jane brocket

delight

Delight by JB Priestley is itself a delight. Some of his delights such as trying new mixes of tobacco and smoking a pipe in the bath in the morning may appear dated now, but they aren't that far removed from trying new wines and drinking a glass of champagne in the bath, both of which would appear on my list of delights.

Three nights in Aldeburgh are a delight, too.

As is all this wonderful space full of fresh air and light.

 

And the chance to be alone yet stay in touch.

To be able to read three books in three days. And get my work done. And plenty of knitting.

To watch the sky change colour. To wonder what it would be like to sit at the top of this tower and gaze out to sea.

 
To expand my literary horizons with Eric Newby and Susan Hill (both books are a delight).

To call this place home for a short time, but not do any cooking for a change.*

To come home with a head full of fresh delights and a box full of Burt's Chips which are the very best crisps in the universe but difficult to find, so we always stop to stock up here. 

*Best of Suffolk is exactly that, and Naomi who runs the company with her husband is, you've guessed it, delightful. We book all our Aldeburgh holidays with them.

real and imaginary

 

Phoebe is terrified of spiders. Yet at the weekend she quite happily made a super-huge, creepy-crawly spider when we went together to a one-day cake decorating workshop with Frances McNaughton (who was involved with the amazing TV and press Skoda adverts). We spent six hours decorating a dozen buns each, squeezing, piping, rolling, pressing and cutting. It was great fun and our cakes looked fabulous, especially the scary spider.

It made me laugh the next day, though, when I saw this beautiful web covered in droplets of rain and Phoebe wouldn't come anywhere near it.

I think it's a shame so many people don't like spiders (British spiders are not exactly threatening). Then again,there are also plenty of people who are scared of cakes.

tea and knitting

I've been to the Knitting and Stitching Show this week and this has reinforced my belief that Alexandra Palace is the most inaccessible place ever to boast a London postcode. It took me two and a half hours in the car to do the 25 mile journey from home; even if I'd used public transport it would have taken me a similar amount of time to get there.

So by the time I arrived, I was gasping for a cup of tea. Which is when it occurred to me that not only is Ally Pally ridiculously remote for a city venue, it also has what are possibly the worst catering arrangements ever for a few thousand knitters (and stitchers). Surely everyone knows that tea and knitting go together like, er, love and marriage? That knitters are there for the little sit-downs in between raiding the Colinette stand, or touching all the yarns on the Habu stand, or gazing lovingly at the Loop stand and wishing they could afford a skein of every colour of Wagtail 4-ply mohair . That knitters are sociable and like to take tea with friends at every available opportunity to discuss and show their purchases, to plan their next assault on the aisles, to rest their weary feet and to count their remaining pennies.

Why, then, are the several thousand tea-drinking knitters funnelled into a couple of tiny bar areas where there's usually just one poor, harrassed man dealing with a temperamental machine and a long queue of borderline-temperamental knitters? And why, when you have got your grotty cardboard cup of tea with a sad little plastic lid that doesn't quite fit but has a silly tea-bag dangling down from it so that when you lift the lid the tea-bag comes out which seems to me to defeat the purpose of said tea-bag, plus your nasty little containers of UHT milk that you just know will squirt their contents all over you when you finally locate the tiny tab, why is there nowhere to sit? Not a spare table, a chair or a space anywhere. Incredible. It's not like it's a surprise every year and the organisers are taken unawares (fancy that, who ever knew that  knitters liked to sit down and have a cup of tea?). And it's not as though decent tea arrangements for knitters is asking too much. Is it? 

What a relief to get home. To put the kettle on, to make some rock buns, to look at the yarns I bought, to find an empty chair, to enjoy some proper tea and knitting.

And if you need any more convincing of the compatibility of tea and knitting, look at Knitting and Tea which has some lovely photos of tea, cakes and knitting.

pretty paradox

 
 

I can't believe that I am the only person who greatly prefers hand-painted yarns when they are twisted into delicious-looking skeins that cleverly show off all the flashes and splashes of colour rather than when they have been knitted up and are looking murkier and muddier and altogether less beautiful and eye-catching.

Believe me, I have done my best to love these yarns in their knitted state. Who wouldn't when they start off  these like Colinette skeins (they make me think of jam tarts and plum crumbles)? But still they don't quite live up to the expectations they create, not in my eyes at least.

Nevertheless, I have bought some recently - not just because I like to see them in skeins (in fact I'm sorely tempted to create some sort of skein artwork/showcase so that I can see them in all their softly wound glory) - but because I want to prove to myself that they can be used differently, in a way that exploits their changeableness but isn't made dull by it. I don't expect you to agree that it's a necessary task to set myself, but isn't that what paradoxes are all about?

The yarns are Colinette Cadenza DK Merino in 'Windfall' (bottom) and 'Raphael' (top): both go well with Tiptree jam colours.  

putting the man in manhattan

I'm in the middle of a very interesting little project which requires me to to trawl through the many photos I've taken over the last few years in search of material. As I scroll down the pages and pages of images, I see my recent life unfold and watch autumn turn to summer, summer to spring, spring to winter and so on as I work backwards. They jolt my memory and fill in the months with colours and patterns and flowers and changing, growing children. I am honestly amazed that I have taken so many - as I only show or publish a tiny, tiny proportion of what I take I do surprise myself sometimes.

I came across this picture above and wondered why I hadn't put it in a post. It was taken near Chinatown in New York and I think it's one of my all-time favourites of the city. Just look at those classic buildings in such wonderful colours.

And why did I never show the double rainbow over Midtown?

Or the play of light and reflection on the facades on West 57th Street?

I am hoping Simon gets to see (or pehaps I should say 'notice') the brilliant details of Manhattan. He's there all this week. I couldn't be happier for him. Unless I were with him, of course.

***

Thank you, all you musical-watching librarians who came up with so many great ways to sort out books and so many film recommendations. The problem is that if I'm watching Fred and Gene and Elvis and Doris and Frank, I'm not getting on with the bookshelves. And if I'm getting dusty and sneezy with books, then I'm missing out on some precious tap-dancing and tango-ing time. Ah, the choices we have to make.

watch with mother

Sometimes there is nothing better than watching something with a teenager because they have the most acute vision of any age group. I find teenagers see it and tell it like it is, and this is a Good Thing when applied to a match, a film, a TV programme or even an advert (but perhaps not so great when applied to parents). SoI find it highly entertaining and instructive to watch something with one of mine (what they think of watching with mother remains more of mystery).

I watch sport with Tom, I watch scary films with Alice, and I watch musicals with Phoebe. Last night we couldn't bear yet another miserable murder series on TV so she dug out the DVD of Hard Day's Night. What a great choice; funny, frantic, full of energy and songs to which we know all the words. Really, though, this is a visually brilliant film with all sorts of unusual camera angles and beautifully choreographed scenes. Phoebe fell about laughing at the Fab Four's daft quips and their deadpan delivery. And I was asking myself why I'd always thought Paul was the fabbest when in fact it was clearly John.

It made me realise that even though she's quite young, she and I have already built up a good list of favourite musicals that are just the thing to watch when there are simply too many detectives and dead bodies on television. So here is our top ten:

Hard Day's Night (1964): Obviously. 

The Pajama Game (1957) : probably our top favourite for reasons completely unfathomable to the rest of the family. I love the colours and the costumes and the Bob Fosse choreography. Phoebe adores the numbers with John Raitt and Doris Day.

Calamity Jane (1953): rip-roaring songs and Doris Day challenging gender boundaries (as if).

Easter Parade (1948): fantastic costumes and Anne Miller with dogs to match her outfits. 

Meet Me in St Louis (1944): a little over-long so we usually watch it in several bursts, but always with the 'Trolley Song' which then filters through the house for days afterwards. 

Hairspray (2007 and 1988): either version as it hasn't dated, but we do like John Travolta's dresses  in the recent remake.

Oklahoma! (1955): mostly for the music as the rest isn't quite as good in the film as it is on stage. 

Singin' in the Rain (1952): the almost perfect muscial, according the Phoebe. 

West Side Story (1961): over-the-top and stagey, but brilliant . 

Some Like It Hot (1959): not technically a musical, but with plenty of music and utterly watchable every time.

So there we are. Which musicals would/do you watch with your mother?

english perspective

I'm reading Frances Spalding's biography of John and Myfanwy Piper and considering English perspective in the landscape and in art. It is a ridiculously heavy book at almost 4lb/1740g (not one to carry in a handbag or to read when your wrists are tired) and not exactly a light read, either. I didn't expect it to be a romp (I don't think Frances Spalding does 'romps' but she does do fantastic biographies) but am struggling slightly under the literal weight and the weight of the prose (record so far: 11 commas in one sentence), and am distracted by the errors (so far Geoffrey Grigson has had two second wives, Epsom College is not a boy's [sic] school...).

On the other hand, there's plenty of great stuff on English art and artists in the 1930s and 40s, more than enough to occupy my thoughts and conversation yesterday when we went to the lovely village of Hurley (not far from Fawley Bottom - or Fawley Bum as they called it - where the Pipers lived for decades).  

 We had lunch at The Olde Bell which dates back to 1135 (that's quite some time-perspective) and is quaint on the outside and a wonderful mix of neo-Georgian style and nooks and crannies on the inside. Great food, too.

Then we walked to the river and I reckoned that Hurley would not have enough 'pleasing decay' to keep John Piper interested; instead it is full of well looked-after old buildings with long, tall flint walls and mature shrubs which offer many lovely time-honoured perspectives.

Plus this: a modern ice-cream boat on the ancient Thames.

 

I was delighted to see that there were even three ducks and a dog to complete the wholly English perspective.

And, now, I'm, ready, to, tackle, the, second, half, of, the, book.

we have a pink kitchen (updated)

...to 'we have roses in our sink in our pink kitchen' because, well, because I can't be bothered with any negative comments about the colour. We love it and we love living with it. Plus, it puts a rosy glow on my cheeks whenever I'm in there - much easier and cheaper than applying blusher!

Here's a Benefit/Urban Decay tester-size pic of the colour, just so you can see it's well and truly and wonderfully pink.

 

edinburgh

Three days in Edinburgh give you:

:: a meeting with a lovely blogger 

:: in a place where coffee and cake are taken seriously (but not too seriously)

:: and a taste of brawn croquettes at a brilliant cafe that sources its brawn (aka pig's head) and all its ingredients locally. I have no doubt that Mrs Rundell has something to say on the subject of brawn in the forthcoming Persephone edition of her book.

:: the chance to wander round the New Town (as in 18th century), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and imagine what lies behind the beautifully proportioned facades and tastefully coloured doors. (The door above was my favourite - I love the very thin gold and black painted border on the door frame. So refined, so Edinburgh.)

:: time to read a book by local hero, Alexander McCall Smith, because even though we have his novels littered all over the house (waiting to be catalogued - see below), I have never read one. Simon has been recommending them for years, so I decided to read an Edinburgh novel seeing as I was there. 

:: an excuse to walk to Scotland Street to see the setting of the book and to discover that AMS was playing a joke on his readers with the address, like  another famous local writer. There is no number 44, just as there is no 221b Baker Street.  

A visit to Edinburgh also gives you:

:: the opportunity to test your fitness up and down hills and famous sets of steps, and a better leg-muscle workout than any treadmill. Plus you get plenty of real weather (wind, rain, sun, fresh air) while you exercise.

:: a knitting shop where you can rest your tired feet for a few moments and buy some beautiful sock yarn...

 

...K1 Yarns is on Victoria Street, a wonderful curving, double-decker street where you can buy cheese, tweed suits, and second-hand copies of books by literary joker, PG Wodehouse, with titles such as Eggs, Beans and Crumpets,

and plenty of ammunition for practical jokers, too.

:: an opportunity to say your tuppence ha'penny worth about the subjects that everyone is talking about, namely the trams/the new Scottish Parliament building/Glasgow/football/where to get the best coffee (this is a coffee city). Not that I know much about any of these topics, but I like to look willing and it doesn't do to keep quiet in a talkative city. 

:: a taste of Scottish art, poetry, architecture in a legal, financial, medical hub. Fascinating.

:: the desire to go back. Soon.