Category Archives: pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 44

OMG it’s now week 44 (of 60) of my experiment documenting each week five things which have made me happy of for which I’m grateful. But I’m still trying to work out where the last week has gone. I seem to have been running in a blur of circles all week with little to show for it except stress and losing all track of what day it is. Ably assisted the while by having a cold and sinus infection — thankfully it seems now on the wane.

So I have to come up with my five picks for the week. Hmmm …

  1. Pak Choi. Yes that strange cabbage-y oriental veg. I rather like it’s slightly nutty flavour and its crispiness and it is full of vitamin C. As it has been good recently so we’ve eaten it twice this week.


    And I’ve made my own way of cooking it (probably not original): slice the pak choi in half along it’s length and pan fry it in olive oil and flambé it with a slug of whisky or brandy. (I nearly managed to fire the kitchen doing this last night!) Serve when it’s beginning to brown but still fresh and crunchy.

    What I hadn’t realised is that it is very closely related to the common or garden turnip. But don’t eat too much of it as it contains some toxic glucosinolates.

  2. Bastourma. We’ve eaten out twice this week as on both Tuesday and Wednesday we ended up near a favourite restaurant in the early evening. On Tuesday, as we left a meeting about 6pm I asked Noreen what we were about to do. She said “I’m taking you out for dinner”. Well who am I to object? Especially when we were but a few hundred yards from one of our favourite Italian restaurants.

    Then on Wednesday I had another meeting which was scheduled right across evening meal time and which I knew wouldn’t finish until 8pm. So afterwards I met Noreen in our favourite Greek Cypriot restaurant. I just had a quick main course of Bastourma, a smoked spicy beef sausage, with a couple of beers. They weren’t hugely busy, so we had time for a chat with the lady of the house too.

  3. Boarding the Loft. Regular readers may recall we’ve been slowly trying to clear and organise our loft. This week we had James in to lay boarding in the second (of three) areas we’ve cleared. Job well done and lots more usable storage space. Now we just have to clear the final third!
  4. Roast Pork & Apple Sauce. This week’s other treat was a large joint of pork from our trip to the supermarket. Succulent roast pork, with Noreen’s tart apple sauce (just Bramley apple stewed with butter) — and a naughty bit of crackling on the side!
  5. Completed Tax Returns. What a wonderful job for a Sunday: filling in the income tax return! Like most people it’s a job I hate; I remember my father swearing about it every year. But it’s worse now I have three tax returns to do: mine, Noreen’s and my mother’s! But with a decent PC application, last year’s return as a basis and all the data in the file ready it doesn’t take too long. Mine and Noreen’s have been sent in; just my mother’s to finalise during the week. And it is such a pleasant relief when it is over for another year!

Reasons to be Grateful: 43

OK, so it’s another week down in the experiment: week 43 done and 17 to go. Here are my five picks of the week.

  1. Wedding Anniversary. As I mentioned, yesterday was our wedding anniversary. I worked it out; a mere 33 years! I make that pearl (30) and leather (3), so we invested in some fancy dog-collars shackles. 😉 But … Eeeekkkkk! We’ve been married much longer than we weren’t. And every year we look at each other and say “How did we do it?”. And we still don’t know! But it’s a good week for it; we have several friends with wedding anniversaries this week.
  2. Summer Weather. This week has been another of glorious late summer weather: clear blue skies, hot sunshine, warm nights — just like summer should be — but also quite humid. It seems the first week of September is so often good weather, which is one reason we often used to go on holiday in early September. All of which has meant we’ve enjoyed several days of …
  3. Eating in the Garden. Well at least on the terrace, aka patio.

  4. Plums. Our next door neighbours have a small Victoria Plum tree. Like all fruit trees It hasn’t been prolific this year (we’ve had no apples worth eating), but earlier in the week they gave us a couple of pounds of delicious ripe plums; just right for eating.
  5. Duck and Blackberry. See my recipe from yesterday!

Reasons to be Grateful: 42

OK, so it’s week 42 of the experiment. Which means I have to find another five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week. Some weeks this is incredibly easy and other weeks it is hard. For no obvious reason this is just one of those hard weeks.

  1. Hypnotherapy. As I’ve said before, I always enjoy my hypnotherapy sessions. That’s party because it is quite relaxing; in fact so relaxing I almost always fall asleep when I get home. And this week Chris was able to push me deeper than ever before.
  2. Smoked Chicken Salad. Here’s another regular. We always keep a couple of smoked chicken breasts in the fridge. They make a quick, delicious salad.

    Autumn
    Click the image for larger versions on Flickr

  3. Alpine Mornings. Thursday night was an exceptionally cold night for August and Friday dawned bright a chilly: really autumnally alpine. Which I love even if it shouldn’t be happening in August!
  4. Lamb with Port. One of our occasional treats from Waitrose is a piece of butterflied leg of lamb (ie. boned and opened out), dressed with some herb and garlic before being vacuum-packed. We only buy it if it is reduced (ie. near it’s sell-by date) — it is just too expensive otherwise. The piece we had this week I sliced into steaklets and pan-fried with a little olive oil and a generous glass of port. It was just so tender and went down extremely well with some mixed rocket salad and steamed new potatoes.
  5. Food with Friends. Last evening we went to a local Thai restaurant with our friends Sue and Ziggy, plus their two boys — a last chance before the boys go back to school and everyone’s’ diaries get impossible to shoehorn anything else into. Good food, a few beers, excellent company as well as fun watching Sam (14) and his mother wind each other up! We wound up the evening early-ish partly because young Harry (10), having put away a gargantuan amount of food, was visibly beginning to wilt — and I knew if we went back to S&Z’s for postprandials then Harry would likely resist bed and they’d all regret it. A good evening nonetheless.

Reasons to be Grateful: 41

Experiment, week 41.

What a strange week. Apart from going to Norfolk to visit my aged mother on Monday it has been a fairly uneventful week, so I’m not quite sure why it’s been quite so strange.

But anyway the experiment continues … so here are five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

  1. Shipdham. On the way back from visiting my mother we detoured via the Norfolk village of Shipdham with its rather interesting church. As I wrote about it here, I’ll say no more now.
  2. Feeling Human. Somewhere around Thursday I suddenly came to the realisation that I was beginning to feel human, almost normal, rather than my usual morose, grumpy and depressive self. I have no clue where it came from, or why. It was a most strange feeling. It hasn’t entirely gone away, but it isn’t entirely here now either. I’d be quite happy if it came back, though.
  3. Plums. It’s the season for decent English plums. I love good plums and especially Victorias. On Monday we bought some large plums in Roy’s (again see here) of a variety called Jubilee. They looked and tasted like large Victorias. On Friday we bought some actual Victorias in Waitrose. Both were excellent, although to be honest the Jubilee were maybe the better if only for being more succulent.

    Click the images for larger views on Flickr
    Hollyhock Hollyhock

  4. Hollyhocks. Also on Monday there were some wonderful hollyhocks in the village of Bawburgh where we had lunch. I’ve noticed this glorious show before, many growing not in the gardens but on the verges. The photos above are just a couple of a whole range of colours from pure white to deep maroon.

    Hot Lemon Chillies

  5. Home-Grown Chillies. As I have for the last several years I’m growing my own chillies again on the study windowsill. Up to now I’ve always grown 3 or 4 different varieties. The large Scotch Bonnet type never seem to do well for me — I have just a couple of fruit ripening — they probably need it consistently hotter and brighter. But I have a tiny purple-turning-red variety called “Explosive Ember” which is prolific. They are hot and I usually dry them for winter use. But my favourite is “Hot Lemon” (the ones in the photo above are from my 2010 crop). They are 2-3 inches long and when ripe a bright lemon yellow. They too are hot with, when fresh, a delightful succulent, almost citrus-y taste as well. They go well in salads, and they look just stunning. Today I picked the second flush — only seven fruit, but there are already at least as many more to come and the plants are still flowering. It’s a travesty not to eat these fresh, but next year I might succumb and plant only these — they are that good.

Of Flowers, Sheep and Churches

Last Monday we spent the day in Norfolk. The main purpose was to visit my mother, but we also managed to fit in an hour or so of being tourists.

As normal we left home about 7.30am and we had a really clear run up to Norwich. By the time we arrived the sun was burning off the overnight cloud and the day was working up to be another scorcher.

Having spent a quick 20 minutes with mother, really just to see what if any bits of shopping she needed, we scooted off to Bowthorpe: take some stuff to the good charity shop there and a quick wander round Roy’s, the local supermarket.

I’ve written about Roy’s before. They started as boat chandlers in Wroxham, on the Broads. As I recall about 40 years ago they bought the Wroxham Post Office and General Store and expanded to become Roy’s of Wroxham. They now have a small chain of supermarkets serving the local communities; they are still family owned. Their philosophy is to stock the basics and whatever they can get cheap — everything is cheap — and if it’s local so much the better. True to their origins they sell everything from frozen food to paint, insect spray to shoes. Apart from the staples you can never be sure that if you buy something there today they’ll have it next week. It is a cross between Lidl, a pound shop and a market stall — they don’t describe themselves as “the world’s largest village store” for nothing! The downside is that their fruit, salad and meat isn’t always top quality, but there are definite bargains (like our favourite packs of bacon pieces) if you shop carefully.

After Roy’s it was off for pub lunch at the excellent King’s Head at Bawburgh. We were early and by now it was hot, so it was cold soft drinks all round. It was even too hot for fish and chips or beef suet pudding! So we all settled for the most excellent Ploughman’s Lunch: craft cheese, home-cured smoked ham, home-made pork pie, granary bread, tomato, pickled onion and home-made piccalilli. It was good, wholesome and tasty; none of your plastic packet food here. It was so good we none of us wanted a pudding!

Click the images for larger views on Flickr
Hollyhock Hollyhock
I stopped in Bawburgh to photograph a few of the magnificent hollyhocks growing outside some of the cottages. Then on the way back to see mother for the afternoon we stopped and gathered some flowers for her to paint and a small bundle of stray corn: we found wheat, naturalised oats and naturalised barley in the field margins.

Bouquet
The time saved early in the day allowed us to leave mother slightly early and take advantage of the good weather with a diversion on the way home. Much as we like the section of the A11 from Norwich, by way of Thetford and Eleveden, to Mildenhall it is nice to see something different. So we followed the A47 round to Dereham, then the A1075 through Watton, rejoining the A11 near Thetford.

This was a deliberate ploy to go through the lovely village of Shipdham — literally “settlement of the sheep”, which tells you where its wealth came from — where we stopped for an ice cream and a look at the church.

Shipdham Church, Norfolk
All Saints, Shipdham is a rather interesting church. It clearly has Norman origins and lots of later developments, finally having been “tidied up” by the Victorians. On top of the originally 13th century tower there is a two-tier, 17th century cupola of wood covered with lead. There is a nave (totally Victorianised) and a north aisle which still has it’s early roof beams. Strangely the church has two fonts: it’s own 14th century one and a Norman font rescued from Ovington which they now use in preference to their own. It is a small delight.

Shipdham Church, Norfolk Flint & Brick
Shipdham is also interesting because it was clearly quite prosperous in medieval, Tudor and Stuart times. Hence the surprisingly imposing church with a neat walled, picture-book churchyard. The village also had its own brickworks for several hundred years up until around 1820. So as well as the ubiquitous Norfolk flint there are still a number of examples of the local small, pale red bricks as can be seen in the church wall above.

If you’re going that way, Shipdham is definitely worth a quick stop.

Reasons to be Grateful: 40

Experiment, week 40.

Apologies for the hiatus in postings this week, somehow I’ve managed to be busy, busy, busy. There are a few things happening over the next 2-3 days, but hopefully things can then get back to normal.

Anyway we’re now two-thirds of the way through my experiment. This is week 40 of 60 and so far things are looking fairly positive.

In fact this week has been so busy I’m actually struggling a bit for things out of the ordinary to write about, however here are five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

Sorry Sue, It’s a foodie theme again!

  1. Meeting Katy. On Monday Noreen and I met up with our friend Katy and her three children who were having a break in London. While it was a social meeting we also agreed to go and see the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum. Meeting Katy is always a pleasure especially as we usually eat cake and lunch! And the Shakespeare was also a pleasure, especially as it’s aim is to show things about the times in which the plays were written and put some of the great speeches into their contemporary social context. The exhibition is definitely recommended. You can find Katy’s write-up of the exhibition here.
  2. Ciao Bella. Having done the exhibition, had coffee and cake, and let the children run around in Corams Fields for an hour or so, we wandered off for lunch. Katy had spotted a good-looking Italian restaurant, Ciao Bella, next to the Lamb pub in Lamb’s Conduit Street. Despite (or maybe because of) being inhabited by what appeared to be a couple of small groups of Mafiosi, it was excellent. Although we had just a quick, simple and late lunch the food was substantial and good. Definitely one to be added to the list of useful London eateries. Again, you can find Katy’s write-up here.
  3. Doughnut. On Wednesday we spent a depressing chunk of the day in a consultation meeting about changes to our local hospitals. Depressing because of what my father would have called the “poverty of mind” of most of the people there; people who cannot (or will not) understand what is being proposed but oppose it anyway. Afterwards Noreen and I had to fortify ourselves with doughnuts and a cold drink. I’m not a huge fan of the doughnut, if only because they don’t do much for the waistline, but this one went down a real treat after a long, and very hot, ordeal.
  4. Swifts. I like having swifts flying around and I always look forward to their arrival in late-April/early-May from Africa and wish they wouldn’t fly away again so soon at the end of July. But amazingly we still have at least one swift still around; I’ve seen it on each of the last three evenings. This is unusually late (although not unheard of) and especially late for me to see a swift in London.
  5. Pub Meet. Yesterday I hosted the quarterly lunchtime Anthony Powell Society Pub Meet in London. I always enjoy what are informal chats between friends over a beer or two and pub lunch. We never know who will turn up and yesterday we had three people come along totally unexpectedly and enliven the conversations. These conversations cover almost anything but sooner or later always return to some Powellian theme or aspect of life. For a wonder yesterday I managed to get through over three hours in the pub without a drop of alcohol, or sugary drink — just to compensate for Wednesday’s doughnut!

Reasons to be Grateful: 39

Experiment, week 39. Well here we are again. Another week has gone round. Where did it go to? And so it’s time to document the five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

  1. Ultra-Sound Scan. On Monday I had to go to Hammersmith Hospital for an ultra-sound scan, because I have a lump where I shouldn’t have one (and where only 50% of us can have one). I went early in case I got stuck in all the extra traffic due to these wretched Olympic Games. I had a 10.40 appointment; I left home at 08.20 and was home again by 10.20 having stopped for a leisurely coffee after the scan. The scan was of course quick, simple and painless — and no it didn’t bother me in the least. Even better I got the all clear. If everything the NHS did was as good and efficient as this we’d have nothing to bitch about.
  2. Retsina & Mousaka. On Wednesday, early in the evening, I had a meeting at West Ealing. As one of our favourite restaurants, Retisna & Mousaka, is close by, and so are our friends Sue & Ziggy, we took the opportunity of grabbing our them and their two boys for a social evening. I wouldn’t normally do this mid-week but as it’s the school holidays there’s no harm the boys being a bit later to bed than usual. Needless to say there was plenty of very enjoyable food, drink and chat.

    Ely Cathedral West Front
    Click the image for larger views on Flickr

  3. Ely Cathedral. Fortunately we weren’t too late home on Wednesday evening as we were up at crack of something on Thursday for a day trip around some of the Cambridgeshire villages where my g-g-grandmother and her ancestors originated. One of them is Soham, which is a nice, quiet, small country town a few miles south of Ely. So of course, as we had the time, we had to go into Ely and spend an hour or so in the cathedral. I think Ely is one of my favourite cathedrals. The octagonal lantern tower is just such an amazing structure, built entirely of wood. It is visible across the fens for miles around, the more so as the cathedral stands on a slight hill (once an island in the marshes). Overall the villages weren’t amazing interesting, but the fenland is lovely and Ely is just a delight.
  4. Nutty-Seedy Bread. I’ve probably written about this before, but once or twice a week Noreen makes bread with seeds in. Usually a mix of pumpkin seed and pine nuts. So much nicer then plain, even if it is relatively expensive!

    Oak Bush Cricket
    Click the image for larger views on Flickr

  5. Oak Bush Cricket. Last evening I spotted an Oak Bush Cricket in the bathroom. We usually get the odd one in the house at this time of year. They’re 2-3cm long, bright green with yellow legs. Yes they live mostly on oak trees and they fly quite, jump and walk quite smartly backwards as well as forwards. I didn’t manage to photograph this one as it stayed out of range on the ceiling, but you can see from the photo above (which I took two years ago) that they are absolutely amazing tiny pieces of engineering. Stunning!

Quotes about Cats

Good quotes seem to be slow arriving at the moment. Maybe they’re like London buses and there will the three along in 5 minutes time. Meanwhile I thought we’d have a few quotes about my favourite animal: the Cat.

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes.
Theophile Gautier

There are people who reshape the world by force or argument, but the cat just lies there, dozing, and the word quietly reshapes itself to suit his comfort and convenience.
Allen & Ivy Dodd

I have studied many philosophers and many cats. The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.
Hippolyte Taine

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau

No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of masking tape
can ever totally remove his fur from your couch.

Leo Dworken

Cats’ hearing apparatus is built to allow the human voice to easily go in one ear
and out the other.

Stephen Baker

Cats are mysterious kind of folk. There is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.
Sir Walter Scott

The cat is a dilettante in fur.
Theophile Gautier

Reasons to be Grateful: 38

Experiment, week 38. So here we go, another week completed in the continuing experiment documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week. We’ll soon be two-thirds of the way through the experiment.

  1. Willem Van De Velde and …
  2. The Wallace Collection this week produced the first two of selections. More on both here.
  3. Queen's Head and Artichoke, Albany Street, London NW1

  4. Queen’s Head & Artichoke. After we’d been to the Wallace Collection, Noreen and I pottered off (in a taxi) to the Artichoke for lunch. We had a selection of their tapas: Prawn & Scallop Skewers, Whitebait, Chorizo and Lentils, Cannellini Bean Salad and Patatas Bravas. This is an excellent gastro pub in Albany Street, NW1, very close to Great Portland Street and Regent’s Park tube stations. I can’t believe I’ve not written about it before as we use it both for ourselves and for some Anthony Powell Society functions (it is close to Powell’s former Chester Gate home). The menu is always interesting: a good selection of starters, main courses and puddings and on the other side a whole range of tapas; you can mix and match anyhow you like as long as you don’t want standard pub food. The food, beer, wine and service are always good and friendly; the manager is a characterful Frenchman (certainly Francophone with a wonderful Inspector Clouseau accent). They are always willing to try to accommodate allergies: we have one friend who is vegetarian and allergic to dairy, and they were quite happy to quickly adapt a risotto for her. And it isn’t expensive, especially for central London. The only downside is that if it’s full the main bar can be a bit noisy, but if you’re eating there is always the upstairs restaurant area. I have to thank our friend Jeff Manley for finding it on one of his transatlantic trips to London! Everyone we’ve taken there has liked it.
  5. Waitrose Chorizo Sausages. These were one of last week’s finds as they were on offer. Eaten cold between bread for lunch. Mmmmm!
  6. Strawberry & Gooseberry Crumble. Friday’s trip to the supermarket found lots of fresh strawberries and gooseberries leaping into our trolley. They were destined for a favourite crumble: gooseberry and strawberry — yes, it really does work! I cooked the fruit a bit first, with just a tablespoon of sugar and a small slug of apricot brandy. This was then topped with crumble and given a 10 minute burst in our combi oven. What an excellent way to start Sunday morning: a bowl of G&S Crumble** and Custard.

** G&S Crumble. An interesting addition to the Savoy Cabbage operas.

Wallace Collection

Earlier today I had a meeting at The Wallace Collection in central London, which is just off Oxford Street near Bond Street tube station. While there we took the opportunity for a quick look at a couple of our favourite things.

The Wallace is a mine of all sorts of art eccentricities from paintings (famous and not so famous), through Sèvres porcelain and French furniture, to bronzes, metalware and armour. It describes itself on its website as a national museum in an historic London town house. In 25 galleries are unsurpassed displays of French 18th century painting, furniture and porcelain with superb Old Master paintings and a world class armoury. Their description used to be A Family Collection, A National Museum, An International Treasure House — and that is precisely what it is!

Apart from my meeting and the inevitable coffee and cake, we stopped to look specifically at three things: the current exhibition, Poussin’s painting A Dance to the Music of Time (of course!) and some of the Dutch naval paintings.

The current exhibition is The Noble Art of the Sword: Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe. It contains some delightful examples of both functional and ceremonial rapiers from around 16th and 17th century Europe, together with a few artefacts and numerous contemporary illustrations.

Some of the metal work is stunning, but for me the highlight was the Parade costume of Christian II, Elector of Saxony which dates from the first decade of the 17th century. Costume from that date is rare, and something of this quality and in such good condition is just fabulous! With it was the Elector’s (ceremonial) rapier, the hilt inset with blue enamel and lapis to match the costume.

Having seen the swords, we made our way up to the first floor, past paintings by Rembrandt, Gainsborough and Canaletto for a quick look at Poussin’s painting A Dance to the Music of Time, inspiration for Anthony Powell‘s 12 volume magnus opus of the same title. Whenever I see the painting, which is always hung nicely at about eye-level, I am surprised by how small it is at just 82 x 104 cm.

On the wall opposite the Poussin is Frans Hals’s (wrongly named) The Laughing Cavalier, which today was amusing for having, left nearby on the floor, a reproduction lace collar complete with ye olde press studs.

Click these images for larger versions on Flickr
cav1 collar1

Finally we went to the newly transformed and restored Dutch Galleries, which look stunning. They contain some of my favourite paintings: the Dutch sea scenes of Willem Van De Velde (1633-1707). Many of these paintings, two of which are below, would have been done at a time when England was at war with Holland and Samuel Pepys (another of my “heroes”) was in charge of the British Navy.

Van De Velde
Calm: Fishing Boats under Sail
Van De Velde
The Embarkation of Charles II at Scheveningen
This was the Restoration in 1660; Samuel Pepys was there

If you’re in central London and have some time The Wallace Collection is well worth a visit. You may not like everything it contains — personally I dislike the Sèvres porcelain and the ornate French furniture — but you’re almost bound to find something you like. The Collections are a nice size: worth seeing but not too huge. While to do it all in detail would take a lot of time you could absorb and enjoy the highlights in an hour or so.

The restaurant is definitely up-market, if not a little pretentious; the food is always good, although the service can be slightly tardy; our slices of coffee cake were gargantuan! There is the usual shop. Visitor information is here, and entrance is free.

All images except the two of the Frans Hals are © The Wallace Collection.