Buy me a Coffee

There can’t be many of us who don’t know someone or who hasn’t come in contact with somebody who is living with dementia. In our family I have witnessed my grandmother, my father-in-law and now my mother afflicted by this cruel disease. Amongst friends and acquaintances, we know several people currently living with it. Yet despite this I think we are often ignorant of how it actually affects people on a day to day basis and perhaps more importantly how we need to act and talk with people living with dementia. In essence how we can help make their lives easier without robbing them of autonomy and agency.

Last week I mentioned I was reading a book by Wendy Mitchell called Somebody I used to Know, and thank you to everyone who took the time to comment or send personal messages about my Mum, it really does mean a lot. One of the things I found so enlightening whilst reading the book was an insight into what it must be like to be the one actually living with dementia, rather than just witnessing it from a carer’s point of view and I felt I needed to write more. It’s too late for me and Mum but maybe my words will resonate and help someone else understand this condition better.

My grandmother Annie, a wonderful woman, Nan to all who knew her.

Obviously dementia can take many forms and different types will present differently in each individual, with a range of diverse physical, cognitive and communication manifestations. I always used to think of it in terms of memory loss, which of course does happen but dementia is not just about forgetting people’s names, or running upstairs to fetch something and then forgetting why we went up in the first place. That is something we all do, especially as we get older and that alone is not dementia. Wendy describes it as more like a fog of confusion that randomly descends and can just as quickly lift. She initially says it felt like a vague fuzzy feeling as though life wasn’t quite as sharp and it is important to remember that dementia has a starting point before life begins to feel impossible. It’s at this stage that conversations need to happen. If people don’t articulate how they feel or let others know the problems they are facing while they are still able to do it, then once they are beyond the point of communication it is too late.

George, my lovely father-in-law

With my Mum I can clearly remember the first time I was aware there was a problem. It was 23^rd September 2013, her 79^th birthday. She had experienced a couple of TIA attacks earlier that year followed by surgery on her left carotid artery but had seemed fine. Mum, typically independent always declined much help or ‘interference’. She could manage. Stewart was away, so I had called the previous day to say I would drive down to her and take her out for lunch on her birthday. But when I arrived the car wasn’t on the drive and there was no sign of her. I called home to check with one of my sons and she had come to our house thinking I had invited her to lunch. At this point I didn’t think it was much of a problem, a bit of confusion that could have easily been my fault as much as hers but I was slightly concerned when Sam said she had immediately got back in her car to return home and she was furious. I let myself in the house and waited for her to arrive back. Forty five minutes later I heard her car on the drive and opened the door to greet her, big smile on my face ready to make a joke of it but I had seriously miscalculated. Oh boy was she furious. She lashed out at me verbally in a totally vicious attack that left me sobbing, which only prompted further abuse calling me pathetic for crying and being upset. She seemed to believe I had deliberately invited her to my home on a wild goose chase. Eventually things calmed down a little and she demanded whether we were going for lunch or not, but by now it was the last thing I wanted to do. I suggested we went out another time when we both felt better but for now we could have lunch together at home. She agreed and said she would make some cheese on toast. The next thing I knew she had put a plate in front of me and literally threw a slice of white bread and a chunk of cheese on the plate.

At this point I had no desire for further confrontation and ate my bread and cheese and by the time I left to return home things had calmed down. I drove home feeling distraught and confused not understanding what I had just witnessed. I called her the next day and tried to talk to her about what had happened but she appeared to have no recollection of anything being amiss and that was the end of it. No discussion, no conversation so that eventually I began to believe I had blown the whole thing up out of proportion, maybe it was me that was confused? During the intervening years there were often other small things that made me believe there was a problem but with Mum not willing to talk about anything, again I just put it down to my imagination, but I often wonder if we could have managed things differently if Mum had been willing to open up and talk about things.

Only once, about five years ago when I turned up to get her some shopping she blurted out “I think I’ve got Alzheimer’s”. When I asked why she thought that, she said she kept forgetting things. When I suggested that maybe we should get her checked she dismissed the idea and told me it wasn’t a problem and the conversation was immediately forgotten as though she had never even uttered the word. Although it did prompt me to make an appointment with her doctor.

Me with Mum, less than a year ago on her birthday.

As well as having early conversations about the disease, it is also important to think about the language we use. In the book Wendy recalls going for a check up and being told “You are a little worse than last time” and despite the fact that she knows she has a progressive illness the word ‘worse’ makes her heart sink. She knows she is never going to get better but thinks she might feel a little less helpless if instead of saying she was worse, maybe the doctor could have said “You scored twenty six this time and it seems your coordination might be the problem. What can we do to help?” Likewise rephrasing to say ‘people living with dementia’ rather than ‘suffering from’ can make all the difference. This is not a denial or trying to minimise the impact of what it is like to deal with dementia, the reality is ever present, but by using positive language it helps to reframe conversations around the disease to what can be done rather than what can’t be done. It is about celebrating what remains rather than mourning what is lost.

The final thing that I took away from the book was Wendy’s thoughts about living alone, something she managed to do right up until her death in February 2024. It is estimated that a third of people living with dementia in the UK live alone and while it can be hard not to share the joys, fears and problems of life with another person, Wendy believed that the fact she had to navigate day to day life alone slowed down the progress of the disease for her. With dementia, having another person around can be useful. Someone to jog your memory, reminding you to eat or take medication etc can be a helpful safety net. But Wendy liked the fact there was no one constantly asking her questions, rushing her and giving continual reminders that she had forgotten something. There was no one saying, “Let me do it, it will be quicker” and with no one else to do things she had to work out how to do them for herself. If she didn’t manage, there was no one else to worry about things not being done and without another person sharing your home who moves stuff around, or clears up after you, everything remains familiar. Things being moved in the house can be very disorientating. When we start to take away someone’s independence and agency it means they forget how to do things for themselves.

Of course there is a flip side to this too and I am reminded of our visit to one consultant who suggested Mum might be better off if I allowed her to do more things on her own like write her own shopping lists before I did her shopping. It was something I suggested to Mum every single week and yet each week I would turn up to ask if she had written her list, but of course she had forgotten. It felt cruel to keep reminding her she had forgotten to do it and the one time she did remember there were just four items listed for her entire weekly meals and needs. Would it have enabled her to just buy those four items and let her go hungry? I think not. At least with food in the fridge she was eating, not always regularly and in the latter stages often at very odd times and in odd combinations but allowing her to make those choices was at least important.

It’s easy with hindsight to look back and wish we had done things differently. There were times when Mum’s day to day reality of losing things, forgetting things, inventing her own reality often accompanied by angry outbursts at me for reminding or nagging her just felt frustrating as though she was deliberately try to annoy me. If only we could have spoken earlier about her fears and what she felt like then maybe I could have accessed help earlier, enabling her to live better. There is always guilt for not having done things differently. Guilt now at seeing her in a care home where I know she would have hated to be. But guilt too from the person living with the dementia for the burden imposed on those who walk the path beside them, the husbands, wives and children. Only yesterday I sat by Mum’s bedside holding her hand as she dosed through a morphine induced sleep and at one point she woke and apologised for being such a nuisance. Memories might go but feelings and emotions hang around. Don’t apologise Mum, you’re not a nuisance.

Wendy Mitchell died in February 2024 after ten years of tirelessly campaigning for dementia awareness, following her diagnosis of young onset dementia. Her work enabled others to live their lives feeling less afraid. She wrote a blog about living with dementia, called Which Me am I Today Her final post written just before she died titled “Final Hug in a Mug” explains her death from her own perspective. Wendy was an active campaigner for assisted dying and ended her life by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking.

You can hear Wendy talking about living positively with dementia here:

Dementia, A Month in the Life

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Autumn may not be very far away but I was horrified to spy a Christmas magazine in the supermarket shelves last week. What sort of craziness is that? IT IS WAY TOO EARLY!!!

We went to see The Odyssey which was an entertaining evening out. It is full of big themes such as homecoming, migration, memory, war, how we treat or welcome strangers etc and so many of them relevant to our lives today yet the film never really delves in more than at a superficial level. There are plenty of crashing waves, thunderstorms, violent deaths, monsters, burning buildings etc. as well as a totally impractical yet beautiful Trojan Horse, all relying on huge special effects that deliver an abundance of noise and visual impact but nothing deeper. The female characters are played down, all very one dimensional, although Circe managed to raise a smile. Even Penelope’s yearning for her husband’s return lacks passion and conviction. And the simplicity of the dialogue gives no sense of the complexity of the original poem – although who am I kidding – full transparency here I haven’t read the original but I’m trusting those who have. But I didn’t mind all that, nor the fact the actors all have American accents and that the rather gormless Telemachus played by Tom Holland, calls Penelope ‘Mom’. Because we went for an entertaining evening out and it delivered entertainment in spades. I never expected a Classics lesson and we all know that books are always better than the film. Not sure I would ever want to sit through it again though. On the plus side, apparently translations of The Odyssey are flying off the shelves which can only be a good thing.

I had another excellent shift in the bookshop. Not quite as busy as opening week but there was still a steady stream of accompanied little people choosing books and telling me stories of grazed knees as the result of a scooter accident; a rainbow coloured rabbit called Flumpfy, of course; how shuttlecocks go faster up Mount Fuji which led to a discussion on whether we thought this applied to all mountains or just Fuji in particular - it is all mountains because because high-altitude locations have thinner air with less air density, which reduces aerodynamic drag, and how sometimes there are monsters in dreams. In this latter case I did advise that possibly Spiderman wasn’t suitable bedtime reading for a five year old and Dad might opt for something a little gentler. Another Dad, after having chosen a very suitable board book for his toddler enquired whether we had a copy of Anne Fine’s book ‘Bill’s New Frock’ which was first published in 1989. Sadly we didn’t have one but I remembered my boys having a copy and we exchanged happy memories of the book. The story is about a young boy named Bill who wakes up one Monday morning to discover he is a girl and he is subsequently sent off to school in a frilly pink dress where one of the worst days of Bill’s young life is about to begin. Bill discovers that things are different for girls, that they are treated differently and are expected to behave differently to boys. Anne Fine, the second children’s laureate, wrote the book to address the gender inequality experienced by her own children when they started school in Britain in the 1980s. Funny and written with a light touch, it was a well-loved book in our household, hopefully teaching my own boys a valuable lesson.

It also reminded me of another anecdote. On the way to the shop I popped into one of the many charity shops that line the high street and witnessed a young boy, maybe ten or eleven years old at most, admiring his reflection in the mirror. He was trying on a fitted leopard print ladies jacket, a little long in the sleeves but otherwise a perfect fit. His mother was trying to dissuade him.

“But it’s a ladies’ jacket, look it has shoulder pads”

“Please?” as he did another twirl.

I couldn’t resist and blurted out “You look fabulous!”

He was delighted and Mum relented “I suppose I’ve got to buy it for you now”

I really hope that she did because he did look amazing and he definitely had the confidence to carry it off.

Another young man displaying sartorial elegance, this one about eight years old, came into the bookshop wearing long shorts, polo shirt and a very smart straw trilby with a marvellous pheasant feather tucked onto the ribbon which he wore with great panache. He very politely enquired if I had the Pokémon book featuring Ash on the cover. No idea who Ash might be but I did know where the Pokémon books were shelved so led the way and we found what he wanted. He left with his grandma, a very happy young customer with a book in hand and feather in his cap.

Growing up one of the things I imagined I might do was become an illustrator, which of course never happened. But recently once again I have a hankering to try illustration, possibly a story for my grandchildren as I have no notions of it ever getting published. At the moment I’m playing with collage and coloured papers so I thought I would practise by illustrating some of my anecdotes here. Be kind, these are my first attempts!

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This year really has not been a year for having an allotment. I don’t feel the need to talk about droughts and heatwaves as I’m certain you are all painfully aware of the impact, but the soil is parched and rock hard, not helped by the fact that we don’t even have water on site. All water has to be carried over in 5L bottles from the house. Because of this I always try to keep watering to a minimum. I water when I first put seeds or plants in the ground but once they are established they are left to fend for themselves. Mostly this works but this year things have struggled and yields are down. I have missed the usual abundance of raspberries and despite healthy looking plants with lots of flowers there have been virtually no runner beans. Apparently they don’t get pollinated in the extreme heat.

But there has been a constant supply of courgettes and cucumbers, my San Marzano tomatoes (seeds bought in Italy) are now starting to yield and there is an enormous pumpkin lurking under the leaves. This is the one plant I have consistently watered. But the bigger picture of loss of crops and smaller yields in farms across the UK and Europe due to the drought and extreme heat doesn’t make happy reading.

One of the books I am currently reading is ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ by Wendy Mitchell, a revelatory memoir about Wendy’s experiences of living with a diagnosis of dementia whilst still in her fifties. Not necessarily an easy read but insightful one that is also full of hope that such a diagnosis does not mean life is immediately over. I wish I had read it earlier on in my Mum’s journey with dementia when maybe some important conversations could have been had but sadly it’s too late for that now.

I was reminded that just four years ago I had taken Mum out for the day to visit the gardens at Capel Manor and see an art exhibition where my cousin had some paintings. We had lunch in the café, Mum walked around looking at the paintings and it was a happy day with very little evidence of the dementia to come. A little forgetful, occasionally confused but Mum was still living relatively independently. Yet today it’s such a different picture. She is rarely out of bed and is in constant pain where her only wish is to die, as she repeats a prayer to a God who is clearly not listening. She doesn’t understand why she is in pain and it frightens her. On the days when they seem to get the dose of morphine right she is either sleepy or as high as a kite. A week ago we were there and she was almost hysterical with laughter because her plate of dinner was on the floor, although she claimed to have no idea how it ended up there, and then she proceeded to talk utter nonsense non-stop for an hour. In these hallucinations she is visited by her Mum and Dad and other people long gone and is full of stories of how she was playing football in the morning or running up and down the stairs. But that is rare, usually she is sleepy, in pain and not fully aware we are there. Every single time we visit I have to go in search of a nurse to check whether she has had pain relief which has happed three times this week. Unfortunately the answer is usually no despite it being prescribed. It breaks my heart to see her like that and being unable to do very much to help, short of being with her twenty four hours a day.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to end on such a low note but that is life right now. On the plus side our nine year old grandson is coming later today to sleepover where he has great plans for a few days of arts and crafts and I’m back in the bookshop tomorrow, where he’s planning to visit with Grandpa. Good things to look forward to.

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This is being hastily scribbled at the last minute because I have been away during the week for a few days at The Festival of Quilts in Birmingham where I have spent way too much money on fabric and dressmaking patterns, but let’s not concern ourselves with that. There has also been time spent with lovely friends, plenty of laughter and the odd glass of Prosecco or two which is definitely to be recommended. Friends, laughter and Prosecco… what could possibly go wrong.

Yes, I know, I’m wearing a table cloth

But it’s not just fabric that I’m inclined to buy on impulse and I know I am not alone when I admit to having a serious book buying habit. I find it impossible to pass a bookshop, especially an independent bookshop, without going in and once inside it’s impossible not to buy a book… or maybe two or three. To be fair I do read most of them, although there are also many I don’t read or at least I haven’t read them yet, and the TBR pile beside my bed never seems to diminish. There’s even a secondary TBR pile in the spare bedroom. But I don’t spend money on lots of fancy new clothes (does dressmaking fabric count?), I don’t smoke, take drugs or drink to excess (despite the odd glass of Prosecco or two) so overall I’m not feeling guilty. There are worse habits to have and as we all know reading is good for us. It is such an essential part of who I am that I cannot imagine a day without reading.

I grabbed a book off the spare bedroom pile to take away with me that had been sitting there for a while. Hag-seed by Margaret Attwood is a reimaging of The Tempest, part of Hogarth’s Shakespeare series and I’m wondering why it has taken me so long to read it because it is hilarious. It’s an absolute romp of theatrical extravagance sprinkled with magic and confetti. After he has been toppled from his post as artistic director of the Makeshiweg Festival, where his production of The Tempest has been pulled at the last minute, Felix retreats to a backwoods hovel where he mourns the loss of his daughter and plots his revenge. Twelve years later he gets his chance when he finds himself running a theatre course at the local prison. I’ve not quite finished it yet but I don’t hesitate to recommend it. I’d love to hear what you are reading at the moment as I’m always looking for good book recommendations.

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Reading not only improves our literacy but develops critical thinking, increases our overall intelligence and keeps our brain active. Because it requires focussed attention and memory retention it is excellent for our brain health, keeping neural pathways open. Immersing ourselves into a good story can open up whole new worlds of different perspectives, different cultures and different ways of thinking which builds empathy and makes us more tolerant. Equally books can show us that we are not alone and that there are others who think and feel like us. And if all that wasn’t enough reading has been shown to reduce stress and aid relaxation.

“I could never have dreamt that there were such goings on in the world between the covers of books” Dylan Thomas

But of course, if you are reading this it is very likely you are already a reader so you know reading is good for you. But despite this knowledge the number of children reading for pleasure is rapidly declining. According to the Literary Trust in 2024, 1 in 10 children aged between 5 and 18 in the UK did not own a single book. And if reading is good for us as adults you can guarantee it is definitely good for children. There is evidence from studies at Cambridge University that reading is linked to important developmental factors in children improving their cognition, mental health and brain structure. It is also widely accepted that it sparks imagination and inspires creative thinking, it helps develop empathy, expands horizons and reduces stress.

There are many initiatives to help introduce children to reading and one that aims to help every child in the UK to own a book is World Book Day, a rather grand title for a charity that is only based in the UK. Every March, each schoolchild is given a £1 book token that can either be redeemed against the price of any book or be used to buy special £1 World Book Day books produced specially for the occasion by leading children’s authors and illustrators. Of course it also happens to be the bane of most parents’ lives because schools also encourage children to dress up as their favourite book characters on World Book Day causing last minute constructions from cardboard boxes and Sellotape or hastily ordered polyester outfits from online retailers who promise next day delivery. If you ever need to convince anyone that children need to read for pleasure of Living Danishly has produced this resource for teachers which I hope she won’t mind me sharing as she says it so much better than me.

And all this is a preamble because before I hotfooted it up to Birmingham I did my first afternoon as a volunteer in our local children’s book shop. We are very fortunate to have an independent bookshop in our nearest town that opened a couple of years ago selling a great selection of both new and second hand books. Against the odds it has survived and this week they have branched out to the shop unit opposite to open a children’s bookshop which is manned entirely by volunteers. There was one mean spirited person from our art society who expressed the opinion that as it’s a business not a charity they should be paying people to work there but I feel they are missing the point. The profit margin in books is not huge and by the time you add in rent, business rates and the competition from retailers such as supermarkets and the online sites, like the ones that provide those polyester world book day costumes, paying for full time staff is impossible if they want to stay open. Fortunately, me and all the other volunteers are quite happy to offer a little of our time to keep this wonderful bookshop open seeing it as a valuable resource for the town. If we want to see our High Streets survive we have to play our part.

I was rewarded on my first shift by seeing the sheer pleasure this shop was bringing to the many families and children who popped in on a Monday afternoon. I know it’s the start of the school holidays and there is the novelty factor of a new shop but I was amazed at how busy it was, right up until past closing time and grateful that people value it enough to pay the proper retail price for their books. The joy of watching a tiny little boy, no more than two years old, choose a book and then sit himself down on one of the small chairs dotted around the bookshop, to become thoroughly engrossed in ‘reading’ was a delight. I would have loved to have taken a photo of him to make a drawing later, especially as he was wearing a big hat covering his face but do know that taking photos of other people’s children is a definite no go area so I resisted the temptation.

While I’m talking bookshops, I have just finished reading Receipts from the Bookshop, A Bookseller’s Year by which I cannot recommend enough. Along with her Mum, Katie established a bookshop, Storytellers, Inc in the seaside town of Lytham St Annes. Once a week on a Friday Katie notes the coming and goings of customers, passers-by, bringers of cake, delivery people and sometimes friends coming in hoping to catch her Mum who doesn’t work on a Friday. She publishes these wry and often hilarious observations in her weekly Substack which I have followed for a while, but this year she published a year’s worth of these wonderful anecdotes charting the highs and lows in the life of a bookshop. Fabulous uplifting stuff that can be dipped into guaranteed to make you laugh, and maybe even shed an occasional tear and you can get your hands on a copy here or of course go and buy it from your own local bookshop. I think I would buy it for the cover illustration alone!

So that’s a wrap for this week, because I have things to do and places to visit… laundry to do and my Mum to visit since you ask. Back next week for more ramblings but meanwhile thank you for continuing to read and support me. You know what to do… just a simple click on the heart would be wonderful.

Four versions of me!

Add to this mix catering for a family gathering of nineteen, our monthly reading group meeting and the usual visits to see my Mum several times a week, which always leaves me emotionally drained and you will understand why writing hasn’t been top priority. But we also managed our trip to Brighton at the end of last week, which was a delightful, if hot, day out with a couple of friends. The trains were running without any delays or problems and we arrived in Brighton before midday, just a couple of hours door to door. Famous for its wide pebble beach, the historic Palace Pier and the Royal Pavilion Pleasure Palace, the Brighton of today seems a far cry from the violent and seedy gangland underworld depicted in Graham Green’s 1938 version, despite the fact that Greene described his novel as a labour of love to Brighton, a place that had a curious hold on his affection. This can be seen in his initial description.

“They came in by train from Victoria… stepped off in bewildered multitudes into fresh and glittering air: the new silver paint sparkled on the piers, the cream houses ran away into the west like a pale Victorian water-colour.” Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

Stepping off the train we weren’t immediately wandering into the fresh and glittering air of the sea front, but instead we explored Brighton’s famous Lanes, a labyrinth of small streets situated between the North Laine and the sea. Many of the small alleyways, or twittens as they are known locally, date back to the late sixteenth century but it is the mix of old buildings and new that gives the place its charm. The area is packed with independent shops and cafes, perfect for browsing and shopping and of course stopping for a coffee whilst sat outside watching the world go by.

We took a stroll down to the end of the famous Palace Pier, which opened in 1899 originally with a large theatre and grand dining room, evolving over the years into the amusement park of today. There used to be two piers in Brighton but the West Pier, the first to be ever given Grade 1 listing, closed in 1975 after which it became increasingly derelict. It fell into disrepair and partially collapsed into the sea before two separate fires, thought to be arson, destroyed most of the remaining structure. Today just a skeleton of the original building remains jutting out from the sea, offshore.

Lunch was had back in the Lanes where the choice of places to eat was overwhelming. We ate in a vegetarian restaurant Food for Friends which I don’t hesitate to recommend should you ever find yourself in Brighton. After lunch we walked some more along the sea front between the piers stopping for an ice cream but one of the highlights of the day was a visit to the Royal Pavilion.

The Pavilion was a seaside pleasure palace built for George IV when he was Prince of Wales, as he had been advised by his physician to take advantage of the health benefits of sea air and salt water. He was a vain and extravagant man who loved fashion and the arts as well as indulging in hedonistic pleasures such womanising, drinking and gambling. The Prince hired architect Henry Holland to convert his Brighton lodging house into a modest villa which was known as the Marine Pavilion. He furnished and decorated the villa in lavish style, favouring Chinese export furniture and hand painted wallpapers. By 1811, George III had become incapable of ruling Britain so his son George was declared Prince Regent and it was at this time he hired another architect John Nash to extend and transform the modest Pavilion into the oriental style palace that it is today. Its exterior is in Indian style with a vista of domes, minarets and pinnacles, whilst inside it has a magnificent Chinese interior filled with opulent decorations and furnishings. No expense was spared. Many of the elegant seafront buildings also date back to this regency era.

After George became king in 1820 his health deteriorated and he only visited his Pavilion on two further occasions. On his death in 1830 he was succeeded by his brother William who continued to visit Brighton, although never really considered it a suitable residence, despite extending it for Queen Adelaide and her extensive household. Mostly he used it for informal entertaining. William only reigned for seven years before he was succeeded by his niece Victoria, the daughter of his younger brother Edward. She inherited the throne as each of her father’s three brothers died without any legitimate heirs. Despite visiting the town in the year of her succession, Victoria was never comfortable with the opulent and indulgent past associated with her uncle and the Pavilion , so as a result she sold it to the town of Brighton in 1850, stripping it of its contents which were redistributed around other Royal households.

As Brighton continued to prosper the ground floor rooms of the Pavillion were restored and redecorated, not quite to their former glory but in a similar style and the building was opened to the public. Then in a turnabout, in 1864, a few years after Prince Albert’s death, Victoria returned several of the original fixtures and fittings back to Palace which continued to be much admired by a constant stream of visitors who paid a sixpence for the pleasure. It was during this time the gardens were also opened to the public.

By WWI the Pavillion was converted into a military hospital, largely used for Indian troops who had been wounded fighting for the British. Following their withdrawal it was then used as hospital for British soldiers who had lost limbs during active service. It was inevitable that during this time much of the interior was altered and sometimes damaged so a programme of restoration began in the 1920s boosted when Queen Mary returned many of the original decorations and furniture, much of which had never left Buckingham Palace. There was a brief hiatus during WWII after which the restoration continued in earnest bringing the interior back as closely as possible to its Regency days. We didn’t venture inside, but walked through the parched lawns of the gardens, surrounded by numerous school parties, admiring the extravagant architecture.

We finished our day by taking tea at the Grand Hotel, a small window into times gone by. In the opulent surroundings we were each given our own silver tea pot and rather delicious shortbread biscuits. A perfect end to a wonderful day out before the train journey home.

And all day long I didn’t spot a single stick of Brighton Rock!

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I might be back but I’m not taking you to Brighton as promised because it turns out the trains were broken too. Don’t get me started… too hot, overhead lines, not enough rolling stock, I’m not sure what the excuses were but there were no trains from Cambridge to Brighton on Friday so we’re trying again another time, just don’t hold your breath!

But it just so happens that in all the additional reading time I have been clocking up, as well as reading about homicidal kidnappers locking people in attic rooms* (hence my earlier reference) I have discovered a wonderful artist previously unknown to me.

Eric Tucker as a young man in a back alley in Warrington, around 1952

Eric Tucker was born in 1932 in the town of Warrington situated in the north west of England half way between Manchester and Liverpool. He was uneducated having left school at fourteen, trained as a boxer and spent most of his working life as a labourer, yet at the time of his death more than 500 paintings plus even more pencil drawings of working class life in the industrial north were discovered in the modest end of terrace council house where he had lived with his mother and step father for most of his life.

Although it was known within the family that Eric liked to paint, he was never very forthcoming about what he did so no one was ever aware of the extent nor the accomplishment of his artwork.

His painting was “not deliberately hidden but generally pursued so quietly, so unassumingly that the effect was almost the same” Joe Tucker, nephew

When Eric left school at fourteen he was apprenticed as a signwriter, yet he never followed it up as a career. Instead he took a series of casual labouring jobs eventually ending up working at the delivery yard of a local construction company until in middle age he was forced into early retirement, unable to work due to severe arthritis. When he was 15 he joined the local boxing club and received his professional licence just a few weeks before his 18^th birthday, where he boxed under the name of Jack Flowers. However in 1950 he was called up for national service in the Army where soldiers were not allowed to box professionally. After leaving the army he boxed again for a while but hung up his gloves for good in his early twenties.

Redhead and Two Bottles of Beer, oil on board, date unknown

He never married or had a long term partner and except for a brief period in his late twenties when he took work on the construction of steelworks in South Wales, he lived at home with his mother and stepfather, his own father having died during active service in World War Two when Eric was just ten years old. His stepfather died during the 1990s and his mother in 2008 but Eric remained in the same house until the end of his life. His younger brother Tony remembers him drawing as a boy and he continued to draw and dabble with paint during his teens and early twenties, but it was only as he reached his late twenties that he started painting in earnest. In addition to his bedroom in the modest council house he had use of what had previously been the front parlour as a painting room, its frosted glass door always pulled closed to prying eyes. Under a single bare lightbulb there was an easel and a small table which contained brushes and half squeezed tubes of paint. Also around the room were piles and piles of magazines and newspapers, evidence of Eric’s hoarding habit, as well as numerous paintings stacked in rows on the floor.

Fighting Dogs - Howley Stores, Oil on board, date unknown

Just like his paintings Eric the man was something of an enigma. He liked to frequent the pubs and clubs of Warrington and Manchester, and outwardly he was very sociable, ready to chat or tell a joke to whomever might listen. Yet his huge output of paintings are testimony to his solitary nature and the many hours spent alone in his painting room. He would be gregarious one minute , silent the next. Entirely self-taught he would spend hours visiting the art galleries of Manchester studying the paintings, pouring what he learned into his own work. Yet he remained unforthcoming about his art almost to a point of paranoia. Throughout his life he made very little attempt at promotion almost as if he didn’t want the paintings to be seen. During the 1970s and 80s he began to venture into some of Manchester’s private galleries possibly harbouring an ambition to be represented. Encouraged by his brother Tony, Eric eventually approached the owner of one gallery who took three of his paintings. Despite selling two, Eric took the third back home and that was the end of his relationships with galleries. In 1995 he entered a painting into an open call exhibition, which was then purchased by the museum, effectively winning the competition. But Eric never mentioned this to anyone. Despite this reluctance to show or sell his work it never stopped him painting.

Bare Arsed, Oil on board, date unknown

Eric has sometimes been described as the ‘Secret Lowry’ his work often compared to that of L. S. Lowry capturing scenes of northern working class life, yet for me his paintings contain far more life than any of Lowry’s anonymous ‘matchstick’ figures. His paintings are full of wonderful characters, the ordinary working people who frequented the smoky bars and clubs where Eric liked to drink, painted in a beautiful, subdued palette. He would sit quietly with his pint , shoe laces undone, trousers tied up with a piece of rope, moth holes in his sweater and surreptitiously have his pencil and paper under the table drawing the various characters around him who would later turn up in his paintings. He was an unlikely looking artist.

City Bar Manchester, watercolour and pencil on paper, date unknown

At the age of 84 Eric was diagnosed with a degenerative heart condition for which he refused treatment, but possibly in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be around for much longer he mentioned to Tony he would like to have an exhibition at the local museum and art gallery. Prompted by this last wish to have his work shown it was only now that Eric’s family started to discover how prolific he had been as they started to catalogue his work. Tony made contact with the museum, phoning and visiting in person but with very little success. By the time the museum eventually responded it was too late, Eric died in 2018 aged 86. After Eric’s funeral Tony returned to the task of sorting Eric’s work and as they cleared the house more and more paintings emerged stashed in every nook and cranny. With little response from the museum and wanting to honour Eric’s last wish the family decided to stage their own exhibition of the work in Eric’s house.

Father, oil on board, date unknown

The house was transformed into an art gallery with everything painted white with the exception of Eric’s bedroom and painting room which were left set up as he liked to use them. For two weekends in October 2018 the house opened to the public. Tony’s son Joe, a TV scriptwriter dealt with the publicity inviting everyone he could think of, but it appeared there was very little interest. Until two days before they opened when the story was picked up by the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, where Eric was dubbed ‘The Secret Lowry’ after a treasure trove of paintings had been discovered in his house. What followed was beyond anything the family could have imagined. By opening time the queues for ‘Eric Tucker: Sixty Years of Unseen Art” went right to the end of the road and around the corner. An eclectic mix of hundreds of people from around the country, many of them visibly moved by what they saw, came to see Eric’s paintings. I have deliberately written more about the man Eric Tucker, rather than the paintings because I also find them an incredibly moving representation of real life working people and I’m not sure words do them justice. But I urge you to see the paintings for yourself and watch this short video of the exhibition in the house which is fascinating.

By the Sunday evening Warrington Museum and Art Gallery had confirmed they would be giving Eric a full retrospective exhibition. Which of course is bittersweet in that Eric never lived to see this public recognition of his talent. Yet there was never any guarantee that had this been offered to Eric in his lifetime he would ever have gone ahead with it, possibly pulling the plug at the last minute, so maybe this was always the way it was meant to be.

I can thoroughly recommend The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker (Eric’s nephew) if you want to read about Eric and his work in more detail. It’s a humorous and honest account written with much affection.

*The Housemaid by Freida McFaddon since you ask but that is not a recommendation. I did read it two days because despite being badly written, incredibly far-fetched and littered with totally unbelievable, dislikable characters it is a bit of a page turner. But in my opinion it was awful and I won’t be reading the sequel.

Thank you as always for reading, please do click the heart if you have enjoyed it as it really does encourage me to keep writing as well as helping others find me.

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All of which is a shame as today is my 150^th publication on Substack after almost three years of writing. It was my intention to write something to celebrate this but as well as it being a logistical nightmare, the irritation of it all is taking up head space so I’m finding that concentrating on writing feels impossible. As a result I will be taking a break until we get our internet fixed and your guess is as good as mine as to how long that might be. Hopefully not too long.

Meanwhile this week I celebrated a birthday quietly at home where I did a bit of sewing and potted up a container for the garden on a day that was far too hot to be outside. I picked a bowl full of blackberries on an early morning walk. They always catch me out when they start to appear in July as they feel like such an autumnal fruit, but I still think they are unusually early this year and already very abundant. And of course no internet means no television so there has been a lot more reading over the past few weeks although I don’t want to be inside watching TV in this heat anyway. As a result I have finished three books in the last five days. It feels like I’m on holiday. The first was Sea Glass by Anita Shreve which exceeded my expectations. I had picked it up off a charity stall somewhere and I assumed it would be a light read but Shreve’s handling of a tough subject was expertly done. With elegant yet deceptively simple prose she tells a riveting story of a newly married couple Honora and Sexton who set up home in a ramshackle house on the beach in New Hampshire just before the Wall Street Crash and depression in 1929 – 30. The story follows the lives of Honora and Sexton as well as several of the local mill workers who are about to go on strike. She doesn’t hold her punches when describing the appalling conditions, nor the ensuing violence that results in tragedy.

Next I picked off the shelves an old copy of Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, last read as a set text when taking my English Literature exam at age fourteen. I wanted to read it again for some research into gang culture during the 1920s – 1930s as background to my barely started novel and although I found it gripping I’m not sure I enjoyed it. Way too much Catholic guilt, hell and damnation for my liking but then what did I expect from Graham Greene. I think it was a complex text to be set for O level, with its themes of murder, Catholicism, sex and suicide, as well as one of the best yet most awful endings ever in a book. I’m now of a mind to see if I still have copies of my exam papers in a box in the loft, as I remember very little of my reaction to it from well over fifty years ago and I thought the questions might jog my memory. For some unknown reason we sat English Literature (and one other exam I don’t recall) a year early so being a summer birthday I wasn’t even fifteen at the time. It’s not surprising I didn’t get very good grades, barely scraping a pass. As well as reading for research I also thought it would tie in very nicely with an upcoming trip to Brighton later this week and make a nicely themed Substack newsletter but the inability to back it up with research has put to paid to that idea and pretty much any writing for the foreseeable future. If the engineer actually turns up on Monday you might have Brighton to look forward to next week but don’t hold your breath.

The latest book I read I could not put down. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans is an epistolary novel, written entirely in the form of letters or emails. It tells the story of Sybil Van Antwerp a seventy three year old retired lawyer who is slowly losing her sight. Sybil loves to write letters, to her favourite authors, her family, her neighbour, to an ex colleague’s young son, she writes to everyone except one person. It took me a few pages of going back and reading sections again until I was clear of all the characters in Sybil’s life but once I did I could not stop reading. It is both hilariously funny in places as well as terribly sad but Sybil is wise and witty, even if she is also very blunt and to the point. She reminds me in some ways of Elizabeth Strout’s indomitable Olive Kitteridge, although easier to warm to. I grew to love Sybil by the end of the book. Every character is beautifully and cleverly written as the story of Sybil’s life unfolds letter by letter. It’s a worthy winner of the Women’s Prize for fiction and a fabulous debut novel. It made me want to invest in some quality stationery, dig out the fountain pen and inks and write more letters.

Who wouldn’t want to use these beautiful inks!

And on that note I will bid you farewell. I’ve ended up writing more than I thought I would and I now just need to work out a way to publish it this week. Hopefully I’ll be back before the end of the month but more importantly I hope you won’t have given up waiting for me. Please click the heart to reassure me you’ll still be here! See you soon.

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She gave her time for free and the cost of construction was met with a combination of private donations, a small Arts Council grant and from Hambling herself who sold sixty of her paintings at £250 each to help fund the project. To create the oversized shell Hambling commissioned T. Pegg and sons, a local foundry company more accustomed to mending and building boats than creating sculptures. Father and son Dennis and Sam Pegg claimed they had never made anything like it before but they had a model to copy. “We just had to scale it up by 37 times. Nothing to it!” Sam, said at the time.

The sculpture is made from stainless steel and weighs 3.5 tons and the upright half of the shell bears cut out words taken from Britten’s opera Peter Grimes that was dedicated to the lives of local fishermen, “I hear those voices that will not be drowned”. After it was installed, it was named as the best public sculpture in Britain and it received the Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture in 2006.

However, despite receiving much acclaim it didn’t prove to be popular with all the local townsfolk, receiving criticism for its position in an area of outstanding natural beauty, with critics claiming it ruined the view of the sea shore. This is despite the fact that the silhouette of Sizewell nuclear power station can be seen clearly just along the coast. I know what I would prefer to look at. Some residents even started a campaign to have it removed although as yet, twenty three years after it was erected it is still standing. Built to withstand the elements, being battered by the wind and sea, it looks as though it can withstand the storm of controversy too. Whilst The Guardian newspaper art critic Jonathon Jones listed it in top spot as one of the UK’s six worst works of public art, author Susan Hill who knew Benjamin Britten has claimed it to be “A glorious thing of power and beauty” and feels certain Britten would have approved.

Hambling herself defended its site on the shingle saying

“It was made for that particular place in juxtaposition with the sea and that is where I want it to stay… I’m very disappointed the Scallop is not being given a chance to settle which I am sure it will in time… It never crossed my mind it would be controversial, I thought people might come up and say thank you. More fool me! My own newsagent just said to me ‘Hello, how’s the eyesore going?’ ”

Which just goes to show you really can’t please all of the people all of the time, although you can pretty much guarantee you’ll piss some of them off. Personally I think it’s a glorious ‘eyesore’ that I never tire of seeing which is why I was delighted to be back in Aldeburgh, to walk along the beach and to lay my hands on its smooth surface and feel its magnificence. Sitting in the centre of the sculpture the sound of the wind and waves appear to congregate, cutting off the outside world. It is one of my favourite places, made all the better this week by spending the day with friends in this unspoilt little seaside town.

Art will always attract controversy and have its haters as well as fans. Just think sharks pickled in formaldehyde or unmade beds and even, although hard to believe, the work of David Hockney which I have seen described over the past few weeks since his death, as being simplistic, juvenile and garish despite bringing so much joy to so many. Therefore it’s no surprise that the Scallop wasn’t Hambling’s first brush with controversy over a public sculpture. Maggi Hambling was born in Sudbury, Suffolk in 1945 and attended the Ipswich School of Art. She is primarily a painter of land and seascapes full of big lively brushstrokes as well as numerous loosely executed portraits. Her work is in national collections and in 1980 she became the first artist in residence at the National Portrait Gallery where she produced a series of paintings of the comedian Max Wall. But it is her sculptures for which she is probably best known as they are what have attracted controversy. Let’s face it, there’s no fun in being universally acclaimed and in controversy there is reaction and publicity. In the words of Oscar Wilde “When critics are divided the artist is at one with himself”… or herself as the case may be.

My other favourite controversial Maggi Hambling sculpture just happens to be of Oscar Wilde, erected in 1998. Situated just off The Strand, opposite London’s Charing Cross station there is a green granite sarcophagus, just like a bench which is what it is intended to be, with a bust of Wilde emerging from one end, originally with a cigarette nonchalantly clasped in one hand. A committee called ‘A Statue for Oscar’ led by Sir Jeremy Isaacs the television producer, that included notable names such as actors Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellan as well as the Irish poet Seamus Heaney had formed to bring the idea of a memorial to Oscar Wilde in London to life. It would be the first ever sculpture of the writer outside his native Ireland. Twelve artists were invited to submit ideas on a single sheet of paper, from which a shortlist was drawn up. Those on the shortlist were then asked to make a maquette and from these Maggi Hambling was selected by virtue of the fact that her submission not only met the criteria of the brief but was also a simple idea yet expressive and impactful at the same time, as well as being witty and accessible. Members of the public can sit on the sarcophagus and engage with the laughing, talking, smoking head of Wilde, celebrating the fact that although he might be dead, his work lives on. It is called A Conversation with Oscar Wilde and inscribed at the far end of the coffin shaped bench are the words from Lady Windermere’s Fan “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”

The abstracted writhing hollow head of Wilde, still instantly recognisable, didn’t receive universal fanfare and over the years the cigarette in his hand has been removed by vandals and replaced so many times that the City of London now no longer replaces it. Instead Wilde’s hand grasps at thin air. But the statue remains and just like the Scallop it invites people to sit on it and engage with it, maybe even have a conversation, where it provokes a reaction, just like all good art should.

Hambling’s third controversial public sculpture, more recently unveiled in North London in 2020 is of Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18^th century writer and early advocate of feminism. The statue depicts a naked woman emerging from a swirling mass of organic female forms. It sits on a plinth on which Wollstonecraft’s words are etched “I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves.” It has been criticised for its nudity and objectification of the female form with some mistakenly believing to be a depiction of Wollstonecraft herself, but Hambling has defended it by saying that it is a representation of every woman and clothes would have restricted her to a time and a place.

“It’s not a heroic or heroinic likeness of Mary Wollstonecraft. It’s a sculpture about now, in her spirit.” She said

Not having seen this particular statue I will reserve judgement but I think the critics might be right on this one because most people walking past are going to look and see a naked woman not a tribute to a feminist icon. And I can’t see anyone putting up a statue of some fit looking naked young man in honour of an iconic male historical figure from the 18^th century, can you?

Our Wi-Fi woes continue, although currently we have connection so I’m publishing this while I can. It does seem to depend on the temperature. Too hot and it cuts out so we are not relishing the return of another heatwave. It has been established that there is a fault, although there seems little agreement as to where. There have been two cancelled appointments, the first because they thought they had solved the problem by sending a new router, the second because the ‘Appointment failed’. I know, what does that even mean? Neither time were we informed of the cancellation, we just waited and no one turned up. An engineer finally came to fix the problem inside but decided the problem was outside. Another engineer came to fix the problem outside, but no he thinks it’s definitely inside. So the current situation is that we are awaiting another engineer to come inside. It appears they are either inside or outside engineers, they can’t do both. That’s not to mention the endless telephone conversations that seem to get us nowhere because no one seems to know what anyone else has done or said. For a communications company they seem really bad at talking to each other or us. We might as well have a conversation with the sea… or even Oscar Wilde!

Hopefully I will be back next week depending on temperatures and engineers, but meanwhile thanks for reading and remember to give me a like by clicking the heart. It makes me happy and helps others find me.

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Back home the final strike had seemed to land right in the centre of the village knocking out the internet in our street. Mostly it had been fixed by the end of the day but we weren’t so lucky as our router had been fried. As I type the new router has arrived but there’s still no internet connection so we are now waiting for an engineer. I might have to head to a café to actually publish this on time, or you might just get it late if at all. I haven’t missed the mindless scrolling through Instagram etc but unfortunately it has had more repercussions than just no social media for a few days. Our landline is also driven by the internet and given that I have zero network coverage on my mobile phone at home I have felt totally cut off, but I am nothing if not resourceful.

Unable to send an agenda for a meeting I thought I could print off some hard copies, that was until I clocked that our wireless printer requires internet to connect to the laptop in order to print. Not to be thwarted, I took a screenshot of the agenda and then sat in the supermarket carpark before doing the weekly shop and forwarded it to the committee via WhatsApp. The meeting went ahead as planned the following morning, I took minutes and then I managed to type them up and send them using the WIFI at Mum’s care home later that day. But it has made me hugely aware of how dependent we have all become on technology and just how easily it can all be snatched away. The next hurdle is ordering a repeat prescription which is usually done on the NHS app. I could phone the surgery, risking the wrath of the receptionists, but of course I don’t have a phone I can use anyway… and so it goes on! At least it’s another week before my credit card payment is due.

It turns out the smart TV is not so smart without the internet either. As we wanted to watch the England World Cup game this week we went to the local pub and I realised it was a first for me. I have never watched football on TV anywhere other than at home. It felt like a slightly alien environment, not helped by being one of only two women in the entire place, but being a game without goals or very much excitement of any description it was quite a sedate affair. I could easily have given it a miss, but I was happy to be sat in the air conditioned pub with a cold drink for a couple of hours. I stopped short of taking my knitting but I was tempted.

At last we have reached that time of year where all the hard work on the allotment is starting to pay off. There are plump red jewelled raspberries picked fresh every morning for breakfast and if we are lucky there are a few extras to stick in the freezer for a treat during the winter months, although it’s a much lower yield than usual this year, disappointing when they grow like weeds. There are lettuces ready for lunch and small, sweet courgettes and broad beans making an appearance at dinner time. Not exactly self sufficient but it feels good to know that some of what we eat is homegrown and organic. Plus on the allotment I have discovered I have two bars of phone signal if I stand in the right spot. Bonus! Twice a day I go over to pick veg and check my email.

Apparently 24^th June was National Writing Day in the UK although I do wonder who decides and declares such days. Without internet, I was unable to do much by way of research for my weekly Substack, hence you have this random collection of mundane notes from my week with very few photographs. I know I could have done the old fashioned thing and gone to the library to research and write, but I didn’t. It has been too hot to drive anywhere I didn’t need to go. However a national day for writing did remind me I had an abandoned manuscript that I could return to. I use the term ‘manuscript’ very loosely with my tongue firmly tucked in my cheek. Five months ago on 25^th January I pledged to myself to write 500 words a day on my ‘novel’ based on nothing more than a very vague idea for a story. What I wrote didn’t have to be any good, no one else even had to read it but consistency was the key to getting it written. It all started so well. I was consistent for about two weeks before grinding to halt. I had the beginnings of the first two chapters but I couldn’t see where it was going next, so I stopped and all thoughts of a novel were pushed from my mind.

So on National Writing Day following the discovery of a card during a morning spent clearing and tidying my desk (it’s amazing how much one can achieve when thrust back into an analogue world), the card coming from a kind reader Sue, who many months ago sent me a small gift to encourage me after I wrote about aspiring to write a novel, I resurrected the long forgotten word document. I’ve started some serious editing on the two chapters already written because it’s amazing how distance can lend clarity to what one is trying to achieve. In other words a lot of what I had written was utter tosh but ideas are sparking as to where it might go next and I have added another 1000 words. I’ll probably be enthusiastic for another couple of weeks before something else crops up but who knows, maybe this time I’ll continue to write.

I have just finished reading Land by Maggie O’Farrell and if there was ever a novel and novelist to inspire one to write, this is it. It is an epic story covering several generations of a family in the years following the Great Famine in Ireland. It begins with Tomás and his ten year old son Liam who are working for the Ordnance Survey Project to map the whole of Ireland. What follows is a tragic tale of a family’s attempts to survive, and make a life on the land that holds generations of history below its surface. Ancient woodlands, peat rich earth and deep clear pools contain stories and magical mysteries that become entwined with that of Tomás and his family as they are torn apart by tragedy and separation. It is a powerful story, and although often bleak and depressing it reminds us that the land goes on and holds our stories regardless of those of us who try to claim it. I highly recommend it but don’t expect a cheerful read.

And that’s about it for another week. Thank you as always for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next week, if the internet is playing ball. Until then please do click the heart and/or share to show me you care and help others find me.

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Empty and quiet, which seems ridiculous because he hardly ever made a sound. Except for a rebellious grumble akin to muttering under his breath if he was told off. I can count the number of times he barked on the fingers of one hand, during the whole ten years he was with us. If ever he did bark, a deep loud single woof, he always appeared so surprised as if he couldn’t quite figure out what had made such a loud noise. He came to live with us in June 2016 after we had been seduced by a friend posting photos of her dog’s recent litter online. We both knew that ‘just going to have a look’ at the puppies wasn’t going to work out and of course we would end up with another dog.

How could we ever resist?

Right from the start he was silly and ridiculous and constantly made us laugh. Despite almost a year of training classes he was very resistant to outright obedience. He knew all the commands, would respond to a whistle (especially someone else’s whistle) and yet would still do a 360° scan of the landscape when called just in case there was something more interesting to run off to investigate. Yet he was a gentle giant of a dog that loved everything and everybody… well possibly not cats but we never really found out. Despite his eagerness to chase them he never did get up too close. He probably just wanted to play with them.

Always silly! We spent ages looking for him and found him just sitting there in the old plant pot

There was one occasion when he disappeared into the woods only to come out with a fully grown mallard duck in his mouth. Appalled, I ordered him to ‘Leave’ which unusually he obeyed, dropping the duck to the ground. I assumed it was dead, but it gave itself a shake, quacked loudly and toddled off none the worse for its experience. I quickly grabbed the dog who was now eager to give chase. He couldn’t resist a real life ‘squeaky toy’ that ran away! We rarely gave him toys as he always ended up eating them, even the so called indestructible ones, so I can’t blame him. On more than one occasion he was spooked whilst on the lead, rapidly whipping himself around my legs and completely flooring me. The first time was just days before my eldest son’s wedding and resulted in some very grazed and bloody knees. Fortunately I was planning to wear trousers to the wedding. The last time was lock down year when I fell flat on my back in the middle of the road, whacking the back of my head. That time it involved an ambulance ride to hospital and three weeks of concussion. But he never knowingly hurt a soul.

His love of everyone meant he absolutely adored visits to the vet and going to kennels, quite happily going off with anyone who would lavish him with attention without so much as a backwards glance. He never went upstairs or climbed up on the furniture, unless of course he thought we were out and he could get away with it. There was many occasion we would come home to find him lounging nonchalantly across the sofa, a place usually out of bounds. We were never sentimental dog owners, he wasn’t a ‘fur baby’ a term I detest, nor were we ever his ‘Mum and Dad’ – I have many skills but giving birth to puppies is not one of them. But despite that he was our boy and we miss him more than we thought we would. Because now our house is quiet and we have spent the week trying to adjust, keeping ourselves busy, but feeling a bit lost.

There’s been an afternoon out walking and sketching at Wimpole Hall, strange to go without the dog, where we had tea and cake to celebrate Stewart’s birthday. I also attended a painting session at our local Art Society where we were given a mini demo by artist Carol Whitehouse and I dabbled with water colours. I have painted with water colours before but mostly in a ‘colouring in’ type of way to add colour or depth to a pen drawing (see above), never really progressing beyond the paintboxes of my childhood. But this was different. No pencil drawing first, just beautiful rich pigment and plenty of water with a big brush applied directly to the paper.

My first attempt at proper water colour painting as opposed to ‘colouring in’ with paint.

There was a vase of peonies and irises for inspiration, where our main aim was to capture the colour and shape. If felt like a much freer approach to water colour than anything I had tried before and I am keen to try more. And that is really all for this week, aside from cooking… I made this ice cream, which was excellent and I don’t usually even like strawberry ice cream. There was also some pottering in the garden and far too long spent trying to write this, which has felt a little indulgent so I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ll be back to normal next week.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with something that popped up on my Instagram feed (how do they know?) Apologies that I do not know the original source but it seemed worth sharing.

Things we could learn from dogs:

· When your loved ones come home, always run to say hello

· Never pass up an opportunity for a walk

· Allow yourself to enjoy the fresh air, the sunshine, the wind and the rain

· When someone has a bad day, sit close, stay silent and gently make them feel you are there.

· When you’re happy, dance around and wag your entire body

Thanks for being here and don’t forget if you click the little heart icon below it really does make my day, as well as helping others find me.

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We dodged the rain showers last week for another trip into Cambridge, this time to visit a museum that neither of us had been to before, The Polar Museum. The Scott Polar Research Institute was founded in 1920 by Frank Debenham, a geologist on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s scientific team, as a memorial to Scott and his four companions who lost their lives on the return journey of their Antarctic expedition of 1912. It is part of the University of Cambridge and has occupied its current building since 1934. On entering the building, one first goes into the Memorial Hall where it is necessary to look up to see the two magnificent painted domes, one depicting the Arctic and the other the Antarctic.

Detail from one of the painted domes in the Memorial Hall. In 1910 Terra Nova departed from Cardiff with Captain Scott aboard for what was to be his final Antarctic expedition

The museum has always been a centre for Arctic and Antarctic research and exploration. Today its staff and students also investigate polar environmental change, polar history and the people of the Arctic polar regions, with a major focus on the links between ice and climate and the behaviour of glaciers and ice sheets. The permanent displays have a strong focus on exploration, including the incredibly poignant letters written by Scott and members of his team to their friends and family in the certainty that they would not be returning home. Penned from a frozen tent, suffering from frostbite, malnutrition and exhaustion, just 11 miles from a supply depot, Scott wrote to his wife Kathleen.

“To my widow… You know I have loved you, you know my thoughts must have constantly dwelt on you… the worst aspect of this situation is that I shall not see you again.” Captain Robert F. Scott

He encouraged her to remarry for the sake of their three year old son, urging her to foster within him an interest in natural history, advice she obviously followed. Their only son was Sir Peter Scott, the conservationist and ornithologist and founder of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature..

Fascinating though this was, I was also keen to see the temporary exhibition Through Fire and Ice, described as a fusion of contemporary art by Rowan Huntly and cutting edge Antarctic research by Dr Joanne Johnson a Polar geochemist. Does any child actually grow up thinking ‘I would like to be a polar geochemist one day’? Just wondering. The exhibition claims to connect geology and our industrial past with the science of glaciers, ice sheets and climate, bringing Johnson’s research into physical focus, aiming to make the complex scientific processes more immediate and relevant. It claims to question what we see, what we overlook and examines how we can reforge lost connections with the planet.

Chione’s Torment, Acrylic on canvas, Rowan Huntley, 2023 (In Greek mythology Chione is the goddess of snow and the north wind)

I didn’t really understand how it was achieving these lofty claims and reading the wall labels beside the various paintings and sculptures didn’t help me much. It was an eclectic collection of acrylic paintings as well as sculpture formed by working with extreme temperatures, local geological found materials, ice, metal and paint. I liked the various abstract paintings, even if I didn’t understand how they came about and what they were meant to represent, but the sculpture didn’t do much for me.

However the sculpture that really caught my interest during our visit was in the display case of Inuit art in the permanent displays. The Inuit are a group of indigenous people who inhabit the Arctic and subarctic regions that span Alaska, Northern Canada, Greenland and Siberia, which are some of the harshest environments on earth. There are forty distinct ethnic groups which include the Sámi of Northern Europe. Our Western concept of art does not exist in any Inuit culture or language. The closest word they have to describe art is Sananguag, which means likeness or imitation. Historically Inuit men would carve tools and utensils from walrus ivory, or caribou bone and antler, which they would decorate with carved geometric or figurative images.

Man and Woman, ivory and soapstone, Unknown artist, 1927-35

They would also carve beautiful Arctic animals and birds as well as human figures which served as amulets or fertility symbols. Mother and child images were common. The art reflected traditional beliefs, the place of the Inuit people in the environment, the traditional way of life and closely held family values. It was only later that these carved items were made for barter or sale to European visitors. Contemporary Inuit art dates from the mid twentieth century when there was a deliberate policy to develop a commercial art market. In 1948 a Canadian artist, James Houston travelled to the Arctic and returned with a large number of traditional Inuit carvings. They were in great demand and this led to the Canadian government promoting the art as a way of successfully diversifying Inuit economy. Today it is not only sculpture but paintings, prints, tapestries and other textiles that make up a vital part of the culture and economy. Inuit art is represented in private and public collections and has become internationally recognised. Nowadays Inuit artists no longer just represent the traditional styles and values but they are beginning to address contemporary social issues with their art too.

“We carve the animals because they are important to us as food. We carve Inuit figures because in that way we can show ourselves to the world as we were in the past and as we are now.” Paulosie Kasudluak, contemporary Inuit artist, 1976

In the language of Greenland, the word tupilak which refers to an ancestor’s soul, originates from mythology as a type of avenging monster that would be created by a shaman to destroy an enemy. The grotesque hybrid creatures were carved from the body parts of dead animals such as bone or horn and imbued with a monstrous spirit and ‘brought to life’ with dark magic and chanting. It was a risky business though because if the intended victim had stronger magic the tupilak could return and destroy its maker. They were often placed in the sea to do their magic and destroyed after use so consequently no old examples exist. Today these figures are carved in bone, tooth, wood or stone and are made purely for the commercial market where they are highly collectable.

I resisted the urge to buy a soapstone carving kit in the shop and drew some tupilak instead!

Another traditional type of Inuit sculpture is an inuksuk, a manmade stone landmark similar to a cairn, yet often built to represent a human like figure. The word inuksuk translates to mean ‘that which acts in the capacity of a human’ (Inuk means person and Suk means substitute). They are made by balancing stones on top of one another, so that they stand out in the icy landscape. They are used for navigation and hunting, marking good fishing or hunting grounds, or sometimes as memorials or shrines.

Inuksuk outside the museum

There is a large example standing outside the Polar museum that was build in Baffin Island in the 1960s and later donated to the institute. Although the things that really captured my interest weren’t what I thought I was going to see, it was a fascinating day out.

I have recently finished reading the much acclaimed book Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, an extraordinary nature memoir. When Dalton, a political advisor and foreign policy specialist, left London and returned to her country home during the pandemic she discovered a newborn hare out in the open nesr her house. She waited to see if its mother would return for it but when it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen she brought the leveret home and learned to how to raise it. She was careful not to try to tame the animal, handling it as little as possible, never giving it a name and allowing it the freedom to come and go as it wished. An extraordinary relationship develops, with the hare roaming the countryside at night and returning to Dalton’s garden each day. Eventually the hare even gives birth to her own litter of leverets inside Dalton’s house, hiding them there while she leaves to forage at night.

This beautifully illustrated book is an extraordinary account not only of the interaction between Dalton and the hare but also about the way it changes Dalton’s own life and her appreciation of the natural world and how human behaviour impacts on nature. The book is beautifully written in a lyrical prose, it tells of an extraordinary bond and deep connection with the elusive mystical creature as well as containing a lot of background information about hares generally but, and I feel I might be out on a limb with this, for me it really seemed to drag through the second half and in the latter chapters. I loved the early chapters where she explores the nature of her relationship with the hare and keenly observes how the hare changes as it grows but by the time the hare becomes adult there seemed to be a lot of repetition, especially in the descriptive passages. However, I am aware that this is not the general impression of this book which has had glowing reviews, so don’t let me put you off. If you have read it I would be interested to know what you think.

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I had written this post in the middle of the week, all done and dusted by Wednesday, but on Friday we had the sad news about David Hockney and I couldn’t not mention him.

An absolute legend. From 60s pop art, photography, portraits, abstract landscapes to iPad drawings and so much more, his enthusiasm for life, his curiosity and humour and willingness to embrace new technology never failed to inspire. He was endlessly creative and inventive. The world was a better place with him in it.

I painted this portrait a couple of years ago never really expecting it to sell and I admit I was a little disappointed when it did. I would quite like to still have it to hang on the wall as a reminder to never stop looking at the world with wonder.

As ever, thank you so much for sticking with me and continuing to read each week. And if you have only just found your way here, welcome! A simple click of the heart below shows me you have enjoyed reading and helps others find me, so thank you if you take the time to do that too. Sharing and subscribing also greatly encouraged!

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The table arrangements at an art themed wedding party… of course!

Perhaps I should explain. Many of you reading this will be familiar with the amazing art supplies business that has been Art Van Go. Except that reducing it to the description of art supplies is doing it a disservice because it has been so much more for so many people over a period of many decades. It started life as a mobile art shop, selling every imaginable art supply from paints and brushes, papers and sketchbooks, fabrics and dyes and everything else you never knew you needed, all from the back of a van. I first encountered them in the late 1990s when I attended an ‘Away Day Play Day’ workshop where we were introduced to a myriad of different art materials. Then when I took my City and Guilds in machine embroidery, the van would visit the college during the lunch break so students could stock up on supplies. In the meantime they acquired a bricks and mortar premises in Knebworth, the site of the former recording studio of Marty Wilde. So now, not only could we stock up from the van, we could visit the shop and take courses in the studio as well as see a myriad of exhibitions from renowned textile tutors.

Kev and Viv in October 2019 at their last Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally

And the beating heart as well as the vision behind this extraordinary business was the partnership of Viv and Kev, partners in life as well as partners in business and two of the most wonderful people you could ever meet. Over the years they continued to visit the colleges where I was now a tutor, I taught workshops for them and I held exhibitions in their studio. Occasionally I would join them as a demonstrating artist at one of the big Knitting and Stitching shows and there was even one time when I was roped in to work on the retail side of their stand at Alexandra Palace, where I have never worked so hard in my life. There was one occasion when I had gone to the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show to work on their Artists in Action stand. The plan was to stay for one night, but another artist had to pull out at the last minute so I ended up staying three nights. Cue a quick dash to M & S for clean knickers! And we all did it because once you got to know Viv and Kev it was like becoming part of a big family, where people were willing to muck in and help out. They not only forged friendships and connections with themselves but enabled so many other people to connect, especially within the textile art community.

‘Artist in Action’ Gina Ferrari!

For many years several of us who knew them would joke that if eventually they ever decided to get married then we wanted to be bridesmaids. In the last few years they have gradually wound down the business, no longer visiting venues around the country in their van, selling off their stock and closing the shop as they look forward to some well deserved time off in their retirement. Because although it has been fun over the years it has also been very hard work. And after forty years together they also decided it was time to tie the knot!

Gill and I as bridesmaids!

And that is how last weekend along with fifteen or so other tutors, friends and colleagues I happened to be a bridesmaid, along with my good friend Gill who came to stay with us for the weekend. It was fitting that Gill and I had first met when she worked in the Art Van Go shop.

Viv and Kev with Julia after ‘Tying the Knot’

Yes, both the bride and groom wore Crocs and we wore our party dresses along with colourful sashes to identify our role for the day. And it was just what a wedding party should be. Not all about the most expensive dresses, lavish gifts or five tier wedding cakes. It was all about love, laughter and connection with a group of people who have met over the years because of these two amazing human beings. There was a short and beautiful ceremony conducted by artist Julia Triston, followed by much food, drink and dancing whilst the sun shone all day, making it perfect in every way. A beautiful reminder that there is still much to be thankful for in life.

Spot the tutors… and the ‘imposter’!

Amongst the guest list at ‘The Wedding that Never Was’ were a large number of ‘textile royalty’, those tutors who are legends in their lifetime within the textile art community. I was overcome with more than a little bit of imposter syndrome when invited to join them for a photo… and immensely flattered too. It has been a few years since I last taught any textile related courses, either in person or online and as a result my own textile art has also come to a halt. I have been busy with painting, the allotment and caring for Mum amongst other things, including writing of course and any sewing has been limited to dressmaking and crafts. So it has been easy to convince myself I haven’t missed it. But when several people whose work I admire (I am looking at you Marian and Catherina) were urging me to come back to the world of textile art it got me thinking that maybe I would quite like to be part of that wonderful community once more.

My problem has often been that there is a lot of so called textile art that I really don’t like, especially within the world of machine embroidery. I’m not a fan of heavy gungy textures and over worked pieces preferring clean, simple lines, and bright bold colours. But I have always loved being able to use my sewing machine like a drawing tool and as a result I have especially enjoyed making portraits in stitch.

My stitched portrait of Gill

The long and short of it all is that I am tentatively dipping my toe back in. I’m thinking that I will probably return to portraits but for now I’m taking small steps by working daily in my sketchbook in an attempt to find themes that interest me that I might want to develop into finished work. To that end I have dug out one of my many unused sketch books, ignoring all those with two or three pages started, because we all like a brand new sketchbook, don’t we. Or is that just me?

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Working in my sketchbook.

It’s small so I can carry it around with me and the intention is that I work at least one small page every day, any medium, any subject, anything I like. No rules and no pressure and we’ll see where it takes me. Who knows I might even report back here and tell you about it one day but along with no rules, no pressure also no promises. Which is slightly ironic because historically I have always worked better under pressure with a looming deadline…

And since I penned those first words in that last paragraph a looming deadline is exactly what has happened. Did I say I was dipping my toe in the water? More like a double twist backwards flip off the 10m diving board because in the space of three days I have joined a textile group and have committed to making work for an exhibition. Watch this space!

Meanwhile, if you want to follow along with my sketchbook, I am posting my daily sketches on Instagram although after just a mere week that is already feeling like a pressure so not sure how much longer I’ll keep that up. It might become more sporadic than daily posts.

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Totally unrelated but we have been watching ‘Dear England’ a four part drama on BBC based on the successful play of the same name. It follows Gareth Southgate’s time as manager of the England football team from 2016 until his retirement in 2024. I didn’t think I would be interested having a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude to most football but I found it gripping. Joseph Fiennes gives a mesmerising performance, if perhaps a little too twitchy, as Southgate and although there is a lot of football, there is also a lot of focus on the psychology and pressure of winning, the pressures of racism within football, and the way Southgate is credited for creating a positive and cohesive culture within the squad. I doubt I’ll find the forthcoming World Cup tournament quite so gripping but I can recommend Dear England if you are looking for something to watch while the football is on.

Until next week, thank you for reading. As ever please do click the heart if you have enjoyed reading as it helps spread the word and keeps me motivated!

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Decorating the body with permanent skin marking is one of humanity’s oldest artforms performed within many different cultures on every inhabited continent. Yet despite its rich cultural heritage and ubiquitous presence it continues to carry dubious connotations. Tattooing has been used to signify rites of passage, offer spiritual protection or to display tribal lineage with a rich cultural history dating back over 5,000 years and most likely longer.

Jorja, Oil on Canvas 2024

Ötzi the Iceman is Europe’s oldest known natural human mummy, estimated to be approximately 5,300 years old. He was discovered in 1991 by hikers in the Ötztal Alps on the border of Austria and Italy. His body was so well preserved that scientists have discovered an extraordinary amount about him. He was estimated to be about 45 years old at the time of his death from an arrow in his left shoulder. He was 5’3” and weighed about 50kg, his last meal, eaten within a few hours of death, consisted of ibex meat and wheat grains, he had internal parasites, decayed teeth and his bone density suggested he walked great distances over hilly terrain so it’s likely he was a high altitude shepherd. His body was also covered with 61 tattoos consisting of well defined lines and crosses situated around his joints, which has led to speculation that they were a result of a type of acupuncture designed to relieve joint pain.

Tattooed remains from the Pazyryk people, approx 600 BCE

Ötzi is not necessarily the oldest example of human tattooing. His tattoos were so well defined that it is thought that they were the work of highly skilled practitioners, suggesting he was far from the first to be marked in this way. It suggests a well-established practice dating back many years. In addition, statues representing humans with tattoo like marks that date back even earlier have been discovered in Japan. Moving forward several centuries, in Ancient Egypt tattoo marks have been mostly found on the mummified bodies of women hinting at links with fertility, rejuvenation and protection during childbirth. In the Pazyryk tribes from Central Asia, well preserved bodies dating back 2600 years have shown intricate decorative tattoos of stylised designs of animals. In Polynesian tribes the art of ‘Tatau’ (meaning to strike) is an important cultural practice passed down from father and son and in particular the intricate curvilinear and spiral marks of the Māori tribes, known as Ta Moka, serve as a sacred visual language that represent an individual’s ancestry.

An example of ‘Ta Moka’ tattoos on a Maori man

However it wasn’t all spiritual and cultural significance. In Ancient Greece and Rome the practice of tattooing was either done by Barbarians or was reserved for the branding of slaves and prisoners and it is here we can witness the first negative connotations associated with tattoos. Throughout China and Asia there are links with criminality and it was used for branding criminals, where their crime would be permanently recorded across the face in black ink. Apparently any man committing adultery more than once would have the words ‘committed licentious acts two times” written across their forehead, leaving no doubt as to what they had been up to!

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In Europe the practice of tattooing had largely died out until the world’s seaways opened up and sailors were exposed to the cultural practices of other nations. By 1800 it is estimated that at least a third of British sailors sported a tattoo often featuring designs such as anchors, ropes, ships and swallows. Such nautical themed tattoos remained popular right through to the 1950s postwar period where they were seen as a signifier of masculinity and rebellion.

Another 20^th century trend which did nothing to enhance the reputation of tattoos were the travelling circus groups who would gather people with anatomical oddities or conditions and put them on display. It goes without saying that this is a horrific discriminatory practice and these people were often very poorly treated. None were more popular among these ‘circus freaks’ than people who sported tattoos and tattooed women were a particular draw for the crowds.

The Tattooed Woman - circus sideshow

Tattoos for women as cosmetic enhancements also became popular during the 1920s. Eyebrows would be defined, lips outlined and even a beauty spot or too might be inked permanently on the skin although these were often secret procedures as by now getting a tattoo was definitely taboo for women unless you were of a certain lower class.

When I was growing up tattoos were absolutely only ever linked with sailors, criminals or prostitutes, yet my fascination with them started very young. My Mum’s younger brother was a merchant seaman and sported a magnificent, prowling inked tiger stalking down one bicep, acquired on one of his oversea trips. As a small child I loved my uncle’s tiger tattoo and would ask to see it at every opportunity, thrilled as the orange and black stripes rippled down his arm as he moved. It felt rebellious and subversive and so beautiful. It had a lasting impact on me. As I grew up even getting my ears pierced when I was sixteen felt like a massive act of rebellion so I hate to think what my parents would have thought if I had rocked up home with a tattoo. By the time I was married and had a family, thoughts of getting tattoos were pushed to the recesses of my mind. I think my ex-husband would have probably been appalled at the idea. When we divorced, along with changing my name (if you missed me writing about it last week I’ve linked it below) I started to think I would like to get a tattoo to mark my new found freedom but the problem was that I didn’t want any old random design. It had to mean something if I wasn’t going to regret it later on and the problem was that nothing really appealed. There was also the question of where to go to have it done because I had seen some pretty awful tattoos in my time, crudely executed with little skill.

For the next couple of decades I would occasionally think about it but never dared go beyond the thinking stage. These days tattoo culture has spread, largely thanks to the rise of social media, and they are a common sight but for me it still felt like a huge decision to make – what design, where on my body and who would I trust to do it? Those questions all loomed large until last year when it all seemed to fall into place and I knew it was time!

It all began on my writing retreat last year where several of the women had tattoos. We spoke about them and why they had them as we sat around the table together eating, drinking and laughing. I picked up the bottle of wine to pour another glass and there it was on the label, a little cartoon shaped man, half way up a ladder reaching for the moon. Half joking I said, “This would be a great design for a tattoo.”

The aforementioned wine label!

We all laughed but the more I thought about it the more it seemed perfect. The writing retreat had taught me to dream big and reach for the stars. The week away in the company of a group of amazing women had changed something within me and it felt like something worth marking. On returning home, I was in the hairdresser chatting to the young girl who was washing my hair when I spotted she had a gorgeous floral tattoo on her shoulder, very delicate, single colour and beautifully executed. We laughed as she said she still hadn’t told her Dad (yes, those taboos still exist) and I told her about my long held ambition. As I left the salon she handed me a piece of paper with the contact details of her tattooist.

I drew out my own design, a willowy woman half way up a ladder reaching for the moon and stars. The figure was based on a Dali statue of Alice in Wonderland that I had seen in Cortona during the retreat but the general idea had come from the wine label which was fitting in many ways as we consumed a lot of wine that week! And a couple of weeks later I had my tattoo.

It is on my back over my right shoulder blade, the position picked because I had no desire for it to be on constant show. No one else knows it’s there unless I’m in a strappy top or I choose to show them. It’s not hidden because I’m ashamed of having it, and one year on I still absolutely love it but it was done for me, no one else. Also I think that because of long held prejudices it has felt quite exposing to admit that I have a tattoo. In the intervening year I have had at least three friends make disparaging remarks about the type of people who have tattoos and I have kept quiet, until a couple of weeks ago when I decided it was time to speak out. I replied to one such remark with, “Well I have a tattoo”. I had to suppress a smile as I witnessed some hasty back tracking and uncomfortable shuffling. I wasn’t the one who felt embarrassed.

But have I told my Mum I got a tattoo? Hell, no!

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My writing process doesn’t really follow much of a pattern, although most weeks I start with an idea of what I want to write about. I begin with some notes, usually follow up with some research and as the week progresses it takes shape into what I hope will be something coherent and interesting. Other weeks I have no idea at all and by Saturday I start randomly writing down thoughts with an air of mild panic in the hope something I can publish will emerge before Sunday morning and it usually does, some weeks better than others. Well it has so far. I also keep an ongoing list of subjects or ideas that I might develop. Some of them never make it to the page and others sit there for a while before I feel the urge to write about them. And other times, like this week, I start with a firm idea of what I am going to write about, I make a start and then abandon it because I have read or seen something else that caught my interest. I am easily distracted. What is consistent is that I do actually write because without some words on the page to begin with, nothing else would happen.

Still Life of Dahlias, Chrysanthemums and Begonias, 1912, Vanessa Bell

Last week we went to see the latest exhibition at the Kettle’s Yard gallery in Cambridge. I confess that I don’t always understand the art chosen for the exhibitions at Kettle’s Yard. It is nearly always contemporary and conceptual, sometimes includes video with which I find it difficult to engage and I’m left feeling as though I’m intellectually inferior in some way because I don’t ‘get it’. Although I suspect that it is more likely to be a case of The Emperor’s New Clothes in some instances, and possibly it’s just other people raving about something because they are the ones who don’t want to be seen to be intellectually inferior. It doesn’t bother me because I know what I like and that’s all that matters. The current exhibition is not like that though and I thought it was full of beautiful paintings. Handpicked: Painting Flowers from 1900 to Today takes inspiration from the vases of freshly cut flowers that are on display throughout the Kettles Yard House and the paintings of flowers by Winifred Nicholson that are on permanent exhibition. It features beautiful flower paintings from a whole range of artists spanning the 20^th and 21^st centuries, from Vanessa Bell and Henri Rousseau to contemporary painters such as Caroline Walker and Chis Ofili.

Kitchen Table, 2025, Caroline Walker

I came home inspired and thinking that the exhibition would make a good starting point for my Substack this week. It would coincide with The Chelsea Flower Show, which would provide a topical link ( I do like a neat segue between topics), and I would write about how flowers inspire artists. Except I couldn’t really get going and ended up being distracted by an article I read in last week’s Observer Magazine about the power of changing ones name. Coincidently it also ran a feature about the celebrity florist Hamish Powell who has had a hand in the garden produced by the King’s Foundation, which caused me to reconsider momentarily. His extravagant, exuberant floral displays are extraordinary.

But the idea about names wouldn’t leave and I doubt that I’ll get around to writing about flowers in paintings after all. However if you happen to be in Cambridge before 6^th September it is worth popping in to Kettle’s Yard to see the exhibition which is free. And of course, the house is always worth a visit too if you can spare the time.

But back to names. The article was titled What’s in a Name Change written by a man with a most wonderful moniker, Benoit Lancelot Denizet-Lewis. Although the article largely looks at changing names in people who have undergone gender transition, he begins by visiting a transformation obsessed, spiritual group (I’m more inclined to call it a cult, but hey, what’s in a name?) founded in the 1930s, called Kabalarian Philosophy who claim to help people choose or change names to be a better fit or to reflect a life transition. They are not alone in these wild claims and apparently so called naming experts can be found on platforms such as TikTok too. The Kabalarian approach is to assign numerical values to letters in names which together with an individual’s date of birth can not only mathematically shape their personality and life experiences but can alter their pattern of thinking too. Everything hinges on one’s name according to this ‘divine mathematical principle’ and a change of name can lead to a complete change of personality.

Call me a cynic, but I know enough about mathematics to know this is utter codswallop. Yet despite this, we do still make associations with certain names and somehow grow into our names. In naming children we often agonise over what to choose. It has to fit with a surname whilst we also consider whether it can be shortened or if the initials might spell something rude. As Socrates apparently claimed ‘Naming is no light matter” (It just so happens I have a very cute little grandson called Sokratis, spelt the Greek way… but I digress)

Growing up I was always acutely conscious of my own name because back then it was an unusual choice. In a classroom full of Marys, Elizabeths, Annes and Janes whose register sounded more like a cast list from a Jane Austen novel than a school roll call, being called Gina was positively exotic. These days when people are called all manner of names I know of several other Ginas, but back in the 1960s and 70s I was the only one in my social sphere. More than often I would be asked if it was short for Georgina to which my reply would be ‘No, just Gina’ in the manner of the well meaning but mischevious Just William.

‘Just Gina‘?

Apparently Michelle had been a consideration, although I can’t really see myself as a Michelle and later my Mum said she wished she had called me Siân, a name she wasn’t aware of when I was born but one she felt linked to her Welsh heritage. Although of course Siân is the Welsh equivalent of Jane or Jean which would have put me back with all the other Janes at school. Although Gina was unusual it did at least fit with Ferrari (we spelled it differently back then but that was only down to an illegible entry in the birth register two generations earlier – a whole other story) and although I am not Italian it was a nod to my Italian heritage, which made me feel special and not ‘just Gina’, especially as I was the only one in my generation of Ferrari cousins with an Italian Christian name.

When I met my first husband he had a very plain surname, Morris, although even that had been changed by his father from its Russian Jewish origins. I didn’t ever question whether I wanted to change my name, I did it out of convention and a desire to have the same surname as any future children. And downgrading from a Ferrari to a Morris offered plenty of potential for my Dad to make unsuitable car jokes in his speech at our wedding. It’s easy to look back on a marriage that fails and see it as all bad, but of course it wasn’t like that in reality. There were plenty of fun times and four gorgeous boys that came out of that time in my life, although there were also difficult periods when I struggled with my identity. I often felt controlled and moulded into someone else’s idea of what I should be. When eventually we parted ways, I consulted my sons who fully supported my decision to return to my former name. For the first time since my early twenties I felt like me. When I met Stewart and he asked me to marry him my reaction was ‘Yes, but I won’t take your name’. I had grown to be comfortable in my name and it made me feel strong and independent. I’ll be first to admit it has sometimes caused confusion over the years. Although it might be more common with younger couples, people don’t seem to expect married couples of our generation to have different surnames, so they assume we’re not married. Others get in a muddle as to what to write on envelopes and we get every possible combination or version of our names imaginable on our Christmas cards but never have I wavered or regretted my decision to keep my name.

The idea that the names we are given could possibly alter the trajectory of our lives, changing how others perceive us and even change who we might become is the subject of the recent book The Names by Florence Knapp . In 1987 Cora sets out with her daughter Maia to register the birth of her son. Her husband expects her to follow the family tradition and name him Gordon after him and his father before him. But Cora has reservations about naming him after generations of controlling men. Does she choose Gordon, or maybe Julian the name she has set her heart on. Or did she pick Bear the unconventional name chosen by her daughter. It is a story of three different names and three different versions of a life and the endless possibilities that can result from a single choice. It’s an interesting concept, well written and had me gripped from the start, however I had hoped there would be some weaving together of each story in a meaningful way. But ultimately they remained three disparate stories with three very different endings which left me feeling dissatisfied by the end of the book.

Maybe Shakespeare had it right all along

“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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To be fair, we’ve not actually had storms but it has been a bit gusty, with occasional heavy showers and a hail storm or two but most of all it has been cold. Really cold! So cold that pretty much everyone over on the allotments has lost plants, despite all rushing out each evening as the temperature plummets with fleecy covering for the most tender of the vegetables. Even though the beans, tomatoes, corn and squash have been covered, the overnight frost has managed to seep in and destroy them all, which is very disheartening. Fortunately I have plenty of spare tomato and squash plants but it will be back to the beginning with beans. I’ll probably forgo the sweetcorn, especially as the entire crop was lost to deer last year, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. And if that wasn’t bad enough all my Pak Choi and lettuce seedlings have been munched in my cold frame. At first I thought it was those pesky pigeons but no, I discovered several slugs and snails lurking under the pots. It’s a miracle I manage to grow anything at all. None of which has helped my mood this week.

To think that two weeks ago we were sitting in the garden eating our supper looking out for the returning swifts whilst bemoaning the lack of rain in April. Such is British weather.

Slug and Slime with Gangrene and Daisy the pantomime cow

Talking about slugs, I was reminded by my friend Annie of a very different type of slug this week which made me smile and cheered me up no end. Many years ago, well thirty two if you are counting, we were involved in our local Amateur Dramatics pantomime, an adaptation of Jack in the Beanstalk. She was the musical director and I was the costume designer/maker. The giant in our version of the story was never actually seen but he had a henchman by the name of Gangrene with two little helpers called Slime and Slug played by Annie’s eldest son Will who was fourteen at the time and my second son Sam who was about eight. I designed them costumes made from a hideous selection of sludge green and brown fabrics with little helmets complete with goblin style ears, taking inspiration from Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs.

Whilst my eight year old relished the idea of dressing up as something disgusting, Will was not impressed. He refused to wear the hat during any of rehearsals and although he relented for the performances, it has become something of a joke over the years that I thoroughly traumatised him by making him wear such a monstrous outfit. I’m not sure I am forgiven even all these years later but they did make very cute slugs.

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Part of the struggle with my mood these past days has been down to witnessing my Mum decline. Since moving her to a different care home, most of the time I am much happier with her level of care. Usually she is up, washed and with her hair brushed. She appears to be eating well and there are plenty of professionals around seeing to her needs. But in herself she’s not happy , in constant pain and on my last three visits she hasn’t wanted to get out of bed. She drifts in and out of sleep, moaning and repeating a prayer “Dear God, please help me, please let me die” over and over again. This week we found her asleep with plates of uneaten food, long since abandoned, giving me occasion to complain. Sometimes she wakes up and greets me like I have only just arrived, unaware that I have been sitting there for the past 45 minutes despite having spoken to me just ten minutes earlier. Other times she just apologises for wasting my visit. It never feels like a wasted visit, but to those who tell me to make the most of these days and that I’m lucky to still have her, my answer is that I’m not. This frail, old lady isn’t my Mum, not the one I could laugh and joke with or call every day just for a chat. She doesn’t understand my life, or recognise the people I talk to her about. We were looking at photographs this week and the only ones she recognised were her Mum and Dad and one of me as a child. She stared blankly at pictures of her siblings and my Dad. I visit out of a sense of duty and to make sure she is being properly cared for but the moments of connection are few and far between. Until the moment I go to leave. I hold her hand, kiss her goodbye and she tells me she loves me, every time without fail. All the more poignant because it’s not something I ever recall her saying to me as a child. I leave with a feeling of sadness that stays with me as an undercurrent to my days.

I come home and the dog doesn’t make me feel much better. The steroids are doing their job and are keeping him going. But he spends most of his day asleep and greets me with a raised eyebrow and brief wag of the tail. He doesn’t bother to get up, at least not until he hears me open the fridge door, when there might be a chance of a mini sausage or two. Then he gets up and sits before me expectantly. He is still getting out for a couple of short walks each day although he can no longer manage to climb steps. He too is not really himself and we feel like we’re playing a waiting game. At least he’s content.

But of course, just like our stormy weather it’s not all grey clouds and there have been rays of intermittent sunshine. We attended an excellent lecture on the portraits of Stanley Spencer, an artist I very much admire. You can read more here in one of my first ever Substack posts which has reminded me how much I would like to return to Burghclere and the Sandham Memorial chapel:

We have seen lots of the family and there has been plenty of reading, largely books that have been recommended here on Substack. Sorry, I can’t remember who recommended them but unlikely it was anyone who reads this.

First up was the excellent ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan. It is a short yet powerful story that shines a spotlight on the Magdelene Laundries during the 1980s. The story takes place in a small Irish town in the weeks leading up to Christmas where Bill Furlong, who was the illegitimate child of a sixteen year old mother, is facing his busiest season as the town’s coal merchant. Due to the kindness of his mother’s employer, Bill did not suffer the same fate as many others in his position. His mother was kept in the employ of Mrs Wilson, who took Bill under her wing as he grew up. As the story unfolds Bill reflects on the past and encounters complicit silence about the atrocities carried out in the small community under the control of the Catholic Church. He considers the hardships that others face and decides it is time to repay the kindness he reaped, because by ignoring a problem we become part of it. This is very understated writing, both precise and concise, that goes straight to the heart of the subject and the moral choices we face. I highly recommend it.

Next I read Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, of which I had read a glowing review. Knowing it was a Booker Prize winner, knocking J G Ballard’s Empire of the Sun off the top spot I had high expectations, that unfortunately were not met. It is set in the old fashioned Hotel du Lac, somewhere in Switzerland at some undetermined period after the Second World War. Romantic novelist Edith Hope arrives for a short break, having been sent away from home by her friends to reflect on her situation, after managing to embarrass herself. It is quite a way through the book before we discover what she has actually done but there is a sense of her being sent to the ‘naughty step’ while she considers her misdemeanour. During her stay Edith encounters a number of pampered women whom she befriends. I struggled with these additional characters finding them completely unbelievable, although I am aware that the intention of these caricatures was probably an attempt at humour, it fell short of the mark. It struck me as a very ordinary book and slow of pace, which although very well written came across as lacklustre and full of outdated ideas and stereotypes. It is the only novel by Anita Brookner that I have read so maybe I should try something else if anyone has any recommendations?

The final book I’m reading, is also full of outdated ideas, appalling prejudices and stereotypes, yet manages to be very funny and pacy. It is the wonderfully satirical novel The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. Here the collection of caricatured characters, all highly eccentric and unconventional, are hilarious and very believable. It tells the story of the Radletts of Alconleigh, an aristocratic family that are largely based on Mitford’s own family, during the period between the wars. Narrated by cousin Fanny, we follow Linda and her sisters who are on the hunt for an ideal match. It is wickedly funny yet beautiful prose. In describing a photograph she writes

“There they are, held like flies, in the amber of that moment – click goes the camera and on goes life…” Just beautiful!

This is one I’m happy to recommend and I’m looking forward to reading more.

And because it has been so cold I made soup. A warm comforting Ginger & Orange Lentil Soup but with enough fresh flavours that it does at least hint of sunnier days to come. Very little effort is involved and yet it is quite delicious. I’ll leave you this week with the recipe and let’s hope there is sunshine on its way.

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A couple of weeks ago I recommended the book James by Percival Everett which is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn but rather than narrated by Huck as in Twain’s original, it is told from the point of view of his companion, the runaway slave Jim. It is a powerful novel that is harrowing at times but there’s humour too as we are taken on Jim’s journey with him along the Mississippi river. Although it is fiction, it is of course written about a very real and horrific time in American history. Human chattel slavery , consisting mostly of Africans or African Americans was prevalent in the US from 1776 until 1865, mostly in the Southern States. Enslavement has always taken place throughout human history yet it is still difficult to comprehend how any individual could feel justified in owning another human being. Owning them like discardable goods one might buy or sell and then often treating them so badly that it wasn’t unusual for them to be beaten to the point of death. Beatings, rape, shackling, hanging, mutilation and burning were not unusual events.

One of the plot lines in the book centres on Jim’s ability to read and write and his attempts to procure a pencil, by which he can then write his memoir, which was unusual and noteworthy because most enslaved people in America were illiterate. Mandatory illiteracy was something unique to American slavery, a fact that I was unaware of until recently. Literacy was seen as a threat to the institution of slavery, after all if enslaved people were able to read they could read about the work of the abolitionists or the escape routes via the Underground Railroad. So it was easier all round if they were kept illiterate. In the words of Elias B. Caldwell, a notable Washington Lawyer at the time:

“The more you improve the conditions of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable they become… you give them higher relish for those privileges which they can never attain… keep them in the lowest state of degradation and ignorance.”

It is dehumanising in the extreme. In some states it was actually illegal to teach a slave to read and write. In South Carolina a white person could be fined up to $100, a fortune in the nineteenth century, for teaching a slave to read or write and if a slave taught another slave they would be sentenced to fifty lashes.

Of course Jim is a fictional character but I recently discovered the story of a remarkable individual who whilst spending most of his life as an enslaved man, not only learned to read and write but was also a skilled potter and a poet, using his pots as a means of personal expression in an act of audacious rebellion.

Lm September 7, 1857, Dave

David Drake, known for most of his life just as Dave was born around 1800 on a plantation in Edgefield, South Carolina to an enslaved family owned by Harvey Drake who owned a large pottery business in the area known locally as Pottersville, as it was so dominated by pot making. The pots produced were mostly jugs and vessels designed to hold food. Dave was one of about 76 enslaved people who worked in the potteries, becoming a highly skilled pot maker, known for producing particularly large, glazed stoneware vessels. It is not known how he learned to read and write. Some believe that Harvey Drake, a deeply religious man may have taught him to read the bible, but most scholars seem to think he most likely learned when he worked at a local newspaper. Harvey Drake’s business partner Abner Landrum published a newspaper called ‘The Edgefield Hive’ where Dave occasionally worked. We may not know how Dave learned to read and write but we know that he could because he would inscribe his magnificent pots with not only with his signature which was an act of subversion, but also with lines of poetry in the form of rhyming couplets. His earliest known pot is dated July 12, 1834, and is inscribed with the following words written in cursive script:

April 12, 1858, Dave

After Harvey’s death, Dave was bought by Harvey’s brother Reuben, before being passed on to Rev John Landrum and then sold to his son Franklin Landrum. Although advertised at the time as ‘An excellent stoneware turner’ he was sold alongside other goods and chattels such a piano, mules and cattle, reduced to a mere possession. Whilst with Franklin he is known to have been treated badly and during this period there are no known inscribed pots. In 1849 on Franklin’s death Dave was sold again to Lewis Miles who also owned a pottery called Stony Bluff and it was during this time he was at his most productive. His pots often contain the letters LM along with the date referring to Lewis Miles but always with his own name ‘Dave’ below in an act of radical resistance. He is the only Edgefield potter known to have signed his own work.

During his lifetime he is thought to have made as many as 40,000 pots but around 40 are known to be inscribed with poetry, with a further 50 or so carrying his signature and other inscriptions such as ‘Great and noble jar.” They were great and noble indeed and Dave is especially known for the size of his rotund, bulbous jars, the bases of which were formed on a wheel before being built up in coils of clay. Particularly poignant are the words on one pot:

Not only questioning his heritage and personal history but also his immediate family. He is thought to have been separated from his wife Louisa and their children when he was sold to Franklin Landrum. Poignant words but without animosity to all those who wronged him.

June 28, 1854, Dave

Having lost a leg earlier in life, possibly due to amputation following a train accident Dave wasn’t called to serve in the civil war, but he stayed at Stony Bluff and continued to work. He was eventually granted his freedom in 1865 at the end of the war after which he is known to have been reunited with his wife and family. It was then that he took the surname of his first owner Drake. There are no surviving poems on pots after this time and it is unsure when Dave died. A David Drake is recorded in the 1870 census but not by 1880. During his Lifetime his pots were worth little more than 50 cents, yet in 2021 an inscribed jar sold for $1.56 million.

After a lifetime of being treated as less than human, there is something comforting in the knowledge that Dave’s words remain as a lasting act of rebellion.

Thanks must go to the food writer for introducing me to the life and work of Dave Drake. We were fortunate to spend an evening in the company of Bee and her then husband, a couple of years before the Covid pandemic when we both attended a dinner at the Cambridge Cookery School. And excellent company she was too even if I was a little star struck having recently read her book ‘This is Not a Diet Book’. So back in October last year when I saw she was talking at the Cambridge Literary Festival to coincide with the launch of her latest book ‘The Heart Shaped Tin’ I decided to go along.

In 2020, just a couple of months after Bee’s husband walked out, she was startled by a heart shaped tin falling from a cupboard. It was the tin she had used to bake her wedding cake and in what she had always planned to bake a special anniversary cake, except that never happened. Unsettled by the falling tin she began talking to other people who have strong attachments to kitchen objects and so the book was born. It was an excellent, entertaining discussion, with laughter and tears where Bee explored some of the stories behind the kitchen objects that have meaning beyond their practical use, including Dave’s pots. Of course I bought the book and queued up to have Bee sign it where she very graciously said she remembered the evening we had dined together. Bee’s book is excellent, being in the form of a collection of short essays that combine personal reminiscence with stories from folk around the world who talk about their complicated relationships with ordinary kitchen objects ranging from saltshakers to melon ballers. I can definitely recommend it and it is one I shall probably return to another time as it has made me think about the kitchen items that that I have hung onto over the years as well as some of the items inherited from my Mum.

I can’t finish writing this week without mentioning another Dave… the English broadcaster, natural historian, environmentalist, writer and something of a national treasure who celebrated his 100^th birthday on Friday. Happy birthday Sir David Attenborough!

As always, thank you so much for reading. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you being here. If you have enjoyed today’s writing please do click the heart to let me know… and if you like, please do leave a comment, share or subscribe if you don’t already do so.

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Out walking first thing in the morning earlier in the week there was a hint of petrichor in the air, a welcome sign of rain overnight, although nowhere near enough. Barely a drop throughout the entire month. Is the weather ever what we want it to be? April has been such a dry month in these parts that it’s hard to remember the endless grey wet days at the beginning of the year. I’m not complaining though, as it has been lovely to spend so many days outside on the allotment, even if it has meant daily watering already . There have also been beautiful evenings spent outside with a book, eating supper al fresco keeping an eye out for the return of the swifts. Last year we didn’t see them until May 11^th but there have been reported sightings locally and we’re convinced we saw a pair one evening this week.

Supper al fresco… tuna burgers with cucumber salsa

These amazing birds spend almost their entire life on the wing, sleeping, eating, drinking and even mating whilst flying, landing only to nest. They spend their winters in Africa and each summer they return to the UK making the 6,000 mile journey via Portugal and France. Arriving at the end of April/beginning of May they only stay for a few short months whilst they raise their chicks, pairing for life and returning to the same nesting sites. By August they leave to start the return journey to Africa. Sadly like many species they are in decline and are on the UK Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern.

We are fortunate to have quite a good swift population in our village, although the box on the front of our house is now well and truly occupied by a family of starlings. Both the parent birds are endlessly flying back and forth with beaks stuffed with goodies for their chicks, whom we can hear squawking within. What I didn’t know was that it is the males that build the nests and then they perch nearby and sing to attract a mate, who will then help them finish off the nest with feathers and moss. A bit like she’s moving into his bachelor pad and then prettying it up with cushions and throws. Apparently they lay between 4-5 eggs that take two weeks to hatch. Despite appearing to be a common sight, their numbers are in decline and starlings are also on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern, so we don’t really mind that they have moved into our swift box.

Birds that are definitely not on any red lists are pigeons, with whom I seem to be doing constant battle. The good weather has meant that the many hours spent on the allotment has resulted in it looking pretty shipshape for the first time since I took it on. The compost bin has been dug over, woodchip laid on the paths, beds are mulched and ready for planting, and frames are up ready for runner beans and other climbing plants.

Looking shipshape… the sticks are my homemade pigeon deterrent which have kept them off the broad beans so far!

I spent a happy morning pottering last weekend doing gentle weeding, moving things about and opening up my small polytunnel to get fresh air to my young cabbage plants. I then popped home for lunch, only to return and find the pigeons had been lunching too and my little cabbages were reduced to stumps. It was though they had been hanging around waiting for me to leave. Darn birds! (Which wasn’t quite what I called them at the time.) Fortunately I think the plants will just about recover and I have now covered them with netting but there is always a certain amount lost to wildlife. Last year my entire sweetcorn crop was demolished by muntjac deer. These small Chinese deer were first introduced to nearby Woburn Park in Bedfordshire at the beginning of last century and they rapidly spread to the surrounding countryside where they are now quite common. I regularly see them when I’m out walking, hanging around the backs of gardens and on the edges of fields and woodland. They are pretty little things but notorious browsers and will munch their way through new growth and shoots destroying everything. And if it’s not deer or pigeons, it will be rabbits and rodents that we are battling with on the allotment. Fortunately there is still usually plenty to harvest and eat each year and although it’s wonderful to have home grown organic food, I do it as much for the exercise and the benefit of being outside. It’s much cheaper than a gym membership or therapy!

Cambridge Botanic Gardens

We have mostly kept up with our weekly days out and on Thursday we returned to Cambridge for a day at the Botanic Gardens. Not somewhere new to us but a gorgeous place to visit on a warm sunny day. The gardens which are home to a collection of 8,000 plant species from around the world, are not only a beautiful place to visit but are also a centre of teaching and research. The Botanic Gardens were originally established in the centre of the city in 1762 as a place to grow medicinal plants for teaching medical students. In 1825, 29 year old John Henslow was appointed Chair of Botany at the university. At the time both botanic teaching and the Gardens were in decline but Henslow persuaded the university that the Gardens needed to move to a bigger site if they were to be of any value to botanic research. This would allow the cultivation of new tree species and provide the space required for the cultivation of plants beyond those used for medicinal purposes. It would be a place for the study of plants in their own right.

A sixteen hectare site one mile south of the city was acquired by the university in 1831 although due to legal wrangles it was a further fifteen years before planting began. The first garden curator was a man called Andrew Murray and his original plan for a winding path around the circumference, bisected by a main walk lined by trees, with a lake and numerous beds is still the layout that visitors can enjoy today. Later editions were the glasshouses, a magnificent fountain and a limestone rock garden as well as the cultivation of the eastern part of the site.

An extraordinary Jade Vine (Strongylodon macrobotrys) in the glasshouse

We enjoyed a long leisurely walk around the gardens, marvelling at so many incredible specimens, we explored the glasshouses and we also had an excellent lunch at the café, although there are plenty of picnic spots around the gardens too. It’s definitely a place to visit if you find yourself with a day in Cambridge. Whilst there, we learned that Cambridge is Britain’s driest region with an average annual rainfall almost half that of the rest of the UK, so it’s little wonder I’m already watering on the allotment. There’s also a lovely little shop of course and I came home with a new specimen for my garden, a dark purple Cranesbill Geranium that I hope will spread in the bare patches under our trees.

And the prawns? A few months ago the Royston Art Society hosted a demonstration by artist Michelle Parsons who is best known for her lively paintings of fish and shellfish. She gave us an entertaining demo and I liked her no nonsense, anyone can have a go approach so I booked myself in for a half day workshop with her. This week I took myself off to the heart of the Suffolk countryside and joined eight others in Michelle’s studio where we spent a morning drawing and painting fish. If you had asked me would I be interested in painting fish my answer would have probably been ‘not really’. But it was a brilliant and productive morning, the time just flew by and I ended up with a pen and ink sketch of a crab, plus a couple of oil paintings, one of a pair of rainbow trout and my favourite… this little prawn! (You can see the other paintings on my Instagram account)

Prawn, 15 cm x 10 cm, Oil on board

And if being outside in nature or creating art wasn’t enough to engender feel good vibes, this week the King gave us reason for a miniscule glimmer of hope in the political arena.

I was one of those people who felt that the King’s visit to the US should not have taken place fearing it to be just one big ego trip for Trump, but I was wrong. I’m not a particular fan of the Royals, indifferent more than anything else, but this week the King played a blinder and showed just how important it was that he was there. With a gentle power he defended Nato, stood up for Ukraine and reminded the US of the importance of those allies that Trump is so quick to insult and discard. Without naming any names he spoke about duty, friendship and accountability with a quiet dignity so much more powerful than all the loud aggressive voices. Although he spoke to the entire congress and was heard by the world there is little doubt who his words were aimed at. Sadly that person is so wound up in his own ego and ignorance it most likely didn’t register with him. Nevertheless, hats off to King Charles and his excellent speech writers and we can only hope that some of those who heard him might be urged to examine their consciences and act on it

HRH, 18 cm x 22 cm, Pen and ink on paper, Bravo King Charles!

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Elsa Schiaparelli was a radical fashion designer, curator and collector who apparently was also fond of a London Pub. She first came to my attention years ago when I was studying a fashion module for my Contemporary Stitched Textiles degree and I was immediately drawn to her quirky, irreverent yet witty designs that crossed the boundaries between fashion and art. She once said, “Nobody has been able to say Schiaparelli* but everyone knows what it means” So when I saw that the V & A in South Kensington were holding a major exhibition featuring her work I was keen to go. Having recently renewed my membership to the V & A there was no need to book tickets so last week when I found myself with a free morning in London, that is where I headed.

Schiaparelli was born in Rome in 1890 and from a young age displayed a level of eccentricity that was to become her hallmark.

“Once or twice I had thought that instead of painting or sculpture, both of which I did fairly well, I could invent dresses and costumes” Elsa Schiaparelli in her autobiography Shocking Life.

She first visited Paris aged just 23 but she also spent time in London where she met her husband, William de Wendt. Her route into the world of dress design came about following her divorce in 1920 when she found herself to be a penniless single mother. She returned to Paris where she met the designer Paul Poiret and it was then she began designing. Her first success was the butterfly bow sweater.

Admiring the elegant knitwear of an American friend, Elsa discovered it had been hand knitted by an Armenian refugee who happened to live in just around the corner. Schiaparelli paid her a visit, the two become friends and then business associates, with the result being her Armenian friend translated one of Elsa’s designs into a simple dark sweater with a graphic trompe l’oeil butterfly bow design around the neckline, a design as contemporary today as it was back then. I quite like the idea of making myself one. Schiaparelli wore the sweater to a society lunch where it was a huge success leading to numerous orders. Although Chanel had already introduced knitwear to the fashionistas of the 1920s with knitted coats and jackets, this was something revolutionary and the beginning of what became ‘sportswear.’

She took her inspiration from a whole range of unconventional themes and her Circus collection inspired by Barnham is a wonderful showcase of such creativity, featuring shocking pink silk jackets embroidered with silver elephants and cast metal buttons in the form of tumbling acrobats cavorting down the front of a jacket amongst prancing blue horses. Buttons played an essential part in Schiaparelli’s art and took the form of anything from animals to bugs, padlocks to feathers made in materials such as wood, plastic and metal. There is a whole display case at the exhibition dedicated entirely to buttons including some designed by the artist Giacometti. Another case features brooches of every description, my favourite perhaps those ruby encrusted lips with rows of pearl teeth.

Elsa Schiaparelli had a long association with artists, especially the surrealists and collaborated with many famous name such as Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dali, Man Ray and Picasso. She famously sought inspiration from Dali’s Lobster telephone when she designed her lobster dress. The dress is a simple off white, A-line silk organza evening dress with a crimson sash but it features a lobster, originally painted by Dali, printed down the length of the skirt between the legs of the wearer with its tail fanning out to the groin, in keeping with Dali’s vision of lobsters being symbolic of sexuality.

When Wallis Simpson chose to wear the dress shortly before her marriage to Edward VIII, famously photographed by Cecil Beaton and featured in Vogue magazine, it was reported that her wearing of the dress was charged with ‘erotic flippancy’ giving the British public even more reason to hate her. I treated myself to a pair of ‘Lobster’ earrings at the end of the show, completely innocent of their apparent symbolism. My favourite Schiaparelli artist collaboration might be the elegant evening coat based on a drawing by Jean Cocteau, a black silk coat featuring two embroidered faces in profile on the back, almost kissing but between them is an urn overflowing with a riot of appliqued pink roses.

Wallis Simpson wasn’t the only famous woman to endorse Schiaparelli designs, and her gowns were worn by some of the most stylish women of her time such as Peggy Guggenheim, Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and the aviator Amy Johnson. Walking around the exhibition it wasn’t difficult to see why her designs were so popular as the garments are simple, stylish, flattering yet overflowing with playful details and humorous touches, both glamorous and elegant yet very wearable. They are garments that are dictated by the shape of bodies, rather that bodies having to be contorted to fit the garments. And of course there was all the additional attention to detail, not only in the use of buttons but there were hats, gloves and the perfume and so much more.

Schiaparelli retired and closed her fashion house in 1954 but lived for almost another twenty years during which she dedicated herself to writing her autobiography, Shocking Life. She died peacefully in her sleep aged 83.

Today Maison Schiaparelli is back in business and since 2019 it’s creative director Daniel Roseberry has continue to create spectacular sculptural garments that challenge our perception of fashion. Inspired by a button, or an accessory or maybe just a colour he creates exaggerated silhouettes in homage to Elsa Schiaparelli. There is no doubt they are stunning creations but for me they lack the wit and spontaneity of the originals. And whereas the original Schiaparellis are all very wearable these belong mostly on the catwalk. I certainly can’t imagine sitting down to dinner in any of them, or sitting down anywhere for that matter never mind having a pee!

A Daniel Roseberry creation

But despite all the wonderful things to see I didn’t really enjoy the exhibition. Maybe it is more correct to say I didn’t enjoy the experience of the exhibition. It was very dark, which I understand is probably necessary for the preservation of some of these historical garments, it was also very crowded, again probably unavoidable in a major London museum but it did make it quite difficult to see some things. But worst of all there was also the most interminable inane music playing on a loop that made me want to scream and get outside within about five minutes of entering the exhibition. The cynic in me thinks it was designed to keep people moving through quickly. I might have to go back another time wearing noise cancelling headphones.

And those London pubs? Schiaparelli claimed to love them saying they were more inspiring ‘than the splendour of a ball’. Her favourite was a pub in Wapping where she would sit and watch tugs chugging up and down the Thames, apparently enjoying the company of the English working classes.

*Schiap is pronounced Scap

Other highlights that brightened this week - we went with friends to walk around a bluebell wood. No words really, although it is hard to imagine anything more beautiful on a sunny morning. Although the Mama duck leading her babies along the road to the nearby chalk stream was also pretty special.

And I cooked a fabulous quick and easy spring pasta dish for supper one evening that was absolutely delicious and took no more that 15 minutes from start to finish, with an added bonus that the herbs came from the garden where they are growing in abundance. It’s one I will definitely be repeating while asparagus is in season and I loved it so much I felt the need to share. I used orecchiette because it was what I had but I imagine most other small pasta shapes would work too. The recipe came from Nigel Slater and was published in the Observer last Sunday and I have made no tweaks of my own other than reducing the cooking time of the asparagus. Sorry Nigel but six minutes was way too long! This is my version:

Thank you as always for joining me here on Sunday morning. It’s always a pleasure to have your company and if you have enjoyed it too, please do click the heart to let me know. It helps others find their way here too. And of course, feel free to comment, share or subscribe if you don’t already do so.

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A day out is an excuse to dress up, by which I mean discard the usual everyday gardening/dog walking clothes in favour of something that looks more considered. Sitting on the train I look down at my outfit, a long dark blue denim dress combined with a boxy green canvas jacket and I am immediately reminded of my paternal grandmother and a phrase I remember her saying, “Blue and green must never be seen.” Utter nonsense of course, but it has stuck with me, which is strange as I don’t remember an awful lot else about her. She was a small woman, slightly stout by the time I remember her and always bent over to one side. We used to call her Nanny Ironsides because she wore a rigid surgical corset to support her back. I’m not sure what the problem was but in her words her spine was crumbling. My memory is that she was always very considered in what she wore, dressed in brightly coloured dresses, a particular royal blue dress sticks in my head although never worn with green of course, and always with a brooch pinned to the shoulder or a string of pearls around her neck. As children we would delight on knocking on her rigid torso as we giggled ‘Nanny Ironsides. ‘

‘Nanny Ironsides’

Today I’m happy with my outfit and feel almost stylish in my blue and green ensemble. Well, tidy at least. I’m wearing statement earrings and a sweep of red lipstick, which no doubt I will have completely licked off by the time I arrive in London. I never could wear lipstick.

I was meant to be meeting a friend for lunch near London Bridge but unfortunately she’s unwell and we’ve had to reschedule. However, as I had also bought a ticket for a curator’s talk at The Fashion and Textile museum for later in the day, I decided to come in early and make a day of it. There are several exhibitions I would have liked to have seen but sensibly I knew that cramming too much into one day would be exhausting and overwhelming so I decided to narrow it down to just one additional exhibition plus lunch. I opted to go to the V & A in South Kensington where there is a new exhibition open Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art. That would also mean a leisurely lunch in the member’s room and plenty of time to mooch around, sit and relax and maybe even indulge in a little sketching. As it happens just doing that was overwhelming enough and if I had known what was in store at The Fashion and Textile Museum I might have given it a miss altogether. I have concluded that one exhibition per trip to London is quite enough to process, especially when they are as wonderful as Paint! Pattern! Print! In that spirit I have also decided that one exhibition is enough to write about in one session too so I will come back to the V & A another week.

Mid-afternoon I headed across London to Bermondsey and strolled around Borough Market and Southwark cathedral before stopping for a much needed cuppa and a flapjack. I was feeling nostalgic. The last time I was here I was about to head off on a long walk to Canterbury…

I arrived at the museum a couple of hours before the scheduled talk so that I could take my time wandering around the exhibition Paint! Pattern! Print! The Textiles of Susan Collier and Sarah Campbell and I am so pleased that I did. Nothing prepared me for the absolute riot of exuberant colour and pattern. It was like Kaffe Fassett on speed! I must have wandered around three or four times and still I have only taken in a fraction of what was on display. It is only a small museum but it was packed with hundreds of exhibits all beautifully curated. Even the walls were specially painted in gorgeous colours to complement the displays. I didn’t want my head to be filled with the Schiaparelli gowns I had seen earlier, I just wanted to take in every little detail of what I could see here.

Susan and Sarah were sisters who worked together for over fifty years creating beautiful painterly designs for textiles, homeware and fashion, working with brands such as Liberty, Heals and Jaegar. They were born into an unconventional family with a childhood filled with art and design, colour and pattern, Susan born in 1938 and Sarah in 1946, their brother Joe in the middle. Their father a pharmacologist and their mother an actress, had met at Cambridge and they encouraged creativity in their children by developing their skills of observation through long walks in nature and allowing them to select colours for their bedroom furnishings. Susan famously picked red and yellow for her table and chair. They were always drawing and they grew up accepting that it was normal for women to have careers, although neither had any intention of pursuing a career in textile design after school. Initially Susan studied catering and hotel management, but that was short lived. It was only when working for Ponting’s department store in Kensington she realised there weren’t any fabrics she liked and decided she would have to create her own textiles. It was her lasting belief that beautiful textiles should be available to everyone. She went on to design fabrics for Liberty and as her workload increased she asked Sarah who was still at school to help her paint the designs, which proved to be the beginning of their creative partnership.

Frustrated by the fact that Liberty and other textile producers would only print their designs anonymously and wanting recognition, the sisters ultimately formed Collier Campbell, designing and selling their own cloth. They wanted to have more control over their work and would only licence their designs, retaining the copyright and the original artwork. It was this decision that resulted in such an extensive archive of designs, paintings, sketchbooks and samples that form the basis of the exhibition. It also allowed them to oversee the entire process from the original painting to developing their own colours and choosing the quality of the cloth. In the 1980s despite having successfully broken into the American market as well as being busy at home in the UK, Susan and Sarah opened their own shop, extending the fabric and homeware range to include shawls and other clothing. It proved to be an instant success.

It wasn’t always easy and as fashions changed and computer aided design emerged they found it harder to make a living but still they stuck to their values of producing hand painted designs, believing that the hand painted mark was what was key to their work, giving their designs a loose painterly style. Sadly Susan died in 2011 bringing an untimely end to the sisterly partnership but Sarah has continued with her own hand painted work with Gouache on paper being her favourite medium. She says she prefers “the conversation between the eye, the paper and the hand” rather than using a computer. In recent years she has also started painting and printing directly on to fabric producing unique one off items that sing with pattern and colour.

I knew my ticket was for a curators talk about the exhibition but what I hadn’t realised was that it was in the form of a conversation with Sarah Campbell herself. She was delightful and charmed the audience for the entire hour with her infectious enthusiasm. Her gorgeous hand painted coat covered in luscious florals made my blue and green outfit feel positively drab and made me want to go home and throw on bright colours. You have to love a woman, who in her eightieth year, responding to a question about whether she has any plans to republish The Collier Campbell Archive: 50 Years of Passion in Pattern by Emma Shackleton and Sarah Campbell (currently available on eBay for around £300), replies ‘Not at the moment, but who knows maybe when I’m an old woman.”

It was one of the most inspirational and joyous exhibitions I have seen in a long time, and goodness knows we could all do with more joy in the world right now. It also made me want to return home and get out my paints and sketchbooks immediately. It has been a long time since I have felt this inspired and I definitely plan to return before this exhibition closes in September.

Also on at The Fashion and Textile museum is a small exhibition, just one room, dedicated to two private collections of pin-stuck cushions dating from around the time of the First World War. The Material Heart: The Front Line to the Home Front is a display of pin cushions that were often known as ‘sweetheart cushions’ despite the fact they were usually made by soldiers for their mothers not sweethearts, often as Christmas gifts, either during leisure time or while convalescing. They were available as kits, usually shaped like hearts and decorated with pins, military insignia, meaningful tiny objects, photographs and embroidery. Some earlier cushions were made from red uniform cloth and came in different shapes. The collections were amassed mostly from online purchases and some came in original boxes with accompanying letters, all of which are on display. I didn’t spend long looking at them, as I was lured away by the glorious colour in the room next door but they are definitely worth a visit too.

Thank you as always for reading and if you have found it interesting or entertaining please do click the heart to let me know. Comments and new subscribers are always welcome too.

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is a quote usually attributed to the 19^th century French poet, essayist, translator and critic Charles Baudelaire. Which is ironic because he was hardly a walking advertisement for a happy life.

He was born in 1821 and when he was only nine years old, his father who was 34 years older than his mother, died. Baudelaire seems to have formed an unnatural attachment to his mother and was traumatised when she remarried the following year. As he grew up he frequently visited prostitutes contracting both gonorrhoea and syphilis, and he constantly ran up huge debts, squandering any money he earned from his writing. He took a mistress, attempted suicide, smoked opium and drank excessively, not necessarily in that order. He struggled constantly with poor health and pressing debts and eventually in 1866 he suffered a massive stroke which left him paralysed until his death the following year aged just 46. Despite being one of the major innovators in French literature he could hardly be thought of as happy.

But he wasn’t wrong, because if we can find joy and beauty in the simple small moments in life, although often transient or fleeting, they can be cumulative in their effect on our overall feeling of happiness and well-being. We are far more likely to find contentment in these small moments than in life’s grand gestures, wonderful though they may be. And let’s face it with the horrors that are happening around the world right now we all need as many joyful small moments as possible.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not about to suggest the way to bliss is to light a scented candle and sip a healthy herbal tea, made in our favourite handcrafted mug while we stand on one leg watching the butterflies, as some influencers might suggest, delightful though that may sound (or not.) But it’s more about noticing those small micro pleasures that life has to offer. The phrase is not mine but was coined by in his excellent weekly offering last Sunday, which immediately brought to mind the Baudelaire quote.

“Micro pleasures that a few years ago I might’ve missed, too happily lost to the task to want to haul myself out of writing’s deep well, but these are the moments that allow you to write better, live better and hopefully take a few steps towards being… content.” Mark Diacono

It probably has something to do with the glorious weather we have had for the past few days which means many more hours than usual spent outside, but this week has been punctuated by a host of micro pleasures, spending time outdoors being one of them.

Jerusalem artichokes making an appearance

While I’m mentioning Mark, some of you may recall me planting Jerusalem Artichokes early this year, purchased from his plant nursery . They had arrived Christmas week with the instructions to plant immediately. Well that was never going to happen, so I put them in a paper bag and popped them in the fridge hoping that would delay any deterioration. To be honest they didn’t look great when a couple of weeks later I eventually got around to putting them in the ground and I didn’t hold out much hope for them. But this week they started to push up little green shoots that made me disproportionately happy. All sorts of other seeds have started to germinate this week too and I keep having to peep into the cold frame as the new shoots push up out of the soil. “Ooh hello runner beans!” I’m easily pleased which I think makes a good companion to small pleasures.

And runner beans!

Also in his latest newsletter Mark mentioned ginger rosemary, a culinary rosemary with an underlying flavour of ginger. Who knew? Not me obviously but I have now placed my order and I can’t wait for it to arrive. Of course, things arriving in the post are very much in the small delights camp too. I’m especially keen to try this magic rosemary as an infusion syrup to make a Tom Collins cocktail. I’ll let you know how that one goes.

Look at the artwork on that cover… abundant indeed!

I risk sounding like a bit of a fan (I admit I am) but one of my Christmas presents this year was Mark’s book Abundance and during the sunny afternoons we have been experiencing this week, when I’m too tired to do any more digging I have sat in the sunshine and dipped in. It’s a combination of great writing, memoir and fabulous food, that originally was written as weekly instalments on Substack. It’s tempting to read it all in one go but I’m eking it out throughout the year, reading it seasonally week by week, this week accompanied by a curious and very vocal robin whose red breast resembles the rich terracotta of my recently planted pots. The garden is looking very shambolic but at this time of year most of my effort goes into the allotment. I’m trying to prepare a final bed ready for a crop of Japanese squash. It’s a delight to be outside, accompanied by the sounds of birds and insects. Although listening to the bees enjoying the dead nettles that are covered in little purple flowers laden with nectar I found myself reluctant to dig it up. Maybe I’ll let them enjoy it for a few days more.

Bolstered by heavy doses of steroids the dog seems to have regained some of his energy as his symptoms have eased. We know it will be short lived but for now he is living his best life which mostly seems to involve a lot of sausage. There are also daily walks, although shorter than usual so we’re not getting out across the fields and through the woods. I miss it, but on one morning this week I still heard eight different birds just around the village - a robin, blackbird, dunnock, thrush, wood pigeon, jackdaw, blue tit and corn bunting if my Merlin app is to be believed. One morning I was listening to a podcast rather than the birds, which was focussed on staying strong and healthy as we age. As I am rapidly approaching my 70^th year I was interested to hear what they had to say. Someone (not medically trained I might add) was extolling the virtues of walking backwards as a way to strengthen different muscles as well as improving our balance and stability. Apparently when we walk without using our eyes we need to have a more enhanced sense of the space we are moving through which is something called proprioception. Our proprioceptors are neurons embedded in our joints, muscles and limbs and they work with our senses to communicate with our brain so that when we walk they are constantly allowing us to negotiate different types of terrain and obstacles without falling over. But because walking backwards demands complex and unfamiliar movement it enhances these proprioceptive abilities.

I think most of us would feel pretty silly being seen walking backwards but I tend to walk the dog early in the morning when there’s no one else around so I thought I would give it a try, after all what’s the worst that could happen. Well, yes I know I could fall over (I have form) but fear not, that didn’t happen because the dog was having none of it. He slowed his pace as he eyed me suspiciously and then sat down and refused to budge until I turned around and walked normally. So much for that, but he did make me laugh. He’s seen me fall over before so maybe he was just protecting me, although I doubt it. He was more likely just confused. It doesn’t take much.

Not getting out to the fields has meant I have missed one of my favourite small pleasures and that is hearing my first skylark of the season but on Friday I ventured out to local heathland where the larks were in fine voice. I was joining a small group on Therfield Heath to spend a couple of hours drawing and painting en plein air. The reason for this particular destination was the appearance of Pasque flowers.

The Pasque flower, or Pulsatilla Vulgaris is incredibly rare in the UK and apparently can be found in only five sites around the country, one of them being our local heathland where it grows on just one side of a chalk escarpment. It is estimated there are up to 60,000 of these little purple and yellow flowers on this one site, making it one of the largest colonies of this plant anywhere. It flowers from late March through April, coinciding with Easter hence the name Pasque flower, although it is also known as Dane’s blood as it is said to spring from the blood of dead Vikings, a legend that has probably originated from the fact that it tends to grow in the undisturbed soil of ancient barrows. Sketches were made that are not really worth sharing, but I was happy just to have seen such a beautiful display of flowers.

The gardens at Longstowe Hall

This week, we also managed to visit a beautiful Open Garden where we saw newly hatched lambs, we ate an excellent lunch out at Cafe Cou Cou in Saffron Walden before seeing an exhibition at the Fry Gallery, maybe more on that another time, and last night we attended a brilliant demonstration showing us how he approaches drawing a landscape in pastels by Suffolk based artist Rod Bastable. Today it is a bit wet and windy so I’m inside but there’s mending to do and knitting to finish and if the rain stops I might pot on my tomato plants. Sometimes all we need to do is take the time to stop and notice the small pleasures.

Suffolk landscape in pastels by Rod Bastable

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My final collage… now to tidy up!

I was thinking about the endless conundrum of tidying up and fresh starts after reading a recent newsletter from my podcast chum . She mentioned an old podcast episode that we had recorded where we answered a question from a listener who had posed the conundrum of what would we do if everything in our creative space - tools, materials, old work etc disappeared. Would it be a disaster to lose everything or could it feel like a fresh start, a chance for reinvention, and if so what would be the first thing we would replace to start over with? I listened to the show again while I was out planting broad beans on the allotment because I couldn’t remember my answer at the time. As I guessed it was along the lines that it would at least be a solution to my clutter problem. Which I am aware is very glib but it tended to be how we played off each other. A bit of a double act, with Izzy carefully considering all the options and me playing devil’s advocate by saying the first thing that came into my head.

And it didn’t feel too far from the truth to say that I wouldn’t bother replacing very much at all. Some basic sewing tools and materials and basic art supplies would suffice. And I guess this was also on my mind recently because I have had to consider what would be my single luxury item I would choose to have with me if I was stranded on a desert island. Read on to the end to find out!

One of my favourite radio programmes is Desert Island Discs. I can’t imagine there are many people in the UK who are not familiar with the format, but for overseas readers and the uninitiated, the premise of the show is that guests who range from actors, politicians, writers, musicians, scientists and more, get to imagine themselves as being cast away on a desert island. They have to choose eight audio tracks, usually a piece of music but sometimes the spoken word, that they would like to take with them. Before each track gets played the castaway explains why they chose that particular piece which allows them to narrate their life story from childhood to where they are at present. No matter who the guest, or what their music choices, it never fails to move me. The show wraps up with the guests being asked if they could only save one disc which would it be. They are also allowed to choose a book to take with them (they are given the complete works of Shakespeare and the bible, or a similar religious text) and a luxury item, something of no practical use for life on or escape from the island.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who likes to play along, imagining which pieces of music I would choose, trying to pick just one book, and never being able to decide on a luxury item but now I’m having to do it for real. Not for the actual radio four programme I might add but for our village social club, which I help run. A social gathering once a month with quizzes, games, crafts and music all washed down with mugs of tea and homemade cake. Next month we will be having a ‘Desert Island Disc’ theme, where members will choose their favourite pieces of music, as well as divulging their book of choice and luxury item. Volunteers were a bit thin on the ground so a couple of us on the committee are also taking part. I have played along in my head so many times I thought it would be easy but not so. I thought you might like to know what I ended up with and why, although of course it could easily change between now and next month.

There would have to be a David Bowie track and almost any one of them would be great ranging from when I first discovered his music up until the Thin White Duke days when I was lucky enough to see him in concert. He was the soundtrack to my teens. If I was forced to pick just one it would probably be The Jean Genie because even now at my advanced age it makes me want to dance. But I think I would like to have Life on Mars too

By the time I got to University I discovered Genesis, courtesy of my boyfriend at the time. We were pretty much inseparable for the three years we were at Birmingham and during that time I drew him a replica of the album artwork from A Trick of the Tail, painstakingly reproduced about three times the original size in sepia ink on cream card that formed a frieze around his bedroom wall. The day I finished my finals he finished with me. I belonged in a box marked university, not to be allowed to accompany him into the wider world. But despite that I still liked A Trick of the Tail… him, not so much.

When I first started teaching in North London, I got to know a great group of friends. Lots of gatherings, all involving plenty of laughter, good food and way too much alcohol. Gradually as people got married, had families, changed schools etc we all moved on although I’m still friends with a couple of them. Colin introduced me to the film ‘Brief Encounter’ and somehow the soundtrack reminds me of that time in my life. Piano Concerto no 2 by Rachmaninoff

There are so many songs that remind me of my Dad, who I still miss very much. He was a great jazz fan and there are plenty of great jazz tracks I could have chosen but I opted for something a bit more personal to me. After he died I took part in a starlight walk to raise money for the local hospice in his memory. I would go on long training walks accompanied by the soundtrack of Frankie Valli’s greatest hits, all of which have a great beat for fast walking. Of all the tracks, Walk Like a Man always made me think of my Dad.

I met Stewart back in 2002 when I was directing an amateur dramatics show with his children. I had known them for a few years through school but had never met him before, however we hit it off at the after show party, he took my number and a couple of days later we met for lunch and agreed to meet again for dinner later that week. In the intervening days he sent me a text message along the lines of ‘Enjoyed our lunch and can’t wait to see your beautiful blue eyes again.’ My reply was simply ‘Blue Eyes???’ absolutely nothing else, because I am inherently evil. When I opened the door to him on the Friday evening he peered at my face and exclaimed ‘… they ARE blue.’ In my defence, at least he knew what he was letting himself in for right up front. It didn’t put him off and two years later we were married. My next choice is ‘our song’ Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, which would also be the one I would rescue from the waves if I could have only one.

Although for our first dance at our wedding we chose Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton. I could have picked several from Eric Clapton, most of them from his album ‘Unplugged’ but I’ll stick with our first dance song.

My final track would be You Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry because the memory of Stewart and Joe, my third son, doing the twist around the kitchen in the manner of John Travolta and Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction always makes me smile. I’m not sure either of them remember (there was alcohol involved) but it is an image that will stay with me.

My book of choice would be Still Life by Sarah Winman. It moves between London, which will always be dear to my heart and Florence, perhaps one of my favourite cities in the world. And includes an unlikely cast of characters who end up being friends. By the end of the book, which is filled with moments of both sadness and joy, you end up wishing you could be part of this wonderful fictional friendship group. I couldn’t imagine a better group of people to be cast away with.

Finally my luxury Item would be an unlimited supply of pencils and paper, because with these not only could I still draw but also write which has become an important part of my week. Who knows I might even finish off that novel that has remained stuck after chapter two. My excuse is that I haven’t had the time recently to think about it, but I’d have all the time in the world on my desert island. So maybe all I would need to replace in my studio if I lost everything would be a stack of paper and a box of pencils. It would be a good place to start if having to begin again.

I would love to know what your choices would be, so please leave a comment and let me know.

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I had intended to write some more about Easter and specifically chocolate but I have rambled on a bit today, so instead I’ll leave you with my recipe for a chocolate thing I made on Wednesday for this weekend, except there’s none left because we ate it all. A sort of Rocky Road but with mini eggs instead of marshmallow. You’re welcome… and enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend.

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