jane brocket

windowsills

Bought hyacinths with foaming white flowers,

and home-grown hyacinths newly in from the cold, still lime-green and unaccustomed to bright light.

I re-read The Diary of a Provincial Lady recently and have decided I prefer the PL to Mrs Miniver because she is so devastatingly clear-sighted, remarkably well-read, and consistently subversive. If she actually spoke her mind instead of keeping silent and committing her words to her diary, she could have sparked a feminist revolution in the Home Counties. Of course, the hyacinth-forcing/competitive bulb-growing saga is as brilliantly funny as ever. And while I wouldn't take hyacinth tips from the PL, what I do admire is her resolution to try all over again after the year's efforts have failed. It's a triumph of hope over experience - the right way to begin any new year.

 

zest

I like the way Nature kindly provides some much-needed zest and zing at this time of year, particularly in the form of fresh, seasonal lemons. Our local supermarket is selling new Spanish lemons with their leaves on and they look and smell marvellous. Handling them reminded me how much I loved Bronnley lemon soaps when I was growing up; every Christmas I was given a box of four (or, occasionally a lemon soap-on-a rope) and thought they were incredibly, exotically realistic and very extravagant, and I never left a lemon soap in the bathroom after a bath as I felt it was far too good for my younger siblings. A couple of years ago I discovered that the pharmacy in Aldeburgh stocks them, and every time I visit I have to go in to smell them and admire their shape and tissue paper wrapping, and sometimes even buy some. I should really set them aside for when they, like real lemons, are most appreciated, which is now.

scilly season

Isles of Scilly AA Moores (poster for the Empire Marketing Board's 'Home Bulbs for Home Gardens' campaign in the 1920s, now in Manchester City Art Gallery)

It may seem a tad early, but in fact it's already narcissi season on the Isles of Scilly. This company sends out beautifully packaged bunches of incredibly pretty yellow and white narcissi in what, for the rest of the UK, are the depths of winter. I've used them several times and seen the flowers that arrive, so know that they are lovely. It's part of the now much-reduced but very traditional seasonal flower business that has been sending flowers from the Isles of Scilly and Cornwall to London ever since the arrival of the railway. There were once flower trains which brought the freshly picked blooms to the city's markets; I like to imagine passengers could sit in compartments surrounded by sweet-smelling spring flowers, but in fact the blooms were - and still are - very skillfully packed in long, elegant boxes.

Daffodils Harold Harvey (1874-1941)

Parts of Cornwall were also famous for a range of flowers including violets and anemones, and Harold Harvey (good video in link) often painted them in all their profusion and glorious colours. A little while ago there was a fascinating programme on Radio 4 about the history of bulb and flower-growing in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, a business which just about survives despite tough competition from bigger flower-producing countries that sell much more cheaply. It's well worth listening to (it made me want to buy a bunch of violets like the characters in Thackeray's novels) and it can still be heard here.

 

clean and bright

I've said it before, but every 26 December I waking up feeling like a new woman. The world, post-Christmas, is shiny, bright, and full of optimism. And the fresh, clean colours and scent of these 'Paperwhite' narcissi - timed to flowering perfection by the clever friend who gave them to me - are perfect for this brief and enjoyable break-from-routine interlude. 

[The backdrop is an unfinished painting by Tom.]

lights

Finally, light itself. On a speedily built book tree; it was intended as a dummy run, but I am quite happy now to leave it as it is, complete with lights and chocolates. All it needs is a book with a star on its cover at the top, and Tom has promised to create a suitable temporary wrapper.

light verse

[photograph of Paddington Station by John Gay]

The train at Pershore station was waiting that Sunday night
Gas light on the platform, in my carriage electric light,
Gas light on frosty evergreens, electric on Empire wood,
The Victorian world and the present in a moment's neighbourhood.

(Opening lines of 'Pershore Station, or a Liverish Journey First Class' by John Betjeman)

The London-bound train from Pershore comes into the still-spectacular Paddington Station, but there is only electric light nowadays. No-one writes about stations and trains as well as John Betjeman, and in this poem he captures the different lights beautifully. He and John Gay also produced the wonderful Historic Railway Stations of London (1972) which is a much-loved part of my railway book collection.

The historic stations of London are just as atmospheric as ever, particularly in the early evening at this time of year. On Wednesday evening I went up to the new balcony at Waterloo and spent a few minutes gazing at the scene below and beyond; it's like looking at a crowd-filled painting or watching a film, and quite different to looking around at ground level. St Pancras is also lovely (and contains a statue of JB), but my favourite of all is Marylebone, which was also close to JB's heart and which now has a blue plaque dedicated to him.

light grey

Or maybe pale grey, silver grey, or dove grey. I'm knitting a grey hot water bottle cover, and it grew and grew yesterday at Persephone Books where I sat amidst the piles of light grey books and knitted and chatted and met many lovely people. Thank you to everyone who came and said hello and bought books.

I can't go to bed in winter without a hot water bottle; every night as I read in bed my nose freezes but my feet are beautifully warm. I've just re-read Greenery Street which is ideal reading-in-bed material. It's a truly delightful book, a little arch at times perhaps, but charming and very London-specific. Once I'd looked up Walpole Street on a map (Greenery Street in the novel, and where Denis Mackail lived at no 23 when first married), and seen photos of the street, it was so easy to picture Felicity's comings and goings in London (some of my favourite scenes are set in Andrew Brown's aka Peter Jones of Sloane Square). I'm now choosing my next bed and hot water bottle read; I tried Anderby Wold by Winifred Holtby but have decided this is a daytime book. It has the most brilliant opening chapter - quite astonishingly good - but the rest often feels laboured and campaigning, and at times resembles a tract. (A shame because WH was a tremendous force for good, but the politics don't mesh well with the human story in the novel.)

So, what to read next in bed? I'll decide when I'm boiling the kettle tonight.

light fantastic

Richmond Green, 4.40 pm yesterday.

A fabulous address all year round (Virginia Woolf once lived at no.17, so this is the type of dusk she wrote about in her diaries), but particularly beautiful in winter.

light relief

A surprise on my desk this morning (above).

A day at Persephone Books tomorrow.

Mrs Miniver. I could read the opening chapter over and over again and never tire of it. It's short and beautifully formed. It's really a prose poem about the pleasures of home and domesticity. 

Ben Pentreath's blog. In the best possible taste, and often very funny, too.

The Infinite Monkey Cage. I heard it for the first time yesterday. I don't know if it's always as entertaining and thought-provoking, but this edition certainly made me laugh and think. Radio 4 at its best.

Chocolate with sea salt.

light therapy

Still with low light levels and the problems they cause...

:: In the Guardian this morning I read about the light boxes that have been installed at bus stops in a town in northern Sweden in an effort to reduce SAD. It makes me wonder if people will go and stand in the shelters and deliberatley miss buses in order to get some UV rays. They could become hubs of social life; I see coffee and cake stands, mulled wine, a DJ perhaps, all popping up around the bus stops as locals in sunglasses crowd into the shelter and party like it's summer.

:: I tried reading The Emotional Calendar by John Sharp after hearing him speak very sensibly on Radio 4, but the book failed to change anything for me. It contains too many anecdotes, and is oddly superficial considering the author's credentials. The premise is interesting and a fascinating area of study; I'm sure there's a good book waiting to be written on the subject, but this was too upbeat and cheerleading-self-help-positive-style to be really insightful or useful.

:: It might help to arrange a business trip to somewhere warm and sunny with nice spicy food. Simon packed his swimming trunks and a pair of shorts yesterday, and flew off to visit to Kuala Lumpur this week - after he's been to the not-so-warm Shanghai. Friends ask why I don't go with him on these trips, but someone needs to stay with Phoebe and take her to the bus stop in the dark, and pick her up from the bus stop in the dark. She brightens up my day, anyway, and I wouldn't miss that for anything, so I'll just have to wait until she's gone to university before I can gad about in search of unseasonal sun.

:: I'm using the dark to force hyacinth bulbs in vases. No point in not taking advantage of it.

:: And black and white films look so much better in winter when the light and dark and shade seem to come into play more vividly. I just watched Victim (again) which was remarkably subtle and forward-thinking for its time.