A life in bottles

My sister and I shared a house for a while when we were in our early twenties, she's still there and when I visited her at the weekend I realised she still has my collection of (empty) champagne bottles.

The kitchen had a lot of shelves, something I miss, but we didn't have enough things to fill them with at the time so we thought we'd have ten green bottles. Ten turned into - well I can count twenty six here and I know in the end we didn't keep all of the bottles by a long way.

The first thing that struck me seeing them all again was sheer wonder that I'd ever had that much money to spend on champagne swiftly followed by the depressing realisation that prices have increased entirely disproportionately with my income. Not so very long ago some of those bottles could be bought for around £25, they'd cost closer to £75 now which I imagine puts them entirely out of reach for most of us, something I can only consider a shame.

These bottles roughly chart my twenties - a time when I lived in shared, rented, houses and had a job that gave me access to excellent wine, a generous discount to allow me to buy it, and equally enthusiastic friends to drink it with. Now that I live alone with a mortgage and most my friends have small children those days seem far distant but the bottles remain to prove they existed and remind me of the people I drank them with more than anything else.

There are a decades worth of birthdays here; the oldest bottle is one that dad gave me for my 21st birthday, the last of a case he bought when I was born, and 30 years old by the time I drank it (with my friend Nicola and a very handsome Dutch exchange student). Old champagne has a deep golden colour and a honeyed sort of flavour. It's complex, subtle, and altogether wonderful. It may have been at that moment that the dye was cast and a career in wine became inevitable.

My sister could tell you a story about her experience drinking Taittinger's Comte De Champagne but I'd probably better not repeat it. There are bottles which recall travels with a tour guide friend through various duty free outlets, a Krug and Dom Perignon that my mother and I spent an increasingly hilarious Sunday afternoon drinking just because we could, and a whole lot that chart a wine education. I wish I could do it all over again!

A brighter prospect

Oh dear, I meant this post to go out on Saturday but I'm still miserable with my cold (and if it sounds like man flu than it probably is, but I've been at work all day being extremely patient and so reserve the right for a bit of a whinge now). Sunday was devoted to James Bond and a family gathering but here I am, back home, in my pyjama's, considering another hot toddy and ready to blog. 

A goodly portion of my book pile has come courtesy of Prospect Books, one of them particularly (Messy Cook) I've had for months without ever seeming to find the time to have a proper look at it so I thought the best thing might be a quick run through of these four titles prior to a better look later.

Michael Raffael's 'Messy Cook' is a book with recipes that wants to be read. It has short stories, experiences, a bit of philosophy, and some instructions - in short there's a whole lifetime's accumulated knowledge, the proper appreciation of which will take some time. I need to find that time somewhere, but until I do - this book looks great, absolutely perfect for anyone interested in cooking and food.

Caroline Conran's 'Sud de France - The food and cooking of the Languedoc' is a slightly more traditional cookbook in that it seems to be slightly more focused on recipes than philosophy. I know a lot of people who would love this book, but not being a francophile it might have been a bit of a hard sell for me until I read the magic words cuisine du terroir. Terroir is a concept that I not only believe in but get quite excited by. The idea that you can taste geography - and culture - is quite seductive, and is the basis for much of my love of cookbooks, so once again I'm looking forward to spending more time with this book.

Peter Brears 'Cooking and Dining in Medieval England' deserves to be a best seller as well as winner of the Andre Simon food book of the year award (2009). You can taste history in food as well, and never more so than at Christmas when all those dried fruits, nuts, and spices hark back to at least the middle ages and all sorts of culinary explorations. (I really love mince pies.) When I first got this book I started flicking through it until I finally put it down at something like 2 am. Everything is in here; what was eaten, how it was eaten, where it was eaten, or made - everything, right down to the lengths of tablecloths and how they went on the tables and it's all really interesting (because honestly, it might not have been). Interestingly Brears has reconstructed the recipes using contemporary ingredients so cooking from this book should be quite easy.

Last but not least I also got a copy of Dorothy Hartley's 'Lost World'. Hartley's best known book is 'Food in England' a complete guide to the food that makes us who we are. It hasn't been out of print since it was first published in 1954 and is familiar to me from many, many, bookshelves (though somewhat inexplicably not my own). Lucy Worsley is presenting a programme about Dorothy Hartley on BBC4 at 9pm Tuesday (6th November) which should be good. meanwhile 'Lost World' is a collection of her journalism written between 1933 and 1936 and covers a range of rural matters from a time when farming and country life were changing fast. It's a beautiful book. 

Back to the books

Back from my travels with the beginnings of a stinking cold as a souvenir, an unexpected bill for over £200 as a welcome home gift from the dastardly service company, and a very busy day at work - it's all making me wish I hadn't come back. On the up side I've been reunited with my library, the Scottish one, and the blonde and also I have a spurtle (a stick for stirring porridge).

I was away for less than a week but in that time it's turned from Autumn to Winter, I've got a much warmer quilt on my bed, the hot water bottles have come out of retirement, and I'm making lists of things to do before work goes so crazy I can't think. When I say I'm making lists it would be more accurate to say constructing precarious piles of things to be dealt with. There are several collections of paperwork that probably ought to be dealt with in a timely fashion, a whole lot of things destined to be presents which should be hidden, and a big pile of books that I've acquired over the last few weeks.

Some of them have just appeared on my doorstep looking hopeful and suggesting I might like to take them out of the cold and give them a good home (I did), others have had letters of introduction and been welcomed accordingly, and some were invited. Anticipated or not if they're in these pictures they will be written about before long (I hope) and with that laudable aim in mind I'm off to bed with a book, my cold, and if I can be bothered, a hot chocolate. Welcome back. 

Going Away.

I'm off on holiday for a couple of days and have left it late to pack, partly because I thought I'd make quince jelly tonight. Not everything went according to plan (oven is especially sticky) and I need to be up at 4.30 am. Imagine my happy face as I contemplate a sticky flat, a pile of random clothes that need to be turned into sensible outfits, a pile of books to be whittled down to carry-able proportions, and that early start.

Wish me luck. I think I might need another holiday to get over this one - but at least there might be book shops...

Inspector Minahan Makes A Stand - Bridget O'Donnell

This is a book that landed unsolicited on my doorstep, I know I kept the press release but I don't know where I decided to keep it so if you sent it to me - thank you, I really enjoyed it. 

Bridget O'Donnell was a producer and director with the BBC before she went off and did an MA in creative non-fiction - not a term I'd heard before, but one I think I like - I generally get quite wound up by non fiction that contains, in my view, to much supposition. Sticking that creative in left me feeling forewarned and forearmed.  O'Donnell has also written for newspapers including The Guardian which goes some way to explaining why this book feels so assured despite being her first, it probably also explains why it feels like it would make such good television.

Inspector Minahan was a large (6 foot and a bit) and conscientious policeman who after a couple of decades exemplary service on the force started making waves in the early 1880's. he started by backing a prisoner who had been beaten in custody and carried on by taking exception to the brothel running activities of Mrs Mary Jefferies who catered to clients of the highest rank, and seems to have had the Chelsea police force in her pocket. The bigger picture sketched out here was familiar to me but Minahan was not but he played a vital part in our history.

In the 1860's the age of consent for girls was 13 and the Contagious Diseases act was passed - this allowed the police in navel ports and barracks towns to arrest and examine any woman suspected of being a prostitute to make sure she was 'clean' in an attempt to halt the spread of venereal disease in the troops . There was no question of these women's customers being examined in the same way. One unintended consequence though was a galvanisation of the emerging women's movement and an increased demand for female suffrage.

Twenty years later when Inspector Minahan lost his job after making a fuss about police corruption in Chelsea his actions helped repeal the contagious diseases act and raise the age of consent to 16. Minahan had been watching Jeffries brothels and knew who her clients were - potentially explosive information. It didn't help him much, he was still hounded out of the force every avenue of appeal closed down on him - all of which he pursued right up to an appeal to the Home Secretary who was having non of it. 

It was a journey that led Minahan to investigate for various purity campaigners including William Stead who's 'Maiden Tribute' expose caused such a stir, and to keep on challenging the establishment in one way or another for as long as he possibly could. It's a great story full of issues which haven't really gone away, it's also brilliantly handled. O'Donnell's research is impressive (she checked contemporary weather reports for when she wants to throw in a little dark and stormy atmosphere) but her story is also creative - she has a definite interpretation for her facts. Happily the results are compelling as well as convincing. There are also parallels with current events, specifically the grooming of young girls by groups of older men as in the Rochdale case, which call for some consideration. Then, as now, the girls most at risk seem almost disposable - potential commodities rather than people. In a hundred and thirty years you might have hoped we would have come further. 

Miami Blues - Charles Willeford

'Miami Blues' is (I think I'm right in saying) the first of Willeford's Hoke Moseley books - it's the second one I read ('New Hope For The Dead' was the first) which could perhaps have been better organised on my part. This second meeting with Hoke Moseley has confirmed my enthusiasm for him. It's described as "A brutal, thrilling ride, Miami Blues is a classic of Florida crime fiction, revealing the sordid side of the Sunshine State' in the back blurb and that sums the book up quite accurately on one level but doesn't at all reveal the humanity that Willeford brings to his characters. 

With Hoke it's not his divorce that humanises him but his false teeth which become something of a running theme throughout the book, it's easy to relate to a man who has false teeth, and easy to like him when his actions may otherwise encourage ambivalence. Basically though Hoke is a decent man who behaves with honesty and integrity - always an encouraging thing - even if he does sometimes break the rules.

'Miami Blues' villain is another matter Freddie 'Junior' Frenger has just got out of prison in California with the advice that he ought to get out of the state if he doesn't want to end up right back in prison. It's advice he takes, stopping only to steal some credit cards and accidentally kill someone. When he reaches Miami he accidentally kills someone else - by breaking their finger - because they've annoyed him. Freddie has no morals at all and no compunction when it comes to using violence, but again Willeford makes him oddly attractive if not very likeable. Perhaps it's because it's inevitable that Freddie is going to come to a sticky end quite quickly that the reader can maintain some sympathy for him, possibly it's because he does whatever he wants and however unpleasant that is we've probably all half wished we could do it at some time or another.  

Freddie finds himself responsible for a hooker called Susan, she doesn't seem very bright and she's the sister of the corpse he left behind in the airport so he feels responsible for her. Susan is an interesting character - she seems to be exceptionally dim but as her story unfolds you begin to wonder... Susan went to Miami to have an abortion, it turns out that the father was her brother, who followed her to the city and forced her into prostitution. It's not then very surprising that Susan is seemingly disengaged from her surroundings. When she meets Freddy he offers her a way out - he provides her with the money to stay at home keeping house as long as she doesn't question him which for the most part suits her just fine, the last chapter though demands a re-assessment of Susan and who's been playing who.

Otherwise the pattern is much the same as it is in 'New Hope For The Dead'; a down and dirty look at Miami, lots of tangential detail, and occasionally something really shocking to pull the reader up short. It's a winning formula and I look forward to more. 

In the Kitchen

I have good intentions regarding spring cleaning but they never actually amount to very much. Autumn is a different matter - the run up to Christmas is such a big thing in retail that over the years I've developed a real need to feel organised in good time, part of that is a desire to clear the decks of all the past years accumulated crap, another part is settling down to making things ready for Christmas. I know it's only October but now is the time for jam and jelly making - and I've made a lot of it. It's also turned into a big week for baking...

Work asked me to make a cake for the shop's second birthday on Friday - a cake - there are about 150 of us and although not everyone will be around at cake time one was never going to be enough which I maybe ought to have thought of before I said yes. In the end I made four cakes, two got sandwiched together to make a giant chocolate cake, there is a carrot cake because it's my favourite and that's what matters after a couple of hours baking, and a lemon layer cake which tried to escape from it's pan but was just about rescued... Because I was in the kitchen all day and the oven was on I also made jam, some scones for afternoon tea with the Scottish one, roasted a pheasant to share with the blond, and made some Brownies as well. She had to stop me from making short bread too - by that time I was on a roll and didn't want to stop. 

It was, by my standards, a lot to get through in one day, normally my Kitchen would look like a bomb site at this point, but happily the blond took charge and wouldn't let me leave the washing up, she also put everything away so I really do feel organised today which is wonderful (it won't last).

The jam is particularly exciting - it's the Fig and Pomegranate from 'Salt Sugar Smoke' which I've wanted to make since I first opened the book. I think I'll call it Persephone jam though, partly as an homage to Persephone books reaching their 100th title, and partly because the generally Greek and Autumnal feel of figs and pomegranates make it appropriate - mostly though it's because I struggle to spell pomegranate (I try to put in another 'm', spell check changes it to permanganate which baffles me, and the whole thing becomes very stressful) Persephone I'm fine with. 

This is a lovely jam and absolutely worth making, figs in supermarkets are fiendishly expensive but I managed to buy well over a kilo of them for £3 from my local market. It was the end of the day and they were going cheap, normal price is four for a pound which is still considerably cheaper than the supermarket rate, so it's worth shopping around as 400g is roughly nine to ten figs.

  

Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food

Apparently it's national baking week this week - who new, and where do these things even come from? It does seem like a good excuse for a cake though, or possibly even a whole afternoon tea - something formal feels quite appropriate for Autumn (says she whilst dressed in pyjamas and huge cardigan) and it's certainly cold and damp enough to make a prolonged kitchen session very attractive. It may also be that Arabella Boxer has been having a civilising influence on me; something has certainly inspired a bit of a sort out.

This is another book that's beautiful to look at, the cover and illustrations are by Cressida Bell and she's bought a suitably Bloomsbury feel with her. Her black and white prints decorate the first page of every chapter (they really are charming) and that's it for illustration - which makes a refreshing change; I like to see pictures that show what I'm cooking will ideally look like, but from the days when cookbooks commonly had no pictures we've somehow ended up with books that are more image than substance. 

'Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food' is all substance - like a very rich fruit cake. Originally published in 1991 this book has had a timely re-release, my general taste in fiction runs towards mid century, middle class, middle brow, and frequently feminine - this is the perfect compliment to all of those things. Arabella Boxer's early life was spent in a Scottish country house where her American mother had been rather thrown in at the deep end in the 1920's. Post war that country house lifestyle all but vanished from Britain, and 15 years of rationing certainly didn't help make food exciting so it's not surprising that Elizabeth David's Mediterranean descriptions caught the imagination. Boxer argues (and I agree) that this didn't necessarily do us many favours. 

What she does in 'English Food' is look at what was going in with food in fashionable circles between the wars. The emphasis tends towards what was being eaten in fairly sophisticated circles, be they social or artistic - generally because these were the people with the interest or means to experiment. In Bloomsbury this might have been because there wasn't enough money to afford a cook so you had to learn to cook instead. At the top of the scale there is Wallis Simpson introducing American habits to British food - but habits which had their roots in a shared culinary past.

It's fascinating, whether I use the recipes for afternoon tea in here or not, the understanding of what this and other meals were all about is invaluable. There are plenty of gossipy anecdotes from Mitfordesque circles which never go amiss, but lightly as it's handled this is a serious book with lots to say. The recipes themselves are a mix of Boxer's own and those culled from contemporary sources, something I particularly like is that she adds her comments and amendments to these in brackets and italics which lets the reader know when something has been amended. This suggests that the recipes have all been checked and used which is reassuring, and from a purely academic point of view it's good to know precisely what is and isn't original.

I'm really delighted with this book, it helps me bring another layer of understanding to many of the books I read which I appreciate, but primarily it's a fascinating and useful thing in itself. For anyone with a love of Persephone books, Virago's modern classics, or similar, you really need this on your shelf.  

Nature Near London - R. Jefferies

Since I started blogging it's become unusual for me to have more than one book on the go but this summer there have been a couple that I've read slowly and in-between other things. Like the summer though, all good things come to an end and so it is with 'Nature Near London'. This is the first in a series from Collins - their Collins Nature Library, 3 titles have been released so far, I hope there are more on the cards. 

The first thing to say about these books is how attractive they are. The cover is cloth in a muted shade with a picture stuck on - the effect is both old fashioned and authoritative - I love looking at this book; it's a truly pleasing object, the paper inside feels nice too and I like the type face, these are small things but all part of what makes books so desirable - it's not just about the contents.

Which is not to suggest that the contents aren't the main thing, of course they are. This series is selected by Robert Macfarlane and consists of texts he thinks have been unjustly neglected. On the basis of this one book I think he has a point. The introduction puts the book both into the context of its own time and also ours. Jefferies wrote this in the early 1880's, by 1887 he was dead at the age of 38 (tuberculosis), he lived in the country on the edge of London - the city was drawing ever closer and now the places he observed are long built over but his record of those edge lands remains.

Jefferies is an observer, 'Nature Near London' is an account of the things he saw around him from tiny insects all the way up the food chain to farm labourers - it's all here. I found I couldn't read this book quickly, I need plot for that and bar a chapter about a trout (will he be caught or not) there isn't much of that, but it's beautiful and I have returned to it week after week whenever I've needed half an hour or more of calm. 

I can't help but compare Jefferies to Miriam Darlington - 'Nature Near London' records opinion as well as observation but it is above all a contemplative book and this suits me better. After a few pages of reading on the bus I found I stopped to look out the window to see what the trees were doing - you can't read and remain indifferent to what's outside the window, and he also reminds you that everything is worth a closer look. I live in a city, but right next to a park and river. The park is a small and reasonably well tended one which leans towards the formal flower bed - though it also boasts an impressive collection of culinary herbs, even so there are wilder pockets including a whole strip of bankside between fence and river. Anything could be living down there - even otters (definitely rats), I've seen kingfishers which bodes well for the rivers health, but to see anything at all you have to stop and watch, something it's easy to forget to do. 

 'Nature Near London' and 'Otter Country' are not in the end so very different but  'Nature Near London'  elicited a very different response from me; it was a much closer meeting of minds. 'Otter Country' will certainly sell more copies but Jefferies book deserves this attempt to rescue it as a classic and it deserves to be sought out and looked over.     

Otter Country - Miriam Darlington

Otters are beguiling creatures and like Miriam Darlington I've been fascinated by them since childhood. Growing up in Shetland there were plenty of them about, even in the darkest days of the seventies and eighties when they had vanished from much of mainland Britain. The thrill of seeing a live otter has never diminished but perhaps the most profound experience I had was with a dead one. Our next door neighbour was handy at skinning things and someone had bought him an otter that had been hit by a car, children are callous little beasts so we had gathered to watch him do the job - and we really were young at the time.

Farming types aren't generally very squeamish so nobody thought this was an inappropriate form of entertainment, it was as gruesome as you might expect, but also educational - what I chiefly remember now is that between pelt and muscle there were perhaps have a dozen balls of shot in various places. That otter had been shot at, perhaps more than once, and that was truly shocking. An accident we could comprehend but the idea that someone would shoot at an otter of all things was utterly outrageous.

Shetland remains a particularly good place to see otters, twenty plus years of protection have increased their numbers and reduced their fear to the point that one of the best places to spot them is next to a busy ferry terminal. The overall combination of clean waters, food rich coasts, and relatively empty spaces to make homes in is obviously just what they need. Early this summer it was announced that for the first time in many years otters have been recorded in every county in Britain, which speaks volumes for the difference protection has made, and also for the improvement in water quality throughout our river network. It's not all good news though - numbers are marginal in many places, new diseases and parasites picked up from cats and ornamental fish are doing their damage, and there's a depressing number of road casualties.

The bad news I've gleaned from 'Otter Country', a book that's troubled me somewhat over the last few days. I wanted to love it, the reviews have been excellent, and theoretically I agree with much of what she says, but I still found myself swearing at this book in frustration. It's a question of style and Darlington does a few things I struggle with; she repeats, which can be a hugely powerful tool in making a point, but when someone uses the word 'water' seven or eight times a page with a good few 'wets' and 'oozes' thrown in I find I can't concentrate, and as it carries on the effect is positively to the point I found myself wincing every time another 'water' appeared. I don't really like similes either and in the end too many things were like other things - a wren creeps like a small brown mouse, a fox has a tail like a bottle brush - I want to know what things are, not what they're like.

Normally I don't persevere with books that I find I'm not enjoying, but I stuck with this one - which in some ways has done it a disservice as I got steadily more wound up. Darlington has some excellent points to make; wetlands are vital, not just to otters, but to our own defence strategy, when it comes to dealing with floods we need somewhere for the water to go, and forget it at our peril. Clean water is also important, the pollutants which affect the otters won't be doing us any good either, and nor is losing a sense of connection with nature.The things I take issue with here are a matter of taste, I prefer something quite pared down and far less lyrical, plenty of others have, and will, love this book for just the reasons I don't and it certainly has something to add to the general debate around how we treat our environment.