View From The Sofa

There is never a moment of privacy in this place. And I mean, never.

Picnicking It

I woke up to a vomiting dog and so the first three hours of my Saturday were frittered washing floors, bedding, dealing with long, sad faces and, eventually, preparing the picnic I had been planning. William eventually looked up for it and off we went into autumn and it was yet another fabulous day at Tatton Park. Sorry if this is boring people but now that the light is slicing low and that greens are mutating into golds... well, I’d be crazy to miss it.

One For The Girls

Today was the best day ever. I drove to Tatton Park with Victoria after we dropped Rick off at work and the weather was fabulous and the sky was super-blue and the water was crystal-clear and the leaves were turning, it was cold, peaceful, beautiful, argh, I am running out of sugary-sweet things to say. Magnificent I am telling you. We had a five-mile walk, enjoyed the sights, the deer and having the whole park pretty much to ourselves. I had never seen it so quiet but then we always love to go at the weekend, so it’s obvious that there was nobody around today. We then returned to William with a chewing cigar and he forgave us for the private girlie time. Anyway I later took him for a spin to the garden centre to meet another friend so he really doesn’t have anything to complain about if you ask me. What dog wouldn’t love to look at plants and paving stones and flowers and gravel I am asking? Isn’t that what dogs do? Shop at garden centres?

Gratitude

Well I had a great day. I spent it with a friend and her daughter, she gave me an amazing birthday present (a lace scarf knitted by herself, no less), then we had tiramisu which she bought at Marks, we toasted my PhD, my precarious future and tra la la, it was evening. As I was driving home, home to further celebrations of ‘new tidings’, see below, a swoosh of gratitude swept over me.

Only two days ago I felt a little displaced. This is the first September since... since... since ever, that I do not have school and/or work and/or uni to go back to. The first time since I was six years old I am telling you, and for someone so keen on the academic year-rhythms as I am, the realisation that for the first time in my life I do not have to work at anything came as a shock. A shock of identity-searching proportions, a shock of subjectivising proportions. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, I can fly in whatever direction I want to and yet I feel small and almost unable to move, fearful to take the leap into the unknown.

So as all of this was going on, there comes Britt with the scarf (and some tea and a soap and a card and the cake). By the time I arrived home and twirled in my room in the scarf and threw shapes and tried different brooches on it I felt completely and utterly elated. I need to stop worrying, stop trying to plan the future. I am just so grateful for everything and should enjoy it right now. And so I am, with a bomb of calories. Yay!

Pukka Love

While at the uni, only three events made us drop everything we were doing in favour of some TV time:

1) The wedding of Sophie and Edward (and God knows why);
2) George Michael talking about the incident in LA to Parky (and the reason is self-evident);
3) Anything with Jamie Oliver in.



It is thus that I vaguely recall the beginnings of my fondness for Pukka Oliver, as we loooooved to call him at the time (and as, if truth be told, I still call him). The then shaggy hair and crash boom bang attitude around the kitchen had us, and another few millions, captivated. It was only years later that it was brought to my attention that Jamie is a polarising figure, as some people love everything he does and others detest his perennially over-salivating plump mouth and southern accent. I must admit that I had not noticed the over-salivating plump part until it was pointed out to me by one of Jamie’s detractors but of course in my eyes it only denotes juiciness, not greasiness. There you go, the glass is half-full here.

Regardless, Jamie has managed to irk many people, namely the lowest substrata of the underclass, thanks to his school dinners crusade first and then thanks to that debacle about Rotherham later (which I think is a royal dump, but then if I were to choose between Rotherham and Stockport... well... I’d be hard-pressed to pick the shitter of the two, I am telling you). Anyway, no matter. Sometimes I am perplexed by Jamie’s attempts at justifying the whole killing thing. It seems to me like he does not want to offend militant vegetarians and so pussyfoots around the slaughtering. And you know Jamie, you cannot pussyfoot around the slaughtering and you cannot convince me that Halal slaughtering is really not that distressing, as is implied in your latest Jamie’s America. I understand that you want everyone to like you but that’s just impossible love.

Well, I am a vegetarian and I love Jamie. Love, love, love him. I love his excellent work across the board, his commitment to younger people, his attempt at making the nation understand that rubbish is only fit for the wastebasket and not our stomachs, and his incredible passion for learning and good food. Jamie is an artist and a national treasure and so tonight I spent some amazing time in bed, enjoying his latest literary/culinary effort. But do you know something? Reading such books in bed is really bad for you. I suppose that’s what midnight snacks were invented for.

I'll Snap His Neck When He Is Not Looking

This pretty much sums up their relationship...

Sunday Fab

Today I managed to sneak out of the house without the guys sussing I was going to a park. I had to act casual and, crucially, had to wear something other than my riding pants and boots, in order for them not to suspect I was up to no good. But you know how it goes, you cannot take dogs to a museum and so, sometimes, they have to forfeit the park. It won't happen again though guys I promise.



The mansion at Lyme Park started out as a Medieval palace, although you wouldn't know it by looking at it now, as it underwent several face-lifts over the centuries. The gated gardens are very beautiful and have something for everyone, whether you like damp paths by a stream, fending off swishy ferns, a tidy rose garden, a less formal flower garden, a very serious thou-shalt-not-come-near Dutch garden or a magnificent orangerie with exotic plants, Victorian tiles and sprouting fountain.



Sadly, as is often the case, the interiors are off-limits to a camera lens but I find that this helps the visit in some ways. Have you ever noticed how some people wielding cameras zoom from room to room, safe in the knowledge that they got it all captured anyway? If I cannot take pics I take much longer, as I want to impress my own retina with what I see. And there was plenty of beautiful detail at Lyme, from ancient tapestries to silk lampshades, from numerous clocks to countless paintings, secret passages, window seats, wood panelling, a piano, a harpsichord and plentiful staircases to the upper floors which afford charming views over the gardens, the park, the Lantern and the Cage. A fab, fab, fab way to spend a Sunday at the end of summer. Now back to walkies...

Tudor Tales

The weather turned quickly this week. Not that we had a summer of any description, bar those two weeks at the end of June, but today it was nippy and the sky promised Big Doom. See?



Except it did not rain. It stayed cold all day and what better way to fight the cold then to tour an ancient Tudor home that hasn't been heated for centuries? Yes, today I finally visited Little Moreton Hall, a Tudor hall that had been on my list of to-go places for a very long time. As the path curves and the hall comes into view, it looks wonky and more than a little unsafe. I thought it was all down to an optical illusion but, no, it ain't no illusion my friends, the hall really isn't level and the National Trust has spent many millions of pounds in its upkeep and restoration and to ensure that we can continue to walk around it without it caving in and taking us with it.



As I stepped into the courtyard I felt like I had entered a movie set. The enclosed space, beautiful bay windows and fetchy black-and-white walls are so picture-perfect that they could be used in a period movie without a touch-up to speak of. The hall was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century but it didn't immediately look as it does today, for extensions and a viewing gallery were added over the years. The latter was built in a precarious way, to the point whereby major restoration work was undertaken at various times to ensure that it wouldn't slide off the top of the building and onto the entrance below, nor crash through onto the forecourt.




I took a guided tour and listened to plentiful horrid tales of poor hygiene and of servants sleeping on hay infested with moths, fleas and all other disgusting little crawling things. In some respects, the Morton family didn't fare much better, for their clothes too were infested with insects and were kept in the garderobes (read: their toilets) because the smell of ammonia (read: wee) acted as a deterrent.



Now do you see why I am adamant that those people who speak of the 'gentle pace of life of yesteryear' haven't got a clue? When I visited Dunham Massey early this week, I read that gardeners would be up at the crack of dawn, come rain or shine, regardless of the season, in order to pick vegetables and fruit, start preparing them for the family and even selling them at the local market. I know that it is très chic to speak of the past as a better, gentle time but, really, only those who haven't got a clue about it can say its pace was 'gentle'. Go to Little Morton Hall and take a look at their 'toilets': you will not wonder why their life expectancy was so short but why they had a life expectancy at all.



Still, it is a magical, charming place with an Alice in Wonderland vibe. Do not miss the upstairs fireplace that looks set into the wall sideways. It is in fact straight, it's just the rest of the room that isn't. Ab fab I say!

Blast From The Past

I do not drink, no more than the occasional shot a couple of times a year or the occasional Irish coffee in the middle of January, but today I felt certain I experienced a hang-over. I often do the day after my birthday, as I look forward to it so much, but this year it was worse because the day ended an already long weekend and returning to some sort of normality today, that is Rick at the office, me with a mountain of washing to put in and one of ironing to stare at, felt worse than the worst post-New-York-in-February anti-climax. When I woke up at something past eight, had a look at the phone and realised that it was already Wednesday, I experienced a time-warp as Zoolander does in the movie of the same name. Where has the past week gone?



And so while I tried to resist the mundane and fight the hang-over as much as I could (by virtue of a triple-shot Starbee, a flick through American Vogue and a listen to a jazzy CD), I also, eventually, begrudgingly, found myself in a supermarket, pushing a small trolley while glassy-eyed and bored. Until I came across a wall of these and there and then I experienced an out of body experience. I wasn’t really in a supermarket, standing in a pair of Pradas and wearing a hot pink silk dress.

Oh no, I was in my room at the uni, hunched over my desk in an Adidas tracksuit, manually counting the number of words of my first uni essay written in neat long-hand. We used to live on cup-a-soup at the uni, all of us. They were a staple item in our cupboards, together with spaghetti hoops, loaves of white bread and plastic tubs of plastic Flora. For the first time in many years, today I picked a packet, went home and made myself a uni lunch, a cup-a-soup and a Marmite toastie, even though I cheated on the bread, as I had one of these trendy seeded batches and not one of the lowest-of-the-low white cheapo loaves that even seagulls, but not students for some reasons, turn their beaks at.



And do you know something? It was my Proustian moment as a flood of memories swept over me but despite how much we all like to romanticise our own past, no matter the good times we all had at the uni... I’m much better off making a real soup from scratch, despite that site calling the cup-a-soup a 'British delight'. Errr, yeah.

Birthday

I always feel a little sad as my birthday trickles into the evening. They don’t last half as long as they should birthdays, that’s what I think. I always try to remedy the problem by telling myself: ‘It’s my birthday month’, every time I am about to do something I normally wouldn’t. So for the entire September, I buy more books, more make-up, more candles, more flowers, more food, more magazines, just more, more of everything I come across because it’s my birthday month and I should have one long celebration that continues until the very end. It has worked really well for all these years but hasn’t managed to remove the sting I feel at about 8 pm on the day itself, when I sigh to myself and think that another year has begun and I wonder what it will bring and when and how and if?

Today I spent the day in two places, Dunham Massey and Quarry Bank Mill. I often go to the Massey but always with my dogs, which means I visited the gated gardens and mansion for the first time today. And I had a fantastic time. Every time I visit one such property I lose all track of time as I walk through the magnificent, still rooms and wonder what the people who lived there were like, and what they hoped for themselves and what they did every day as they woke up and saw that gigantic canopy all the way to the ceiling. Weren’t they afraid of spiders nestling in the folds of the fabric? I suppose staff must have kept everything super-clean every day, no spiders for them. I couldn’t take pics inside the house but I urge you to go if you’re local or find yourself around these parts. As you can see below, the weather was pleasant enough, with blue sky and a breeze making it all the more pleasant.





It wasn’t to be at the Mill though. After lunch, which consisted of a birthday cake I made myself (a truffle cake if you must know, which means chocolate, cream, Golden Syrup and nothing else),



we headed to Quarry Bank but it was lashing down already and thank God we were only doing the tour of the Mill anyway. There too, no pics, and I cannot begin to tell you how annoying I found it. It’s not every day that you get to see ancient looms still in operation, I surely would love to have captured the moment. I have noticed, however, that photography is possible, provided it is arranged before your visit. And that’s what I am going to do next time; I will ask to be allowed to take some snaps for some project I am doing and that will also give me an excuse to buy a decent camera. It’s my birthday month after all.

Visiting the mill was beyond fascinating. Cutting my fabrics for my home projects will never be the same again now that I have seen how they are constructed. However, walking through the partly dingy rooms filled me with a certain sadness as well. To think of those people, and lots of small children too, crammed in there, working to an ear-splitting noise every day made me feel uneasy and not that happy after all. But it was a speck on an otherwise great birthday. Oh and did I mention that I received a pair of fabo Prada shoes from my parents and then had pizza in the evening? Well, it doesn’t get better than that people.