Cookery books and how they...

chart our progress through life.

Just before luncheon today,

just after I'd learnt a few more words

to the songs,

sorted out my costumes for my 

*starring* (fib)

role in

'Oh What a Lovely War'.

Being at a loose end, as Ted was doing the lunch,

I idly perused my blog favourites, like you do.

One of my new blog fav's is
The Quince Tree
today her post transported me back in time.
That in turn got me to thinking about
recipes over the years which we've all used to
impress; fall back on as family favourites,
and, more importantly, ones that
conjure up time in our lives that, no matter how hard
we try, wish for, will never return.

The recipe for a coffee-soaked cake, star turn of my 
Seventies dinner parties,
 I was sure was in my much used...

'The Cookery Year'.

I rushed over to find it, only to discover...
I was wrong.
Where the devil was it?

Surely not the Robert Carrier
Cook Book that an old boyfriend of eons ago
had bought me for the princely sum of five guineas.
The inscription cut out by my father before
my wedding day.
I'm sorry he did now...
a tiny scrap of my own personal history gone.

Smells, tastes, sounds...
the recipe for a life well lived.

As I recline on the...

dfs, I got to thinking...

The problem is...

I'm on the cusp...

shall I pull out all the stops...

and be... 

Audrey Hepburn
(read slim)

I'm banking on it!

 in our local

'Oh What a Lovely War'

production, or give the latent

Miriam Margoleses

Just wish I could!
 
full reign of the double d's

and let it (or more to the point, them)

hang out?

I can't sleep at night for worry. 

What do you think?

I need help soonest.

'And another thing'

As I sit in the garden, early Saturday evening 

on the longest day of the year.

Smiling at myself in the screen of the laptop...

hold tight... only to see if my mortgage inducing

root canal treatment injection has worn off.

I get to thinking about my week.

Well, I would do if I could hear myself think over

the noise abatement societies worst nightmare of

chirruping flaming sparrows.

I wouldn't mind, but I'm becoming 

increasingly deafer, than deaf.

The week has been action-packed.

Last Friday we went to the 

Affordable Art Fair with dear chums,

that I tell myself not to believe, are young enough

to be our children.

We got the inside track about exhibiting

and the pitfalls.  

A leisurely late luncheon, early evening

supper in a Hampstead pub with pint/wine in hand 

we put the world to rights-ish!

Alcohol, don't you find, brings out the inner politician?

Saturday - fete and

impromptu Aldi/Lidl fest

(written about)

Sunday - lazy day with dentures (fib)

in Steradent.  

Monday- Scotney and the charm

offensive, with by now gleaming knashers...

smiles a-go-go.

Tuesday - cake baking for

afternoon tea date with pals we haven't seen

for simply ages.

Rehearsals - Tuesday night.

Wednesday - afternoon tea,

scrummy sandwiches and wicked

chocolate cake...

err... 'healthy' baked nectarines with

almond stuffing.

Thursday - Lip-reading class,

where I'm ashamed to say I troll along 

with choccies for teacher.

they don't call me a snivelling, trying a

tad too hard, to be teacher's pet

for nothing, you know!
Rehearsals - still I haven't learnt my six lines.

Friday - A trip to Charleston

and guess who forgot to take her camera?

When of course the garden was looking at its

very, very blowsy best.

The only fly in my ointment was

the bed of dahlias.

"Surely the Bloomsbury Group didn't give

dahlias room in the bed?"

I said in my best lady Docker voice.

thinking all the while... 

'Well everybody else got bed space,

why not a frigging dahlia!'

"Best ask the gardener!" the lady said.

The trouble was I'd missed the trilby-hatted him,

at the start of our tour.

I had spied a much loved by me, and I'm afraid to say

only me, what looked like a 

giant hogweed...

The garden was a delight, just my sort of

disordered chaos.

My grandchildren call me Poppy,
perhaps a name change to Angelica
might be in order.
I think not...
angelic?

Saturday - a flaming dental appointment...

I ask you who goes to the dentist on a Saturday?

I left home early for my 3pm appointment.  
I mooched around the Pantiles...
giving everybody the evil eye because...

 I couldn't join the rest of the world sat in the sun

enjoying luncheon and watching the world go by.
Hadn't I only just cleaned my teeth to within an inch of
their very precarious lives?  
Wine, crudities, olives, garlic bread plays havoc with the old
oral hygiene, what!

I found just the earrings I needed to complete

my ensemble for the Edwardian picnic,

where I'm going as...

Vanessa Bell.

Ted as John Maynard Keynes...

John M.K. in the garden at Charleston painted by
Roger Fry

hence the refresher trip to Charleston.

With my bosom and strings of pearls

I just couldn't bring myself to go as Queen Mary.

Alright I know some might say I have all the accruements...

but still...

Suffolk next week...

brace yourselves.

I've come over all...

crabby and peculiar!

Could it be because...

I'm growing my hair but my beard is growing faster?

Or...

I went to the Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead

and came away with a total lack of confidence

in my latest

'Painting by Numbers' masterpiece?

Not only is the Laughing Cavalier not cracking

a smile, neither am I!

Or...

the fact that at the impromptu supper in our garden after the  

fete worse than death (fib),  I couldn't even join in with the barrister, the upholsterer

and the head teacher about the wonders of

Lidl and Aldi.  The world as I know it has crumbled around my feet.

Social climbing has never felt more treacherous.

I honestly think I'd be safer piggy-backing Brian Blessed up Mount Everest

on his latest attempt.

Or...

My wild gardening is frankly making me...

not to put too fine a point on it...

wild.

Why, because we have grass in the wild flower meadow, hardly any

flowers and my visions of wandering lonely as a cloud

(alright I know its too late for daffs, use your flaming imagination)

doesn't seem the same somehow, as I sniff and sneeze across great swathes

of prairie grass with nere a flower in sight.

Or...

that the froglets aren't coping at all well with their dash for

freedom across the coping stones.  Their little wet bodies on the stone

sticks them like glue and they frizzle and die like comedy cartoon characters;

all in the worse possible taste.

Riding to the rescue we removed the stones and all is well;

they manage to escape, only to be eaten by a bird or a passing hedgehog.

Talking of which, the only bit of good news is...

after our guests went last night, Ted went up to see if the hedgehog's

food had been eaten...

and there were two, having a romantic Saturday night

supper in the greenhouse.

The patter of tiny prickles just a hog hot date away.

It quite bucked me up, then I remembered I'm making an art-form

of being miserable, about the only art-form I'm any good at.

So I've just sunk into another mizz-mog. 

As I said to Helena...

Bonham Carter only this morning...

'Last night I saw your muff!'

Before you fall back in a dead faint...

I ought to explain.

Last night we watched 'Wings of a Dove'.
This morning on the front cover of 'Culture'

who should grace the front page but her-

lovely corsetted, gloves up to her pits, self.

Now if there's one thing I like, really, really like... its a wacky woman.

She epitomises that person... fluff'n'all.

As I endeavour to age gracefully...

(that'll gett' em rocking in the aisles)

my eternal interest is hair in all its forms.

By the early morn light I sit by yonder window for a quiet pluck.

In days gone by, hairy caterpillars would arrange a pow-wow

right on the bridge of my nose...

not anymore!

As I wage war on the chin and tache, suddenly I

realise my eyebrows are balding by the second.

But wait...

Where is the hair going?  

It sure as hell isn't marshalling forces to protect

my womanly front-line.

'We shall fight on the beaches,

we shall fight on the landing grounds,

we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

we shall fight in the hills;

we shall never surrender.'

Let's take time out to remember all the men who gave their
lives for us to enjoy the freedom we have today.

And as flippant as I am, and as flippant as I will always be,
I will never forget their bravery.

I read other folk's...

blogs and come over all peculiar.

My life in comparison seems so dull.

The most exciting thing in my little world is...

I'm growing my hair.

All my life I've wanted straight hair...

well until now, when my wish appears to be coming true.

There is one small problem, 

I've just discovered straight thin grey hair isn't hugely attractive. .

My idea was to grow it to my waist, have it flowing down my back 

and then take up Morris dancing.

It would flow and ripple beautifully as with bosoms 

strapped I would make the earth move.

Men would fall at my feet at the beauty of line and movement.

Hey nonni nonni no...

All I've managed to do is look like
a lesbian with a bob. 

Life's a bitch.

You can't beat a little bucolic...

bonk I always say.

Sitting like Ma Larkin, cheek by jowl with

Pa, full to pussy's bow with good strong Kentish cider.

We contemplate our wild meadow garden.

Cynics might say our gardening slothfulness knows no bounds.

With the sun's rays peeping through the canopy of

the magnolia tree, smugly, 

we look to those who buy cheap sunshades from Robert Dyas,

Argos and the like.

No worries that the sub-soil from the big pond dig

sits on the lawn, looking for all the world like 

Kent's answer to Tut's final resting place.

We are happy.

Nature is doing what nature does best...

not to put too fine a point on it...

shagging.

Every year, under the eves of our 300 year old

weatherboard cottage, sparrows nest.

They make much of building a des. res. with lichen-clad roof of

Kentish peg-tiles.  After the Grand Designs is complete, they

celebrate by sitting on the end of the cast-iron gutter

and not to put too fine a point on it...

fornicating...

until even Ma Larkin thinks...

'They're pushing it!'

There is just one bum note in this

'Love Story'

in all the years we have,

like pervy naturalists, watched their antics,

there have never been babies.

She is obviously a slatternly sparrow;

a wag of the worse possible kind.

He's a male, happy to provide a cosy pied-à-terre.

No worries she's faking it! 

The blue-tits are about to entice their family out of the

nest-box.  They along with the frogs have

produced offspring.

It only remains now for Hedge

to find a mate instead of sleeping alone

in the greenhouse, and we will feel that our wild gardening adventure

has proved a success.