Halfterm Week - Saturday 4th June

And here's the last report of "what I did over half term"

I met up with an, no, pause for a moment, let me think this through. I was going to say "an old school friend" but that's not quite coming out right.

Anyway, we met up at a coffee shop opposite "Persephone Books" in Lambs Conduit Street, London. We had planned to meet at the bookshop at 11:30, but it has the most uusual opening hours..



Opening hours 10-6 Monday to Friday, 12-5 Saturday

No matter. We kept an eye on the front door while we had coffee and managed to avoid the croissants, cakes, pastries on offer.

Timing was perfect - we had just finished when someone appeared and unlocked the door. We gave maybe 30 seconds to get settled and went in.

Inside, it is curiously monochrome, apart from a few splashes of colour. There are a quantity of scrubbed wooden tables crammed into the room, and shelving round the sides. Every surface is covered with stacks of books and as the books all have identical pale silver-grey covers, the effect is curiously monochrome. Not at all what I was expecting after the bright displays in Waterstones, Foyles, and so on.

I would buy Persephone books just for the quality of the paper, the silken sheen of the covers, the colourful inside covers taken from vintage fabric prints of the same period as the book. However, the list of books itself is fascinating... mostly dating from the 1920s onwards, mostly written by women, mostly fiction, all "wantable", with the exceptions also being intruiging and unexpected.

How to choose? You certainly can't judge the books by their covers here. I decided to pick from the thinnest books as I would be carrying it around all day. But my friend pursued me round the shop holding out one of the thickets volumes "you HAVE to buy this one! Please buy this one! I want you to read this!" I was torn - but as it happened the one she had fixed on was on my list of Must-Reads, so I gave way. It was a good excuse for buying a Persephone Books bag to carry it in.



Oh, the book... it is called "Miss Buncle's Book" by D E Stevenson and is utterly hilarious in a long tradition of subversive English Writers Style  - think Barbara Pym, E F Benson, Jan Austen...
Here is a blog report on it.

www.persephonebooks.co.uk/content/persephoneforum/persephone-book-no-81-miss-buncles-book-by-d-e-stevenson/

from Susan Daly’s website

I've taken this picture from the link, as I want to visit Susan Daly's website next (www.destevenson.org) so this is a way of hanging onto the information

No time to read the book there and then - lunchtime was overdue. We went to the cafe at The Foundling Museum close by, and had an excellent lunch (squished avocado on sour dough bread - delicious) for minimal cost. We talked and talked and talked, until she had to leave. "But you must go round the museum" so I did.

That could be another blog post - it is absolutely fascinating, and heart-rending by turns. Did you know there is a Handel Room, because he was a great supporter of the original hospital? As was William Hogarth? No? Check it out for yourself:

http://foundlingmuseum.org.uk/

After that it was time for me to make my way home. I walked all the way to the Charing Cross Road, past the Britsh Museum, to Foyles, where I had a pot of tea (and a packet of crisps). Then is was the good old number 24 bus, and back home. I managed to exceed my steps target for once!

Halfterm Week - Tuesday - Medical Report

A week ago last Tuesday seems like twenty years ago now. Especially as that day was Winter - cold, wet, dank, miserable, and today (ten days later) is Summer, hot, sunny, muggy (and threatening thunderstorms)

So, anyway, a week ago last Tuesday found me in London for routine lung function tests and chest clinic appointment. We got absolutely soaked walking from the coffee shop to the hospital, properly wet through, from knees to toes. Yuck. Luckily we were both wearing walking trousers instead jeans, and they miraculously dried over the next couple of hours or so. Could have been much worse.

Anyway, I did all the blowing into complicated bits of equipment, sometimes holding my breath, sometimes changing from breathing in to breathing out as fast as I can, depending on what it was they were measuring.

The result of all that huffing and puffing is that my lung function results are unchanged from the end of 2013, when I finished the course of cyclophosphamide (if that's how you spell it) to stabilize things after a bit of a deterioration in 2012. Oh, and I discovered that my "heavy cold" was a chest infection and was given antibiotics, which seem to have done the trick.

So that's us happy.

We finished the day looking at tech, stationery and dinner services in big department stores. We are thinking of replacing our china, (again) as we are using the service we got for our wedding (40 years ago next year) which predates microwaves and isn't really up to dishwashers either - we have the broken, cracked and dis-coloured plates to prove it. Amazingly, we haven't seen a single set we like - yet....  the one below is definitely NOT microwave safe! And it's probably a bad idea to put those butterflies in the dishwasher. Mind you, if it comes with those cakes...

http://www.wedgwood.co.uk/teaware-and-tea/by-teaware-collection/butterfly-bloom/butterfly-bloom-build-your-own-set

Halfterm Week

The first weekend of halfterm was the last day of good weather for a whole week. I'm glad we went out and walked round a local garden for an hour or so in the afternoon as the rest of the week saw us back in winter clothes and frequently cursing that we should have put on a warmer fleece.

The garden was lovely; an entire small steep valley with a lake at the bottom, big enough to warrant a small rowing boat and a punt tied up at the landing stage. We walked round in a leisurely fashion as befits the elderly (that's how we felt that afternoon, pockets full of tissues and stopping every few yards to cough or sneeze). Luckily the gardens were not crowded so we didn't need to inflict ourselves at close quarters upon the other visitors.

While refreshing ourselves with a cream tea, I spotted two kites (birds, not the other sort of kites) circling round on the thermals in the clear blue sky.

There isn't much parking at the house, so we had been directed to a National Trust car park further along thought the woods, next to a lake. Definitely NOT a meromictic lake as you can see from the colour of the water!

The white thing in the top left hand corner of the lake is a heron - there were two, flying round and round together with lazy, elegant flaps of their wings. One settled where you can see it, the other went and pretended to be one of the bullrushes on the far side at the edge of the lake.

Home to rest up after our exertions and eat some more of the Victoria Trifle.  

Halfterm Week - Sunday 29th May

About that cake...

It sort of worked. We had been invited to a 60th Birthday Party with a Great British Bake-Off theme - everyone to bring a "Showstopper" or "Signature Bake".

I planned a "Victoria Trifle".

In my mind's eye, it was a three-layer Victoria Sponge, with the centre cut out of the middle layer and replaced with a disc of strawberry jelly made with sliced strawberries. The layers would be have custard between them, and the topping would be cream and sprinkles.

So I did a test run using a two-egg Victoria sponge and only two layers. From which I learned:

1. If the cake tin is too shallow, you won't get decent layers

2. You can make a fairly decent cheat's creme pat from whipped cream folded into ready-made custard. I used what the local corner shop had on offer; tinned Ambrosia. Which was OK, but not excellent. For the real thing, use the fresh luxury vanilla version.

3. If you slice lots of strawberries into jelly, it takes an age to set. In fact the jelly didn't set until the next day  

4. Even when the jelly had set, it wouldn't be possible to cut a disc out of it. In fact it wouldn't turn out of the dish I had put it in, If I wanted to incorporate jelly into the cake, I would have to make it more concentrated, and set it in a suitable circle sort of contain without adding strawberries, or else just fill the cut out cake centre with squidgy spoonfuls of jelly, or just strawberries without the jelly, and accept that it would all come tumbling out when the cake was cut.

In the event neither of us felt up to going - we've both been plagued by a really nasty cold which has made us tired and lethargic and actually unpleasant (think sneezes and coughing and boxes of tissues) to be anywhere near. So I rang with apologies, and we ate Victoria sponge layered with jam and custard with jelly on the side. "Feed a cold and starve a fever", as they say.