Little dragon

I'd like to wish our friends Jennie and Kai in Hong Kong and Dawn in England a Happy Chinese New Year for tomorrow.

Apparently it will be the year of the snake. I was born in the year of the snake a long long time ago. Chinese snakes or small dragons as they are also known are not sly and mean like western serpents but charming, passionate, intellectual, intuitive, attractive...oh I could go on. Wouldn't it be lovely to have all those attributes. Feel free, my friends and family, to attest to these glorious qualities in me in the comments section - now don't be shy. I find it all quite fascinating.

Snakes value their privacy, have excellent manners, get easily bored, don't like noisy environments and are passionate about friends and family. Other than the fact I'm writing a blog (where's the privacy in that) I do insist on good table manners from my children, I do get bored easily, I prefer quiet to loud and I do think a lot about the people in my life. Oh yes and we like to be in control - only now do my friends and family want to pipe up in the comments section! It's all quite uncanny.

We are not averse to lies if we think we can get away with it (don't believe everything you read in this blog) and we like the good life (let me take another sip of champagne). We can also get very stressed if things aren't going well (please please 'follow' this blog). It's all true.

One of the snake's lucky numbers is 8 which is cool. I was born on the 8th, I live at 88, I used to live at 8, I'm married to someone born in the 8th month. I believe '8' anyway is a lucky number in Chinese culture so here's hoping.

Oh and although it's really best if a snake hooks up with an ox or a rooster, a horse will do. That's a relief.

Happy Chinese New Year

Mmmmmm on buttered bread

Just had our little batch of harvested oyster mushrooms on fresh bread at 88.

Melt a knob of butter in a pan, add some garlic and a little squirt of anchovy paste (magic ingredient). Let this froth away for a minute or two and then add harvested mushrooms, toiled over for a month, spraying and talking to and watching. Ok this may work with bought mushrooms too. Also add a bit of thyme with a sprinkle of pepper and just a tad of salt. Cook til mushrooms done. Breathe in that delicious aroma. Just at the end throw in a splash of cream and let that bubble for a minute. Serve on buttered fresh bread, untoasted, and most importantly eat with fingers. Mmmmm...not bad.

Actually I think everything tastes better eaten with your fingers. Fish and chips, cream cakes, pizza, a chicken leg, even a curry with a good supply of chapatis. I seem to have invested and perhaps put in that little bit more effort if I eat with fingers. It's that bit more primitive and you also get to lick them. But shhh.. don't tell the children.

Garden inheritance

We have a very big garden. We love it. We are not very good gardeners but we are learning.

My mum's house with beautiful garden (the farm), her home for nearly 60 years, was sold recently. My home physically until I was eighteen and I think spiritually for a long time there after was sold. It's a sad and reflective time for the family.

I have quite a few friends going though similar experiences. One of them was telling me how she spent an arduous afternoon digging up a peony from her mum and dad's garden before it was sold. Her mum had originally brought it from her mum's so it seemed kind of important to continue with that line of descent. It was huge, dug up on a hot afternoon and then transported 300 miles up the motorway, sat on the passenger seat, belted of course. But it was worth it. She can now see the green shoots of recovery - quite literally.

So with that green inheritance in mind I walked round our garden at 88. I noticed the daffodils, peeping up through the grass. I made a mental note to tell the children not to stand on them while their little shoots were still camouflaged amongst the blades of grass. My Dad planted hundreds of daffs along the banking up the drive to the farm and at the end of the garden. Every spring the drive welcomed you in yellow.

I admired our rowan tree that we planted as a spindly whip about three years ago and how big it's got already. My Mum and I bought Dad a rowan when he retired from farming. He then proceeded to complain every year thereafter that the berries were a browny yellow and not red. Funny thing but last autumn they at last turned red.

I looked at the azalea that Mum and Dad bought for us when our daughter was born. I was concerned last year that it did not flower but I have high hopes that it will burst into vibrant fuchsia pink again around about her birthday in April.

I smiled at the snowdrops up already and the whites of the petals just visible packed tightly into their buds. I remember my Mum urging me to dig up spent snowdrops at the farm for my own garden.

I sat in the garden chair in the cool winter sunshine that my Dad made for me. He had carved my name on the top and had done the same on chairs for the children. A friend always jokes with me that they are the Blakeley Family Inheritance Thrones.

 

I walked through the soggy grass. I love cutting grass. I started cutting the lawn at the farm, all those years ago as a teenager for pocket money. Up and down, up and down with the lawn mower, methodically comforting. I complain every year to David that our lawn mower doesn't make lovely lines in the grass. Well it will this year as we have inherited my mum's.

I have quite a few mementos from the farm around the house at 88, memory reminders of a time, a place, a feeling, a person. It would seem I have a huge green and living inheritance too.

Magic mushrooms

We have started our gardening at 88 early in the season this year. It's the best type of gardening, given the wind and the snow and the rain. It's indoor cultivation. We have mushrooms growing in the front room. They aren't hallucinogenic and we don't have rising damp. David got shitaake and oyster mushroom growing kits at Christmas. Apparently and in actuality mushrooms are very easy to grow. You just have to have a little patience.

Oysters on toast for tea?

David no sooner set the kits up and going than he had to go away on business so I was left with the arduous and onerous task of spraying the mushroom culture every day with water. Nothing happened for ages. And then one evening no sign of mushrooms: the next morning oyster mushrooms. Magic if a tad unsettling!

Handmade Histories 2: Crow cushion

Crow Cushion (Fruitique:Sonya)

This is my cushion. Foremost I like it because my good friend made it for me. Secondly I like it because it's beautiful but slightly menacing. No chintz here thank you very much.

One of the most memorable films I've ever seen is Hitchcock's The Birds. Very thrilling and very very menacing and this cushion reminds me of it. I'm also fascinated by the film because of Tippi Hedren's wardrobe. The films spans a weekend (Fri to Sat) and she wears the same tight fifties pencil skirt and high heels as well as beautifully coiffured hair all the time without looking dishevelled at all......that is until the last few scenes!!!! But the cushion also simply puts me in mind of a common garden bird. Depends what mood I'm in.

A garden bird or menacing crow?

It sits on the chest-chair-cum-table at 88 that came from my parent's house a few months ago. It sits next to its companion, a stag cushion, also made by Sonya. I love stags.

I'm into recycling so the cushion also appeals to me because it's mostly made of upcycled materials. In particular the dark grey in the background is made from a length of suit material my mum got from her cousin's woollen mill in the eighties. I can remember going and mum's cousin giving her it. I love it because it has  'Superfine All Wool Made in England' running down the side of the cloth which Sonya has incorporated running down the side of the cushion. The yellow ric rac (technical term - who'd have thunk that that was what it was called), squaring off the cushion, was passed on to Sonya years ago by a friend's mum. On the back of the cushion there is some corduroy which I do believe had a former life as a pair of Sonya's Levi's....better still originally bought from a charity shop. The button may be from a stock she inherited from her Gran but hey it's hard to keep track of buttons.



Amazing what you can do with a pair of old jeans

My stag and my crow make me happy and comfortable. Perhaps I need a pink moose to complete the set.

Handmade Histories 1: Red Keyring

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Handmade Histories 1: Red Keyring

Good crafts and handmade wares are shaped with differing levels of skill, with imagination and, I hope, enjoyment by their creators. Most of the time a lot of work goes into their existence and then even more effort and anxiety to sell them. It's a shame in a way that we never know what happens to these paintings and cushions and jewellery and furniture that these fine craftspeople produce after they leave the workshop or gallery. There must be a whole load of continuing stories in a crafted object's history.

OK that's all very interesting but I just want an excuse to pry! I want to know how the story continues after the Fruitique's handmade wares are sold or given away as presents.

Red keyring (Fruitique:Virginia)

I can't actually claim a huge amount of work went into the making this at 88. The keyrings are all unique but they are basically the stocking fillers of my work. But a little thought and a dose of affection does go into the choice of colours and shapes of the beads used.

I gave this red one to C, my niece, as a table present at Christmas. It's come to mean quite a lot to C as she and her boyfriend have only recently got the keys to their first flat together. A new keyring for a new set of keys and a new start. By coincidence her new flat is predominantly red and the keyring is red. She feels grown-up now. She also has her mum's house key and her Dad's house key on the ring. She feels loved, wanted and at home, wherever her hat may lie. Oh and it helps differentiate her keys from her boyfriends.....before Christmas she took his keys by mistake and imprisoned him in the flat all day. They are still talking.

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I kid you not

My mum (88) cannot stand it when people call children 'kids'. As far as she is concerned kids are the young of goats or the present tense of a gentle tease. She hates it. If I'm with her and she hears it, she tells me how awful it is. She tells me quite loudly. Mum is like that woman in that famous poem: she likes to wear purple juxtaposed with red now she's 88. Well metaphorically at least. In reality I don't think my mum would approve of wearing red and purple at the same time.

Mum first started complaining about the use of the word kids in reference to the young of humans, probably back in the eighties. I used to be embarrassed and tease or is that kid her that she was being a funny-duddy. She would smile all the while knowing she was right.

But now I'm starting to think she has a point. Has she worn me down? Am I truly my mother's daughter? Now when she bemoans its modern meaning I do have some sympathy. I cannot actually bring myself to say or indeed write 'kids' when referring to my offspring. Goats yes; children no. I like to think it's not indoctrination but daughterly loyalty. She does have a point. My children don't look anything like kids....although I do feel like an old goat at times.