Home

My daughter is moving into her new house today. It is a huge undertaking with an active toddler and a new baby, so I hope the day goes smoothly. The new house has a large garden with a pond, fruit trees, a vegetable plot and plenty of room for the children to play. The beehives will soon be on their way from London and I'm looking forward to comparing Oxfordshire honey with the London honey we've enjoyed for several years.

I'm sure the house will be a home very soon. This poem sums up what my home is to me (except for the reference to the cat) and I can't wish for anything better for my daughter and her family:

I've come to know a place I can call home:

It walls me gently round, it gives me space,

It offers me stillness, it contains my fears,

It roofs me safely under, gifts me grace,

It is both books and art, colour and light,

It shelves and stacks me, my life storage space;

It's work and love and dust and green growing things,

It's laughter, friends and food, it's cat's own place,

It is so full of me and all I am,

I've come to know a home, a sacred space.

Rosie Miles

A miracle of deliverance

"A miracle of deliverance" is how Winston Churchill described the evacuation of British and French troops from the beaches of Dunkirk between 26 May and 4 June 1940. More than 330,000 men were stranded, driven back to the coast by the advancing German army.  Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay  masterminded Operation Dynamo, a plan to rescue as many men as possible.

A fleet of cargo ships, passenger ferries, barges and coasters was assembled at Dover and Southampton, with Royal Navy minesweepers, corvettes and destroyers for protection. However, the shallow slope of the beaches of Dunkirk prevented the ships from getting close to the shore, so smaller craft would be needed to ferry the soldiers from the beaches out to the ships waiting a mile off shore. 800 pleasure boats, lifeboats, Thames barges, tugs and fishing boats set off with volunteer crews, many of whom had never sailed outside coastal waters. Under attack from German fighter planes and bombers, dodging mines and submarines and under fire from coastal defences, they picked up soldiers from the beaches, took them to the waiting ships and went back for more.

 

 About 338,000 British troops were rescued and, on the last night, some 26,000 of the French rearguard were picked up by British, French ,Belgian and Dutch vessels.

 The 70th anniversary is being commemorated by a smaller fleet of small boats  making that same journey under very different circumstances. Many of them took part in Operation Dynamo and have been proudly restored for this occasion. Sometimes I am very proud to be British!

Merry month of May

There are twelve months in all the year,

As I hear many men say,

But the merriest month in all the year

Is the merry month of May.

(Oxford Book of Ballads)

We are certainly enjoying some perfect May weather with the temperature in the shadiest part of the garden reaching 27C(81F). It is so nice to be able to eat in the garden, starting with an early breakfast while watching the blackbirds zooming in and out of the garage with breakfast for their noisy babies. I managed to get this shot of one little open beak but Mr Blackbird soon hustled me out:

 We think there are four little ones in there but it is difficult to get a good look.

Whether it's Shakespeare or H.E Bates, I can't help thinking of the darling buds of May as I look around the garden. My brother has asked me to refrain from posting lots of photos as they take too long to download, so I'll restrict myself to this peony:

"perfick" as Pop Larkin might say.

At lunchtime we watched the blackbirds still zooming around gathering food for their little ones while we ate some gorgeous local asparagus with hollandaise sauce accompanied by a perfectly chilled Chablis.  I wish Mr Blackbird could have joined us but his only rest is a brief time perching on the lilac outside the garage, ensuring that no-one is following him into the nursery.

The garden ought to be declared a hard hat area as the birds skim our heads at high speed. I know that parenting is hard work but I don't think I was ever so busy as these blackbirds. 

I'm heading back for the garden now: my husband has fired up the barbecue and he is cooking supper. Perfick!

Household gadgets

Jodi, of Curious Acorn, has a most fascinating job as a living historian and today she has posted about the cookery demonstrations she gives in the kitchen of 1790. There are photos of the simple utensils that were used and lots of information about how people lived then. I love to visit this kind of museum and always head for the kitchen because it gives a clear insight into the daily lives of people of all classes.

In the days before mechanical and electronic labour-saving devices were available, the kitchens of rich and poor were probably similarly equipped, differing only in the size of room, the quantity of spoons, bowls and pots and, more significantly, the distribution of labour! The farm labourer's wife with a brood of 8 children to feed and clothe would have spent all of her waking hours in the kitchen, while the farmer's wife would have had a couple of girls to help her and the squire's wife probably had a housekeeper, cook and a host of servants.

How different today's kitchens:  light, airy and clean and crammed with utensils, gadgets and machines. My cottage is about 350 years old and I've been looking around the kitchen to see what would have to go if I were to try to live like the original inhabitant. Goodbye Aga and gas hob; farewell washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher; out with the steam iron, food processor, Kenwood Chef, microwave oven, centrifugal juicer, citrus juicer, electric toaster; then we have the cupboards and drawers filled with smaller gadgets: whisks, apple corers, peelers, presses and all manner of handy little tools that would have mystified my grandmother.

These are some of the things I found in a drawer. They have probably been there for years, I can't remember how they got there. Can you guess what they are?  One is a Tea Drip Catcher, one a SqueezeEase 'ideal for most types of tube' and I had to open the other item to discover its purpose:

Well, who doesn't need a set of labels for their cheese board?

I can remember the day that my mother got her first washing machine and later on a vacuum cleaner and what a difference they made to her life. I would hate to be without those items and I have serious withdrawal symptoms when I'm away from the Aga:

But I could probably get by without most of things I currently think of as essential. How about you? What is your most treasured or essential gadget and what is the most useless or trivial thing in your kitchen?

Boxty

Boxty on the griddle,

Boxty in the pan.

If you can't make boxty,

You'll never get a man.

I'm not actually looking for a new man in my life but I decided to make some boxty at the weekend anyway. There are many different recipes for this traditional Irish potato pancake and I suppose everyone's grandmother's was the best. I sort of made this one up from a mixture of childhood memory and guesswork:

Ingredients

8oz raw potato, grated

8oz mashed potato

4oz plain flour (US all-purpose)

1 egg, beaten

1 tablespoon chopped wild garlic stems or spring onions (scallions)

Milk or buttermilk to mix

Method

Mix the grated and mashed potato together. Stir in the flour and garlic/onion and season with salt and pepper. Add the beaten egg and enough milk to make a batter that will drop from the spoon. Cook on a griddle or shallow fry for about 3 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Serve with bacon and eggs.

The best place to eat boxty and other traditional Irish dishes is at Gallagher's Boxty House in Dublin. Mine didn't match their high standard but we all enjoyed it. If you have a different recipe for boxty, I'd love to hear it.

Tiger cub

An email from my daughter this morning brought this picture of Millie. Who wouldn't welcome this tiger to tea?

Knitted yoke

Over the weekend, I tried out a new (to me) knitting technique: a yoke for a little jacket. It looked tricky but turned out to be much easier than I expected:

Here is the short-sleeved jacket, knitted in cashmerino aran yarn.

I'll be posting it off to Millie today, together with a little summer dress. I hope the sunshine returns soon so that she can wear them!

As I was working on the yoke, I couldn't help thinking of a certain lace collar in Cranford. Thank goodness I have no cat!

Bring us a Trollopian Prime Minister

".... He should have rank, and intellect, and parliamentary habits, by which to bind him to the service of his country; and he should also have unblemished, unextinguishable, inexhaustible love of country ... as the ruling principle of his life; and it should so rule him that all other things should be made to give way to it.... " 

I wish!

Just M

I'm sure that I will soon be longing for the sounds of hectic life which have filled my days for the past months but right now I am enjoying a little tranquillity. I have had a week of catching up with chores in the house and garden and I've even read a book that wasn't written by Julia Donaldson. I haven't been Mum or Grandma - just M.

While I wasn't paying attention, the garden has been turning blue. The pinks and reds of magnolia and camellia have been replaced by the blues of ceanothus, wisteria, Spanish bluebells and some Heavenly Blue lithodora in the neglected rockery.

With no visitors to cater for, I put away the tablecloths and got out the everyday place mats that a friend made for us more than thirty years ago. How threadbare and shabby they looked:

time to put the sewing machine into action again.  My former needlework teacher would surely find many faults but I am pleased with my new double-sided mats. I can have a yellow or blue themed table, or even mix them!

The me-centred interval will soon pall but just for a little while longer I will enjoy being just M.