Back in the Big Wide World - for now!

Well, I have re-emerged from the world I have been immersed in for the last two weeks, of the international influence of Islamic Spanish art in the 19th century, while I have been writing Chapter 4 - but as of 9.30 last night, I sent that off to my readers, and took the rest of the weekend off! That's the last chapter of the book - so, nearly there. Just the small matter of the rewrites to incorporate comments and corrections from my readers, finding some time to write the introduction, and whipping my image needs into shape - not all of which I am going to be able to do in the next two weeks, which is how much more research leave I have. I will try and do what I can to keep focused when I get back to the 'day job' in early June, but I know it will be difficult, so I'm feeling a little bit of pressure there.

I'm starting to chafe at the confinement slightly too - whole days at the desk when you don't go outside or (since my office in the Research Dept has no window) even see the sky. When I was writing Chapter 3 I closeted myself in the flat and didn't go out for about three days. This is all bringing back memories of writing up the PhD. I have also been remembering the difficulty of finding music to write to - you need something that makes the background fade away (especially in the Research Dept, where there is quite a lot of background) but is not itself distracting. I can't write to Bach for example - the music is so complicated that it engages your brain too much. Trouble is, you find something that works and then over-listen to it - I haven't been able to listen to Satie's Gymnopédies since I finished my thesis. This time round I have been listening to a lot of Max Richter, which is great but is now also starting to drive me slightly crazy. It's time to put this book to bed and get on with the rest of my life!!

This is a random picture to show the kind thing I have been writing about - this one of the pavilions built for the International Exposición Iberoaméricana in Seville in 1929, in a 'neo-Mudéjar' style, i.e. reviving a form of medieval Iberian architecture which adapted Islamic styles to Christian functions. The style was revived during the eclecticism of the late 19th century, when nations were looking for an architectural style to encapsulate their national identity, and which could represent their culture and aspirations at International Expos. At that time, Islamic styles became Spanish. The pavilion still stands, in Seville's Parque de María Luisa - along with various other structures built for that Expo.

Still. Today was a carefully-planned lazy Sunday, beginning with a cooked breakfast at the Vera Cruz on Brixton Hill, with Lindsay, followed by a short cycle ride over to the Clapham Farmers' Market, where we haven't been for aaages. It's not the biggest market you've ever seen, and I think stallholders were put off by the gusty, chilly, rainy weather we've been having over the last week - so there were only about ten stalls today, but all the same, it was nice to wander and think about buying things you would never otherwise buy. I got some rhubarb! I have no idea what to do with rhubarb but I plan to find out! We also bought some game pies (one venison and one rabbit), K picked up some homemade cider, and somehow the guy on the bakery stall managed to persuade us to buy his last two slices of pear and chocolate cake for a £1 each - he drove a hard bargain!

I don't care all that much about the fact that the food is organically-grown, I just like the fact that it is grown as it should be, and when, and that it's not flown in from cash crops in Zimbabwe. I'd love it if we could get a veggie box, and you just get what you get, cos it's in season that week, and you have to work out what to do with it - but where we live, there is nowhere for the delivery guy to leave it. Tescos was doing it for a while, in partnership (apparently) with local farmers in Kent, which seemed like the ideal solution as they could deliver it with your other groceries - but I got annoyed with it, because most of the stuff in the box was freighted in from distant lands, and that was not my idea of supporting local farmers. I guess other people objected to this too because they stopped it. 'Grow your own' is a big thing now, especially on community gardens - with people turning common garden areas in council estates into kitchen gardens, and the government proclaiming 2012 new allotments in London in time for the Olympics (it's not just Michelle Obama and her organic garden, though that is obviously fantastic!) - and that's something I have wondered about us trying to do with some of the unused common garden areas in our block of flats, though I have never had a garden in my life and wouldn't know what to do with it, let alone have the time....

But in terms of 'green lifestyle' for now we're contenting ourselves with composting - thanks to our neighbour Lisa, who actually went out and bought a compost bin, which nestles under a tree round the back, out of everyone's way, and which about five flats share now, including us. I got fed up with how much organic waste we were throwing away every week - and it's amazing what a difference it makes. It is so satisfying putting the peelings and the offcuts in our little compost bin then once a week taking it down to the big bin! I am sure some nice juicy compost has developed by now - Lisa has had the bin for about a year - but we have to work out how to get to it and what we're going to do with it! Hence the momentary thought about community gardening, when we were in the pub one night... Hmmm.... What I get annoyed about now (!) is how much plastic packaging there is - on almost everything you buy! There is so rarely an option not to buy something covered in plastic - I hate it! Our rubbish bin is just full of plastic bags and wrappers now. There was some horrible statistic I heard once - on a Jon Stewart interview I think - that plastic will outlive the human race, or some such. That's the monster we've created! The truth of this was visible everywhere in Syria last autumn, especially out in the countryside - plastic bags everywhere, just awful.

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I've accidentally finished The Gormenghast Trilogy. I didn't have another Swedish crime book lined up after I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Bookthrift didn't have anything in that jumped out at me, so I reverted to Titus Alone, and after a few pages a night here and there, I discovered I was most of the way through, so I just went for it! It was very different from the previous two books - written much later, and completed after Mervyn Peake's death from his notes, but there is also such a contrast between the world of Gormenghast, which seems so remote from the real world in time as well as in space, and the sort of Brave New Modernist World which Titus encounters during his adventures in the last book. It all becomes a little bit weirdly hallucinogenic as well. But the writing is so beautiful - I've had a bookmark in this passage almost since the start of the book:

Suddenly and unexpectedly the last of the cedars floated away behind him as though from a laying-on of hands, and the wide sky looked down, and there before him was the first of the structures.

He had heard of them but had not expected anything quite so far removed from the buildings he had known, let alone the architecture of Gormenghast.

The first to catch his eye was a pale-green edifice, very elegant, but so simple in design that Titus's gaze could find no resting place upon its slippery surface...

Titus sat down by the side of the road and frowned. He had been born and bred to the assumption that buildings were ancient by nature, and were and always had been in the process of crumbling away. The white dust lolling between the gaping bricks; the worm in the wood. The weed dislodging the stone; corrosion and mildew; the crumbing patina; the fading shades; the beauty of decay.

I love that! The idea that buildings "were and always had been in the process of crumbling away", of not being able to find a resting place for your eye on the plain surface of a Modernist design - I can just imagine what it must have felt like living through the development of those new architectural fashions, how stark that contrast must have been between the heavily-decorated Victorian constructions of the previous century, and the move towards new, sleek, undecorated designs and their machine-made materials... It must have been exactly like how Titus experiences the unnamed world he is travelling through in that passage. (A by-the-by - we went to the Le Corbusier exhibition last Sunday - another disappointingly put-together exhibition with fabulous material)

Now I am reading The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (Bookthrift came through this time, and I set aside my snobbish reaction to the 'Richard and Judy book club' sticker on its cover) which I'm really enjoying - I hadn't realised it is an account of a true-life country house murder mystery, investigated by one of the earliest ever detectives, which was sensationalist at the time and inspired a wave of Victorian crime novels, not least Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone - well, we like those kinds of books, so it's got to be a winner. Really pared down language, which is refreshing too, somehow - after Gormenghast, and my own florid literary creations!

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Quick plug before I go. On Thursday night I joined my family to celebrate a friend's book launch - The Iraqi Cookbook, by our great family friend Lamees Ibrahim. Lamees is an Iraqi who has lived most of her adult life in England. The recent war in Iraq really hurt her, and she's been really driven to do something to raise understanding about the Iraqi people and their culture - she's been instrumental in setting up the new International Action for Iraqi Refugees. She's also an amazing cook, and the book started out as a way to pass on recipes to her children. She started throwing in memories and anecdotes about her childhood, and researching the history of Iraq and its cuisine, and the book was born. In her little speech on Thursday, she talked about why Iraqi cuisine is so different from that of its Middle Eastern neighbours - even from one end of the country to the other (all the fresh fish that is cooked and eaten in the port cities of the south are not known in the north, for example), partly because of all the empires and rulers that have passed through Mesopotamia during the course of millenia and left their mark on the food. She paused and said, "I don't think the current regime is going to have the same influence!"

(A brief aside on the British "draw-down" from Basra - there's an article here about my cousin, Dickie Head, who won the Military Cross for leading the force which went in to recover the bodies of the British soldiers killed in that helicopter crash in 2006 - proud of him)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to browsing the book and learning to cook some Iraqi dishes. I wonder what they might do with rhubarb...?

P.S. You can also check Lamees and some of her recipes out on the Guardian 'word of mouth' section, here.

Spring Cleaning!

Hard to believe, as housework is probably the Thing I Hate Above All Else, but gently over the course of the last week we've been having a clear-out and a clean-up - K has gone through all the clothes in his wardrobe and binned or charity shopped about half, and I actually hoovered the flat (well, Dysoned, to be strictly accurate) on Saturday morning. It is one of the few activities in life where you see immediate results - not that this makes me want to do it any more often, but it is rather satisfying when you do. I picked up a fridge magnet somewhere a few years ago, which says - "Dull women have immaculate houses". I immediately connected with this concept, and the magnet is still going strong, stuck to the boiler! Anyway the weather has certainly been springy, so it is obviously something in the air - but it still hasn't made me want to clean the oven...

We've been relaxing over this May Day bank holiday weekend - K has a week off work now, spending some of the time off in lieu that he has accrued on the Henry VIII project. I decided to relax too, though the last week's work has not been exactly rigorous, and I have not got very far at all with Chapter 4 - quite a lot of urgent last-minute sorting of papers and "I had just better read this one last article..." Anyway I have to pull my finger out and really get into it this week, since it is now MAY and I suddenly only have a month of research leave left, which is somewhat terrifying, considering how much there still is to do - and who knows how much reworking to accommodate my readers' comments...

Anyway, we're relaxing today. We have been very fortunate to be invited round to friends' houses every day this long weekend, so we have eaten some very fine meals, and had some very fine conversation, and a very nice time all round! Lunch on Saturday with Kirstin in Pilgrims' Cloisters, the always unexpectedly gorgeous oasis of Victorian residential architecture which is the only remotely old thing still standing in a sea of tower-block estates in Camberwell... Yesterday in Guildford, with Alison and Steve, meeting Nate for the first time (though I can't believe he is already 8 months' old!) and being introduced to the world of Rainbow Magic books which Ellie and her 4-year-old friends absolutely love! There are nearly 80 of these books, and there's a fairy for everything you could possibly conceive of in life - from Alice the Tennis Fairy, to Tasha the Tap Dance fairy (this was the first one I read to Ellie, so will always hold a special place in my heart!) I was amazed - something about these books utterly mesmerised little Ellie... Whoever came up with this idea is clearly raking it in!!

Today we had lunch with Cornelius in Kennington (I do like it when we can travel to and from friends' places just on the bus), followed by a film at the Ritzy. We often go and see films with Cornelius, and it's really nice as a way to see things you would not otherwise think to go to. We suggested State of Play, he suggested Let the Right One In - which I have to say I knew very little about but had gathered that it involved vampires and was, according to the poster, a "chilling fairytale", which was enough to put me off wanting to see it, and avoiding reading any reviews. Normally I only watch 'horror' movies (though it defies that categorisation) under extreme protest, though Salem's Lot, to which this film nods in at least one memorable scene, was once a favourite film, but most recently, the closest I have been to vampires is watching the last few series of Angel, the friendly vampire-with-a-soul who crusades against evil, which is all rather outlandish and amusing TV, in a Joss Whedon kind of way. But when Cornelius suggested this film, I looked up Peter Bradshaw's review, whose critical opinion I utterly trust, which made me think it could be interesting - not quite Rainbow Magic, but certainly another way of taking my mind off my work...! In the end, we flipped a coin (when was the last time I did that?!) and Let the Right One In was the winner.

And I loved it! It's an achingly beautiful film - set in snowy urban Sweden, with a quiet but beautiful soundtrack, not much dialogue, and quite minimalist when it comes. I liked the fact that the subtitles were quite minimalist as well - there was a lot more Swedish on screen, in newspaper cuttings, and notes between the young protagonists, than was translated, and I thought that was a sympathetic way of respecting the lack of spoken word. I won't tell you the story - read the review, if you want to know, it won't give too much away. If you're worried like I was about the horror movie aspect, don't be - it is gruesome in parts, but won't wake you up with nightmares (I hope!!) But it's hauntingly memorable, and as other reviews have said, it's a "major addition to the vampire genre", and "infinitely superior to Twilight" - which I have not seen, and quite frankly don't wish to after this! Though my heart sank to read just now that a "wholly unnecessary" American remake is in pre-production... Why do they do this?? Is it that taxing to read subtitles? We'd gone to an afternoon showing, and it was odd to re-emerge into daylight - everything seemed slightly disturbed, not quite normal. Cornelius seemed quite shaken, so I think we'll be going to see State of Play next time!

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It being May, though, it must be time to share the picture from our home-made calendar! This does not cease to bring joy by the way - it was an excellent thing to do!

Iglesia de San Antonio, Aranjuez © KR

This is another photo from our trip to Spain last May - nearly a year ago, which is unbelievable... K joined me in Madrid halfway through my month's trip, and the next day I made him go to a palace, which was hardly a fun holiday activity for him, considering he works in one - and one that has the best preserved set of royal rooms in the Baroque style in Europe, apparently, so dragging him to Aranjuez, a day-trip outside the capital, which was the Spanish monarchy's summer palace, remodelled in the 18th century to be fashionably Baroque, was, in retrospect, a bit cruel. But he seemed to love it - he went into photography mode, and took a few thousand images that day I think! No pictures allowed inside the palace, though, which was annoying since my reason for wanting to go there was to see the 'Moorish' smoking room that had been added to the royal apartments by Isabel II in 1850, commissioned from Rafael Contreras, the man who was working for her as restorer at the Alhambra palace, and was built and decorated entirely in the Alhambra style. It was pretty fantastic and worth putting up with the Baroque enfilade of rooms, and the truly monstrous chinoiserie porcelain room. We also had some very fine strawberries and cream, which is the thing to do at Aranjuez apparently.

Anyway we had some time to kill before taking the train back to Madrid, and had a wander around the very small town, which was all remodelled at the same time as the palace. K got particularly carried away taking photos of this church and a barrack block next to it. I am used to having to wait for him to take his photos and catch me up, but usually there are nice things to look at, so it doesn't matter, but I had had my fill of Baroque for one day, and I think it was starting to rain. Anyway I had to phone him to see where he was! But now he has seen the Baroque exhibition, and like me, was frustrated about the lack of a definition of what the Baroque style actually is, according to K, this church is typical Baroque because it's bendy. So there you go.

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Today is the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher coming to power as the first female prime minister. I'm not celebrating, and I always think it's slightly debatable how much of a woman she was, but it is still remarkable, when you look around at our international politicians and see how few of them are women. When we had the G20 summit in town a few weeks ago, there was all this coverage about the meal that Jamie Oliver was cooking for the presidential spouses, and which talented British women were going to be invited, and who was going to sit next to who... And I just thought, hey, does Angela Merkel's husband come to that dinner? Turns out he stayed behind in Berlin!! Why? Because it's too humiliating for him to be one man among all those women at the patronising spousal dinner?? One coup for women I am happy to celebrate in the news this week is the appointment of our first ever female Poet Laureate - not that I am sure this is an institution I entirely support, though it sounds like Carol Ann Duffy has a strong sense of the good that poetry can bring to peoples' lives and of the good she can do in this role. So good luck to her. And I also appreciate the way that the discussion this week has not been all about her sexuality - which it certainly would have been in Thatcher's day.