Boot Rooms and Footmen

Today I returned home from a hack that required an immediate hot shower. We did plenty of dripping trot in lashings and lashings of rain and wind. My waxed jacket did not disappoint, but even Merv’s tack needed a good clean once I made it back. I am not too enamoured with tack-cleaning, mostly because I tend to do it at the stables and it’s usually wet and miserable there, or because if I do it at home it makes me feel hopelessly inadequate. Faced with a bridle dripping with spit, a muddy girth and encrusted riding boots, my mind raced back to the mansion at Tatton Park which I visited last weekend. Not only does the mansion have a fabulous music room and a library whose walls are lined with books up to the very tall ceiling, but it has a boot room, where staff used to clean the riding and hunting boots of the Egertons of Tatton. Oh to live in that place and to have staff that expertly works through saddles, bridles, reins, bits, boots and spurs.

If I lived at the mansion, I would not even drive a car any more, enamoured as I am with Knutsford. I would be able to get my steed out in the morning (no, actually a member of staff would bring him up to me looking like he has just come out of Horse Guards’ Parade), and I’d be able to trot all the way down to Knutsford itself, where I would then stop for breakfast (at Starbucks I’m afraid) and for a spot of yarn shopping at Fibre and Clay. I’d be able to go to church and tie Merv outside it and then we would be able to walk downhill to bottom street, and then we would stop at La Boutique D’Or, which sells lots of frumpy stuff, but also stocks fabulous Flora Kung silk dresses. And then we would be off for a canter up the fields, back home, where my footman would get my boots and they would discreetly disappear into the bowels of the mansion. I think I’ll forfeit cleaning my boots today; I forgot them in the car and it’s too miserable to even step outside and get them. Welcome back to reality really.

Tatton Park Mansion

Creative Perfection

Today I visited Buxton for the first time and was suitably impressed by the fabulous drive there, framed by moody peaks and adorable sheep and lambs, and by the lovely ceramics of the fair at the Dome. I bought a mug which I am presently using as a vase. Nine daffs poked through the shambles that is my front garden; I am always awed by their resilieance. They were planted years ago and are pretty much suffocated by grovel, membrane and debris I am always too busy, and too little inclined, to remove. Yet every year they come up long after most daffs have finishing blooming, with a stamina I never knew flowers could display. And mine are pert, very sunny and very lovely.

Beluga Tea

I have heard of people who discovered L'Occitane while browsing in Knightsbridge and of others that never knew Crabtree and Evelyn existed until they stumbled upon one of their shops in Paris. How funny that one can discover something wonderful so far away from its motherland. I seem to be doing just that with tea. Can you believe that I had never had Mariage Freres tea until I found the black tins in Bergdorf Goodman in New York? Or that I really came to love Laduree in London, despite multiple trips to Paris? And this year I've done it again, I have fallen for a hybrid Russian/French tea (it's really Russian, but they are based in Paris) while browsing groceries in New York's Zabar's. I was taken by the beautiful tins, because, after all, everyone knows that for everything important it is style and not substance that truly matters, but as it happens with this tea, it's not just the tin that grabs you. The contents themselves are absolutely gorgeous. None of that rusk one finds in gauge-like bags, none of that mono-smell that reminds me of nothing other than stale university residences where lingering mugs are left to sprout fungi. This tea (and indeed Laduree teas and Mariage Freres tea) are something else entirely. When some of my philistine friends (and, bless them, I have got loads) feebly claim that they just 'prefer PG tips', I smile wistfully. You know what, I quite like PG tips myself, but choosing them over Kusmi is not unlike favouring trout roe over Beluga caviar.

Buy it here and read about it here.

Weekend Work

For a long time, and certainly just before I started Domestic Miss, I thought that the weekend was a pretext to do work one doesn't have the time to do during the week. And you know what? I think I was, and am, right. I was recently talking to my friend Kev, he who returns home to Manchester city centre after a week spent working in the south of England, and he pretty much spends both days running errands, setting his house up so that he can leave it again at 4 am on Monday morning. What's the point in that? In fact, what's the point in MY weekend, one that is usually spent doing the washing? I don't know what it is but my washing always piles up and up and up until, around about Saturday afternoon, it seems like a good time to start. And so in go the whites. Then the blacks. Then in go the delicate nudes. After that all the colour-fast pinks and the reds. Then the horsey and the dog gear and so on until on Sunday afternoon, at about this time, I find myself with a pile of crumpled everything up the ceiling. Sorting out the dry washing is less exciting than the proverbial observation of drying paint. Much as my iron is an old wreck now incapable to spurt steam, it is always with a vague sense of satisfaction that I neatly pile up the pillowcases and duvet covers and roll them tight all together, so that I can find the whole set next time I change the bedding (also on Sundays, usually). Yet, I still resent the weekend as an excuse for different work. I wonder whether I would feel any better if I had one of those mega-powerful-all-singing-all-dancing steamers that cost £ 500? Heck, I wouldn't even have space for it. The ironing board folded in a corner of the bedroom is bad enough an omen by itself.

Spring Is Coming Part II

What is there to say really?

Assessing March

March is one of those months that I truly cannot stand. Over the years I have turned into an autumn-winter sort of person, and March marks that half of the year that is far from my favourite. This year Easter was so early that it spoilt not just March, with its springy feel when it still feels like winter, but April as well; what on earth have I got to look forward to now, since April has no Bank Holidays, no planned holidays and now not even Easter? Which makes the case for St George's Day even more relevant. But again, I digress. March was a bit of a trauma, since I returned from New York to a very, very, very busy office where brainstorming sessions quickly turned into blamestorming ones. It is difficult to keep one's focus when all we talk about falls under the 'things we could have done better' heading. While I find that learning from past mistakes is always valuable, I think that identifying these mistakes is only philosophically valuable. 'Steph, what would you have done differently?'. When I hear this question I always feel like replying: 'Nothing, because if I had known then what I know now, I would have been an idiot to take the path I originally took'. So of course 'what would you have done differently?' is a stupid question, not unlike, 'would you have driven over the deep black hole if you had known it was
there?'. The point is, I did NOT know there was a deep black hole. Would I want a free gift? Why, is there a type of gift that is not free? The only lesson I learnt over the past few years in the corpo-world is that a creative person should strive to leave it as soon as possible. The harder one leaves it, the more difficult and muddled situations become. I feel like I am slowly easing myself out of it for sure, but I bet that tomorrow I will have another meeting going over the same old hot air. But hope springs eternal, no? Who knows what exciting developments April will bring now that my proposal is in the post...

Easter Simnel Cake

Happy Easter! I am taking some deserved time off this weekend, and even though I am working at my book proposal, most of my time is being filled up by reading, cooking and finally eating, after that dreadful bout of wisdom toothache. I prepared a chocolate Simnel cake which, by its very nature, is not a Simnel cake at all. Its only claim to Simnel-ness are the twelve balls that stud it, except these are Maltesers and not marzipan. The recipe is Nigella's Chocolate Cloud Cake, even though I changed the topping. Mine is whipping cream and dark chocolate.

Lots of Pain and Little Wisdom

Today is not a good day. One of my wisdom teeth has decided to rear its head at the side of my face. Even under the best possible diet circumstances I am no Johnny Depp; you decidedly cannot cut ice with my cheekbones, but neither am I a helium balloon. Except today. And so I rushed to my dentist and I am now packed full with antibios and painkillers until it subsides and we decide what to do with it. Still... this may be the silver lining that will kick start my diet.

Victoria's Birthday

My dog Victoria turned six today. I took her to Tatton Park for some quality time together and we had a fantastic day. Tatton Park is one of my favourite places in the world and this is one of my favourite pics ever. My girl coming up the hill, happy and carefree, without a worry in the world. I wish I were her sometimes, except when she tries to eat her own poo.

Spring Is Coming

So much for Spring...