jane brocket

boots at breakfast

Forget Amazon Japan. Who needs to sit at a screen when it's gloriously warm and sunny at breakfast time? Instead, I pulled on Simon's big gardening boots and spent two happy hours tidying up the garden,

enjoying the soft, low sun, the pale blue sky and the fiery colours of our Japanese maple.

I cut down all the sadly dying and decaying sunflowers, keeping a few heads for seeds for the hamster and to illustrate the Fibonacci sequence to Alice and Phoebe (I think the hamster was the more impressed). I even found a couple of flowers still hanging on and doing their best to impress.

I love the garden when everything is just going over, tipping into dark colours and skeletal forms, but still with a few splashes of brilliant colour from nasturtiums and dahlias. I took photos of the remains of the red cabbages, looking eerily like fossils or something you'd find on a beach.

I waved dried-out stems of hollyhocks covered with seed pods over parts of the garden like a magic wand, hoping that a few will germinate next spring. But as hollyhocks are notoriously fickle, I also collected plenty to try again with later.

And Phoebe and I performed our annual ritual of picking and opening the reamaining runner bean pods, and being amazed at their beautiful colours and markings.

There are days when I see nothing in the garden. And there are days, like today, when I see it all. Just as well, as much of it it will be gone for ever so soon.

browsing at breakfast

I sat down with my tea and toast this morning to have a quick look at Rosa's blog (one of the original craft blogs and still as true as ever to its creator's style, interests and passion for Portuguese history and heritage). Before I knew what had happened, two hours had passed, no children had emerged, I was still in my pyjamas, had drunk several cups of tea, and had a basket full of books at Amazon Japan. Oh, the joys of uninterrupted browsing, searching and discovering. And all because this book was out of stock with Rosa.

It's so long since I've had a good look at Amazon Japan and YesAsia, carefully noted ISBN numbers, gone back and forth between sites to see if I can look inside any of the books with beguiling covers whose contents can only be guessed at wildly, that I was quite carried away. (I also looked at Pomadour24's shop but the search function isn't too good which is a shame because I've bought from her before and she has a great selection of books and takes the trouble to show some of the content photos.) 

Then the house woke up, and I had to leave my dream of owning every beautiful Japanese craft book ever published and sort out real life. The million yen question is, what will happen at breakfast tomorrow when I go back to the basket?

positively the last...

...cake photo for a while. Until I change my mind, that is.

Simon bought this cake tin for Phoebe for her birthday so she had to put it to immediate use. Being something of a perfectionist (see post below), she wasn't happy with the first version which was far too small in her opinion. 

She also felt it was a mistake to use chocolate fudge icing for reasons that were visually clear but don't need to be explained (even though it tasted great). So she made a second cake and decorated it with jelly bean candles and wickedly pink icing, and all was well.

And the happy outcome is that we won't be needing much cake for a while.

celebration time

[looking up to the roof of our house]

Because we now have two sixteen year olds and a fourteen year old (something I keep saying aloud to myself because I still cannot believe I had three babies in 32 months all those years ago).

Because we have come through the grimness of Simon losing his job completely unexpectedly at the end of July, and now he has a new one.

Because the sun has shone for, oooh, at least four days in a row and I love the colours of autumn in the afternoon sun.

Because my lovely sister and her lovely family have just been to stay and we all had a great time together.

Because little cousins are incredibly delightful with big cousins.

And because big cousins look soBIG next to little cousins but are also so funny with them.

Because I have just met a deadline.

Because I feel I have some breathing space after needing oxygen for quite a while (only metaphorically speaking, of course).

Because I am now properly ready to tackle the next major project (the knitting book) and enjoy it.

Because we discovered The Thick Of It last night for the first time and watched, horrified and appalled and vastly entertained.

Because children getting older means I'm getting older and it's not all bad, despite the total rubbish you read in the papers about the necessity to look/behave/dress younger than you are and spend your whole life buffing up your body, considering ridiculous treatments, denying the state of your upper arms and pretending you aren't ageing. Nonsense. Much better to get on with life instead and celebrate freedom from ageism. Unless you are 16 or 14 in which case you don't even know what I'm talking about...

attention to detail

This is my brilliant assistant, who helps me with recipes and baking for books, getting a cake ready to be photographed. And I wonder why my tweezers are covered in sticky icing.

She doesn't always feel the need to pick off wrongly placed sprinkles but it's a measure of her commitment to earning money that, on this occasion, she did. (And she made the whole thing.)

Of course it's Phoebe.

final flourish

As the clocks go back I need all the brightness and sunshine I can get to lighten up my day. This amazing dahlia (about 6" in diameter) is shining outside my study window. I half expect it to go on like a lamp when it gets dark far too early tonight.

pyjama time

In a radio interview this week, I was asked to describe our household at the beginning of half-term, and the phrase 'pyjama time' popped into my mind. As in 'we enjoy plenty of pyjama time during school holidays', as in 'I don't see any reason to organise my children's break with a timetable crammed with improving and stimulating activities', as in 'I believe (and always have, even when they were little) that allowing them to get well and truly bored is the best way to get them reading, making, observing, inventing or simply thinking'. 

So we are getting out the quilts and knitted blankets, looking for our cosiest pyjamas and most comfortable clothes, hunting for our favourite warm socks, and buying in the Ovaltine, books and magazines because we are going to be busy doing very little at all.

preface to a preface

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of Persephone Books. Their books have brought me untold literary pleasure for nearly a decade now, and introduced me to many writers I would never have discovered on my own. Like so many other readers, my favourite Persephone author is Dorothy Whipple. In fact, it took only one novel, Someone at a Distance, to make me seek out everything else she wrote. So I have amassed a nice little collection of mostly dog-eared second-hand copies of DW's novels, short stories and autobiographical writing, all of which are quite marvellous. 

But of all the books I read after that first encounter, the one for which I felt the most affection was High Wages, her second novel which was first published in 193o. It is set in the North West, a part of the world I know so well, and is a beautifully written story with flashes of Alan Bennett-style observation and humour, and an undercurrent of Mrs Whipple's very special brand of insight into human nature. How I loved that book, and how I wished Persephone would reprint it.

Well, my wish has now been granted.

But even more thrilling for me is the fact that I was asked to write the preface to the new edition, even though no-one at Persephone knew that this was 'my' Dorothy Whipple. I was extremely flattered and very nervous - how do you do justice to DW without gushing? As it turns out, there is so much to be said about High Wages that I didn't even have to stray into hagiography and it was a complete joy to delve into the world of dress fabrics, haberdashery and ladies' undergarments around the time of the First World War in order to understand the context of the novel.

And what is really wonderful now that the novel has been reprinted (with characteristically lovely end-papers) is that you don't have to take my word for all this. You can find out for yourself.

my magic tree

My favourite nursery rhyme of all is 'I had a little nut tree' about the tree that bears 'a silver nutmeg and a golden pear' because I loved (and still love) the image it conjures up in my mind, although recently my illusions have been shattered by the discovery that the rhyme is about far more than the fruit of a magic tree.

Anyway, I think of that tree every October when I see the branches of our quince tree bending over under the weight of  what can only be described as truly golden fruit. Not just golden, in fact, but positively glowing.

Every year, as if enchanted, it produces masses of fuzzy, sweet-smelling, medieval-style fruit. It matters not that I have photographed quinces and written about them every year I've been writing a blog. It has now become an act of faith to do so. So here I am, celebrating our magic tree because that is what I do in October.

a large porschen of fun

Peggy Porschen has long been one of our baking idols, but for a long time I wasn't aware that she runs workshops in London. As soon as I did find out, however, I booked birthday treat places for me and Phoebe on Saturday for a day of decorating Hallowe'en cookies. (Phoebe believes she should have been born on 31st October, and that there was a serious mix-up when she arrived a few days before her appointed date).

What I like so much about Peggy's style is the mix of clever designs, beautiful colour, attention to detail, humour, and incredible skill. What's even more amazing is that Peggy manages to teach these skills in a way that makes them seem easy and doable, even for the most untrained icing hands. She reduces years of practice and technical know-how into a few key techniques which allow workshop participants to stop worrying about not having Cordon Bleu qualifications and to start icing.

As ever, Phoebe and I had a great time together with sugar and paste. We couldn't believe we were really watching Peggy Porschen demonstrating with icing bags and colour, and not just looking at the pages of her books. Neither of us would claim to be great icing artists but we were amused by what we produced and inspired to get cracking with more PP ideas. Watch this cookie and cake space.