Making a Christmas Cake

Christmas is still a month-and-a-half away, but we have had to start making plans because this year it's our turn to host Mutti. This will almost certainly be a bit of trial, since she expects things to be done Just So, even when she's not in her own house, but it does provide me with a magnificent opportunity to nag Judith into Massively Tidying Up Her Clutter -- as well as providing me with one or two deadlines for the completion of various tasks before Mutti arrives.

Perhaps because we'll be hosting Mutti, however, Judith decided that she should make a traditional Christmas cake -- something which to my knowledge she has never done before, at least not in the thirty years we've been together. So I took a few photographs of the process -- you will note the CWA cookery book, from which the recipe was taken, in the foreground of the first! The final photograph shows the cake minutes after its removal from the oven, left to cool down before icing and whatnot can be applied.

We'll have to see if was can locate some appropriate Christmas cake decorations, to recreate the scene that Mutti used to do decades ago, when I was very young: Father Christmas on his sleigh, coming down through the trees to Pooh's house. Ah -- nostalgia!

Insulating the Greenhouse for the Winter

Today was the day of the ancient and hallowed ritual of "insulating the greenhouse for the winter" -- a process which involves firstly (and rather counter-intuitively) removing everything from it (and thus taking the plants out into the cold from which one otherwise wishes to protect them) so that bubble-plastic can be hung from the interior. The fact that the greenhouse is built against the back wall of the house and thus obtains some of its heat from that is a major contributor to helping the plants survive the winter; the bubble-plastic helps traps that heat and maintains the interior a few degrees above the ambient temperature of the winter garden. The plants which overwinter there seem to do all right, anyway (more fragile specimens are brought indoors and spend the winter on the window sills, above the radiators).

Below are a few photographs of the insulating process. I bet you don't have to do this in Sydney or Perth!

"It's A Deer, Dear"

Today we went to Richmond Park, in West London, to see the deer rut -- the annual mating display in which the stags paw the ground, thrash their antlers in the bracken, throw back their heads to roar enthusiastically, and fight one another for the right to, er, bonk as many hinds as they can. Or so suggests the BBC's Autumnwatch programmes: but while this is undeniably what deer do at this time of year, we had trouble finding them -- the Park is a popular attraction, and what you mostly see when you swing your binoculars towards a movement in the distance is a kiddie bicycling along followed by its doting parents. Most certainly not what we were looking for!

But persistence paid off. We saw a small group of fallow deer hiding in the trees early in the afternoon; then a larger group later on, out in the open -- several hinds, and even what appeared to be a late-developing fawn being nuzzled by its mother. As we watched this group through our binoculars, obeying the Park's advice to approach the animals no closer than 50 metres, we saw innumerable family groups sauntering up to within a few feet of them, one woman getting so close as to appear to be trying to stroke a reclining buck's brow. WTF? Don't these people realise that deer are wild animals, liable to react adversely to this sort of thing?

We waited expectantly for someone to be gored bloodily in front of us, but instead the stag leaped up and moved off through the bracken away from the humans, his hinds following -- clearly the sensible thing to do (much more sensible than the twattish humans). We continued our walk, heading towards the sound of bellowing deer; and came out suddenly on an open expanse where a couple of red deer stags were disporting themselves: no antler thrashing in the bracken, but lots of throwing heads back and roaring. A group of hinds grazed placidly nearby. And then, as we watched, one of the stags began advancing towards us. Had we grown antlers, were they looking for a food handout?

No. We realised, with a slight frisson of alarm, that we were standing between him and one of his hinds, and moved rapidly to the side -- Judith more rapidly than I, because I was still trying to take photos of this advancing creature. It crossed the path to collect its hind, turned to look at me...turned back to check that its hind was secure...and made a step or two in my direction.

Time to retreat. I turned smartly through 180 degrees and walked away along the path we'd been following. Judith was ahead of me, but some way ahead of me. I could hear the clicking of hooves on the path behind me, and knew that I needed to somehow make myself look non-threatening. "Behind you," she said, "Look behind you." That, I thought, would not be a good idea: look these animals in the eye, even with a camera, and they will charge.

Judith said that it crossed the path behind me less than 7 metres away. Dangerous though it would have been, I wish I could have turned to take its photograph.

Failing to Blog the Paris Trip -- Addendum

Not only did I fail to blog the trip, I also failed to include this photograph in the previous post -- seen in Rue des Rosiers on our walk around the Marais, and claming to offer the best falafel in the world....

Failing to Blog the Paris Trip

The best intentions gang aft agley, etc. etc., and I generally found that after an evening of manging and bouving, and then downloading and sorting out the day's photographs on the laptop, it was too late or I was too tired to compose a blog entry. So you'll have to be content with the knowledge that we did walk around Montmartre on Sunday, which included a visit to the Musee Montmartre where in an earlier epoch Renoir had a studio; and on Monday we walked around the Marais district in central Paris, which included a visit to La Maison d'Ourscamps in Rue Francois Miron, saved from demolition in the early 1960s and now restored by the Association pour la sauvegarde et la mise en valeur du Paris Historique. Its value lies in its being built around a timbered and jettied courtyard and over a vaulted 13th century cellar where the Cistercian monks who then owned the property used to store their wine. The building is open to the public, and I (of course!) took some photographs, including some showing Zena and Holly.







Below: a photograph taken during our lunchbreak on the walk around the Marais. Most of us ordered salads, and it will be apparent from the size of the plates that they are practically main meals in their own right....

Dinner with Zena and Holly

A quick photograph to show that they're alive and well (if a bit tired) after their cycle tour of the Loire valley -- we met up at their apartment at 4.00pm this afternoon, and after a bit of a chat went for a stroll down the slope of Montmartre to view the architecture, gawp at some beautiful people getting out of taxis for an obviously upscale "do" at the Bibliotheque Tiers in Place St Georges, and then have an early dinner at Kuki, a restaurant in the upper reaches of Rue Rodier. (I had its card, but it's gone missing. Curses!) Today is scheduled for a walk through the Montmartre district, from the bottom to the top, finishing at Sacre Coeur via various diversions such as a Sunday market and historic houses where once lived such notables as Vincent Van Gogh and George Sand. If there's time, we might even get our portraits painted.

I Speak Chicken, You Know

We are (as one or two of you may be aware) in Paris this weekend, waiting for Zena and Holly to return from their cycling tour of the Loire valley so we can, er, "pal around together" for a few days (or, rather, so I can impose, Attila-like, my rigidly-crafted by-the-book hup-two-three-four sightseeing programme on them. Gotta educate these guys in the finer points of La Belle Epoque architectural style, donchano).

Today, however, Judith and I went west, to the Bois de Boulogne -- because we hadn't been there before -- and rapidly got lost because we had no compass, the paths on the map did not match the reality on the ground, the sun was in the wrong place in the sky, the "working girls" who decorate the paths alongside the roads through the park weren't in the same place every time we doubled back past them, und so weiter. In the end, however, we made it to our intended destination, the Jardin d'Acclimatation, a combination kiddie playground/funfair/small farm area at the entrance to which we offered the full price (€3) and were asked if we qualified for the over-60 reduced rate. (Not quite yet, alas.) We then spent a pleasant hour ambling about meeting the animals, some kept in enclosures or cages and some not, before departing for the Musee Marmottan Monet just outside the eastern boundaries of the Bois de Boulogne, an art gallery with a remarkable collection of late Impressionist works by Claude Monet, most donated by his daughter shortly before her death in the mid-1960s. The First Empire collection, of paintings and porcelain from the Napoleonic period, is also of interest, but much less impressive (although the collection does include Napoleon's bed, which is remarkably short -- I didn't (couldn't) measure it, but I'm sure that he would have been able to sleep in it only if he laid himself down diagonally and didn't turn over during the night).

In the meantime, here's a picture of Judith and the black rooster which accosted her at one point in the Bois de Boulogne, clearly expecting some sort of hand-out. She responded to its overtures with a series of clucking noises which either baffled it completely or drove it mad with rage. We could not tell which: it's a brainless chicken, after all.

Sailing Around Africa

We went into central London this afternoon, to see the replica Phoenician ship currently moored at St Katharine's Dock. It's not a static replica, like the Amity brig in Albany, but a working, seaworthy vessel, built to an ancient pattern to repeat a journey made in 600 BCE when -- at the request of the 26th Dynasty Pharoah Necho II -- a flotilla of Phoenician merchant vessels sailed clockwise around Africa (or Libya, as the continent was then known) "just because". Herodotus records this in his Histories, but says that he does not believe it because the Phoenicians reported that when they were rounding the southern part of Libya they had the sun on their right, i.e., to the north: a point which to a modern reader confirms that the Phoenicians did indeed make that voyage.

We arrived in time for a guided tour of the ship by the skipper, who said that one of the things they'd found when sailing up the west coast of Africa was the impossibility of beating the prevailing winds and currents, which required them to sail way out to the west and eventually turn back to make landfall on The Azores from the northwest; ergo, the Phoenicians must have been the first to have discovered the archipelago. This is apparently a sore point with the Portuguese, whose national mythology is built around the islands' discovery by Prince Henry the Navigator in the 15th century; however, it would seem that recent archaeological discoveries on the islands have confirmed that the Phoenicians got there first. (The link talks of Carthaginians of the 4th century BCE, but Carthage was of course a Phoenician city. In addition, an exploratory voyage two centuries previously may have left little if any non-organic material to mark that it had been there.)

The ship was -- as the original would have been -- difficult: it had a large square sail which could be turned about the mast but couldn't properly tack against the wind; it had two side steering oars rather than a central rudder, and therefore couldn't easily be turned into or held against the wind; and it had no ratlines, which meant that hauling in the sail requiring pulling on ropes from below (or even lowering the boom) rather than rolling it up from above. That it took the crew two years and two months to sail around Africa is not at all surprising.

Below are some photographs -- a general view of the ship from across St Katharine's Dock; a view of the horse's head on the prow of the ship; a view of the stern showing the starboard steering oar; a view of the mast and the boom, showing the ropes needed to haul in the sail; and one of the explanatory boards from the display in the hold, showing how the ship was put together. This last is not conjectural, but based on the recovery of a wrecked Phoenician ship from the seabed off Marseilles: a construction method the Romans later appropriated but (typically) were keen to pretend was their own invention. I'm not sure that I'd trust my life to it, but I greatly admire those -- ancient and modern -- who did.

Doctor Who Would Never Fit In This!

Earlier this evening (i.e., immediately after work) Judith and I went to The Developing City exhibition at the new Walbrook Building, opposite Cannon Street Station (a new building which, according to theThe Financial Times, is now worth less than the debt run up to build it and is still unoccupied). The exhibition, featuring plans and images of the City of London from Roman times to the present, has obviously been compiled with assistance from the collections of the Museum of London but is primarily concerned with the present and the future of the City -- it has many conceptual drawings, architects' models, and speculations (some of them very interesting) of what the City may look like in 2050. (If we live that long, we'll be 97 years old. I hope I make it.) You can read more about the exhibition, and see some photographs of it on the blog that tipped me off to its existence.

After our time was up, and the exhibition closed for the day, we walked to Liverpool Street Station for a train back to Seven Sisters. And on the way, passing St Stephen's, Walbrook* a Wren church now surrounded on three sides by tall office buildings (and with an exquisite mid-Georgian vicarage surviving alongside, just as hemmed in), we came across this Corporation of London police phone box. When taking its picture, I added Judith for scale. If the box could ever have travelled through time and space, it would never have done so with any human passengers.



* Note that this link to the church's website will automatically play a rather irritating bit of Gregorian plainchant unless you click the "Music Off" button beneath the logo near the top of the page. Unless you do, you won't be able to hear the vicar talking about the history of the church on the optional embedded video (it has its longeurs, but has much interesting information to impart).

A Walk in Constable Country

Yesterday, we went for a walk in what is now marketed as "Constable Country", the area around Flatford and Dedham on the Essex-Suffolk border which is the subject of many of his paintings. I took lots of photographs, and have uploaded an album of them to Facebook; they can be viewed at this link. The photographs are fully captioned, but the doltish way in which Facebook organises its photo albums (every time you turn round, some FB drone has made what they think is a doubtless nifty change but which from the perspective of the ordinary user is Just One More *!£$%&!* Stupid Complication) means that you'll have to click through them individually instead of being able to view them altogether. (Sorry about that.)

Central London, 24 July 2012

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1.00pm today -- clear blue skies, blazing sun, a temperature of 31 degrees C, and a carpet of office workers arranged on the grass. Mere seconds after taking this picture, I joined them, to consume my lunch (three clementines and an apple) with my skirt hitched up around my upper thighs for maximum tanning efficacy....

I took these shots of Buddhist monks at Angkor Wat (built early 12 century) - which is still used as a temple today. I had to laugh as I watched the monk with the ipad taking photos of Chinese tourists.

Just back from a week in Cambodia with Mark. Three days in Phnom Penh then another three in Siem Reap (near Angkor Wat). Lots of tuk tuks, temples, people and food. The temples have all been heavily looted at various stages of their lives - and have undergone transformation form Hindu to Buddhist a number of times. Some are still used as Buddhist sacred temples. Here are some photos to share!

Giant strangler fig roots outside Ta Prohm temple near Angkor Wat. You may (or not) recognise this as the site where "Tomb Raider" was filmed.

Reflection of the Angkor Wat from inside the outer wall.

The Wugster is in The Grauniad!

Letter from Judith here. The other letter on the same issue is from the secretary of our residents' association.

Strawberry Harvest 2012

If we hadn't been away in Purbeck last week, we'd probably have picked some of our strawberry crop then, and thus not noticed how large it actually is....