Christmas and the Mystery of the Missing Spoons

 
We had some friends over for supper on Boxing Day - or Stephen's Day as I always forget to call it.
It was a lovely, informal evening of food and wine and chat.
#2 Son was home for Christmas, and as he is an excellent cook, I was only too delighted to have him help with all the preparations. He made some lovely baby peppers stuffed with a spicy cous-cous, feta, mushroom and spinach concoction; and butternut squash in a creme fraiche and mustard sauce.
Along with roasted sweet potatoes, Christmas gammon and Jamie Oliver's gorgeous rainbow salad, it all went down a treat.
We probably could have stopped there, but there were several puddings too - two of them based around oranges and bitter marmalade.
Yum.

Why are rooms only ever tidy once a year?

I know that many - quite rightly - lament the fact that Christmas has become a meaningless financial blow-out.
It isn't in our house. I don't mean to sound priggish or virtuous, but for one thing we've never had enough money to do that, whether we wanted to or not.
But we do tend to eat a lot. Not caviar and champagne, but a lot, nonetheless.
So I guess Christmas is perhaps as much of a blow-out, just not in financial terms.
But after the rain and the drear and the sheer, utter greyness of the year's last quarter, there is something totally wonderful about sitting around a house full of fairy lights, firelight and Christmas decorations, whilst eating, drinking and laughing with friends and family.

I bit the bullet big time this year. For ages, while the boys were away, either working or simply being too far away to travel home for the season, we didn't have a tree. There didn't seem to be much point, and oddly, in this part of the country where so many seem to grow, it can be hard to find a nice one.
When I was visiting my parents in Suffolk in early December, the lovely, old-fashioned greengrocer opposite their village house had masses of them, clustered outside his shop on little wooden stands. Each one was as gorgeous as the last, and I'd quite happily have brought any of them back with me, except it would have caused a bit of a problem at the airport.
Then, when I got home, I decided we'd just not bother, but after a bit of thought, I realised that actually, despite my years of abstinence, the tree is an integral part of what Christmas is. So I bought an artificial one.
I'm slightly wincing, just confessing to that, but you know what? I think it was a good decision. OK, it took ages to put up (but only because I'd never done it before. And there were no instructions), but it looks good, it gave me a reason to unearth all my favourite decorations, and there's something about a tree glowing in the corner of the room that takes me back to all the Christmases that ever were, and kindles warm memories that I can't even place or name.

The friends who came to visit said they liked it too, and it's still there, reminding me that there are a few days of the season still to go.
A tree isn't our only traditional 'event' - there's the Christmas Jigsaw. The In-Charge rather turned his nose up at my choice of puzzle for this year's festivities. I wasn't really surprised - I chose it because I liked it, not with him in mind this time round. It's a sort of collage of Victorian Christmas designs in cigarette card format.
Lovely.
So after our Boxing Day glut was over, #2 Son and I moved on to conquering the puzzle.We transferred it onto the kitchen table (on it's handy pin-board) and spent a couple of evenings and a rainy day putting it together.
It was a tricky one,as they seem to have introduced some very weird shapes that are, quite frankly, not only meaningless,but which don't actually hold the thing together. What is that about?
Anyway, it looks great, and I'm now postponing the day when it has to be broken up and go back in the box.

My lovely Victorian inspired jigsaw

We went for a walk on our favourite beach as well. The ModelDogs raced and chased and sank into deep pools left by the tide, and were generally thrilled with life. They looked splendid in their special Christmas collars.

SuperModel is still afraid of accidentally dissolving

And we started Christmas, as always, with the service of 9 Lessons and Carols from Kings College, Cambridge. It was rather a bitty affair this year, and not the satisfying fix it usually is for me, as our broadband is so appalling these days that it came and went, went being the more operative of the two.
Fortunately I have a CD of another service, from long ago, so after the official one had fizzled away in a haze of buffering silence, I put that on instead, before we set off for a jolly dinner at a friend's house to welcome Christmas in. During the evening the rain even stopped, the clouds parted, and I went outside and stared at the full moon. I didn't catch a glimpse of Father Christmas speeding through the sky, but it was magical all the same.

Model Dog likes to open her own present all by herself

So it was a very good Christmas, despite missing #1 Son like toothache.
But there still remains a mystery, that several days into the New Year remains unsolved.
All the silver spoons that were used at our Boxing Day party have disappeared without trace.
The In-Charge - apparently - washed them up, dried them and put them on the table in the late hours after our guests had departed.
(So I can't even ponder whether they each left with a spoon in their top pocket or reticule.)
It is a puzzle even more brain-defying than the Victorian cigarette cards, and one that my repeated searches of drawers, dressers, rubbish bags, hidden corners and laundry baskets has failed to solve.
My sister, who also lives in a very old house - as does my mother - swears it is the pixies.
Well, I hope when they've finished staring at their reflections, the pixies will feel moved to return them.
To the right house.

 

The birds had a Christmas present too - a wreath full of goodies

Amalfi: The Road More Travelled

Italy 3


It was stunning, the Amalfi Coast.
It seems that everyone thinks it's stunning, so all in all I'm glad we weren't there in July.
It's probably like the M25. Or the Ring of Kerry on super-steroids.

Every hairpin bend brings another wonderful view. Buildings perched on sheer mountain sides, rocky peaks towering above, boats strewn haphazardly on a jewel coloured sea far below.
It's enough to cause a traffic jam - everyone stopping to take photos.
You can't blame them. We did the same. It's a place where you can capture Italy (the south, anyway) in a single shot.

Southern Italy in a single shot

We didn't stop in Positano. I'd love to have pottered around the town, but it was too full of visitors for comfort.
We stopped further down the coast instead, at a tiny inlet the In-Charge spotted from our lofty height on the road. We wound our way down and happily paid the extortionate parking fee so that we could sit under an umbrella in the blazing midday sun drinking Prosecco. And watch some lads loading crates of beer onto a boat to deliver to a bar a few inlets along. Apparently, the only other way for them to get their beer is to tote it down a thousand or so steps.
There'd be none left by the time they got to the bottom.

We did stop in Amalfi. It was €5 an hour to park, which was even more expensive than the little inlet, but we found a vacant slot right on the front, so we did a lightning tour of the town.
It was beautiful, but to be honest, an hour was enough.
The place was packed and the locals in the shops and bars had obvious tourist-fatigue. Hardly surprising.

Amalfi

The town was packed

Everyone photographing everyone photographing everyone

I had the most expensive ice cream in the world, and then we sat looking over the sea and yacht-gazing while we had a drink before heading along the coast to Ravello.

We sat under the iconic umbrella pines overlooking the sea

A spot of yacht-watching is always fun. It reminds us of #1 Son

It was, thankfully, a good bit calmer in Ravello, despite the town's illustrious catalogue of earlier visitors.
The list of people who have visited the place, or written famous books or operas there, or just stayed with other famous people is endless.
In a more romantic era these included Ruskin, Grieg, most of the Bloomsbury Set including Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Bertrand Russell, Vita Sackville-West, DH Lawrence and TS Elliot. Wagner wrote Parsifal in Ravello, André Gide wrote L'Immortaliste, Churchill painted and Escher drew.
And in more recent times the tiny town has been host to Paul Newman, Rod Stewart, Harrison Ford, Roger Moore, Nicholas Cage, Mel Gibson, John Malkovich and Pierce Brosnan - amongst others. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shot parts of Mr and Mrs Smith in the town, Gary Lineker got married there and Woody Harrelson's daughter was born there, so he named her Ravello.

The view down from the old town

Inside one of the hotels. Who knows which celebrities might have been lurking within?

None of those people were in the streets on the day we visited. In fact, we didn't spot any celebrities - though to be honest, I wasn't really looking.
I got waylaid by several shops selling pottery and the maiolica typical of the area.
I loved the spotty-ware, and some of the maiolica pieces were stunning. I was very taken by an interesting platter fixed to the wall, but in the end I settled for a much simpler (and smaller) memento. A Christmas tree decoration with a bird on it.

Lovely spotty pottery

An interesting platter stuck to the wall

I bought a little Christmas tree decoration. I like birds

We decided to drive back cross-country, through the mountains, and reluctantly roused Angelica. She'd had a day off.
It was a good decision. Angelica rose to the challenge and we hardly met anyone, beyond a flock of goats, the goatherd and his dogs.
We'd loved the stunning views, the towns clinging to the mountain-sides, the yachts and the jewel coloured sea - everything.
But we were ready to head further south to quieter places.

On duty

This is part 3 of our travels in Italy
You might also like Part 1: See Naples and Die
Part 2: Sipping Limoncello in Sorrento
Part 4: Tango-ing to Messina
And the last part: Sicily: Hot on the Heels of Montalbano

The Lake Isle of Innisfree Garden

Bloom


The Yeats garden I designed for Bloom was based on his poem 'The Lake Isle of Innifree'.
It had to be. It is, possibly, WB's best known poem, but more importantly, it's the only one about a garden.

To be brutally honest, I don't think Yeats was much of a gardener.
Maybe I'm wrong, but he strikes me as being someone who thought great thoughts and spent a good bit of time shaping them into miraculous poetry, yet somehow I don't see him doing all of that with a hoe in one hand. I reckon that the pen was mightier than the trowel in his case.I see him as being a bit like Wordsworth, in love with the concept of nature, but not getting so close up and personal that he got stung by the nettles too often.

A hive for the honey bee. An original 1890s CDB's hive, lent for the garden

If I'm totally honest, The Lake Isle was never one of my favourite poems, (especially, at the risk of being sacrilegious, when read by the poet himself), but I have to say, that all changed. Working so intensively on the garden for months on end, I found the lines going through my head endlessly, the words repeating and repeating as I planned and dug and planted.
It drew me in, and as I slowly brought it to life, I found myself loving the poem more and more.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I loved too that this had never been a real garden, so I was free to peek inside the poet's head and create what I saw there - his imagined, secret hideaway on an island in Lough Gill. It made the whole process even more vital that Yeats had written the poem when he was 25 and neither rich nor famous, just a young man living in smoggy London, dreaming of Sligo, the place he called 'the land of heart's desire'. He wrote it the same year that he met and fell in love with Maud Gonne, a love that remained unrequited his whole life.

Nik's mural of Maud Gonne in Sligo. Pic: Internet (Maeve O'Beirne)

I suppose at some level I knew how Yeats felt, because I also lived in London when I was 25, and often dreamed of Ireland's wonderful west coast, the In-Charge's second home. In those days, we spent many holidays here with his parents, and even the dogs sulked when we got back to London, after days on endless beaches, or running free in wild, unspoilt countryside.

Back then, we used to pootle out to Innisfree in my father-in-law's little boat. We'd pack a picnic, the fishing rods and numerous dogs into the boat and head off for the day, stopping on the tiny island to stretch our legs and boil up the 'volcano' to make tea. It was - is - just a small hump in the lake, covered in stunted trees and undergrowth, with a tiny beach on one side, but with all the appeal that miniature things have. 

Pic: Internet  Kelly's Kettles

I designed the garden with the lake in the background, not the foreground. I wanted viewers to feel that they were there, in the garden on Innisfree with Yeats, so I commissioned Nik Purdy, that incredibly talented man, to paint a mural that would curve around the back corner of the garden, to create a view across the lake to Sligo's iconic Benbulben. To create a feeling of distance, remoteness, even a touch of infinity, I suppose.

I'd put a small stretch of water in front of the mural, and the two elements worked together really well, largely because Nik did such a great job, and partly because Famous Seamus's two lads also did a great job - they spent an endless afternoon sticking reeds into pots of cement to put into the lake. You can't have a lake in Sligo without reeds...

Nik with Sligo's iconic Benbulben

It was 60 feet long, the mural and was painted by hand on 15 8'x4' (2.44 x 1.22m) aluminium coated panels. He had, remarkably, painted it off-site - an unexpected complication that caused me (and possibly Nik) sleepless nights, wondering if the painting and 'the lake' itself would work together. But for various reasons (weather, paint toxicity and more), there was no choice.
 In fact he did such a great job that, just after it had been erected in the garden, two women walked by, and one said to the other: 'Goodness, did you see that painting?'
The other one replied: 'Don't be ridiculous, no one could have painted that!'
I suppose she thought it was a nattily reproduced photograph!

60 feet is a lot of mural

The day after we put the lake in, a duck came to visit, which was wonderful.
Seamus, aka The Bear, sent me a photo that he'd taken on his phone.
Even more, I loved the wren, the robin, the great tit and the blackbird who all moved into the garden as we were building. The wren would sit in the beech tree and sing very loudly every day, while the robin followed me round, waiting for the grubs and beetles that were turned over as I dug.

But best of all was the great tit.
My favourite place in the garden was the tiny path that wound down to the lake shore. There were willows planted on either side, that formed a kind of archway over the path, and the birds would sit in the willows close to the water.
One day, when I was standing in the garden with Gary, one of Bloom's official photographers, the tit appeared on his usual branch. A moment later, he ducked down into the shallow water at the edge of the path and had a thorough bath. It was wonderful to watch.
A sort of seal of approval I suppose.

Gary O'Neill's photograph

 Gary O'Neill, photographer

My favourite part of the garden. Photo: Doris Rabe

Pudding Row Posies

It's Wednesday today. My elder brother's birthday, as it happens, but closer to home, it is Flower Day.
A lovely girl - a contemporary of my two sons - has returned to the area and opened a café in the village. It is delightfully called Pudding Row and, although I have not yet sampled any puddings, her bread and jam - both homemade - are dangerously good. We dropped in late one afternoon and she had sold out of cake (and pudding), but offered us some toast instead.

She contacted me several months ago, to ask if I would supply her with little table posies from the garden.
She got, poor girl, short shrift at the time.
'Yes,' I said vaguely. 'No problem', and promptly forgot about it. I was in Dublin, building the show garden for Bloom.

However, when I finally got back home, I did get my act together, and on Wednesday mornings I take little jugs of flowers to adorn her tables.

Because they need to last until Sunday evening, when she closes for two (much needed) days off, I don't pick them them night before.
But most Wednesdays this summer, I have been out picking in the rain, so this morning's sunshine made a welcome change, although I still needed wellies as everything is permanently soaked.

The rain has played wily beguiled with my garden this year. And in my absence, my garden has played puck with me. It is a sorry mess. The weeds are running riot, none of the early perennials have been cut back, and all the worst imaginable seed heads are wafting where they will.
The endless rain means I can rarely get out to call it to order.
The only - small - consolation is that, because it's such a cold, wet summer, lots of plants are still blooming that would generally be over and done with by now, so I haven't missed out as I might have done.

This Year's Weed is the minor rose bay willow herb. Minor is probably not its official title, but I've had enough official titles to last me a good while this year. You have to submit a complete plant list to the judges at Bloom, and, not having given the judging end of Bloom a thought, I planted quite wantonly, so mine ran to six pages. In Latin.
And inevitably, the final list was compiled at midnight the night before submission.
So I'm quite happy to go with any old handle at the moment, and 'minor' will do just fine.

Whatever it calls itself, it is everywhere.

When I was a child, I thought to myself: 'One day I shall have four children, and I will call them Rose, Bay, Willow and Herb.'
Yes, well...
It looks like that has come back to bite me on the bum.
Still, it could be worse. At least they pull out easily. If the sun only shone a bit more often, I might have a chance to get out there to pull them! 

The bees are not happy. Our bee man told me they are starving to death in all this rain, and has had to feed them emergency supplies to keep them going. But happily, my soaking garden is full of birds and frogs. Wherever you move, something leaps.
They are totally invisible in the dense jungle that has taken over, but I hope they are eating morning, noon and night. A rainy summer is a slug's idea of paradise, but a surfeit of slugs is probably an endless cream tea for a frog or a bird.
Yum yum. Pudding Row all round!

Bine's wonderful photo of a frog wallowing in our pond

Problems and Wheelie Big Problems

BLOOM 8

It is wonderful in the woods these mornings.
We go early, so the sun is still slanting sideways through the fresh new leaves.
The first bluebells are just starting to open. They are late this year, but magically beautiful, as always.

They aren't the only new things appearing in the woods. There are birds everywhere.
All the way up the road seagulls were mewling above us, high in the pale sky, and a pair of herons were lazily circling over the river when we arrived. They nest in the trees just by the water's edge so perhaps they were looking for an adequate breakfast for a growing family.
Further up the path SuperModel disturbed a pair of pheasant who flew out of the undergrowth, croaking in alarm. The male flew off (no comment), but the female stood her ground on the path, hesitant but defensive. I called SuperModel away - I expect the hen was worrying about chicks somewhere nearby.

I found myself worrying too as we stepped smartly along the well-worn track.
I still haven't got any wheels for Dublin. I've asked several motor companies, so I hope the latest one will come up trumps. At home, we only have the Silver Beast - that treacherous jade - and while she and I could happily set off for Dublin together (with who knows what little breakdowns tucked up her sleeve!), I can't leave the In-Charge stranded for a month with just a dodgy bicycle to get to Sligo on - it's 30 miles, and he has finals looming! I have the promise of a vehicle for a week, which is wonderful and generous, but I really need the whole month sorted before I set out at the start of May.

However, the best antidote for worry is a bigger worry. My personal wheels pale to insignificance compared with the problem of transporting the contents of the garden from Sligo to Dublin.
In one piece, so to speak.
The trees get bigger and bigger in my mind's eye.
The soft planting gets softer and more fragile.
It all gets heavier and heavier.
I don't think the bicycle is going to cut the mustard.

Well, I've been putting it out there - some serious haulage sponsorship is what's needed. Fingers, toes and eyes crossed something will come back to me soon!

On the way home, I took the dogs down to the little beach in the woods to have a splash and a drink, but as I approached the river I saw a mother duck lazily paddling through a pool of sunlight, a tight cluster of ducklings nestled around her.
I wanted to stop and look - enjoy the lovely morning of their lives, but I didn't dare.
SuperModel probably likes ducklings, and she doesn't have any at home. My hard-won victory over the hens ('Family, NOT food! Family NOT food!') would probably have disappeared like mist in the sun. Family is, after all, only found on one's own property!
I ran in the opposite direction, yelling 'Sweeties!' and waving dog treats in the air.
It never fails.

Some problems are easier to solve than others.
The ducklings are, I daresay, still sunbathing on the water.
Whereas my wheels - large and small - are sunbathing in some location as yet unknown to me.

The Kansan near my back door cheered me up a good bit, though.
It's also a bit late - but everything comes at the right time.
Hopefully even wheels.

Fleece-ing

BLOOM 2


It's been another beautiful day. Not a pet day like yesterday, but still lovely.
I actually left my desk and went into the garden to pot up a few weeds - as you do.
I shall need them for Bloom.
I don't think the weeds could believe their luck. When I grabbed them by the neck and yanked, they hunkered down as usual, digging their root-nails in for dear life. But today, instead of hurling them into the waste bin, I nestled them instead into trays of compost and soil and watered them in.
I expect they are beaming out there under the stars.

During this operation, the Models lay on the grass, blissfully soaking up the rays. I paused in my potting to admire my hellebores, and to notice the violets tucked in along the cobbled path. My favourite little scillas are poking out on the bank and everywhere the softer blue anemone blandas are suddenly opening. The camellias are even more beautiful than I remember.

Beautiful hellebores

It was good to see them all, but I didn't linger very long.
There were calls to make and work to do on the computer.
Two fliers to put together, and somewhere I have to find an apple tree...
And a beech...

My new friend Lucy took me to a fabulous nursery yesterday. We drove half-way across the country to one of her suppliers and spent hours walking round the horticultural equivalent of a top-notch thoroughbred stud farm - everything immaculate, manicured and beautifully clean. It was wonderful.
I even found the perfect beech tree.
Until we discovered that it was a copper, not a green one, that is.
Back to the drawing board.

This morning, back at my computer, I talked to Jack on the phone about the ban on moving ash, about transport vehicles and how best to protect plants for long journeys. He's done it hundreds of times before, and was generous with advice and offers of help.
As we chatted, I watched the rooks in the drive. They are busy nest-building, and - as always - it's a noisy, lengthy business that involves a lot of argy-bargy, not to mention full-scale attacks on all the shrubs in the vicinity.

After breakfast, I'd given Hobbes and the Models a good brushing, separated the resultant wad of soft fur into little bite-sized puffs of thistledown and left them lying all over the gravel. As Jack and I verbally fleece-wrapped trays of plants, I watched a rook hopping madly hither and thither, trying to gather up as many of the little puff-balls as she could manage in one mouthful. Her mate was busy showing off his latest courtship dance moves, but she only had eyes for the fleecy nest lining she'd just discovered.
I pictured her later on, needle-felting it into position with her great back beak, high above me in the ash tree.
And speaking of trees - I'm still looking for a beech.

Hobbes loooves being brushed

Felt All Over

When we were at the Museum of Country Life recently, the bit I liked best wasn't the Museum at all (fab and all as that was).
It was the Café.
No surprise there, cake-aholic that I am, but - although they had very delicious cakes - it wasn't even that.
It was the exhibition of felt pieces on display that grabbed me.
One of the waitresses said they'd been made by local school kids.
I wanted to take them all home - the felt, not the kids.

Some of the wonderful display of felt pieces

I love making felt. I think it should be obligatory for everyone at some stage, male or female.
So many people over the years have said to me: 'I'm not a creative kind of person'.
I find that very hard to believe. Everyone is creative. If they think they aren't, they just haven't plugged into the right socket yet. They probably haven't had the opportunity to be creative.
They need to go on a felting course, even if it's only for a single morning.

No one can fail to be creative with felt.
And who knows where one small session of 'making' might lead?
That would just be the start of it.

I think problems with creativity are largely about expectations.
Take art. For nine and a half out of every ten of us, there is such a gaping chasm between what we see in our heads - or even in front of our eyes - and what we manage to produce on paper/canvas or whatever, it's no surprise we feel as if FAILURE is stamped on our foreheads after every sorry attempt.
It's the same with so many creative disciplines.
The words you write don't express what you'd like to say.. The lump of clay won't centre on the wheel, no matter how often you try. The pink fluffy whatsit you're making doesn't look anything like the one in the magazine.
It's as if there's some vital link missing somewhere in the chain from brain to hand - the messages aren't getting through, or else they're being distorted en route. Your head wants to achieve but it ain't coming out through your fingers.

I guess it's probably age related as well. It's ok to splodge paint about when you're four, you're thrilled with anything at that stage, but splodges aren't terribly satisfying if you're 40 and you were hoping to run up a little Cezanne.

It isn't like that with felt.
Possibly because there aren't really any expectations with felt - or certainly  not in those vital, early stages.
You start with a bit of wool in your hands. You choose a colour you like, several colours that appeal to you.
You have soap and water, and someone shows you how to work them together, with a chik or a mat or something to provide a bit of friction.
You work away in the dark - you can't even see what you're doing.
But voilà - magic happens willy nilly.

When you unwrap your warm, soapy bundle, there it is - a unique fusion you have created without glue, or needle and thread, or any other invasive method of joining. The colours you have chosen have come together in a pattern that you may or may not have devised, to form an entirely new material that is robust yet fragile, tactile yet also a feast for the eyes, enduring yet delicate.
You cannot help but be thrilled - I promise you.

I'll promise you something else too.
You'll want more.

Gradually you become more adventurous.
You try bigger, more elaborate, more precise, more abstract, wilder, finer tuned - who knows, but whatever it is you want to try, more will be the operative word.
More and more and more.
It's fun, it's alive, it's creative, it's addictive.
It's failure-proof.
You cannot help but create felt, and you cannot help but create pattern.
It's just so satisfying.

There was also a fab collection of birds made from felt and scraps of other materials

If you don't believe me, get on-line and find a felting course near you, or ask around and when you've found one, don't hang about - try it.
You won't be disappointed.
And who knows where that portal will end up taking you?
And you'll never again think you're not creative, either.

Oh, and if you're anywhere near The Museum of Country Life in the next few weeks, pop into the Café and see this lovely exhibition while you can - I don't know how long it'll be there.

Time to get felt all over.