Brixton brunch

The American mid-term elections have made me realise that it is already two years since I had my mini-sabbatical at the Metropolitan Museum - six weeks in New York just as the weather was changing to autumn and the trees were turning gold in Central Park. How fantastic that was. Though I don't think, in the euphoria surrounding Obama's election, we could ever have predicted how badly things would go for him, and how disappointing his premiership would become. Still, he's not God.

Today we had brunch with friends and this brought back really strongly memories of another autumnal brunch two years ago in New York, with Rebecca who came down from Illinois to visit for a few days. So fantastic to see her after so long, but terrible that we haven't really been in touch since then. I remember vividly that it was the day of the New York Marathon. We went along to a brunch place on the Upper West Side which had been highly recommended as a New York institution - Sarabeth's, that was it. You can't reserve for Sunday brunch so you have to go there and queue and put your name down for a table, and you can't have a table for 4 if there are only 3 of you queuing. So we were supposed to be meeting Lindsay - who was also on sabbatical in New York at the time - but she was late, because she'd been watching the marathon, so we had to put ourselves down for a table for 3. While we waited for the table to be ready we went across the street to have an emergency coffee in an unfriendly little place where a TV was showing Paula Ridley winning the Marathon just a few blocks away...

I can't remember what we ate at Sarabeth's but it was packed with New Yorkers having brunch and had a great atmosphere. Afterwards we wandered over to Central Park and through the dregs of marathon-runners sporting medals and those space-age cloaks they give you for warmth. We found a fleamarket and started to look around, and discovered that it was a really good one, with great craft stalls, and picked up quite a few things. I got a coaster made from an old map of New York, which showed the exact street that my New York apartment was on - East 87th Street, the building was actually called The Gotham!! - and K picked up some cufflinks made from old typewriter keys. He still wears these, and the coaster is on our study bookshelves, where we put our teapot.

All these memories came back today when we went along to the Ritzy to meet Ruby and Jesse and baby Ivy, and Teresa and Dan - all local Brixton friends and neighbours - for brunch. How lovely! After a scrumptious breakfast (eggs benedict - my current favourite!) K and I decided to wander through Brixton, since we needed to buy some olive oil. It seems in recent weeks some of the market stalls have started opening on a Sunday, so there is still a bit of buzz even though Brixton is generally very subdued on a Sunday. We wandered into part of the covered market we hadn't been into for years - Brixton Village - and discovered not only that quite a number of places were open, but also that it has been completely transformed!! It is now full of lovely little eating places, which all look packed with atmosphere and nice design, and I am sure all do variously delicious food. I would have been happy sitting down to brunch at any one of them. It felt like a mixture between being in a Parisian passage, or somewhere in East London which is a bit more comfortable with being self-consciously trendy than Brixton is yet. Actually it felt like being in New York!

Perhaps it was the fact that it was a Sunday, meaning that all the more usual Brixton market stalls were closed up for the week, but it made me feel slightly sad for the passing of the Brixton Market identity, which is not about trendy foody joints but about the kind of food that real people need to buy day to day. What's wonderful about the Brixton Market foodstalls is that they cater to the ethnically diverse Brixton population, so plantain and salted fish heads and ginormous sacks of rice are as ubiquitous as basic fruit and veg. I felt as if that identity was being a bit streamlined, to make way for the trendy coffee and deli places. But, if that's what needs to happen for Brixton Market to survive at all, then so be it. And thankfully not one of these new places was a chain, all were highly individual in their look and the type of food they were serving. I guess I'll just need to go back on a Saturday and hopefully be reassured by how the two aspects of this new Brixton Market identity are working symbiotically together.

Snapshots

I have a fair bit to catch up on from the last month, but I thought I would write it around snapshots of what I have been doing and seeing in that time.

Owls in the British Library

Well, as I had been warned, the British Library was absolutely packed over the summer, and unless you got there by 10 or very soon after, you could pretty much kiss goodbye to the idea of getting a desk or finding an empty locker down in the cloakroom... People resorted to interesting lengths to reserve desks for themselves - I spotted this one in Rare Books as I was popping out for a coffee break: a little cloth owl, and a bashed-up old notebook. Later on in the day I remembered to look and see whose desk it was, and it was occupied by a very respectable-looking middle-aged Japanese lady - she was working away surrounded by piles of bona fide-looking rare books, with the toy owl still in the same position...

We got into a very cosy habit working with Juliette - my arrival time in the library was slightly erratic and she would always save me a desk. We moved around a little bit - she got a bit bored of looking at the mustachioed Italian who alternated his beige or grey cardigans on a weekly basis...

It was an immensely productive month - as Glaire commented in an email, I was obviously ready to do this. I sent off my book proposal and sample material, and got about halfway through revising the thesis. Some of it is not very polished, and I created work for myself in some ways by deciding to add a new chapter - by turning my object appendix into an object-focused chapter - but I feel very satisfied with how much I got done. Plus I felt extremely relaxed by the end of it, and not at all keen on going back to work - especially with the 'age of austerity' looming and no-one quite knowing what is going to be in store for museums and heritage institutions in the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review...

With Nick at Blickling

We got away for the Bank Holiday weekend (typical late August weather, as you can see from the photo!!) and went to visit Nick in Norfolk. We had a rather crazy weekend staying with him at his mother and stepfather's, along with their 3 young grand-daughters (all under 5), the parents of their daughter-in-law, Nick's brother and his wife, and four labradors!! It was actually great fun, though we slipped away during the day, to take in the gorgeous Norfolk countryside and exercise our National Trust membership cards a little - not being drivers, we don't get to do that very much! K had a bunch of places that he wanted to visit for various research reasons, and it was great just spending time with Nick and catching up. We also got to be the first dinner guests at Suzie & Drake's wonderful thatched cottage, which they had only moved into 2 weeks before!


The South Bank had a Morris dancing festival - inspired by the sarcastic remarks apparently made by Sebastian Coe at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing: in reaction to the acrobatic Chinese dancing, he quipped that in London in 2012 we could instead look forward to the performance of 5000 Morris dancers. South Bank took him at his word, and pop artist David Owen created some memorable Morris dancing related images - one of them was (ha ha) Morissey, waving a bunch of wildflowers; another was the famous head from the bookcover of A Clockwork Orange, wearing a flower-festooned hat... But I liked this Star Wars Stormtrooper the best!

We actually didn't see any of the Morris dancing, but we did go to hear The Imagined Village playing at Queen Elizabeth Hall, which was excellent! The night before going back to work too, so I certainly was not sitting around at home moping over my 'back to school' feeling...


People have been emailing me to tell me they have spotted my book for sale in far-flung places! So far, the furthest-flung is the American University of Cairo bookshop - in Cairo! But this photo was taken by Lisa, "in an academic bookshop in a narrow street in Venice, about two weeks ago"... You can just spot it there in the middle on the top shelf!

Have you seen my book for sale anywhere exotic? I'd love to know!


I had one day back in the office last Monday, then went off again on a 3-day courier trip to Munich - installing a few pieces in an exhibition that is soon to open at the Haus der Kunst, commemorating 100 years since a major Islamic Art exhibition held in Munich in 1910. This one has a combination of 'historic' objects - which had been shown at the 1910 exhibition - together with contemporary works, which seems to be a current trend in exhibition curating in Germany these days. The exhibition in Berlin which I couriered in January took a similar approach. It was early days in the installation - I was the first courier - but I was impressed by the quality of the pieces. The Haus der Kunst is a rather ugly Fascist building - it was built in 1937, and seems ironically to be one of few buildings in Munich that actually survived the Allied bombings in 1945 - though they seem to have turned it into quite a thriving cultural and exhibition centre.

Munich was lovely - I had never been before - and it was really nice to catch up with Marion (hello! I know she reads this!). The Glockenspiel in the picture above is one of Munich's major tourist attractions - it is installed in the impressive belltower of the neo-Gothic Rathaus, though it dates from the early 20th century. It commemorates two events from Munich's history. Everyone gathers in the main square for 11 o'clock when it starts to play, and there is a great cry of approval when the Bavarian jouster knocks his Austrian opponent off his perch - lots of fun!

But what a busy week! I was giving a lecture yesterday - in a study afternoon on Seville - so as soon as I got back from Munich, I had to think about that. No wonder I feel like a zombie today!


And last, but by no means least, our calendar image for the month - K's grandfather, Robert, who died this time last year. This lovely photo of him was taken during the war, when he must have been in his 30s. He didn't change a bit all his life!

The Incident of the Rhubarb Tarte Tatin

It was Friday the 13th, and I quipped to Andrew by email, "I hope I don't burn the dinner!" Hmmm. I had chosen a fancy dessert recipe from Olive to wow our dinner guests, and also to use up the last batch of rhubarb from K's parents' garden. First problem - I haven't cooked with rhubarb much before, and had never made a tarte tatin, and found upon reading the recipe closely that this was supposed to be done in blini pans or in a Yorkshire pudding tray with four indents, neither of which I had. So a single tarte tatin in a cake tin it was going to be. Then came the issue of making the caramel base. I discovered the hard way (er, literally) that when the recipe says butter and granulated sugar, one should not use caster sugar to make caramel.

After two attempts (the first with golden caster sugar, the second with normal refined caster sugar, just in case its goldenness had been the problem), K was dispatched to the local corner shop to procure granulated sugar, and hurrah! all proceeded satisfactorily with caramel production. I made a nice arrangement of the rhubarb bits on top of this, and I must say the tarte tatin did look beautiful when it was turned out. I don't have a photo unfortunately. Andrew was presented with the first slice and we all waited for the verdict - poor man, having been put on the spot, he did a valiant job of keeping a straight face. I tried a bite of mine - decidedly sour!! What happened to all that sugar in the caramel??? Plus the recipe suggestion of serving this with mascarpone was not a good choice.

With lashings of caster sugar, the dessert was eaten, but lesson learned - always test a new dessert recipe before serving it to one's dinner guests!! Alas, I feel this episode might go down in personal legend - "remember when you did that rhubarb tarte tatin for Alison and Andrew....?"

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The nice thing, however, was that we had a dinner party at all. It has been far too long since we had people over for supper, and this is one of the very nice outcomes of the time I have off work at the moment. Five whole weeks! I had so much annual leave to use up, having taken almost no holiday over the busy last few years, that I decided to take a big batch of time off in the middle of the summer - when it is usually quiet anyway - and spend it in the library, finally starting to focus on how to turn my PhD thesis into a book... I get two different reactions to this:

1) "Don't work too hard / Make sure you actually give yourself some time off!"
2) "Five weeks in the library! What bliss!"

I fall into the latter category myself. Two weeks in, and I am feeling immensely relaxed! I have said before that I don't really know how to relax like normal people - I actually really enjoy going to the library, and it is wonderful just to have the time to read things. I made a list of books and articles that have been published since I submitted my thesis in 2002 - not too long fortunately - and have been working my way through that, but also reading the odd other article, which I'm interested in but isn't directly relevant... Plus - I have space in my brain! And time to get round to things I have been meaning to do for months! Like write emails, send people photos or references I said I would send them, and just see people and be sociable!

The British Library is a pretty sociable place, as I have noted before, and I have been meeting friends for lunch and coffee and a post-library drink. Now Juliette has joined me in Rare Books, on her own PhD sabbatical, and we're getting into a habit of taking our packed lunches outside at 1, to sit in the sun for half an hour or so, and debrief... K will be off work too soon, so the 3 of us will be chilling out together...

And two weeks in, I have nearly a complete first draft of a book proposal! Reading the thesis again after 8 years was an interesting experience, and I was gratified to discover that it wasn't too awful, and that mostly I still agreed with myself... It's a bit dry and in some places overly defensive, but that's what makes a PhD different from a book, and that's what I have got to work out how to tackle. I've even had some positive feedback from the professor who supervised me for the beginning of the process, but didn't see it through because he went off to the States to be a hot-shot museum director - amazing to have some actual feedback as the viva was such a let-down... But water under the bridge an' all.

So - the next dinner party is planned for just over a week's time, and I'm already plotting the menu. I'm starting with the dessert first this time...!

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And finally...

Signpost, Chenies © KR

Our calendar picture for this month. A very English country road sign, but for K one which conjures up the places of his childhood. Chenies was where his grandparents lived, both now passed away. It was exactly this time last year that we were in Hereford for the 3 Choirs Festival, unknowingly spending our last days with his grandfather Robert... Perhaps a little sombre for the kitchen calendar, but it prompts some happy memories.

Happy Easter!

Nick sent this to us as an Easter greeting a couple of years ago - it always makes K giggle like a little boy!

Thank goodness for the Easter bank holiday weekend - four days of enforced time off work! It has been a festival of cooking and eating and an orgy of relaxing...

We kicked off the proceedings by hosting a dinner for eight here on Thursday evening, in honour of one of K's colleagues whose contract has come to an end. We started cooking for that on Wednesday night, to fit all the preparations around work, but somehow I still managed to get chained to the kitchen for two hours on the night making salads... The first recipes we have tried from our new cookbook purchase, Ottolenghi, but how yummy and worth the wait! One with broad beans and radishes, another with fennel and feta and sumac, and lots of lemon juice and olive oil in both. A lovely evening, but one which reminded us that it is difficult to entertain eight comfortably in our flat!

On Good Friday, K went into work - it was the first day that the Tudor wine fountain he has been involved with recreating was going to be up and running and serving wine, and he wanted to be around to make sure all went smoothly. I went in to meet him for lunch, then to be introduced in person to the wine fountain - which is just amazing, but more on that anon! I gained the distinction of being the first person ever to pay for a glass of wine from the fountain! I also went round some of the parts of the palace they had made changes to since the last time I had been - and went round the Georgian apartments, which for some reason I had never visited before but really loved, in large part because they were the Hampton Court home of Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II, who is one of the characters in the second Neal Stephenson book, The Confusion, which I have just finished reading and which in all honesty has made me far more interested in the 18th century than I have ever been! On the train there, I was reading about the celebrations of her 18th birthday, and here I had jumped forward - or back - in time to the apartments she lived in at the end of her life!

Home long before K to prepare some of the food for our Easter Sunday lunch party - braised broad beans in tomatoes and herbs, the first time I had cooked beans from dried, and I think the only advantage of this was that they held together better during the long cooking process because in the end I am not sure the dish was all that tasty! I also made lemony biscuits and blackberry ice cream for dessert, using the blackberries we picked on my birthday last year, which have been taking up space in the freezer since then - along with a blackberry and apple pie filling, and quite a few raspberries as I rediscovered to my interest...

On Saturday we journeyed out to Little Chalfont - via the urban wasteland of Watford, due to multiple engineering works on the railways - for the interment of K's grandfather Robert's ashes, in the churchyard in Chenies where he now rests with Betty, his wife of over 60 years. We had a nice family lunch in the pub nearby, then back to the flat for the last time, to choose any books and CDs we wanted to keep, and help K's parents and uncle load furniture onto the hire van, to clean out cupboards and sort what remains into boxes. The sale should be completed by the end of April - fingers crossed - but the flat should be empty by the end of this week. It suddenly struck K as we were leaving that he would never go back there.

Home to marinade the lamb for Easter Sunday lunch and mix up another batch of blackberry ice cream.

On Sunday morning we had to prepare the rest of the food for Sunday lunch but also receive K's father and uncle and the hire van full of furniture K was inheriting from his grandparents, which he had loaded up the day before. This included two bookcases - one of which was made by his great grandfather who was a cabinet maker - and to make room for these, K had to take everything off the two (smaller) bookcases we already had ... so at one point our sitting room was just a pile of books, and 6 lunch guests due in less than half an hour...! But amazingly everything got delivered, fitted into place and books shoved back into them at random, and by the time the doorbell rang for the first guest, it was as if nothing had ever been out of place!

They're rather beautiful pieces of furniture but they give the flat a strong feeling of living in the past that I haven't quite got used to yet. They're the kind of cabinet that might have furnished this flat when it was originally built in the 1930s.




And so to lunch. We followed a Greek-inspired menu by chef Maria Elia, from the food magazine we subscribe to, Olive. Over the years it has come to seem very repetitive and there is far too much Gordon Ramsay in it for my liking, but in every issue there are always 2 or 3, sometimes more, new recipes which we try, and which keep us experimenting with food, and for want of a good substitute, we keep buying it.

This lunch menu started with halloumi and a nice salad made with fennel, celery, olives and parsley; and in addition to the braised broad beans, was accompanied by lemon-roasted potatoes with capers, and wilted spinach with pine nuts and a dressing made with sultanas, herbs and red wine vinegar. But of course the star of the feast was the paper-wrapped leg of lamb that we had marinated overnight with garlic and plentiful herbs and spices and more lemon juice - quite a number of lemons lost their lives to put our lunch on the table! This was the result:

served up on a lovely mid-19th century platter which I inherited from my grandmother, and enjoyed by all - but especially by K and I for whom this was the first meat to pass our lips in 6 weeks!! It was gorgeous!!

A long lingering Sunday lunch with Lindsay & Russell and Wanda & Az, that went on until about quarter to 8, which is how we like our Sunday lunches, and all the better for not having to go to work today...

And so to Easter Monday. We finally got a lie-in this morning - K shocked me into wakefulness by looking at the clock and saying it was 1.15!! Which fortunately it wasn't - the pillow was obscuring the first 1! A lazy breakfast - I am now reading the 3rd of the Neal Stephenson books, The System of the World, which K is jealous about because he hasn't read this one yet! - and then we took ourselves off to the Ritzy for some mindless entertainment in the form of Clash of the Titans, which was great! I love the original film and of course this was nothing like that, but there's nothing like a bit of Greek mythology to get you going!

It was shown in 3D, as everything seems to be these days - the Ritzy had obviously run out of 3s for the board out front where they still put up all the film titles of what's on that week in the traditional way, which I love, and so they were advertising Clash of the Titans in 4D! What would that be?? You are actually in the movie I suppose! But I like the idea of it because it always reminds me of Victorian stereoscope images - the 3D glasses you have to put on are literally the modern equivalent of the stereoscope glasses you used to have to use. Though the technology for creating these images in film-form has obviously greatly advanced, somehow this little bit of lo-fi kit is such a pleasing link to the past...

K is now sorting books, CDs and DVDs, trying to fit everything onto the new bookcases, which have smaller and narrower shelves, and integrating the not-very-restrained pile of books and CDs we brought from his grandfather's. If we end up moving to this new flat, chances are that none of this is going to fit...

Weddings and restaurants

'Angel Face' beakers by contemporary potter Anja Lubach

From the Royal Academy (see previous post), we decamped to tea in The Gallery café at Fortnum and Mason, a joint treat for my parents for my father's birthday at the start of March, and Mothers' Day last weekend. We used to go there for tea with my grandmother when my sister and I were little and she came 'up to town', and when I suggested it, little did I know that a proper Fortnum's afternoon tea in the St James's Restaurant costs more than £30 a head!! So we didn't go there... But abiding memories of bumping into the actress Lorraine Chase in the ladies loos, and my toddler sister saying something which made her laugh - though whatever it was she said is now lost in the mists of time...

We caught them up on my cousin Henry's wedding yesterday - a slightly surreal affair, since it was incredibly High Church, which didn't seem at all in keeping with their personalities, which tend towards the Gothic... Henry's taste in music basically equals Iron Maiden, not Fauré's Canticle for Jean Racine, which was one of the musical interludes sung by the church's very own choir; and Rhiannon's bridesmaids were extensively tattooed, all of which made the proceedings a little disconnected from the surroundings. Which were beautiful - the high Victorian glamour of All Saints church off Regent Street, followed by the spectacular views across London from the top floor restaurant of the St George's Hotel...

They looked happy and it was obviously the wedding that they wanted, which is the main thing. We did some very superficial catching up with my uncle and aunt - my uncle being my father's first cousin - and had quite interesting conversations over dinner with the other family extras with whom we were seated: assorted godparents and parental cousins, one of whom turned out to be a former Tory MP, another the chap who invented Lincolnshire Poacher, one of K's favourite cheeses! Amusing to see him so star-struck when he learned this, and suddenly incapable of making conversation about cheese! Lincolnshire Poacher is one of our staples at our now-traditional Sunday night cheese board - and inspired by last night, K stocked up at Fortnum's this afternoon!

As for wedding present - we bought Henry and Rhiannon a bowl in the style of the beakers illustrated at the top of this post, a handmade piece by ceramic artist Anja Lubach, from her 'Angel Face' series. I find them beautiful but also slightly disturbing - I am hoping their gothic style appeals to the newlyweds! We bought it at Contemporary Ceramics in Somerset House - a small gallery which exhibits the work of many contemporary potters, a really nice place to browse, and not overly expensive if you want to buy a unique present for someone.

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We both indulged in a little bit of beef during dinner last night - naughtily as, don't forget, K has given up meat for Lent, which perforce means I have too. I have to admit that I have had fish a few times, though K has been very good about sticking to his principles (apart from a couple of occasions when he actually forgot he'd given up meat!). I was amazed he didn't give himself a little holiday when we went to Moro last weekend with Nigel and Ginny - a really fabulous experience that we certainly hope to repeat after Easter, but also after we have saved up since it was not cheap!

For those that do not know, it's a restaurant in the attractive parade of shops and restaurants at Exmouth Market - which I think has largely grown up due to the Moro owners' patronage of the area - run by a husband and wife team of chefs (Sam and Sam Clark) who combine Spanish and North African cooking and well-sourced ingredients. We have all their cookbooks, and regularly use their recipes, which I find to be reliable and delicious. But in all these years - despite frequent good intentions - we have never actually been to eat there. Mainly because until very recently, we have not been in a financial position to do so.

But what an experience! The first thing that assailed us was the amazing smell coming from the open kitchen at the back of the restaurant - which was a constant delight, changing and wafting over us throughout the two and a bit hours we were there. The menu was short and simple, and you just knew that everything on it would be fantastic. Nigel and Ginny both had amazing looking meat dishes - in fact, I did have a nibble of Ginny's lamb which was gorgeous! - while I had an absolutely huge plate of grilled bream, and K had the vegetable mezze, which actually looked pretty gorgeous too.

But I think what amazed us all the most was the service - completely unostentatious, just quietly and confidently excellent. Somehow they knew who had ordered what, despite it being somebody different bringing the food from the person who had taken our order. There is probably a crude trick to doing this, but my, it's impressive and makes you feel you're in the presence of great restaurateurs!

Despite the fabulousness of Moro, we have found that it is easy to be vegetarian - if you cook your meals yourself. On the few occasions we have eaten lunch or dinner out over the last five weeks, our experience has been that interesting vegetarian options cannot regularly be found on menus. Vegetarian options yes, but options that you might actually want to and enjoy eating - not so much. Surprisingly, since I thought vegetarianism would have been pretty mainstream by now.

Though I haven't exactly missed eating meat, I have found myself craving sausages and mash a couple of times. And K's idea of a meat-free meal generally involves plenty of cheese, so it has not been an altogether healthy few weeks!

Autumnal musings...

Well, K completed his half-marathon in an amazing (I think!) 2 hours and 7 minutes!! I have uploaded some photos of the day to our Flickr photostream, but here are a couple of before and after shots, and a close-up of his well-earned eco-friendly medal, that he proudly sported for the rest of the day!

It was gorgeously autumnal - the temperature was cold, but just right for running (I am reliably informed). While he did the hard work of running, I wandered around the 'Food and Fitness festival', getting some breakfast (the marathon started at 9.30!) and picking up as many freebies for K as I could - Lucozade recovery drinks, and energy bars. I was amused that the members of the Welsh Guards band seemed to be making the most of this as well!


After reaching my tolerance level of browsing through marquees, I went to sit by the Serpentine and drink my thermos of coffee and read my book (Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel - a well-deserved winner of the Booker Prize recently! I'm loving it!) until it was time to wander down towards the finishing line to see if I could see K coming in... Eventually I did, though of course I was not quite ready in time with the camera, so only got a picture of his back disappearing into the distance... Because of the crush of people at the finish line - there were 10,000 runners taking part!! - we had agreed to meet at the Albert Memorial, where we sat for a while watching the stream of runners flowing past... I had to wonder to myself what on earth makes people put themselves through this! But trying to raise money for a worthy cause goes a long way to helping you towards the finish line...

Speaking of which, K has not quite reached his sponsorship target, so if you're reading this, please go to his JustGiving page and help him raise money for International Action for Iraqi Refugees - there are 4.5 million orphans in Iraq and about 1 million young widows, and even if each of us gave a small amount, together we can help them to survive and build themselves a future and a better life.

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We have just got back from a lovely weekend in Oxford, visiting wonderful friends Bob and Bev for dinner on Saturday night (after a full day spent in the British Library, so we felt very virtuous), and a lovely Sunday lunch in Woodstock today with Annie and Honey, whom I don't think we've seen since their wedding, nearly 3 years ago... shocking. It was great to catch up, and it felt so lovely to be 'out in the country' - and as always cosily nostalgic to be back in Oxford, wandering around old haunts, seeing what has closed down and what is new, and letting those old memories flood in - things you have not thought about for years....

It is well and truly autumn now. The trees are at that point where they have not yet shed all their leaves and they are turning all the colours of the autumn spectrum. It has been really beautiful cycling through the parks. Very cold though, with crisp autumn mornings, which turn into those lovely days where the sky is blue and sunny but there is a chill in the air. People are starting to burn logs on their fires, or make bonfires of fallen leaves, and there is a wonderful woodsmoke smell in the air, which I always associate with autumn. It is still that period before the clocks go back, when it is just dark all the time - when you travel to and from work in the dark - but at the moment it is lovely in the mornings, and gets gradually darker as I cycle home... Lights come on in houses, and as you glide past you can see glimpses of people's cosy interior worlds...

I had not been cycling regularly for a while and had found myself feeling really quite stressed out - one of the reasons for not cycling was the need to get to work promptly, then working really long stressed out days and just wanting to get home quickly and flop. I was feeling like I was not at all on top of my work and that it was all just too much. Plus, it coincided with a period when I had run out of Evening Primrose Oil - which is supposed to keep your hormonal levels nice and balanced, though I don't know whether any of that alternative medicine stuff is really true... But I decided that the exercise from cycling would help me cope with feeling stressed. Also, my plantar fasciitis had come back after - I don't know, maybe it's just over a year since I had it - and cycling seemed to help it last time. And indeed having cycled almost every day for the last two weeks (and got some new Evening Primrose...) I feel much much better and far less angsty about everything now - though I still have a sore heel. The first two days I decided to get back on the bike it rained - it has been very dry this year - but I was determined, and even though I was soaked by the time I got to work, I also found it fresh and invigorating!

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The other day, I was cycling along Hayter Road, having just set off for work, and one of these new bike-mounted traffic wardens was there writing someone a ticket and he called out to me as I went past, so I stopped and turned back to him expectantly - I didn't think I had done anything to inflate the ire of a traffic warden (or parking enforcement officer, or whatever we're supposed to call them these days...). He said, "Excuse me - what colour would you call this car?" I looked at it, and to me it seemed a kind of dark greyish silver, so I said, "Silver?", which seemed to be a word he had never heard before. He thanked me and I went on my way. But as I mused on this humorous encounter, I soon began to realise it was in fact a rather philosophical question he had asked me, because almost every car parked along that part of my journey was some or other shade of silver, and how would you differentiate between them?

I began to think that if I were Paul Auster or W.G.Sebald - which quite clearly I am not, and never could even begin to approach the brilliance of those literary geniuses who are my heroes - that this momentary encounter with the traffic warden could have been the inspiration for some brilliant piece of writing... Oh well, being me, this is what you get.

Resurfacing slowly

I'm sitting here with a cup of green tea and a Ben's Cookie (triple chocolate chip!) which I bought purely in honour of Yamin - she always raved about them when we were all living in Oxford and used to buy us boxes of the things, but I associate them with her and Oxford and because she is now in New Zealand and we in London I never eat the things. But I was passing their stall in High Street Kensington station earlier, and decided to pay memory lane a visit. Very tasty!

It is probably that Oxford is in my mind, since we were there at the weekend. We went down for a brilliant wedding - and if you know us, and how we usually feel about weddings, you'll be surprised to hear me say that. It was Polly and Steve's, and the theme was village fête - they had the service in a tiny, beautiful English country church, then the reception was in Polly's parents' garden, or rather in the field behind it, which had this amazing view down into the valley and the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford. The village fête theme manifested itself in the form of all the silly games you usually find at such things - welly wanging (!), coconut shy, skittles, treasure map... There were genuinely amusing speeches (including a singalong element to the best men double-act) and after dinner highly amusing barn dancing - you could hardly hold K back, and normally he's the last person to get up on the dance floor! It was all just joyous and great fun, and Polly and Steve seemed to be having a brilliant time, and that's the main thing.

Unfortunately, having finally got my hands on the camera to download the pictures of the day, it seems as if it had accidentally set itself to film rather than photo, and there are now lots of brief moments when I thought I was taking a snap, followed by lots of footage of the ground, as I held the camera in front of me ready for the next photo opportunity. It makes you rather sick watching it through actually! There is the occasional good capture - like this one, the first of the barn dances, based on a Central European wedding dance apparently...

I don't think I'd been to Oxford since February last year, when we went down for K's PhD viva. After 10 years of living there, it is so utterly familiar, that is never weird going back - it just feels like you've only been up to London for a day or so, though maybe some of the shops or cafes are different. There's a Costa cafe on Cowley Road for god's sake! Talk about gentrification. Still, I don't miss living there - I enjoy London too much now. But it was so so wonderful to catch up with old friends - Bob and Bev, who we stayed with, squeezing ourselves into their front room as Bev's brother was already staying; and Nigel and Ginny, who are back in Oxford now, living in an entire corner tower of Christ Church's Tom Quad! We had a wonderful lunch with them and an idyllic few hours sitting out in the Sunday afternoon sun in their garden, surrounded by medieval Oxford walls and the large fig trees which are the offspring of the seedlings which Edward Pococke - first chair of Arabic at the University of Oxford, in 1636, and who used to live in Nigel and Ginny's very corner tower - brought back with him from the Middle East!

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I am now on leave from work for two weeks, trying to shift gears in my brain and start thinking about our Scottish holiday... It's been an utterly crazy time at work since getting back from my Research leave - not just trying to get on with the remaining work on my book, but also getting sucked in to work on the Jameel Prize, which has been interesting but unexpected - it was never something on my work plan for this year. And the second round of comments and edits came back from the copy editor on Friday, leaving me no choice but to spend the first two mornings of my holiday working on those files, so they could be delivered to the designer today. The next time I see my text it will be starting to look like a book!

The weekend in Oxford felt like the start of the holiday, though K has the big academic conference on Henry VIII this week, so I have hardly seen anything of him! I have been enjoying being out and about - on Monday afternoon I went to visit Moya, and went with her to collect her kids from nursery, and played Lego with them while she prepared the supper. I even got to read Sam a bedtime story (actually 3!) - which was fun for being something I don't do every day! Yesterday I went to see the J.W.Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy - as you may know, I have a soft spot for the Pre-Raphaelites, and though he was not really one of the Brotherhood, he worked in their mode, and created powerful visions of the classical world, especially of Homeric myths, or moments of tension from episodes in Ovid's Metamorphoses, just before a captivated all-too-human (usually) man falls prey to divine vengeance. His powerful, magical women fill the canvas and conjure long-forgotten stories from the Odyssey, or the Morte d'Arthur... I'd forgotten how these were the images that first inspired my interest in classical myths and legends. I love his painting St Eulalia (1885), and the striking contrast of the martyred virgin's unclothed body against the falling snow.


Today I have been pre-holiday shopping - how is it that that always entails spending about £50 in Boots?! On this occasion, I was investing in insect repellant, since everyone I have told that we are going to the Outer Hebrides has warned me about midges - and I am someone who usually receives a lot of attention from biting insects! I got 3 for 2 of a spray called Jungle Formula, the ‘Extra Strength’ variety for ‘Tropical Use’ - hopefully that will keep off the little devils!!!

It's time to think about cooking dinner - I'm doing Valentine Warner's 'spring chicken salad'. I really like his recipes - he does a series in the food magazine we get, Olive, about 'What to Eat Now', so it's always seasonal ingredients but I think he makes really imaginative and fresh combinations. It's also a specially nice meal, as tonight's our last night together until Sunday and holiday: tomorrow I'm going to my parents' and my sister and I then fly to Edinburgh on Friday morning, for a couple of days of girly together time, then we meet K at the airport on Sunday to fly to the edge of the world - Stornoway. I wanted to check in with the blog before disappearing again, so you knew I was still here! I am sure when we're back from our chilled-out week in our Hebridean cottage there will be lots of pictures to post and lots of seal- and dolphin- and whale- and puffin-watching to update you on... Speak to you then!

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.

Radio Silence

Well, howdy! It's been a while. Sorry for the radio silence - I have been wrangling with Chapter 3, and have been avoiding email, and pretty much anything that is not in some way influenced by the art of Islamic Spain. Apart from Henry VIII - though he was influenced, but this is not the time or place for that discussion. All the big Henry VIII launches have been happening in the last few weeks - the opening on Wednesday evening at the British Library, of their exhibition Man and Monarch, was on the actual 500th anniversary of Henry officially assuming the throne - marked by K and his fellow Tudor historians all wryly commiserating each other on the death of Henry VII... I'll have to defer talking about that exhibition until I've been back to look at it properly.

The previous week was the party to launch all K's work at Hampton Court - details here. It all looks fantastic - they have re-presented the Tudor palaces, including hanging the 'Haunted Gallery' (a long corridor which is used as a paintings gallery, hung with fabulous portraits from the Royal Collection) with rich fabrics, as it would have been in the Tudor period, and bringing together in Henry's council chamber (never before open to the public!) a small exhibition of contemporary portraits of Henry's wives (the first time that's ever been done!) and daughters, together with an object of significance from their lives - and much much more ... The conceit is that the palace is 'dressed' for the wedding of Henry and Katherine Parr ("survived"), which was held at Hampton Court in 1543, and you are the courtiers in attendance: there are staged events throughout the day, when you can meet help the bride and groom prepare for the wedding, or be the first to congratulate them after the ceremony... They have hired three actors to rotate playing Henry every day for a year, and I must say it really brings everything to life, when you're just wandering around the palace and then everything stops to make way for the King ... You get caught up in the scenario and really believe it's him!


I could go on and on - but you'll just have to go along and see for yourself! It is certainly enough to fill a fun day out, which has been one of the main purposes. Hampton Court is just that little bit too far away (though it is really easy to get to - when the trains are running!) for people to automatically think of going there, but amazingly, they had 16,000 visitors over the Easter bank holiday weekend!! We were some of them - K had to go in anyway, so we arranged to go with friends on Easter Sunday. The range of projects that K was involved in for this was so wide that I really had not that much idea what he was working on, as it was too much to talk about after he'd been hard at it at work all day, so that was the first time I really got the chance to find out, and to see it all in action, and people enjoying themselves. Visitors are encouraged to dress for court, by putting on these fine velvet(een) robes - here's K and our friend Az pretending to be Holbein's Ambassadors!


Not that K can relax now it's all open - he's been involved in a whirl of media coverage, including his spot on Today a few weeks back, and the Time Team special on Tudor palaces on Easter Monday! There's also a documentary going around on the History channel, but no-one we know has Sky, so we have to wait for the DVD to watch that!! And this week he has had to give two study day papers, so ended up working through the night on Monday to get the first one written...

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As a result, we're desperately planning to 'get away from it all' and have a holiday this year, so we're planning a retreat to the Outer Hebrides (literally) for mid-July - the earliest 'window' in both our schedules... But we did make sure to take Easter Monday off, and had an absolutely wonderful day out at Bexhill. I wanted to go to the seaside and see some nice architecture, so we decided on Bexhill because of the De La Warr Pavilion, built in 1935, the UK's first public building to be constructed in the Modernist style.


You just can't take a bad photo of it. There was also something truly amazing about the contrasting colours - of the sea and the sky and the pavilion, and the lawn out front which seemed impossibly green. This picture doesn't do it justice.

We got up reasonably early (considering how tired we were!) and managed to get a 9.30 train, and somehow I'd been organised enough to prepare a thermos of coffee and some hot cross buns for breakfast on the train. We read our books and dozed for the two-hour journey (already sounding good, eh?) Beautiful weather had been forecast for the Easter weekend, which had so far failed to materialise, but the clouds burned off and the sun came out as we sat on a perfectly-located bench overlooking the sea, with an easy view backwards to the pavilion, eating what I am reliably informed were the best fish-and-chips on the South Coast (from Louis's Fish Bar on Sea Road - go there)


We literally spent every last penny we had on this feast and it was worth every one of them!!

Quite a number of boats came out as well - it turned into a gorgeously beautiful day.


The thing was, we had absolutely no mental energy left, so it was the perfect day out, because it was all just so beautiful to look at and soak up, and we pretty much just wandered and sat and gazed all day, without having anything at all to say.

This picture sums up my mental state that day!

We sat on the shingle and K found it endlessly rewarding to throw stones at the sea. He took this picture while lying on the beach!


The added bonus was that while I had known pretty much what to expect from the Pavilion, I was totally unprepared for the gorgeous Victorian Orientalist sea-front cottages - we're seriously considering moving there!


Here are some gratuitous gorgeous views of Bexhill and the Pavilion (it's an exhibition venue, but we had absolutely no difficulty in avoiding looking at any of the art - tea on the terrace was much more the order of the day).

View from the terrace

Up the stairwell © KR

Down the stairwell © KR
I love the colours - though they seem to be slightly flattened here

A meditative view out to sea...

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So it turns out I have an inflamed ulnar. This is compressing the nerves which run down the left side of my body and giving me numbness and tingling sensations in my arm and leg - and making it not so easy to type for long stretches. At least it is that and not some other more worrying cause of numbness and tingling down one side ... it induced some anxiety for several days until I decided to be grown-up and go and see the doctor yesterday. I have to take ibuprofen for two weeks to help the swelling go down and hopefully the symptoms will subside. It is probably caused by how I tuck my arm under my head while sleeping, aggravated by the intensive typing I'm doing while I write my book, and by cycling - apparently this condition is quite common in cyclists, and is also known as "handlebar palsy"!!! What is it with me and oddly-named nervous inflammations?? I had plantar fasciitis in my heel last year!!

I am also under doctor's orders to relax this weekend! Which fortunately coincides with that slight fallow period between finishing one chapter and beginning the planning process of the next - which will also be the last!! (apart from the Introduction) Chapter 4 is about the 19th-century rediscovery of Spain's Islamic past and the revival of 'Moorish' (if you must, though I don't like to) styles in art and architecture... So I plan to do some gentle reading about that today, to get me in the mood - and then my sister is coming over tonight (hurrah!) and we're going to see In the Loop at the Ritzy - the first film we've been to see since Frost/Nixon (oh dear!) ... And tomorrow we're going to plan our holiday, over brunch. Doctor's orders.