age?) and not in the wild west. Yes, I'm definitely back in the softly upholstered, very comfortable knitting saddle again.

soft fruit, soft light

Every so often a summer evening produces the most wonderful quality of warm, soft light. I happened to pass a bowl of fruit in such a light, with the nectarine aglow.

And in a different position a minute or so later, all the fruit looked as though it was lit from within. Pretty much as I feel on such lovely evenings.

more good things in lisbon

:: It is no coincidence that this photo is identical to one I posted a year ago. How I could I go to Lisbon and not take the train to Belem in order to enjoy a pastel de nata (unbelievably good custard tart) - or two, even - in the most famous custard tarterie in the country? Definitely 'vaut le détour', as the Michelin Guide would say if it had its priorities right.

 

:: It may also not be a coincidence that I saw tiles to match the pasteis de nata and café crockery across the road from the Confeitaria. Lovely. 

:: The flower-beds of Belem are full of pale blue-violet agapanthus...

...that match the facade of a hotel in Lisbon. Never underestimate nature's own colour-schemes. Or the power of a custard tart to lure you into making a return visit to the city.

:: I watched Casablanca in my hotel (everyone wants to get to Lisbon in the film but more for the passage to freedom than the custard tarts) with a 5cl miniature bottle of tawny port. It's scandalous that such a lovely drink can be put into such tiny vessels. Good job they sell it in grown-up sizes, too.

cherry-picking lisbon

When you have just two nights in a place, you have to do some cherry-picking to make sure you spend the time wisely.  This week in Lisbon I whittled my choices down to:

:: eating the wonderful cherries that are in the shops at the moment. Cherries are my favourite fruit which is a bit of a pain as they have such a short season. So I was delighted to arrive at the height of the cherry season. Morellos are also on sale (they have an even shorter season than sweet cherries) and I did think about taking some home but didn't know what the line on importing cherries is, and I didn''t fancy confessing in a police interrogation that I was a cherry-smuggler in order to feed my clafoutis addiction.

:: walking and walking to look at outstanding examples of twentieth-century architecture, mainly from the 1930s to the 1960s, but this kiosk from the 1920s caught my eye.

:: admiring the artistic arrangements of the grocers. This one (where I bought my cherries) had only fruits in golds/oranges and reds/pinks and was utterly beautiful. 

:: luxuriating in real warmth (up to 35 C) and connecting the climate to the amazing flowers growing all over the city. Fabulous bougainvillea (above), huge plantings of pale blue and white agapanthus, clumps of canna, and oleanders in full flower.

And more...

knit, knit, knit

There can be few nicer places to knit than the beach. When I was reading children's books as research for Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer and Ripping Things To Do (I can't tell you how much I love, love, love that cover) it was fascinating to see how many mums and grannies and nannies knit at the seaside while children splash and swim and do handstands and build sandcastles and eat ice buns.

My favourite mention was in The Family from One End Street (one of the best books I read as a child, with beautiful illustrations by the author but my copy had a different pink and white cover) when Mrs Watkins takes Kate Ruggles and assorted friends to the seaside. She 'settles herself comfortably against a breakwater with a bag of bull's eyes and her knitting' and then spends the whole day making her entry for the 'All England Mammoth Knitting Competition for Mothers' while nodding absently to the children and letting them play as they like. 'She certainly was the ideal chaperone!' 

Well, this weekend I had the seaside, the yarn, the needles, the chocolate satins and the sherbet lemons and strawberries, and a lovely group of knitters, and I think we all nodded absently a lot of the time. We could have leaned against the breakwaters with packed lunches, but didn't need to as we had comfy chairs, a deck, and tea and cake whenever we fancied.

And there were colours and flowers (including the amazing clematis above) and inspiration everywhere I looked.

And a few glasses of wine as the sun went down.

We may not have reached competition levels of knitting, but we all enjoyed a glorious weekend. I came back bursting with ideas for the knitting book (which will be the sister of the quilt book) and full of the joys of seaside knitting.

wet, wet, wet

Although they thrive in hot, dry conditions I have to say that geraniums look pretty wonderful in the rain. My row of pots on the garden table stood out like beacons against the lead-grey sky earlier this week. The cerise-pinks and scarlet-reds were like little splashes of colour on a very wet canvas.

But now I want sun, sun, sun because I am going to the seaside to knit, knit, knit.

temps perdu

When your thirteen year old daughter greets you with a tray of beautifully made, honeyed madeleines when you come home from a weekend away and you realise that you have never, ever made madeleines in your life but have only read about them in Proust* and in a million mentions of Proust, you know that you have lost a great deal of time that could have been profitably and happily spent with madeleines and tisanes.

Today I made up for lost time and made a tray of madeleines using the recipe that Phoebe found on the internet. It contains egg whites, ground almonds, honey and lemon zest and I'm not sure it's terribly orthodox, but my goodness it makes wonderful madeleines that took me back, oh as far as the first time I ate the madeleines that Phoebe made. I can't believe I've got to this age before making them; surely they are something you should start making when you are young so that you never have to go in search of lost time?

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I have just looked for the recipe and discovered it's by Heston Blumenthal. I should have known Phoebe would go for quality. I urge you to make time to make some.

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Oh, I admit it. I've only ever read the bit about the madeleines in the work of Proust. I can't pretend I've read all the rest.

smelling the roses

I just did a double-take when this picture uploaded and appeared in my 'compose new post' box. I could smell the roses and it took a moment to realise that I wasn't smelling those on the screen but the beautiful, floppy, pale gold roses in a jug just near my computer. Ah, but wouldn't it be wonderful if you could smell these roses via the screen and could keep coming back to them when you needed to inhale a lovely perfume?

I picked them in between downpours this afternoon and emailed Simon to tell him about them. He's becoming quite the rose-fancier these days and likes to know of their progress when he's away (having an existentialist work crisis in Paris this week). These come from a bush that has been treated appallingly over the years and yet keeps giving us gorgeous flowers with an intoxicating, room-filling and screen-filling scent.

It's a David Austin rose, but I have no idea of its name - we lost the label long ago. (It's Graham Thomas - thanks, Barbara.)

But I know this rose below is Gertrude Jekyll because she is one of Simon's more recent plantings (or 'plontings' as they say on Gardeners' World these days which always makes us laugh because it sounds so unnatural and strangulated, and anyway what's wrong with a flat 'a' in 'plant'?) and he tells me a lot about her. I left the bloom outside in the rain where I can see it from my study (and smell it when my window is open). I liked the little jewelled rain drops on the petals too much to disturb it.

I'm smelling the metaphorical roses, too. I have finished the quilt book - text and quilts - and am wafting around on a cloud of relief. I celebrated yesterday by going to Liberty and reading almost all of Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple (in a 1946 'Florin Book' edition). And then, because I could, I finished it at 8 o' clock this morning after Phoebe had gone to school and found myself sitting amidst the debris of toast and Special K with tears running down my face.

And then I went to smell the real roses.

100s and 1000s

For a simple sprinkly cake decoration, y0u still cannot beat 'hundreds and thousands'. Phoebe reminded me of this when she shook some over a tray of rose-pink buns and transformed them into the kind of thing we ate at parties when I was little (although I don't remember cochineal-coloured icing being quite so pretty - it produced a much harsher shade of pink).

I've had 'hundreds and thousands' of things going on here for the last few months and that's more than I need or want. So I'm going back down to single figures this summer with two months of house-related work, three children and one long summer holiday, one big pile of books to read, one book to be published, one husband to spend time with in the garden. But I think I may break my single-figure rule when it comes to glasses of wine. Hundreds and thousands of those sounds about right.

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I've just read John Burningham and loved every page. John Burningham's style must be indelibly etched on many a parent or child's visual memory, and Tom, Alice, Phoebe and I still ask each other would you rather? questions. And Winifred Nicholson reminded me again that I would commit serious art-theft to have one of her lovely flowers on a windowsill paintings. I'm now reading Cold Cream which is absolutely wonderful - funny, poignant, self-disparaging and beautifully written.   

PS thanks for all the kind comments about the quilt. The sun has gone in since. I am hoping that what we have just had was not our provencal summer.