The engagement of James and Gabrielle
Now that all the appropriate people have been told, I can announce to the world the engagement of our son James with Gabrielle, whom he met at university in Montreal. They live in Ontario, Canada, but decided to formalise their engagement while on holiday in Scotland recently. We wish them all the happiness in the world.
Norfolk days
The original plan was that the new electric Aga would be delivered this week and that I’d spend some days in a domestic goddess fug of making Christmas cake and freezer meals in advance of the festive family onslaught but, alas, it was not to be.
Do you remember Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence?” I loved that book, and better still the audio version and, a massive Francophile with a deep-seated love of the area where teenage me learned to speak French properly and drink red wine, I imagined my own villa in the Luberon on the road between Lacoste and Bonnieux where I’d bathe in the bright Provençal sunshine and eat all the looong lunches lovingly prepared by wizened grandmas in tiny, rustic shacks, accompanied by the scent of wild thyme on the air.
Alas effing Brexit eliminated that possibility and Norfolk is a much easier journey but just as in the book, we have the same encounters with all the friendly and enthusiastic trades who come for a long chat and say that they can do the work immediatement and are never seen again. I am currently experiencing this with at least three trades, and my new aubergine Aga is languishing in its warehouse until an electrician can be persuaded to come and install an electric supply. Let us hope that it all happens before Christmas. I don’t think I can fit a goose in my airfryer.
Nevertheless in my anxiety to do some squirrelling away of food for winter guests I have managed to make some pasta using my new pasta press on my geriatric Kitchenaid. Here was my first attempt. This is a “before'“ picture because I’m too embarrassed to show you an “after” picture.
I should not have let all my fusilli accumulate in that bowl and, instead, lain them out to dry on a very well floured baking sheet instead. You use a lot of flour. Sadly just-shaped pasta is almost as sticky as sourdough, and my shapes all stuck together. I did dry them out while having a silent hissy fit and put them in the freezer, and they separated out just fine in boiling salted water the next day. I know what to do next time. If you’re not winning you’re learning.
The following day I extruded large macaroni shapes and, still in the spirit of learning, I realised that I had done something wrong because it surely would have been quicker to nip to Waitrose. In Beckenham. From here.
Time Horizon at Houghton Hall
I finally managed to catch Antony Gormley’s Time Horizon installation at Houghton Hall this week, before it closes at the end of next week. It’s 100 identical castings of the naked artist on an horizontal plane into the house and grounds of Houghton using one statue set into the floor of an entrance hall in the house as its datum level.
I don’t pretend to know anything about art, and I’m embarrassed at my lack of education in this area, but as far as I understand it, Art prompts and excites emotions in the viewer. Indeed, Gormley says of his installation “It is only the thoughts and feelings that arise in the viewer that give this work meaning.”
I’m still processing my thoughts but to me it spoke of isolation in a world full of people. Set against the magnificence of the Palladian/Baroque house, with the russets and golds of the trees, white deer roaming wild in the park, on a day of glorious autumn weather, the austere expressionless iron-cast statues with their round casting disks on chests and buttocks made a contrast between nature and artifice. Here are some of my pictures:
Out and abouting
I ran out of eggs for my pasta so I finally paid a visit to our local egg shop up the road, which works on an honesty box arrangement or, rather, a slit in a wall for your exact change and a CCTV camera to make sure that you pay up so a dishonesty box arrangement, really. By the time of my visit they’d sold out of duck eggs but were still well-stocked with chickens’ hard work.
This pretty church gate in Docking caught my eye. I liked the way it’s decorated not only with conventionally-red Remembrance poppies, but also white Peace Pledge Union poppies and the purple poppies to remember the animals who served and lost their lives in wars and conflicts. The third picture is of Thornham beach. It’s quite a long walk from the car to the beach, which means that less doughty souls might be put off, but Fergus loves romping around the mud flats and the sand dunes adorned with hummocks of grasses on the way there and back and then goes and sits in the sea. I’m pretty sure I saw a Greyshank foraging in the sand on its long migration from the sub-Arctic to overwintering in Africa.
Until next week that is all, though I’m considering a post about my pasta-making adventure in a couple of days.
Have fun.
G x
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