yarnstorm

glasgow hide-away

I know Glasgow wouldn't necessarily be on the top of everyone's list of places to hide away and write for a few days. I'm sure others would prefer something a little warmer/prettier or more rural/isolated/unpopulated, but I love coming to places like this to work. I can't imagine being shut up in a quiet place and trying to ransack my imagination when there is nothing to contrast externally with what's going on internally in my mind. Even though I don't get out much when I'm working, I do like to know that there is something happening nearby, as a sort of counterbalance to all the activity in my brain.

I also happen to love Glasgow, with its incredibly confident architecture and characterful streets. I'm most definitely not here to shop or eat out, but I'm here for the buildings. Even though it's very cold and windy, a long walk round the West End of Glasgow is quite a treat and a great antidote to sitting in my room sorting out recipes and book references and wondering how best to pickle limes (as in Little Women). I must have found dozens and dozens of beautiful houses I'd be happy to live in - solid, plush, beautifully designed and proportioned Victorian and Edwardian houses and terraces built in smooth red or pale sandstone, with fabulous wrought-iron fences and gates and stair-rails and all kinds of lovely details, but never showy or over-the-top. And never have I seen such an amazing collection of stained-glass windows in domestic buildings, especially in the big doorways and porches.

It's so easy to start wondering about the people who live or have lived in these houses, some of which reveal a commitment to never knowingly underfurnishing a room (I've also never seen so many paintings/pot plants/massive mirrors/lampshades/pianos as those glimpsed through the windows). In fact, I wanted so much to find out more about West End domestic life, I realised that if I couldn't find a book to satisfy my curiosity, then I would just have to imagine it. And that, I suppose, is how writers of fiction come to their subjects?

But then I came back to my room and returned to a different world. Tomorrow I get time off for good behaviour before going home, and am looking forward to going to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum (itself an amazing building) to revisit the wonderful paintings by the Scottish Colourists such as the one below. And to imagine yet another world of high-ceilinged interiors, elegant women, orange and pink roses and silver tea services...

FCB Cadell 'The Orange Blind' c1927

outside in

We are noticing just how much the dynamics of being at home with three teenagers (Phoebe is a teenager by nature, if not actual age) have changed. Simon has taken two lovely, long weeks off work and we find, amazingly, that we are up and about in the morning before the stay-abeds. Never did I really believe this day would come. But it has, and it means we can do the kind of thing we used to do before we had children. Like take a six-minute train journey to admire a view, get a coffee and then catch the same train back to enjoy the view in reverse. Or plant tulip bulbs in companionable silence. Or be one of the first in to Wisley on a cold and sunny morning to revel in the emptiness and space.

The visit was an exercise in getting out of the house and inhaling some fresh air. So we wandered around looking at the skeleton of the garden, the brownness of it all, the deadness of almost everything. And then we came across the new glasshouse.

Inside we went, and found the most incredible collection of exotic plants and flowers, all lush and stunningly colourful. It was quite amazing to think that in some parts of the world these scenes would actually be outside and not all molly-coddled and expensively maintained under glass.

But after the monochromatic English vegetation outside, it was a treat to see these wonderful orchids and jungly flowers. What a blast of colour and vigour.

What sturdy grace and unseasonal profusion.

And I liked the way the top photos picked up the ghostly outside of another part of the glasshouse next to the bright sky and sun of the real outside.

Once we had been heated up to tropical greenhouse temperature, we went back in the chill English air and, my eyes now attuned to seeing colour, came across some beautiful, brilliant red and gold dogwoods.

There's something to go on the to-be-planted-before-the children-are-awake list.

Of course, they are just saving their energy for New Year's Eve, while we shall be slumped, watching a tape of one of the excellent films in the film noir season on BBC 2 this week (they are on in the middle of the night, both far too late and far too early for us).

Happy New Year to all.

on track

Business jargon, with all its level playing fields and singing from same hymn sheets and things being moved forward, always makes me laugh. Even when I worked for multi-national companies I couldn't bring myself to use these cliches and stuck, instead, to plain language. No wonder I never broke down any barriers, climbed the corporate ladder or got close to the glass ceiling.

And why are things always 'on track'? Never fine, organised, sorted or just plain OK. 'On track' sounds so portentous, so very important. But I suppose that's why it's so frequently said about even the most trivial of concerns. However, this annoying little phrase actually felt quite apt today, even though it was probably more to do with the fact that I was travelling by train and tube and had railway metaphors running through my mind. I still could never say 'on track' out loud in a conversation or even in a frank and open exchange of opinions.

Thanks for your comments on the last post and the great suggestions for Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer (many of which were already either included or on my list) - they have made me feel really good about this book and it was with a spring in my step and echoes of 'on track' in my mind that I went to work in the British Library today to look at fabulous old illustrations and first editions and descriptions of rock buns and birthday cakes.

This morning was one of those days when it's great to travel by train, especially when there is a wreathy mist rising from the football pitch (not level, very uneven) on the opposite side of the tracks, and a brilliantly lit silver birch tree next to my platform. And trains whizzing past and glinting in the sunlight.

And how about this for modern art? It's where layers of posters have been stripped away on a platform at Oxford Circus tube station with amazing results. Like Jackson Pollock meets Rothko meets Ben Nicholson.

Finally, I emerged at St Pancras to see the clock tower of Sir George Gilbert's Scott's fantastic Midland Grand Hotel (1868-77). I can't tell you how happy I am that this is being restored at last and will open in 2009. As long as everything is 'on track', as I am sure the developers are busy telling themselves every day.

I'm already looking for a window of opportunity to visit this amazing building. Must prioritise and diarise asap.

settling down

Life is settling down again. October was an unsettled month; the publication of a book can do that to your life, I suppose. It was exciting, distracting and thought-provoking but I'm glad I can feel some familiar rhythms and patterns coming back. And, nothing daunted, I am getting on with writing the next book.

I'm picking up some threads, too. The crochet flowers are blooming at a modest rate, and I only have to tip all the squares out of my bag to brighten my day and mood. It works with the yarn, too, and I love to see all the bright colours strewn around on the carpet.

The Kim Hargreaves scarf is progressing and the simple lace pattern is very compatible with listening to the radio or watching black-and-white films - most recently Waterloo Road (1944) with Stewart Granger as a London bounder (complete with drama school-style Cockney accent). I had to drop my knitting a few times to concentrate on the amazing period scenes of a sooty, grimy, war-time Waterloo Station - quite a contrast to the gleaming St Pancras International which I visited this week - so beautifully renovated and restored, with a glass roof like an ice sculpture.

It's also good to be reading again. Ted Hughes' letters. Dickens' Hard Times. Dorothy Whipple's short stories. The two lovely Susan Cropper books on crochet and on knitting which sidetrack me into planning all kinds of projects (where, oh where, can I find wide lucite/plastic/polyester bag handles?).

And I know life is more settled because I'm watching the hyacinths grow on the kitchen windowsill.

streets of london

 

I am always acutely aware of the lessening light at this time of year. It gets worse tomorrow when the clocks go back; from now until 21 December I have to work hard to convince myself that the day isn't over at 4pm. I don't like November and December and the countdown to the shortest day, but much prefer January and February because even though they don't have any extra hours of daylight in total, they are at least moving in the right direction with small, but significant, daily increases.

This morning the skies were particularly lowering and as I walked through the streets of Notting Hill I was aware of the need for headlights on cars and indoor lights in houses.

And then I turned the corner into Portobello Road with its fruit & veg market and suddenly my whole outlook was transformed. Despite the fact that some stalls had artificial lights, I was struck by the wonderful, apparently chaotic melee of boxes and piles and arrangements of colours, shapes and textures.

Here was some lovely brightness from glowing peppers, shiny aubergines,

brilliant green herbs against a backdrop of clothes on rails,

pinks and reds and greens and purples and whites and browns and, in one place, a wonderful play on a yellow and green theme.

But this (below) was my absolute favourite 'arrangement' with richly coloured pomegranates flanked by magenta beetroot, greenish-gold mangoes, royal blue crates and scarlet chillis, all set out on the dark, wet pavement.

Even the packing cases looked great.

I wasn't in London to look at a street market even though it did provide a much-needed diversion from sullen skies, but to meet Amy Singer of the inimitable knitty.com for tea and cake (although only one of us indulged in lime and coconut cake at Books for Cooks, and I have to say it was worth it). It was a pleasure to meet Amy whose work with knitty I admire enormously and she was kind enough to give me a copy of her new book which looks excellent.

And then it was back home via the artichokes and sprouts and ginger and apples and radishes, with my spirits lifted and sufficient colour memory to overlook the still grey skies.   

a peek

I had to take some photos of the house today. Funnily enough, it's not something I do too often. Mainly because the camera reveals all sorts of bits and pieces you never noticed before - untidy piles, worn arm rests, tangles of cables, ugly light switches, Alice's mascara marks on a pale bedroom carpet (don't ask me, I don't know how they get there either).

But I was pleasantly surprised to see that the place doesn't look too devastated (I love the Latin verb vastare meaning 'to lay waste' and find it sums it perfectly what children and Romans do to homes). So I thought I'd share a few views with you.

Above is Phoebe's window seat with Stanley the bear and a fluffy rabbit posing gamely. Below is the emerald green bathroom which is so green you have to be sure you are not feeling sea-sick before you venture in.

We painted the ceiling of the other bathroom in a deep pink so that I would have a nice colour to look when I'm wallowing in my bubbles and listening to Alan Bennett. The rubber ducks may look organised today, but usually there is an ongoing game which involves secretly changing their order and positions.

This is the wide kitchen window in front of which I do all my baking.

The 'library' had some disgustingly dark wood panelling so we painted over it - it's now a mouthwatering apple green and I love this room. We tiled the disused fireplace so we could use it for books, and above the panelling we added a bookshelf which goes all the way round the room.

My study holds all my inspiration books, is cluttered and wild,

but the lounge is much emptier and calmer. In theory.

I keep my vintage cake stands and cake plates on top of another bookcase - the arrangement looks like a Wayne Thiebaud painting.

And this is my favourite room, the downstairs loo. I matched the paperbacks with the floor (sparkly turquoise tiles), curtains and towel, and put up an old British Rail train mirror. The room is filled with framed crinoline ladies because I couldn't think where else to hang them and the rest of the family didn't want them where they could be seen by everyone all the time. I've said it before, but they are such philistines...

So there we are. Welcome to my world.

my beady eye

Tom has told me that when you are bowling in cricket you often need a couple of overs (six balls per over) to 'get your eye in', in other words to focus clearly on the line of the ball and the batsman and the stumps before you build up enough accuracy and speed to take a wicket. This concept interests me as I think it's often what happens when you try a new craft - and it was certainly true of this weekend.

I spent two days at the beach in Whitstable learning how to make beaded beads. We were taught by Zitta Smith who makes the most amazingly sculptural, neat and precise beads with seed beads and Japanese delicas, and whose work appeals to me because it looks like a wonderful sweet shop full of tempting colours and whimsical wrappers.

But it took me a while to get my eye in. Although I look at, and admire, my drawer of little beads, I don't often work with them, so I found the scale and the level of expectation took some adjustment. And not only mentally, for my eyes strained to deal with threading the thinnest-ever needles, picking up tiny beads and making small-scale patterns; whenever I looked up the room swam in a rather pleasing beachy/sky/sea blur of pale blues and pinks and sandy browns.

But, as ever at my friend Marilyn's house, it was worth making my eyes re-focus so that I could enjoy the beautiful surroundings. The pale pink lilies, the soft salmon gladioli, the shades of aqua, duck-egg and robin's egg blue everywhere. The textiles, the patterns,

the matching morning glories and tomatoes in the garden. (Tom thought this morning glory looked like a candle with the wax and wick in the centre - a lovely way of seeing it.)

And I even found some inspiration for next summer's toe-nail polish colour. I haven't seen crab apples for ages and they have such rich, vibrant colours that I really should plant a tree just so that I can see the ground beneath it turn vermilion and scarlet with windfall fruit like these.

It was one of those gently creative weekends; there is nothing frenetic or hectic about beading. As we sat around a large table we found that beaded beads are a perfect vehicle for a low level hum of chat punctuated by the occasional screech of laughter. And tea. And chocolate cake. And I had the pleasure of meeting Vanessa who reads the blog and is ultra-talented - children's book illustrator, knitter, traveller and amazing beader.

So where are my beaded beads? Well, I need to tidy them up, string them together, and then they will be shown. In the meantime, I need to get my wordy eye in and get back to work.

 

little england

 

A few years ago, at the very end of the summer holidays, we discovered Bekonscot for the first time. We didn't quite know what to expect, but as soon as we saw the little, old-fashioned figures and houses of the world's oldest model village, we were enchanted.

So now, every year in early September, we go back to Bekonscot, buy ice-creams and wander round this little corner of England that is forever in the 1930s.

This is the most gentle, charming and endearing family attraction. It's exactly as its creator intended it to be when it first opened to the public in 1929 and every detail remains faithful to the period.The ladies wear hats, the men wear caps, the gentry drink Pimms while the gardeners toil away in the vegetable garden, schoolboys play rugby and girls in gymslips play netball. Children crouch on bridges to watch the trains go by, painters and decorators read newspapers, and ladies' umbrellas are nearly blown away.

There are beautiful Arts and Crafts houses, terraced houses, and even a thatched cottage whose roof goes up in smoke every fifteen minutes. There are little back gardens with washing on the line and men drinking pints of beer and ladies sitting in deckchairs. There is a model of Enid Blyton's house which was just outside Beaconsfield (it no longer exists) - but sadly no model of EB in her porch with her typewriter on her knee. There is a swish, white, Art Deco airport, a Victorian bandstand at the end of the pier, a Tudor House and a ruined castle. There are railway stations, shops, churches, pubs, schools, hotels and a population of 3,000 brilliantly expressive little figures.

Bekonscot is full of whimsy and humour. The shops and businesses boast names such as Chris P. Lettis (greengrocer), Ivan Axe (wood merchant), A. Jerry (builders) and Phil D. Churn (milkman). A boy in a red shirt is chased by a bull. A knotted sheet hangs down from the top floor window of the gaol. Another boy waits in Casualty with a saucepan stuck on his head. There are even some engagingly politically incorrect, but authentic details, such as a chimps' tea party at the Zoo, a fox which will always elude the horses and hounds, and a garage attendant filling a car with petrol while smoking a cigarette.

It's 1930s England preserved in aspic, and quite delightful for being stuck in its time-warp.

sweetness and light

When the children were tiny I knew I wanted to find somewhere we could go to on holiday year after year. I liked the idea of returning to a place that was special to us all, somewhere we could slip instantly into relaxation mode and feel at home, somewhere we could build an archive of shared memories and anecdotes and details.

I really had no idea where it would be as neither Simon nor I had any connections with the seaside (it had to be beside the sea) and neither of us had somewhere we'd known since our own childhood. We tried Cornwall, Devon and Dorset but couldn't find what we were looking for. 

And then one grey and windy summer's day ten years ago we took Tom, Alice and Phoebe to Aldeburgh for fish and chips. We sat on the wall of the shelving pebbly beach and faced the ever-changing sea and sky and shared our chips with the cheeky seagulls. And we fell in love with the charm of the town, the bleakness and simplicity of the landscape and the edge-of-the-worldliness atmosphere.

We've been back again and again, and still Aldeburgh offers the sweetness and light we were looking for. We've stayed in many different places in the town, but this was the first time I've wanted to move into a rented house permanently. In fact, it was so conducive to domesticity that one of the first things I did was buy three bunches of wonderful dahlias when we visited the utterly fabulous gardens of Helmingham Hall (an unbelievable £1 a bunch) and arrange them in the living room.

Inspired by these flowers and the general homeliness, we visited Woottens, our favourite plant nursery, to buy some plants to take home, including some 'David Howard' dahlias which I've been searching for for a while (lovely burnished orange flowers with dark, bronze foliage). As the house didn't have a garden we kept the plants in the wash-room - a wash-room to beat all other wash-rooms I've ever known, it must be said - and I spent inordinate amounts of time simply enjoying the effect in here.

This would make a perfect flower-room, I thought.

But the most stunning view was from our first-floor living room and it was best enjoyed with a glass of cold and fruity rose to match my dahlias and my husband (above). I was enthralled by the way that three wide strips - the beach, the sea and the sky - could offer so much drama and variation. One day we would have a calm and glittering silver sea and the next we'd be watching rough, brown, crashing waves.

The sky changed by the hour, and the clouds and the colours offered us brilliant wide-screen entertainment all week.

And I felt so at home that I was able to hand-quilt all my quilt while I listened to Leonard Cohen and the children roller-skated up and down the beach path, queued for fish and chips and designed ridiculous board games.   

Sweetness and light, indeed. 

re-discovery

I find it hard to explain why I love the gentle, pale, bleached and weathered landscapes of the west coast of France. I think it may be that my tastes were formed when I spent several very happy summers near St Nazaire on exchange programmes and looked at eveything with my impressionable teenage eyes and sensibility. Later, when I was at university, I had a life-changing summer working as a courier on a campsite in Brittany and grew to love the rocky coastline, the pale grey houses, the sparseness - and especially the sunsets with their unexpcted explosions of colour at the end of the day.

So going back with yet another set of eyes was always going to be interesting. And I've come to the conclusion that I love the simplicity and neutrality of the overall colour scheme because it forms a beautiful, understated backdrop and makes me look for colour.

I think I might suffer from colour fatigue if I visited a permanently vivid and bright place - my eyeballs may very well swivel in their sockets with all the stimulus - so I find the clouds, the mists, the soft whites and greys soothing, and the perfect foil for the splashes of colour which pop up everywhere if you look carefully and take the time to absorb. 

Every market has a stand selling brilliantly coloured, chalky, saturated zinnias. The bunches are glorious mixes of tangerine, lime, magenta and violet. They are complemented by buckets of scarlet and peach gladioli, and tubs of cerise and pure white cosmos. 

As well as the pink and lemon and raspberry and maroon and carmine and cranberry hollyhocks growing everywhere, there are lovely bignonias trailing over the brilliant white walls, creating exuberant shocks of orange and apricot.

Spices at the local market offer rich, burnished ochres and golds and vermilions,

and a lemon tart can always be relied upon to inject colour into a rainy day.

Pineau des Charentes, a wickedly alcoholic mix of unfermented grape juice and brandy, looks like molten jewels when poured into small, heavy glasses,

The traditional door-knocker (a 'hand of marriage', often with a ring on the fourth finger) can be found in weather-beaten white (above) or a more emphatic viridian. (Simon wanted to bring one home but I started to have Roald Dahl/Tales of the Unexpected-style visions of the hand becoming real and shaking mine as I gripped it...)   

The fortninght on the Ile de Re was a lesson in colour appreciation. My older eyes recognised so much, but saw far more. It's good to know you can teach an old dog new colours.