jane brocket

swimmingly

 

swimmimg books on my swimming pool quilt

What a nice word swimmingly is. Such a polite and apt way of saying things are going well, thank you, provided your image of swimming is of someone gliding gently through water in the slow and medium lanes, and not thrashing and splashing in the fast lane. I like swimming, I like it when things are going swimmingly, and I like reading about swimming. Some of my most read and most referred-to books are on pools and water, and they are always soothing and gentle - plashing is another good watery word that springs to mind - as well as inspirational.

I've been rereading parts of Waterlog again. I bring it out every time I swim somewhere that's mentioned in the book. This time it was Ironmonger Row Baths which I recently visited for the first time. Although it's had £16m spent on it since Roger Deakin wrote about it, it's still recognisable. It has wonderful Turkish baths (very streamlined and spartan style with lots of marble) and swimming in the lovely, clean, simple, pale blue and white pool is a treat (and very good value). 

I've also just read Swimming London which is a brilliant little book about well, swimming in London. I already had a list of pools to visit in London but it's just grown massively. I'd love to be hardy enough to swim in the huge unheated London lidos but I'd need one of those foil hypothermia blankets in my bag with my towel and goggles. I'm all for outdoor pools but with some heat, so Hampton and the Oasis pool are more my kind of thing.

While I'm on the pool theme, there are several other books I'd recommend, although I've a feeling I may have already mentioned one or two before (eg Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton, the sad memoir Swimming the Channel by Sally Friedman, and the classic Haunts of the Black Masseur by Charles Sprawson). When I want to wallow in local swimming baths and lido history (and discover many good places that are still open), I refer to the two English Heritage books, Great Lengths and Liquid Assets, which are both packed with great photos, old and recent. I also like Kate Rew's book although I'm not sure outdoor swimming in rivers and lakes etc is really 'wild' but rather a way of rebranding it for a more anxious, 'health and safety' era. And the big book to read by the pool in summer or by the fire in winter is The Story of Swimming by Susie Parr which is a beautifully illustrated history of swimming with bits of memoir and many brilliantly downbeat and deapan photos by her husband Martin Parr.

My new cossie will be put to good use. I'm excited, in a gentle, slow to medium lane breaststroke sort of way.

apple socks

It's been a long time since we had a sock shoot here. Me and my sock model, messing about on the wide windowsill with feet and props and cameras at awkward angles. I can't even remember when I finished the first sock now - all I know is that it's been sitting for ages by the side of the settee reminding me that it needs a twin.

I've had a break from knitting, and when a break comes, it just comes, even if you are part way through a second sock as I was. Not to worry, Phoebe is past the age of having feet that grow and had a good supply of hand-knitted socks to keep her warm while we waited for my enthusiasm for knitting to reheat. 

This is a great self-striping yarn with just two colours that work brilliantly together: apple green and steel grey. They reminded me of when I was doing wine exams and cramming in as much information about grapes and wine as I could. I can still recall Oz Clarke's description of drinking a fresh, clean, lowish alcohol German wine made with Riesling on s summer's afternoon and how it made him think of a cold stainless steel knife cutting through a crisp, Granny Smith apple. 

This is just what these socks made me think of, and every time I picked them up I fancied a glass of Dr Loosen or something similar. I'm now thinking how good a whole series of wine tasting socks would be...

[The yarn is Silver Star by Stray Cat Yarns.]

 

season finale

2014 will not go down in the annals of tulip history as a great year. Not here, at least. There have been some good pickings but nothing like previous seasons.

Wisley didn't do too badly, though.

hello again

tulips at Wisley, would make good wallpaper

I'm so pleased TypePad have sorted out the problems that were the result of an attack. So pleased that I'm posting quickly just because I can. And to say hello and thank you for your patience and for the emails asking where I'd gone and telling me that my email has been hacked. Oh yes, it's all happening here.

once a year day

very hot and very sticky

This is our once a year day. One of the favourite films in this house is The Pajama Game (we are going to see it at the theatre  in June to celebrate end of A levels and the end of school all round) and we love the Once a Year Day song (and dance and wonderful palette). I make hot cross buns once a year, so this is an apt theme tune for this post. This year they were without crosses but with nutmeg and allspice, and they were particularly pillowy and soft and delicious. Seriously, I could eat these all year round but if I did I wouldn't be able to do the high lifts and twirling around that go with the song. 

10 minutes later

(I always use the recipe in Baking with Passion by Dan Lepard but I've never used the mineral water he stipulates - tap water is fine for me, and I don't include dried apricots or mixed spice, and I don't wait two hours for the sponge to rise, and I use less flour. In fact, it's not really his recipe any more.)

forget-me-nots

forget-me-nots and me, in the garden*

One of the greatest pleasures in the world for me is to not have to wear socks. I don't care about make-up, hair colour, manicures, facials, spas, perfume or anything like that - being able go barefoot or in Birkenstocks is my idea of luxury. Every winter I try not to forget that warm weather will come again, that I will be able to wiggle my toes in the fresh air, that my feet will be warm enough to be sock-free. But it's not always easy to remember.

Then, suddenly, one day in spring around the time that something in the air and light tells me it's time to sow flower seeds, that same something also tells me that Birkenstock weather may be coming soon. It happened earlier this week so I acted and bought a new pair (almost forget-me-not blue) from the very efficient Birkenstock website. Then I retrieved my favourite nail varnish from Phoebe (who wrote a lump-in-the-throat post on Monday) and had a little dress rehearsal to remind me how good it feels to go footloose and fancy free.

[I can't believe fashion writers are now hailing the return of the flat shoe as some kind of amazing discovery. Why wouldn't you wear shoes that enable you walk and move like a normal human being instead of staggering about in ludicrous heels that give you blisters and bunions and are the modern equivalent by choice of foot-binding?] 

*ironically, I can't remember how we came to have so many forget-me-nots, as I don't recall growing them from seed and they weren't here when we moved in.

wild bunch

After dismissing the 'anything as long as it's red and yellow' style of tulip planting on Facebook, I looked at today's bunch and saw that, yes, many of them are red and yellow. Speaking too soon and all that, maybe. But not quite.

There are yellow tulips and yellow tulips, red tulips and red tulips, and even red and yellow tulips. So many of the red and yellow tulips I see around are the very simple, tall, upright, classic, child's drawing tulips. Nothing wrong with them, but when you see what else you can get in the way of red and yellow tulips, it's a shame to go with the type that appear in children's books and illustrations and on Easter egg pacakaging and Easter cards (since when did we send those?). There are all sorts of shades of yellow (primrose, butter, lemon etc) and red (vermilion, scarlet, maroon, ruby, port etc) and all sorts of shapes and heights (lily-flowered, double, parrot etc). So many in fact that if you only grew red and yellow tulips, you'd still have brilliantly varied bunches and effects. But I like mixing it up more and find that bright lemon tulips set off deep purple tulips beautifully, and that red work wonderfully with peaches, pinks and oranges, and red and yellow tulips are great on their own. And so it goes on until the end of the season, as I make as many wild bunches as possible.

One day I'm going to write a short and simple book on tulips. It will be colourful, full of details of all the varieties I like, with lots of wild and mixed bunches, tulip stories, and all you need to know about growing them (ie a short section, not like some tulip books which make growing them sound incredibly difficult and fraught). It will not be dry and botanical, or full of lists, or try to cover the whole tulip world, but it will go way beyond red and yellow.

development

The sock's colours are developing very slowly. I almost wish they'd stayed in the watermelon range and had little black dots as well which would make them nicely fruity. I'm not so keen on the new sulphur-yellow shade that's appearing. But, still, it's good to be knitting socks again and this one has gone well with the rugby on TV this weekend. The yarn is Schoppel Zauberball 1391. Modern Knitting, which is a great site for sock yarn, has many more Zauberballs.

toast rack for sale

This not your average eBay toast rack listing, though. This is the famous Manchester Toast Rack which has recently been put up for sale. It was opened in 1960 and Pevsner called it 'a perfect piece of pop architecture' (surely that should have been 'pop-up architecture'?) and it's one of those buildings that is both loved by those who see it every day, and taken for granted by the same people.

I know I did. I went to senior school opposite the Toast Rack (and the circular building with a shallow dome next to it known as the Fried Egg). We walked past it every week wearing our ultra-short gym skirts on our way to the playing fields for our hated hockey lessons (I associate this walk with being utterly freezing and feeling exposed and ridiculous - we also had to walk past the boys' school). The building was there all the time I was growing up and I never really thought about its amazing design although I did like the fact that it housed the Domestic and Trades College (aka Hollings College) which taught cookery, amongst other things. Yet I have never thought to take a photo of it.

This morning I've been reading that MMU has now moved out and the Toast Rack is on the market. I feel I should dash back to Fallowfield with my camera. It's hard to imagine it not being there, a building to look at from the top of the old 42 bus, a landmark to point out to visitors, a novelty design to be proud of, so I really hope it finds a buyer and a new purpose. 

(The Manchester Modernist Society which has some interesting publications has a Toast Rack blog and has published an unofficial history.)

starburst tulips

 

The pointy and lily-flowered tulips make this bunch look like a starburst. The orange, lemon, strawberry, lime colours are very Starburst, too.

The bulb/tulip season is still discombobulated and I've come to conclusion that this year is simply going to be an odd year, and definitely not one of the best. Still, an off-year serves to highlight just how fortunate we are and how much we take for granted in good years. That's my Pollyanna tulip thought for the day.