Why I'm not sure I like satin anymore

When I flicked through Pauline E Metcalfe's  Syrie Maugham (pub. Acanthus Press 2010) there was something about its glamour that reminded me of my mother's bridge friends in the English provinces when I was growing up in the 50s.  I particularly loved Dorothy, Beryl, Gay, Mary and Heather who left their scented fur coats and Jacqmar scarves on the banisters and played cards with manicured hands in deathly silence, save for the the murmur of  the bidding.  Nobody lived in particularly recherché houses but something about their well-groomed silkiness and face-powder, their nail polish, their patent leather or crocodile shoes chimed with the high-gloss effects of some of Syrie's rooms.  I was nostalgic too for my mother's pale blue satin dressing gown on the back of the bathroom door.  On the strength of that, I  bought the book.

Then I looked again.  Oh dear.  The curtains above were made for her daughter Lisa Paravicini but not sure if I could have lived with this hemming that puts one in mind of  pair of lounging pajamas that have come into contact with the bathroom floor.

Who was Syrie Maugham's upholsterer, I  can't help wondering.  It's tricky stuff but they made a pig's ear of this valance n'est ce pas?  

Just because these rooms [above and below] were created for wondrously camp old Stephen Tennant at the fabled Wilsford Manor, there's no excuse to dress the occasional chairs in  bargain rail party frocks.  

 You'd be forgiven for thinking this was a Nevada chicken ranch.. The taste is not even amusingly execrable and one might spend one's spare time twitching the corners of the bed cover to align the corners. I'm not even an obsessive person.

Now what's going on here?  I love the organdie curtains but the pelmet treatment is nothing short of a tragic stab at things.  Sort of thing your teenage daughter might do with a staple gun on a night when her boyfriend was playing football.

Another bout of juvenilia. Sorry Syrie, but that stool just won't do. 




If anyone needed reminding, this is what Syrie Maugham was capable of and rightly celebrated for.  It's all a bit of a puzzle.

Does any of this chime at christmas time?

No apologies for another poignant episode of Misery Bear.  Either you love him or you think I've gone soft in the head.   Warning: he'll make you laugh but he might make you cry when you think about it..

Happy Christmas from a Domestic Goddess not

I don't know what it is about the festive season that make me go into hibernation.  Very much hoping for an adrenalin rush sometime in the next 48 hours.  

Secret Desires

Now that London's Royal College of Art's Secret Sale (in aid of student bursaries and support) is over, I can reveal my contribution.  Over 2,800 postcards are illustrated by artists and students and exhibited anonymously.  Each costs £45 and the game is to pick one by an expensive artist like Damien Hirst or Grayson Perry and not get landed with a Rosie West.


Artists generally don't like to pin down the meaning of their work.  I suppose mine are supposed to be seductive as little pictures in themselves and then remind one of the gross price of property; they glibly juxtapose the tradition of painting with nasty material values; or simply stand as a painterly documentation of a common phenomenon like the property ads blah blah blah..


They are possibly rather sketchy but you have to take a run at them since you only get given
three postcards and there's no room to mess up even more.

I have no idea how many of them sold but I know that my son pointed out one of mine to his girlfriend not realising his old ma had done it.  Needless to say he didn't buy it.  

All illustrations © Rosie West

The Triumph of Hope over Experience II : Jamie Oliver's Naked Cheek?

Thank God I didn't attempt Jamie Oliver's three-course 'Thirty Minute Meal' before an audience of guests, laughing-charfing and moving confidently around my domain.  This is what happened in the privacy of my own chaos.

6.30: Read recipe. Strange step-by-step instructions swim before my eyes.

6.32: Throw contents of shopping trolley around work surfaces

6.33 Unwrap new frying pan

6.34  Wash new baking dish.  

6.35 Scrabble in cupboards for slicing attachments for my magimix.

6.37 Realise they went to the charity shop.  Start slicing 2lbs of potatoes and red onion by hand.

6.38  Decide to empty washing machine onto ironing board. Why?

6.39 Cut my finger and search kitchen drawer for blue plaster. Wind it up in kitchen roll.

6.40 Start chucking ingredients for Dauphinoise potatoes in pan. Seems from book that pan's too small so I  wash up new bigger baking dish. Transfer the slop of cream, olive oil, grated parmesan  and stuff into that. Occurs to me bigger pan only necessary to save a vital five minutes' cooking time but what the hell, I'm still in the game.

6.43 'Tear' oily anchovy fillets limb from limb. Would have preferred to use a knife, frankly.

6.44  Scrub and sniff hands.  Notice oil on floor and make a mental note to avoid.  

6.45 Put pan covered in tin foil on a medium gas flame.  Narrow tin foil doesn't fit big pan. Will vital steam escape through the join of two pieces? Oh dear.

6.46  Faff about with slimy chicken breasts and mustard powder. Help, I won't beat the clock if I don't cut 'em up! Realise I should have bought ones with skin on for crispy aesthetic reasons. Try to crush garlic cloves 'without peeling'.  Takes twice as long. Run out of olive oil.

6.48 Do the math on producing three 'baby leeks' out of two jumbo ones. Slice finely and hold knife with one finger sticking out at right angles. 

7.00 Oh quick, shake the potato pan!

7.01 Start frying chicken and leeks together.  It looks all milky.

7.05  Shouts from upstairs "Is there something burning darling?" Shout back "NO, the recipe doesn't say it will burn. It's the anchovy you can smell."  Shake the pan again. 

7.10 Realise the chicken's never going to get crispy like the picture.  Check the stopwatch and axe the idea of whipping up a snappy Black Forest Affogato

7.15 Burn my finger rattling the the sodding potato pan again.  Can't find any indication how long it's supposed to be there other than how long the chicken is taking me.

7.20 Open up tin foil.  So when is an anchovy not an anchovy? When it's your pan burnt to buggery.

7.21  Scrape potato gunge into yet another oven dish, grate on more parmesan, put in oven which I failed to light at the thirty second stage.

7.22  Imbibe wine and notice husband has polished off whole tin of smoked oysters. He announces that he's 'off to watch some mindless telly'.

7.24 Address recipe again.  F*** this for a skylark.

7.25  Go fetch camera and start shooting the mess. Feel vaguely embarrassed about promoting my new strategy for a three-course meal every night to anyone who would listen.

7.40  Chop up purple sprouting broccoli at 90mph

7.41 Scrabble to open tub of double cream and a bottle of wine. 

7.42 Glug it madly into chicken.

7.43  Haven't got time to wash the spinach.  Axe that idea.

7.45  Turn off chicken and weep with exhaustion.  Skid on anchovy oil.

7.46  Remember to cook broccoli and turn off oven.

7.47  Totally lose interest in the whole project.  Sit down in front of the telly with a glass of wine.

8.30 Rechauffé and serve. Apologise for delay in advertised time and discrepancy between picture and finished product.  Laugh bitterly.  Eat in 5 mins flat.  (Okay, it was moderately tasty.)

9 - 9.45  Clean Up 

Hmm rather than Mmm

Next day:  Go back to Jamie Oliver and read this: 'These recipes are carefully choreographed so that no single minute is wasted. If at first you run a little over time and your kitchen is a bit messy don't worry... [it's] all about orgainizing your kitchen and your equipment.'  I should coco!

Only Jamie does it better

Seasonal Stuff & Nonsense

Wreathed in smiles...


I bought this delicious festive nonsense in Broadway Market (London) yesterday

from Bernie Malone an old friend of mine. At first I thought, what's she doing selling Christmas wreaths?  until I drew closer and noticed how witty and brilliant they were. That's a pink scouring pad at the top.    

They are made by Bernie and  Madeline Herbert, both notable artists,  so for anything between ten and thirty notes (depending on the size and illuminations)  you are getting rather more than a door decoration I can't help thinking.  

Something more on the traditional side here

And, finally,  another Christmas send-up..

Gorgeous, no?


Find the whole collection here

Swansong

My childhood friend Laura McKechnie says she wants a viking funeral in a swan boat and I wish I had thought of that.  Would our families oblige, I wonder?  This whimsy from Tim Walker in Casa Vogue reminded me of our elegiac fantasy.

Meanwhile here are some more of the beauties, some more serene and some you might feel a bit of a tit in but who doesn't love them?

Boston's majestic fleet here

Ueno Park, Hanami, Japan here

Plaza Swanboat, Disneyworld here

Nestlenook Estate New Hampshire here

 Kawaguchiko Japan here

Hanoi's West Lake here

  at the wonderfully old-fashioned Camden Amusement Park, West Virginia here

Good Works: Me? At Buckingham Palace?

I  have just come across a note I scribbled whilst raising money for the RNLI  a few years back. Lady Somebody-or-Other nobbled me to turn up at 7 am at the Buckingham Palace tradesmen's entrance with a roll of stickers and seduce hapless Palace employees into putting money in my bucket.  Any time before 11 am (that point when I can generally manage to talk) is clearly out of my comfort zone so I accounted this expedition way beyond the call of duty. Besides, I wasn't best pleased to get Below Stairs as my station, fondly hoping to bump into the Queen or at least a brace of corgis.  (At least on this occasion I didn't have to wear yellow oilskins and a comedy red life-vest as I was once did outside Westminster Tube.)

Life Boat Flag Day 7.30 am  B Palace


Looking alert: resting one buttock on maroon baize table rather than settling passively onto  slightly tacky gilt chair with red satin seat.  I feel like a BBC anchor woman at such a positive angle.


I like the men who burrow through layers of mac/overcoat to find a suitable lapel for my sticker.


Always try to establish eye contact.


Strangely unregal and unromantic vestibule.. pipework, lino, fire extinguishers etc.


Someone drops a knob of butter off his toast onto the lino - I point out its presence to a footman and two housemaids but it's ignored.  I clean it up finally with the waxed paper from my stickers.


Yow!   A footman and a groom together  His jodhpurs marked all along the saddle area.

*    *    *

Blimey.

HALLOWEEN SHOCK HORROR

Finding ourselves with but a half-eaten bag of  chocolate raisins in the fruit bowl, the wizard and I had to turn off the porch light and batten down the hatches.

Trick or treating came over from America and continues to take us by surprise. As kids in post-war Britain we might run to apple-bobbing or inviting scaredycats to feel Nelson’s eye in a darkened room. (A peeled grape, if grapes weren’t on rationing).  What we really loved was Guy Fawkes night on 5^th November.

image  © Rosie West

Why I've been Away

I mentioned in my last post that I was expecting a grandchild and here is the proof. He's called Lucien and Lucky for short born 11 October.  I spent a few days with Olivia, bossing her and her husband about and pretending to be a nursery nurse - something our mothers had perhaps.  I rather wanted a crisp uniform and  some white lace-up shoes and a thermometer in my top pocket but just felt a bit scruffy and in need of a hair appointment (which is why I have cropped as much of myself as possible in  this picture).  A manicure too, I see.  

So that accounts for a week or more of my blogging absence and  I can't remember where the rest went.  


More baby stuff at Lucien's mother's blog here

It's All Go In the Women's Auxiliary Balloon Corps

A Balloon Site, Coventry, 1943 by Dame Laura Knight (RA). Women from the Auxiliary Territorial Service work the mooring ropes on a barrage balloon. Image  courtesy of the Imperial War Museum




'It's all go in the women's auxiliary balloon corps', a phrase borrowed from the sublime Blackadder television series, has become a bit of a mantra in our family when things get busy.  And it's beautifully illustrated here by one of my favourite English artists Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970).


It's all go for me now because my daughter Olivia is about to give birth to her second child and I am off tomorrow to help her prepare, hold the fort and do what needs to be done.   In haste right now but here is some more of Laura Knight's work:

Ruby Loftus screwing a breech-ring

Gypsies at Epsom Down

Lamorna Cove

Self Portrait

Zebras

Clowns and Acrobat

The Artist

Read a brief biography of her here

English painter and designer. She studied at Nottingham College of Art from 1889. In 1894 the deaths of her mother and grandmother left her dependent on her own earnings, and she taught art from a studio in the Castle Rooms, Nottingham. From 1903 she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, London, and in the same year married the painter Harold Knight (1874–1961); they lived in an artists' community in Staithes, north Yorkshire, until 1907, also spending time in another community in Laren, Netherlands. They then moved to Newlyn, Cornwall, attracted by the presence of a number of prominent artists. Although Knight painted various subjects, her reputation was founded on paintings of the ballet and the circus, which became predominant after she moved to London. Technically of a high standard, her narrative realist works were painted in bright colours and have limited depth of expression (e.g. Ballet, 1936; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.). She painted backstage during the Diaghilev ballet's seasons in London and took lessons at Tillers Dancing Academy in St Martin's Lane in order to draw there; she also travelled with the Mills and Carmos Circus. In the 1930s she started painting horses and gypsies at the races, as in Gypsy (1938–9; London, Tate). An accomplished portrait painter, she painted wartime commissions and was the official artist at the Nuremberg War-Crime Trials. She also did etchings (e.g. Some Holiday, aquatint, 1925; see Fox, p. 60) and executed designs for stained-glass windows.Exhibited first at the RA in 1903, first exhibition with Harold at Leicester Galleries in 1906. Elected RA in 1936, became Dame in 1939. Retrospective exhitibion at Upper Grovesnor Galleries in 1969. Her work is represented in major public art collections, including the Tate Gallery and Imperial War Museum.

English painter and designer. She studied at Nottingham College of Art from 1889. In 1894 the deaths of her mother and grandmother left her dependent on her own earnings, and she taught art from a studio in the Castle Rooms, Nottingham. From 1903 she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, London, and in the same year married the painter Harold Knight (1874–1961); they lived in an artists' community in Staithes, north Yorkshire, until 1907, also spending time in another community in Laren, Netherlands. They then moved to Newlyn, Cornwall, attracted by the presence of a number of prominent artists. Although Knight painted various subjects, her reputation was founded on paintings of the ballet and the circus, which became predominant after she moved to London. Technically of a high standard, her narrative realist works were painted in bright colours and have limited depth of expression (e.g. Ballet, 1936; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.). She painted backstage during the Diaghilev ballet's seasons in London and took lessons at Tillers Dancing Academy in St Martin's Lane in order to draw there; she also travelled with the Mills and Carmos Circus. In the 1930s she started painting horses and gypsies at the races, as in Gypsy (1938–9; London, Tate). An accomplished portrait painter, she painted wartime commissions and was the official artist at the Nuremberg War-Crime Trials. She also did etchings (e.g. Some Holiday, aquatint, 1925; see Fox, p. 60) and executed designs for stained-glass windows.Exhibited first at the RA in 1903, first exhibition with Harold at Leicester Galleries in 1906. Elected RA in 1936, became Dame in 1939. Retrospective exhitibion at Upper Grovesnor Galleries in 1969. Her work is represented in major public art collections, including the Tate Gallery and Imperial War Museum.

English painter and designer. She studied at Nottingham College of Art from 1889. In 1894 the deaths of her mother and grandmother left her dependent on her own earnings, and she taught art from a studio in the Castle Rooms, Nottingham. From 1903 she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy, London, and in the same year married the painter Harold Knight (1874–1961); they lived in an artists' community in Staithes, north Yorkshire, until 1907, also spending time in another community in Laren, Netherlands. They then moved to Newlyn, Cornwall, attracted by the presence of a number of prominent artists. Although Knight painted various subjects, her reputation was founded on paintings of the ballet and the circus, which became predominant after she moved to London. Technically of a high standard, her narrative realist works were painted in bright colours and have limited depth of expression (e.g. Ballet, 1936; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.). She painted backstage during the Diaghilev ballet's seasons in London and took lessons at Tillers Dancing Academy in St Martin's Lane in order to draw there; she also travelled with the Mills and Carmos Circus. In the 1930s she started painting horses and gypsies at the races, as in Gypsy (1938–9; London, Tate). An accomplished portrait painter, she painted wartime commissions and was the official artist at the Nuremberg War-Crime Trials. She also did etchings (e.g. Some Holiday, aquatint, 1925; see Fox, p. 60) and executed designs for stained-glass windows.Exhibited first at the RA in 1903, first exhibition with Harold at Leicester Galleries in 1906. Elected RA in 1936, became Dame in 1939. Retrospective exhitibion at Upper Grovesnor Galleries in 1969. Her work is represented in major public art collections, including the Tate Gallery and Imperial War Museum.

Attention to Detail

If  you haven't caught this sweet viral video yet, trust me you'll like it.  It comes from the studios of Aardmann, creators of Wallace and Grommit.  Dot is the world's smallest stop-motion animation and it's shot on the Nokia N8.   Dot really is that tiny.  Marvel at how it was all achieved in the second film below.