A day out, and enjoying the little things

Yesterday, for a change, instead of doing my grocery shopping, cleaning, running the washing machine, etc, as per any normal Saturday, I decided to take myself off for a day out.

That makes it sound rather momentous, which I suppose it isn't really.  But in an odd way it felt as though it was.  Life is short and sometimes hard, and at the moment there seem to be so many troubles and disasters in the world outside my own little life, most of which I am powerless to do anything about.  On Friday one of my colleagues quoted "Firefly" at me, and the knowledge that I'm working with a fellow-Browncoat made me grin for about the next hour.  Little moments like that can uplift a day, and sometimes, at times like these, one can simply miss them as they pass by.  I don't think it is hiding one's head in the sand, to want to see some good amid the gloom.  The pleasure those simple few words gave me outweighed quite a few rough moments during the working day, and it reminded me how seldom one indulges oneself to stop and look at the good things as they flash by.  I want to find things to give me hope and moments of pleasure, to counteract the knowledge of so much violence and cruelty, so much sickness and sadness.  To have those tiny flickers of satori, even if of the most simple and minor nature.  To say "Give me some happiness, give me some tiny epiphanies, as I slog through this week, this month, this year.  Let my life be about the journey, not the goal; let the journey not be devoid of good things, and let me have the time and the energy to notice them."

So I didn't do any of my duties, I was self-indulgent, and I enjoyed the simple things.  I had a lie-in with a book, and proper coffee and hot buttered toast for breakfast, and then a leisurely shower with some new smellies from Lush; and I went to the V&A.

Part of the Tube was out of action, so I took the bus to Hammersmith.  I sat on the top deck and watched autumn leaves go by, and people on the Chiswick High Road doing their shopping or having coffee out.  It had poured first thing, but by late morning it was bright and sunny, and all the cafes and restaurants seemed to be doing a roaring trade.  At Hammersmith I changed onto the Piccadilly Line and went through to South Ken, and went and had an early lunch at the Kensington Creperie.  My neighbours at the next table were French, and terribly Gallic with it, noisy and emphatic and talking with their hands, which certainly added to the ambience.  I had a savoury crepe with sundried tomatoes and olives and pesto and cheese, a glass of cold lager, and then (because I am a pig) a second crepe filled with cherry jam and dark chocolate chips.  At the other neighbour table were a group of students all eating dessert crepes and huge ice-creams, all of which they religiously photographed and tweeted before eating.  They weren't as talkative as the French group, but at one point I did hear one of them say "So are we going shopping or are we going to meet Lee at the Natural History Museum and help him pick up girls?"  The general consensus seemed to be for shopping.  I wondered why Lee needed help picking up girls in the NHM?  And is the NHM a pick-up shop? - have I been missing a trick?  I wonder which museum is the pick-up shop for forty-somethings?   

I walked up the road belching in a most unfeminine manner, and had an afternoon of Constable paintings, Indian sculptures and wonderful fashion.  No pick-ups in the V&A, just lots of food for the mind and the eyes.  The current Constable show has a lot of his little oil sketches, which are marvellous, and a lot of instances of a preparatory sketch, an oil sketch, a full-size study and a final painting, all shown side-by-side; fascinating.  There are also a lot of his copies from other artists, including a drawing he did when he was about 18 which is endearingly bad.  Even Jove nods, and even John Constable had to start somewhere.

I wandered after that through the big galleries of historic Indian arts and crafts and scultpures, and finished up in the fashion section.  It was too late by then to go round the special display of wedding dresses through the ages, so I just went on mooching.  There's something very satisfying about seeing perfect cutting and elegant styling in something like a suit or a coat; and of course the party dresses and cocktail outfits and so on are always gorgeous.  At the moment one of the 1940s cases has two Utility suits, one for a lady and one for a gentleman; it's salutary to realise how elegant, to modern eyes, this supposedly unflattering clothing seems.  I would have had a deal of trouble, in times of rationing, being a distinctly larger lady these days; just to make a neat knee-length Utility skirt for a big pair of hips like mine would need an extra half-yard compared to a "standard" size, and that would have meant saving up coupons a bit longer.  But when one tends to dress, as I do, like a parrot, with eclectic colours and patterns and styles thrown-on anyhow, it's fascinating to study the careful colour choices, precision of cutting, and clarity of line and silhouette of earlier fashions; and maybe I can learn something from them, too.

Then home, with very tired feet.  My new shoes (thank you, Hotter!) are wonderfully comfortable, but even in the best footgear Museum-foot strikes eventually.  So I finished off my indulgent day by eating a big bowl of noodles and an apple, writing up my diary, watching a little idle tv and having an early night.  I then slept for over ten hours.

It's no good pretending otherwise; I am tired.  This has been a stressful, draining year for me.  Over the next few months at work I need to get my head round the changes in my role, and in my spare time I need to focus on getting some rest, eating healthily, and doing things that make me feel happy rather than duties that make me feel harrassed and strapped for time.  And carry on with my writing, of course.

First attempts with new toy...

So: I bought myself a cheap toy camera.

I've been struggling for a while with the frustration of not being able easily to get photographs in a form that was electronic and hence uploadable.  I found I could order copies of my films on cd rom, but the cost of that mounts up, to say the least, and I realised that fairly soon I would have spent the price of a bottom-of-the-range tinny digital camera, given just how bloody cheap they are getting these days.

So I took myself to Boots - the big Boots in Westfield (Westfield shopping centre, aka The Good Ship Axiom from "Wall-E") - and waited ten minutes until the chap who knew about cameras was free, and I bought one.

Chap-who-knew-about-cameras was charming and enthusiastic and an all-round nice friendly guy.  It was rather like being served by a young Will Smith, only from west London not the USA.  He really did know about cameras, too, and he gave me lots of advice, talked me through all the features, and was perfectly happy to accept it as I worked my way round to buying one of the cheapest ones they sold.

So now I have a little toy.  I've begun trying to get used to it and to experiment with what it will and won't do well.  Initial examples of things it seemingly won't do well are above, but there are some slightly better things to come...  And it's early days yet.

After buying a camera I fled in shock to the tapas bar in one of the huge atria, and had gambas al ajillo and a glass of tinto di verano, yum, good food, yum; and then treated myself to the dvd of the director's cut of "Bladerunner", in a sale, some sensible black cotton trousers, likewise in a sale, and a packet of halva.  Yum again.  I felt like the last of the big spenders by then; new hardware and trousers and a dvd and lunch out?  Shocking.

I'll post some more of the photos in a bit.

Cheese sauce and odd coincidences

It always pleases me when I find I have something in common with someone I admire.  If I’m reading an interview with a musician or an actor and they say their favourite holiday destination is the Greek Islands, I think “Ha!  If I were ever stuck in a lift with you, we could talk Greek Islands to while away the time until help arrived.”  Believe me, I can talk Greek Islands till the cows have come home, poured a drink and settled down with their feet up to watch Mastermind...  (Of course, the down-side of this is the slightly yuk feeling one has when one reads an interview with someone and they turn out to have politics that make one wince, or to be deeply evangelical over something one feels cringey about (like loving “Hello” magazine), or they are simply full of sh*t.  It isn’t quite so bad if they turn out to be nice but as thick as a plank, but still rather flattening to one's admiration.  Luckily, admiring musicians and opera singers, actors and artists, ballet dancers and writers and film directors and architects and the like, I tend to find myself more interested in someone when I read an interview, instead of less).   

Anyway; I will try and steer this rambling onwards to the point.

I went home last night and looked in the refrigerator, and saw a random range of vegetables, and a lot of cheese.  I thought “Mmm, macaroni cheese with veg!” and I began preparing the random veg and putting them on the hob in a pan of melted butter to soften, with salt and pepper and about ten cloves of crushed garlic.  The mushrooms soaked up a lot of the garlicky butter, so I added more butter, because to make macaroni cheese with veg you need enough melted butter in the pan to make the white sauce around the veg – they then cook in it (it saves on dishes). 

But then I opened the flour jar; and there was nothing in it.  Oh drat.  No flour = no roux = no white sauce.  Rats!   

I didn’t have any yoghurt or any eggs, so couldn’t do my usual gluten-free cop-out cheesy sauce.    I didn’t have any cornflour, so couldn’t cheat that way either.  I had a pan of butter, garlic and lovely veg braising sweetly away, and another pan of macaroni bubbling merrily beside it.  I swore, being me; but swearing didn’t solve the problem.  I could have thrown the lot out and ordered a takeaway.  I can afford to do that, occasionally, these days.  But it does so offend my pride as a cook, to chuck out perfectly good food; and I knew nothing I could order was likely to taste as good as that garlic smelled.  Good evening, Problem, what do you need?  Problem, meet Solution.

I put couscous in it instead, and went ahead exactly as if it had been flour.

The result was actually very tasty, if a bit heavy on the carbohydrates.  Couscous does not make a roux, but it soaked up some of the butter, and it cooked into a sort of creamy, grainy mush when I added liquid.  There were so many good flavours in there, what with the garlic and broccoli and sugar peas and mushrooms, that by the time I’d slung on some more pepper and half a cup of grated strong cheddar cheese I was almost pleased with my invention.  I don’t think I’ll be serving it to company any time soon, as the texture was fairly odd (& remember, I’m one of those strange people who like cornmeal grits and tofu).  Think cheesy gruel with vegetables, on macaroni.  But, heck, it was food.  That's always an improvement on no food, after all.

And then I was reading an interview online, in my lunch break today, and I found the subject talking about problems and solutions and being able to make a meal out of whatever is in the ‘fridge.  I had to laugh.  I love bizarre coincidences. There have been occasions in my life when odd coincidences have brought me real blessings.  I'd like to hope this one may - I sent GY to yet another agent a couple of days ago.  Please, please, please, let me get what I want...

So anyway, now I know, if I’m ever stuck in a lift with the actor in question, I can wipe the embarrassed stars from my eyes and talk cheese sauce recipes with him.  Mmm. 

A pretty busy few days

It was a hectic weekend, and Monday was pretty heavy too. Good hectic, in the main, but it has still left me feeling a little wambly-legged with tiredness. Never mind – I can get early nights for the rest of the week now, and I’ve had a bloody good time in the meantime. Of course, trying to have a rest during the week isn’t always feasible, but I'm doing my best, round the edges of the busy "start of the school hols" patch at work.

Saturday I met my mum for lunch and the terrific new English National ballet programme of ballets by the late Roland Petit. Sunday I went to the Ealing Global Music Festival in Walpole Park (a sort of one day mini-WOMAD) and danced my feet off all afternoon and evening. Monday was unpleasantly frantic at work, a classic “we’re short-staffed and the ‘phones won’t stop ringing” day, but in the evening I met my stepmum Jane for supper and the last Harry Potter movie – oof. At the London IMAX, so double oof.

I am now reeling slightly from the amount of activity; a lot of talking, a lot of eating out, three late nights, lots of dancing and a sort of cultural information-overload.

Mum and I found a new place to eat near Covent Garden, which is always good news; a small but pleasant bistro with the unimaginative name of “Bistro”. Mixed meze, pancakes stuffed with creamed spinach and goats cheese, salad, ice cream, a glass of wine; all very straightforward stuff, fresh and healthy (well, apart from the ice cream) and a bill of under £15 each.

ENB can be very happy with their Petit triple bill. Some of the newspaper reviews have tended towards the sniffy, but to me as a common-or-garden ballet-goer this was a cracking programme, full of energy and drama; the only thing that really looked dated was the copious amount of onstage smoking…

It was hard to believe, watching Erina Takahashi’s shy tenderness in “L’Arlesienne”, that the last time I saw her in action was as a practically fire-breathingly evil Odile in the Black Swan pas de deux. Her partner was the febrile, sexy Esteban Berlanga, doing a good line in wild-eyed distraction and frenetic leaps. Around and behind their doomed-love-story, a small corps de ballet dances lovely, folk-dance inflected rounds and chains that somehow convey both the contentment and the blinkeredness inherent in a tight-knit community.

“Le Jeune Homme et la Mort” brought another terrific young bloke on stage; Anton Lukovkin, a handsome young man with an unusually pointy chin, hurling himself with abandon around the stage in a pair of off-the-shoulder dungarees. It was short but very exciting stuff, and a tour-de-force for the two leads.

I’m not very familiar with Petit’s work. I’ve never seen either of these first pieces before, though I saw “Carmen” (the final piece in this bill) once on television when I was about twelve. I could remember being impressed then, but no particular details of what I was impressed by. Part of what grabbed me, then as now, was the sheer theatricality of it all; the sexiness, the aggression, the high drama of the final duet-cum-duel. My exposure to ballet back then had been very much of the order of “Swan Lake”, “Fille”, “Nutcracker”… Not chic-yet-vampy women in corsets standing on chairs and shouting, and certainly not erotic violence and murder.

I can only begin to imagine the impact this had on a London audience accustomed to the delicacy and classicism of the pre-Macmillan-era Royal Ballet… Not just the unabashedly sexual pelvic movements, but the furious energy, the stamping of feet, grinding out of cigarettes, slashing high leg extensions, all must have seemed like the proverbial bolt from the blue.

I loved in particular the way that even in the central love scene, as Carmen and Don José move through their highly sensual pas de deux, there’s a constant undercurrent of muted aggression that suggests their essential incompatibility as effectively as any amount of speech could do. A corking good show altogether.

Sunday afternoon was spent in the boiling heat, with a large water bottle, a couple of pints of Hobgoblin and an assortment of the usual Festival Food – Thai street nibbles, a crepe, some popcorn, veg curry, fruit sticks with chocolate sauce… Plus bluegrass, ska, Cuban rock, Balkan gypsy music, Hungarian traditional dance and Congolese soukous. Great dancing stuff, and one filthy, sweaty, tired and very cheerful Dent at the end of it all.

To finish off on Monday night with “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part two” was a very welcome finale to the weekend (especially coming after a pretty trying day at the office). It’s excellent; fun, exciting, a bit emotional, good battle scenes, cliff-hangers and great special effects. It was my first time at an IMAX, too – corblimey, now that’s what 3d cinema is good for! My only problem was that Jane and I had been to Sagar in Catherine Street first and eaten an enormous supper of aloo chaat and spicy creamed wheat and dosas, and super-rich creamy mango lassis, and we were both absolutely stuffed by the time we got to the cinema, trying not to entertain our neighbours with burping - such a ladylike pair we are...

At least yesterday evening I stayed in, wrote, and flopped. Pushing on with the revision of “Ramundi’s Sisters” I’ve noticed the spacing in my typing is all to pot. Between full stop and capital letter I've got one space here, two spaces there; it’s all over the place. Trying to make it uniform must be just about the most boring job out, but it has to be done. I like to know I’m producing clean copy. Chuntering through it I had a sudden good idea for solving something that has been bugging me in something else; it necessitates a bit of a rewrite there as well, but what the heck. So I think I’ll have a look at that tonight, for a change. And then an early night.

Memories of Crete...

This was my lunch on my last day in Crete - Mythos beer, tzatziki, fresh sesame-seed bread and a vegetable frittata... Good, simple, tasty food, delicious, straightforward and honest. Eaten sitting under a vine arbour, a few yards from the sea. Oh, memories...

Panic over

...at least until the next one.

Journey down to Kent - smooth as butter. Journey back, last night, smooth as butter, but very slightly delayed (10 mins late, approx). In between, a lot more snow. Very pretty. Very cold! But I had a lovely weekend with my mum, set up and decorated a seven-foot Christmas tree, and hauled a large quantity of shopping home for her with an old-fashioned wheely basket (up a fairly steep hill, in the snow - great calorie-burning activity).

This year's Christmas tree is gorgeous, tall and columnar in shape. It's always a real tree, and we decorate it into a vast pile of ecumenical/pagan/multiple-world-view symbols. It features plenty of angels and stars, and regular baubles, tinsel and fairy lights, as well as dragonflies, birds, flowers, fruit, a donkey, a flying horse, several musical instruments, a mirror, miniature hatboxes and crackers made by my aunt, candles, feathers, mushrooms, a Caga-Tio and a goat.

Back at work for a few days now, and it looks as though the weather may turn everything upside down again for Christmas - but so long as I see my family and we all get a break and a rest together, I'm not bothered by anything else. Peace on earth and goodwill to all don't come from Sainsburys, after all...

Harry Potter and the edible hat

I had a lovely birthday evening, despite the bitterly cold weather. Met up with The Geek, had supper out and a good natter and went to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One” in Hammersmith.

“Harry Potter” was excellent; dark and scary, as it was bound to be, but with a good balance between plot exposition, unhappy teenage emotions, and things blowing up. It looks great, delivers plenty of thrills and is genuinely upsetting at times. The three young leads have gradually shaped up into capable actors and now they virtually carry the film, with all the big name actors having little more than cameo roles to do. The design and special effects were splendid. In short, it’s cracking good stuff.

Prior to that, we had a meal in a South Indian Vegetarian restaurant down the road, called Sagar; a proper Bhel Poori house, with real Indian goodies and Mumbai beach food on the menu. I could have eaten the entire menu twice over – bhel poori, dosas, idlis and so on (Dent drools quietly into her keyboard at the memory). I had the paper dosa masala; it was twice the size I expected and absolutely scrumptious (if messy – I was still licking sambar off my fingers on the way to the cinema).

My paper dosa, unlike those I’ve seen served elsewhere, came not as a neat scroll, but spiralled into what I can only describe as a giant edible wizard’s hat. Most appropriate. It was perfectly crisp and savoury, and the sambar, coconut chutney and potato and veg masala (think colcannon, but spicy) were plentiful and tasty. Proper tart tangy lassi, too. I can’t wait to go back.

More snow today; I was planning to go down to Kent this weekend but have had to cancel as there are virtually no trains going that way at all, and severe delays on those that are. My mum and stepmum are both going slightly cabin-crazy, cooped in their respective houses with eighteen-inch snowdrifts packed round the doors, and Big Bro is equally frustrated with the road outside his flat a sheet of ice and a publishers' assignment at HMS "Victory" cancelled because the photographer can't make it. I must get them all up to London for a day out when the weather improves, and take them for bhel poori in Hammersmith.

Wednesday night is...

...(or rather was)

Christmas Cake Night.

My mother's old Christmas Cake recipe - one of those handed-down things, tweaked slightly over the years and with odd marginal notes - makes the best rich fruit cake I know. If I ever get married, that's my wedding cake recipe. If I ever have a child, or get asked to be a godmother, it's my christening cake recipe. It's basically masses and masses of fruit stuck together with a wee bit of cake and then fed spoonfuls of brandy for a couple of weeks. Is your mouth watering yet? It should be.

It is also pretty easy to make. Almost everything comes in batches of 6 ounces. 6oz sultanas, 6oz raisins, 6oz cherries, 6 oz chopped peel or dried cranberries, 6oz butter, 6oz sugar. 7oz plain flour. 3 eggs. 2 oz whole almonds. 1 teaspoonful mixed spice. That's it.

Last night, a bit late this year, was Christmas Cake Baking Night.

First you prepare the cake tin. Mine is Victorian, a family heirloom; deep and solid and made of blackened wrought iron, it looks more like a piece of steam engine, but it's a cake tin to dream of. Grease it, very lightly. Line it with trimmed baking parchment or greaseproof paper and tie a thick layer of folded newspaper around the outside. Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 3 or the equivalent.

Next, prepare the ingredients. Get the butter and eggs out of the refrigerator. Sort all the dried fruit (checking the raisins and sultanas for stalky bits, chopping the glacé cherries, unsticking anything that is stuck together in lumps). Then blanch and halve the almonds and add them to the dried fruit. Next, weigh the flour, mix in the mixed spice, and sieve them both together. Then, cream together the butter and molasses sugar, mix in the eggs one by one, then add fruit-and-nuts and flour in alternating spoonfuls, stirring with a knife.

As you stir, make a wish. Call the other members of the household to stir the cake and make a wish. Then dollop the mixture into the cake tin, level off and hollow the middle slightly, and pop it in the oven, on the bottom shelf. Turn the oven down a scrap, straight away. After an hour, turn it down another scrap, to about Gas Mark 2.

Then wait.

It takes anything from three and a half to four and a half hours in total. Slowly the house fills with the glorious mixed smells of spices, fruit and hot newspaper. It's a classic smell that evokes childhood and the anticipation of Christmas as little else can do. On the occasions when it takes 4 1/2 hours (like last night) one is practically blotto with tiredness by the time the cake comes out. Then you have to wait another half an hour before it can be safely turned out of the tin. Do not be tempted to turn it out immediately! - it will sag unbecomingly about the midriff, or worse, come apart altogether. I've already got one saggy midriff, i don't need another.

Leave it to cool overnight, and in the morning, wrap in greaseproof paper and stick down with sellotape (or better still masking tape, which will undo and restick several times without tearing the paper). A couple of days later, unstick the tape, unfold the paper, prick the top surface of the cake gently with a fine-tined fork, and drizzle a dessertspoonful of brandy into the top, very slowly. Do this another two or three times at intervals of three or four days.

Take the cake out of the paper. Coat it with warmed sieved jam. Cover it with marzipan. Leave it out overnight to dry. Ice with royal icing. Leave overnight to dry. Decorate, in whatever way you fancy (the year I was eight, it had a pink plastic ballerina on top; the following year, for equality's sake, a toy tank in a green and brown iced battlefield diorama...).

Bring forth, show off, cut in slices. And eat.

A packed week

Well, this has been a surreal week. Mostly good, except for the house being broken-into on Wednesday evening. It sounds surreal even to say it. But it truly would have been a good week if it hadn’t been for the burglary. Even that has a good side, for me at least, because mysteriously but blessedly my bedroom door alone withstood the crowbars and did not get broken down, so I didn't get robbed and trashed.

I'd spent the weekend in Kent, down at my Mum’s. We had a splendid afternoon in a nature sanctuary near Sandwich Bay and went to a Food Fair where we bought and ate far to much in the way of gorgeous edibles from all over Europe; biscuits, mustard, onion chutney, smoked garlic, sweets, cider, mead, vegetables, bread, cake, pies, nuts, wine, olives…

On Sunday I went to a fabulous performance of “Tristan und Isolde” at the Festival Hall, with the sort of cast one could die dreaming of, including a fantastic American tenor named Gary Lehman who I’d never heard of before but will now watch out for. You wait years for a good Wagner tenor and then two turn up! – what with this chap and Stuart Skelton, I have the happy thought that Tristan, Siegmund at al are safe and secure for another generation. Well, a happy thought for a person with tastes like mine, anyway – I do realise not everyone cares a hoot if there are any good heldentenors about…

On Monday I went to a funny and touching Farewell Talk by someone at Kew who is retiring after 40 years (& who will be much missed). Then I had fish and chips, another good thing in my book. Tuesday I actually went home and cooked my own supper, finished re-reading “The Enchanted April”, and had an early night. On Wednesday I went with three colleagues for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Tropical Nursery with one of the Kew diploma students, which was fab. The Tropical Nursery is a simply gorgeous place packed to the rafters with, as the name suggests, tropical plants, of every kind imaginable including the very beautiful and the very weird.

That evening I’d managed to pick up a returned ticket for an Open Rehearsal at the Royal Ballet, so I then charged into the west End, eating sarnies on the tube, and spent an hour and a half watching Kim Brandstrup working on his new ballet with Ed Watson and Leanne Benjamin, two of my very favourite dancers. Then I went home and found the front door hanging wide open, the lock busted, Jennie standing in the hallway trying not to hyperventilate, and the place in chaos.

The front door had been broken open with a crow bar and so had Jennie’s bedroom, while Bethan’s room, where the door doesn’t even close properly, far less lock, they had simply walked into and turned upside down. They’d had a damned good go at my door as well, but it has a stouter lock and somehow it withstood the assault, though half the door frame has been ripped off. There was a heck of a mess everywhere and the girls had both had all their small portable valuables, like laptops, i-pods, jewellery and so forth, taken.

We were like three shell-shocked soldiers, incoherent with disbelief and stress. Jennie’s boyfriend Andy came straight over when she called him, and was a rock, as was Beth’s brother, who she had been out with for the evening. As for me, I had to be my own rock, but I’ve had plenty of practice at that, after all.

We were up till about 3 am, what with ‘phone calls, hysterics, and then police and more police… Matters were made worse by the fact that neither of the others had ever been a victim of a crime before, so they hadn’t a clue what to do or what would happen. I felt a little weird saying “Oh, I have, several times...”. Purse stolen x3, Assaulted x2, Home broken-into x1, Bicycle stolen x1. It’s interesting, in a horrible way, to realise the feelings of insecurity and vulnerability that come after being robbed or attacked don’t get any easier with the greater experience. I still feel like a jelly whenever I think of it, and I didn’t lose anything… I also seem to have a sort of survivor’s guilt; I ought to be delighted that my room wasn't entered, but it’s really quite uncomfortable to be the only one who didn’t lose anything.

Then more hassles the next day (mercifully I was told I could take the day off); trying to get some sense out of the landlady, finishing clearing up, trying to have a rational conversation about something this upsetting, getting a new Chubb lock fitted on the front door, and generally trying to get our respective heads around things. As well as the mess there was fingerprint powder everywhere, which turns out to be strangely clingy stuff; I have a towel thick with it in my washing basket now.

I also got mistaken for a bloke while queuing outside the public loos at Sainsburys, when I went out to get some yoghurt and a time switch for my big lamp. Grr; talk about adding insult to injury.

It always baffles me when I am mistaken for a man. I’m a bl**dy double-D cup, for crying out loud. I do not expect to have to say “Actually I don’t use the gents, I am a woman”, and nor should any woman with good, big, perky boobs. Like mine.

So yesterday was spent getting things sorted out, and then in the evening I made myself go out, as it was my one chance to see my Aunt Juliet, my darling Dynamo-Auntie from Oz. She was in London for two tourism-packed days; she’s now in Paris, then on to Venice, then Florence, and then a week on the Nile before she flies home to Adelaide again in three weeks time.

She’s my favourite aunt, as she was my late father’s favourite sister, and she never seems to change; although we only ever see one another every three or four years, I always spot her instantly. The exact same spruce, cropped-haired, colourful figure as ever came bounding towards me and, keyed up as I was, I nearly cried as we hugged. Juliet was the perfect person to see, full of warmth, common-sense and humour. We had a stiff drink followed by a light supper, and we talked and talked and talked.

And then - I went to a concert. I was determined to hold out against the urge to hurry home and check everything was safe. I had booked a ticket and I was going to use it, god damn it.

I was rather surprised when “Finlandia” made me cry, as normally I find it buoyant, rousing stuff. Something to do with being at such an emotional pitch, and all the timps, and having seen Juliet, and talking with her about my Dad. The Beethoven was lovely (good grief, Helene Grimaud is so small; I never expected to see a pianist so tiny) and the Lemminkäinen symphony (if it isn’t technically a symphony it might as well be) was simply superb. Dear Philharmonia, knocking my socks off once again. And of course, the house was all fine when I got home.

I'm planning a quiet weekend, though. I think I ran on pure adrenaline for twenty-four hours straight; I have felt completely shattered today. I know this sense of anxiety will pass, and the best thing I can do to help it is to be gentle with myself, and as normal as possible in my life. In the name of which, on with the weekend motley, and homeward with me, via M&S for some groceries and perhaps a bottle of wine – I think we all deserve a drink.

The last few days...

The glorious hot weather has broken thoroughly and we’ve had a lot of rain in the last couple of days, which is probably no bad thing as the soil in my little garden was as dry as dust. I haul cans of water and promise it further doses of compost come autumn, but in the meantime it is still basically London clay with a lot of stones, and it bakes hard as cement in next to no time. Mother Nature waters things a lot more effectively than I, anyway.

As for the last few days; well, “Pearl Fishers” was indeed hokum, with tumty-tum music and an inordinately silly plot even by operatic standards. Add on the fact that two of the three principals had throat infections, and the fact that my friend Alan hated it and went on about it at every opportunity, and you have a rather mixed evening. The best thing about it was the production itself, which was an intelligent and coherent updating and had a magnificent set and stage designs. Though I must admit the thought of the lovers escaping to consummate their passion soaked in petrol was a little yucky…

Saturday night, on the other hand, I went to see the programme of New Works by Royal Ballet Company Members at the Linbury Studio, and that was an out-and-out wow. I know I have a tendency to be wildly enthusiastic a lot of the time, so that sometimes anyone reading this must think everything I see is a wow! - in fact this is partly because I tend not to review things I didn’t like (just try and forget them asap), and partly because I am pretty picky about what I go to in the first place; music by A Lloyd-Webber? – I won’t bother; directed by C Bieto? – er, no, thank you; an iconoclastic and challenging production? – probably a yawn, then… But this really was an outstanding evening.

Even if some of the choreography had been dud, it would have been a treat just to see members of the Royal Ballet so very up-close-&-personal (I was in the second row, and had Thomas Whitehead’s perspiration literally flying around me at one point). There were no turkeys among the six new pieces (five premiers and an expanded version of something I saw at a gala in the winter); even the weakest piece was interesting, and tremendously well danced, and the best were downright thrilling. It’s very hard to single out highlights when standards are this high: “Hallelujah Junction” was a feast of incredible athleticism in sky-blue Star Trek uniforms; “Lieder” was a haunting pas de deux about longing and disconnection; “One Shade the More” made wonderful use of the chemistry between Steven McRae and Roberta Marquez.

I clapped so much my wrist watch stopped, which must be one of the odder tributes one can pay to a bunch of performing artists. Mind you, that said, I used to have a front-fastening bra that would come undone if I applauded hard while wearing it; I’d be clapping away madly and feel this sharp “ping” and think “oh dear, the puppies are loose”… Most embarrassing.

After that I had a lovely meal out at my local Turkish place, Lara Restaurant on Turnham Green Terrace; cold beer, tarator, which is basically tsatziki but with spinach instead of cucumber, and wonderful falafels with tabbouleh and a garlicky dip. My mouth is watering now just thinking about those falafels. I do love my grub…

Most of Sunday was taken up with gardening. I had a list of jobs that I thought would take a couple of hours, but I kept seeing more things to do, and it grew and grew until at 7 pm I was gasping as I tried to straighten my back, and the day was almost gone. Gone very satisfactorily, but gone nonetheless!

Yesterday evening we had a Work Do; a buffet and barbecue on the roof terrace of the naffly-named Inn The Park, in St James’s Park. Kew’s new caterers run this, so I think it was basically a charm-offensive; we enjoy the food, we tell enquirers the food is good, they eat and enjoy, everyone wins. Everyone would have won if it hadn’t been raining hard, but that did slightly dampen things down. Nonetheless the food was good, the wine was plentiful (and much better quality than I can normally afford), and the setting, looking out over soft green trees in the rainy dusk, was poetic in the extreme (but wet).

And on Thursday I am going to a behind-the-scenes “Meet the Philharmonia Orchestra” event before their concert at the Festival Hall; a wonderful opportunity – I like getting to see backstage pretty much anywhere. Of course I will probably go tongue-tied and be unable to think of anything sensible to say if I meet Maestro Salonen, who is conducting them that evening. But I’m hoping to have the chance to tell Andrew Smith and Peter Fry how much I always enjoy watching them at the timps.

Currently reading this...

I’m currently reading – to be precise, re-reading, having retrieved it and a few other things from a box at my mother’s – this:

The Birds Fall Down - Rebecca West.

I had forgotten what a masterly piece of writing it is. I have been completely gripped and cannot wait to get back to it tonight. I’m not sure I can collect my thoughts enough to explain why it is so superb.

It’s quite slow to get started, and quite a solid read; someone who disliked solid novels would find it hard going. But the steadiness of the beginning becomes meaningful as the story goes on. I won’t give away any details of the plot in case anyone reading this hasn’t read the novel and is intrigued, because it’s a mystery, and a thriller, in the truest sense of the words. It’s also one of the finest examples I’ve ever come across of a very tight third-person narrative; and in this case the narrator is both aware of some things that other characters are not, and helplessly unaware of other things which the reader can see – yet which we see through her eyes, aware ourselves that she is so uncomprehending as not even to see that she is missing something. In that respect it is a dazzling display of the technical craft of writing. But Rebecca West also pulls off my favourite trick of creating a balanced tension between technical genius and emotional sincerity; one suffers with Laura, with the Count, and one feels the dreadfulness of the betrayals that are exposed during the narrative, and the further layers of betrayal they provoke, and the further betrayals underlying these. And the quiet, steady build-up of tension is horrendous. Hence my desire to get to the end of the day, go home, and settle down to reading again.

Rebecca West once said something along the lines of that in her opinion Mozart was at the highest end of a scale of genius that also encompassed someone baking a good cake; in other words, talent is a continuum and is not the privilege of some tiny elite. In celebration of that honourable and democratic thought here’s the recipe for the bread-and-butter pudding I baked last night. It’s an easy recipe, great for using up slightly stale baked goods of almost any type, and far nicer than its simplicity would suggest.

Bread-and-butter pudding

A couple of slices of slightly stale bread per person. Or fruit bread, fruit cake, malt loaf, teacake. Probably good with most sorts of biscuits, too. You name it, really. Not sure it would work with shortbread, or with Mrs Crimble’s coconut cakes…
Dried fruit. I like to add chopped candied ginger or chocolate chips as well.
Butter
One egg per person
Milk
Sugar

Butter the bread/cake/whatever. Make dried fruit (& ginger/chocolate) sandwiches and cut up. Put in a greased oven proof dish. Sprinkle with a little sugar – less if the bread is rich fruit bread or cake, more if it is plain bread. Beat eggs and milk together – about ½ a pint of milk to every three eggs, although obviously also bear in mind the depth of the baking dish so you don’t end up with a huge amount of excess fluid. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the bread and fruit and leave to soak for 30-40 minutes. Bake in a medium oven for 30 minutes or so until the egg custard is set and the top is risen, golden and puffy. Good hot, warm or cold.

Newsflash (cheerful Dent)

Some better news – I may actually get some of the inheritance money that I first heard about back in March in the next week or so. It isn’t a fortune – I won’t be buying a house with it, even if I were able to move to the cheapest part of the country! – but it is enough to make me feel rather cheerful this afternoon, and inclined to buy a bottle of wine and some chocolates for myself on the way home tonight. And as I’m now going to a picnic on Sunday I may bake something nice and bring something with bubbles in along to that, too. I wonder if one can make chocolate bobóta? I’ll have a look at the recipe and see if I can tweak it…

I just ate my lunch: Jansson’s Frestelse (the spelling of which I’m sure is wrong!). Fish, potatoes, onions, garlic, black pepper and cream. The easiest fish pie in the world, and in my opinion the best. Followed by a Delicje malinowe, which is a Polish raspberry jaffa cake. Cor, yum. This is a fairly unhealthy lunch, of course, but I’ve got a cup of green tea and a pile of clementines to finish off with, which will tip the balance back a little towards antioxidants and vitamins and so forth.

Going home tonight to make a cauliflower and parsnip gratin. Yes, making and enjoying good food is definitely one of the aspects of creativity, albeit one which is seldom cited as such. As I’ll have the oven on I may bake biscuits as well…

More and more I feel in sympathy with Rebecca West’s definition of creativity as being a continuum, running from someone baking a good cake at one end to the work of Mozart at the other. Gardening is in there, as well as cookery, and so are all the activities derided by the Fine Art world as “crafts” – knitting and patchwork quilting, making greetings cards (I have a nice range of hand-made valentines, if anyone is interested), making jewellery, clothes-making, pottery and clay-modelling… the list is, to coin a phrase, endless. While personally I think “Clay artist” is an unutterably silly piece of newspeak, and “Craftsman potter” sounds noble and authentic, and altogether rather good, I do heartily dislike the implied minor status generally accepted as implicit in the terms “craft” and “craftsman”.

Especially let no-one who wants to be taken seriously as a fine artist permit themself ever to be called a “good craftsman”. To actually be good at the basic skill of one’s art form is the kiss of death, relegating one (in some people’s eyes at least) irrevocably to the ranks of the amateur. How nonsensical that is…

These raspberry jaffa cakes are the tops, by the way. Good old Gudi Food Stores. I love Ealing.

Thursday 28th, lunch-hour...

I brought in about ten of my cards to work today, feeling rather full of myself and vaguely hoping for praise and maybe even a sale or two(!), only to promptly catch myself running my own work down: "Oh, they aren't much cop, the ink ran on this one, that one is blotted inside..." etc etc. Aargh!
Why do I do this? Am I the only person who does? I'm pretty sure I'm not... certainly HOPE I'm not! But how stupid of me. There never yet was anyone who successfully promoted their work by disparaging it; it's just false modesty and a nervous reluctance to sound as if I think much of myself - what my maternal grandmother called "thinking yourself Big".
A colleague points out that christmas designs would sell better at the moment anyway. I can take that on board; angels and stars coming up, soon as I get the chance! A couple of the more indeterminate designs could even be christmas-icised without too much difficulty, and I have lots more blank cards to use, too.
At least I have other creative things going on; like cookery. Just finished the last of the roast veg from Tuesday - stuffed roast vegetable marrow (with rice, tomatoes, pine nuts, feta cheese, parsley and paprika), and roast beetroot. The beetroot were so much better roasted than boiled that I don't know if I'll ever bother boiling them again... Yum. Now feeling slightly sleepy as I'm so stuffed with food. Back to work...