National Poetry Day

Hurrah for National Poetry Day! I hope you enjoyed the clip of Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams reading Betjeman's Death in Leamington...Betjeman, Williams and Smith all together on Parky, now that's what I call good telly. You know, I'm the kind of mother who sends the kids to school with a poem in their bag even if their teachers have not specifically asked that the class do so. Their teachers must love me.

Well, anyway, I was gobsmacked to learn that T. S. Eliot was voted Britain's favourite poet this year. He's hardly accessible is he? My hunch is that a lot of people saw that excellent poetry series on BBC4 and half fell in love with Robert Webb and his exploration of Eliot's Prufrock...Let us go then you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table;" ...he wasn't half good at first lines "April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire"...good stuff!

Well for your delectation here are the final lines of Choruses from the Rock (X). Enjoy!

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad

when the day ends, when the play ends: and ecstasy

is too much pain.

We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the

night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day

is long for work or play.

We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are

glad to sleep,

Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the

night and the seasons.

And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;

Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.

Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is

dappled with shadow.

We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding,

to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams

of our eyes.

And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we

may set thereon the little lights for which our

bodily vision is made.

And we that Thee that darkness reminds us of light.

O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great

glory!

Home Tracts, Home Facts

Well, eons ago I promised to do a few proper book reviews and I find myself with a spare hour (before my mum comes around for a cuppa) so I thought I'd introduce you to the wonderful world of "home tracts". Now, if you've been reading this blog for a while and fancy starting a little collection of antique and vintage homemaking books, start with home tracts. First, because they're much, much, cheaper than cookbooks and housekeeping manuals, in fact I've never paid for than £3 for a tract. Secondly, many of the tracts are written with the working classes in mind, and unfortunately you get very little insight into the lives of working men and women from 19th century cookbooks, even Soyer's Shilling Cookery, which was intended as a manual for the working classes, contained recipes far out of their price range. Thirdly, they are often narrative based, modern day parables of thrift, cleanliness and prudence and the efficacy of white wash and home-grown parsley, and as such are very entertaining. However, I should warn you that this post is not merely a book review, but gets a little impassioned an political towards the end.

Many tracts were either given away or sold cheaply by non-conformist chapels and are very much a product of the Evangelical Revival. What we must remember about this time in Britain's religious history is that the non-conformists were responsible for the vast majority of 19th century social reform, they simply took the Christian notion of equality and brotherhood of man with much more seriousness than the established church, and the established political parties, and therefore were quite a radical bunch of old dears. Indeed, Roy Hattersley says that the fundamental norms and values of the Labour movement were built firmly on Methodist ideals and not socialist ideals, and I tend to agree with Roy, as he's a nice chap and a good social historian. So when we read these home tracts we see the writer giving a dignity and a sense of pride and equality to the working poor in the narrative. We also get the idea of former sins forgiven, a new life encouraged, ways of self improvement suggested: reading them is a little like reading simplified snippets of a Mrs Gaskell novel, therefore.

But before I rattle on any further, here's a snippet from the first story in Home Happiness, which I imagine was first published in the mid-19th century and is an absolute smasher of a tract. In it a good working man's housewife teaches her slatternly neighbour how to run a house.

Above everything, pray don't have a mess when Eben comes home. It's shameful how some women drive their husbands to the public house, as one may say, by having the place all dirt and litter and confusion, when a man comes home tired, of an evening, wanting a little comfort. Such women have a small right to complain of drunken husbands, seems to me.

Well, you could deconstruct this bit until the cows come home, couldn't you? I detect a waft of the temperance movement, which is as it should be. I'm reminded of the bit in George Eliot's Amos Barton where she describes the miners of North Warwickshire as being better paid than the poor curate but spending their money almost entirely on drink. Indeed, one or two Methodist factory and mine owners in my town formed social clubs, libraries and so on for their workers specifying sobriety as a form of membership to such clubs. What interests me most is that on both sides of my family my great-grandfathers were miners, and indeed alcoholics, and my maternal grandmother, and paternal grandfather told stories of real hardship, poverty and deprivation. However, the question we have to ask ourselves is this. Is it an act of empowerment to say to the woman that she could keep her husband away from the beer simply by keeping a tidy home? Or, is the tract blaming the slatternly wife for driving her husband towards the drink? I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, deconstruct away, gentle reader!

Now, most of the stories in the book have an urban setting. (Is it me or have the urban poor in this country been seen as "problem " for nearly 200 years now? If so it's about time we got sorted out.) However, there is one tale in the book which has a country setting, and as such is a good read for any fan of Larkrise to Candleford, as it acts as a mirror to the scenes of country poverty and resilience in Flora Thompson's great book. In it we again read a story of a rather exemplary country couple and their imprudent and weak-willed neighbours.

"I've a good deal of binding that must be done this week, Lucy; can't you do some?" asked James, one morning a short time after they were married. "not to-day; 'tis Hilton Fair, you know, and Jane Richards and I are going. You'll come too won't you?" "I can't spare the time - I'm all behind now; we were out so much last week - I think, Lucy, you might as well stay home. Ain't you going to make bread? We've had none but baker's loaves ever since we married, and I don't like that at all." "Nonsense, you are always bothering about the bread. Besides, if we go to the fair, we shan't want any bread in the house," said Lucy, laughing; "so, come along; the shoes will keep to tomorrow." Poor James stood shilly-shally. He knew he ought to stay at home. and do the work her had promised to finish; but Lucy pulled him by his curly hair, and told him that he looked so handsome that she should be quite proud of going to Hilton Fair with him; and just then Jane Richards, with her smart beau came up; and he was afraid of being laughed at, and being called a grubbing cobbler (his wife called hime so once, when he hestitated about going to a tea party at a public house); so he put away his tools, and dressed himself in his Sunday clothes, to go to the fair.

Oh dear, poor imprudent James talked into downing tools by his pleasure-seeking wife. Well, you'll not be surprised to know that no good comes from going to Hilton Fair. Jane Richards gets drunk and finds herself pregnant by her smart beau (a soldier who hot-foots it away once he's done the dirty deed) , James loses business, after getting a reputation for idleness, the family falls into poverty and "after six years, no-one could have believed that the squalid, ragged-looking Mrs Elliot, with her four dirty little children, was the smart pretty Lucy who boasted of her many sweethearts." The sensible, frugal couple meanwhile had "children who regularly attended Sunday-school. The eldest son and daughter had become teachers...The girls had all been taught useful sewing; and could cut out a shirt, or even a pair of trowsers..." and all the children were taught that "honest working people, with the fear of God in their eyes, are often better off than some of those above them in the world."

Of course, fifty years later Maud Pember Reeves would debate the fact that all the working poor needed to improve their lot was an ability to keep house and keep sober. In Round About a Pound a Week (not a religious tract, but a Fabian society report), she details that despite frugality, cleanliness and sobriety the labouring London poor (the lower working classes) were still unable to afford to buy very little but bread and jam to eat, and the health of their children showed the lack of meat, dairy and vegetables in their diets. Her work, and the fact that the majority of drafted soldiers in the first world war were under-height) forced the government of the 1920s into giving schoolchildren free milk. What interests me, of course, is how far Pember Reeves ideal of "the state as co-parent" has morphed into the state as rich uncle. Labour's attempts at curing social deprivation and child poverty have been solely monetary based, we throw money at the urban poor, but we forget that the deprivation they face is cultural and curing that cultural deprivation is going to cost more money than giving out benefits. The state wanders into our lives and hopes we're not naughty with the money, and hopes we don't become too bothersome, and doesn't tell us how to use it, because we're all individuals and the state doesn't want to impose moral values on its nieces and nephews.

But it's no surprise to me that Labour has forgotten its roots, it's rather afraid of the people of whom it was formed to serve, it cannot converse with them without moralising to them, and Labour doesn't want to moralise because y'know that's not what liberals do, good liberals just throw money at any given situation and don't ask questions, of either bankers or part-time drug dealers on sink estates. So it simply doesn't moralise at all, it prefers its (politically safe) giddy rich uncle status. However, we must see a clear vision from our government on what a good life, a good community is and should be. The post-war Labour government managed this, it wasn't afraid to talk about equality, morality and community and it put it's money where its mouth was, it had a clear vision of post-war Britian and it acted on that vision. The early social reformers, Evangelical tract writers and trade unionists had a clear vision of the capabilities and needs of the people they served, they moralised a-plenty and knew what a good life was and offered a firm choice to their intended membership/readership. This is what we so desperately need now, a clear, from the ground-up, vision of British community life, and how the individual is responsible for their part in forming a civil society. And to do this we have to learn from our social history, learn from the likes of the tract writers and Pember Reeves. We need to empower our populace through moral education. We need a moral New Deal because without it those last vestiges of British community life we love and value will begin to crumble.

Gentle reader forgive me, but this is my post has been my online response to the Fiona Pilkington case. Barwell is on my doorstep and I know it quite well and I can tell you it's not that rough. It's just a bit rough and quite ordinary. It's not a Leicester sink estate, let alone a London sink estate, yet a group of local youth in Barwell bullied a mother and her learning disabled daughter so viciously that the mother set fire to herself and her child in a local lay-by. Asbos and handouts did not help Ms Pilkington and they did not help the children who caused her death, but instruction on how we are meant to behave as individuals, family members, and community members would have. By all means give benefits to those in real and desperate need, but please shirk no longer on expressing moral ideals. We need our bread, but we need our roses too.

Nice Things in the Post

Well, I was absolutely thrilled to win Angela's rather generous giveaway and even more thrilled to receive the bits in the post on Friday morning! The bunting is going to come in very useful for birthday season, which for us is also the Christmas period. It will be nice to have birthday bunting up as well as Christmas decorations. I also like the Celtic labels, which I may use to label the chutney and jam I'll give away for presents this year, very posh. But mostly I loved the buttons and lace, rooting through the bag reminded me of my childhood days playing in my Gran's button box. Many thanks Angela.

Dorset Apple Cake and Sloe Gin

Is it me or has it been a really good year for apples? We seem to have tons in our garden, as does my father-in-law, in fact I have so many apples I think I may officially have a glut. I suppose the beauty of apples is that if they are stored properly they will keep for a long time, but if you're like me, and a bit short of suitable storage space (full shed and no garage) it is probably best to think of dealing with them in the kitchen. So soon I will be jelly-ing and chutney-ing and plain old pulping until I have used every morsel of apple-y loveliness.

But before I go full throttle into preserving mania I thought I'd have a go at baking a Dorset Apple Cake. Now, I searched through all of my vintage and regional cookbooks looking for a good apple cake recipes and quite frankly it did my head in. Some recipes used the rubbing in method, some used the creaming method, some were resoundingly anti-spice, and others were very pro-spice. Some added raisins, some added cider, but all of them stated that you should use Bramley apples, which was a complete pain in the rear because my apples are eaters and not cookers. It seems to me that despite the Bramley proviso the Dorset Apple Cake, like most country food, is a movable feast, changing in ingredients and dependent on what a particular housewife had in her pantry from one September to the next. Therefore, gentle reader, I did the sensible and frugal thing and found a recipe which conformed to the contents of my baking cupboard.

The result was the above symphony in brown. I am obviously having a bit of a 1970s kick. Brown plate, brown cake, brown table runner, but you get the idea. You can find the recipe I used here. Yes, I rejected the old (books) in favour of the new (Internet) and I think the result was pretty good. Oh, and you're meant to serve it with clotted cream, which is always my favourite serving suggestion. Also, I did not buy Bramleys but stuck with my windfall eaters and the cake was still moist even though the apples retained their shape. For another good windfall apple recipe please visit Monix.

What could be more wholesome and innocent than a home grown apple? I don't know the answer to that one but I do know that it ain't sloe gin. Sloe gin is wicked, wicked stuff...but I like it. It's a little early to go picking sloes, but I think it may be a good idea to post a recipe now so that anyone who fancies a bit of foraging can get their eye in now a scope out a good bush or two.

Sloes are the fruit of the Blackthorn and are small purple fruits that look like tiny damsons. They're too bitter to eat but are great in cordials, jams and, more traditionally, in gin. The Blackthorn is a thorny old brute and it seems to me that the sloes like to nestle right amongst its inner branches so that foraging for them is always a bit of a painful affair, all in all you need to be dedicated to do it. There are all sorts of bits of advice out there on the best time to pick sloes and how to make the gin, in fact there's forum dedicated to sloe gin! Some say that you must pick them after the first frost, some say that November is the best month, some say October, some say you can pick them slightly unripe in late September and put them in the freezer for 24 hours to mimic a November frost: controversy reigns when it comes to the humble and prickly sloe. I prefer to find a bush and every now and then from late September onwards just have a quick feel of the sloes if they give a little then they're ready. Yes, I'm a secret sloe fondler.

Once you're home you can settle down at the kitchen table, pop the radio on, break out the gin and make the liqueur. Here's how.

If you're lucky enough to find two pounds of sloes, wash and then prick the fruit with a cocktail stick. Pop them in a large glass container - a couple of big kilner jars would do it - and sweeten them with a pound of sugar. Top up the kilner jars with 1 1/2 - 2 bottles of cheap gin. Decant after six months into bottles (I use old pasata jars, but you can get posh gin bottles from Lakeland) and drink. It's nicer the older it gets, but if you make it in October and want a little bit the following Christmas-time then have a fore-taste, it just won't be quite at it's optimum until the following Christmas.

Tips and Alternatives

• I buy Oliver Cromwell gin from Aldi for my sloe gin. It's cheap and cheerful and I like its ironic name. Don't buy good stuff as it makes little difference to the overall taste.
• That being said, some people buy cheap Vodka rather than gin as it tastes of little and doesn't interfere with the overall taste of the liqueur. I can see the sense in this, but I'm just too much of a traditionalist to try it.
• If you can't bear foraging for sloes then try damson gin. You could make it now very cheaply and it tastes incredibly good.
• My friend Zillah makes Bramble Vodka - just crush brambles and add them to a jar with some sugar and top up with vodka. Sounds yummy!
• Finally, proceed with caution! Sloe gin is pokey old stuff!
  

Something Vaguely Weird Has Happened

Yes, goode huswives, I have been voted number 293 out of the top 300 political blogs in the UK. I am so flabbergasted by this, that my political bits and bobs have registered with my readers, that I'm having to have a nice sit down and a cup of tea (just like Tony Benn I drink a lot of tea). When I've fully recovered from this shock, and only then, will I tackle the ironing. After I've done the ironing I'll write a manifesto for my proposed matriarchal dictatorship. Who said a housewife's life wasn't full of thrills and spills?

To be perfectly frank with you, I never thought I had enough readers to ever register for such a thing. So if you did vote for me, I want to thank you very much as I'm quite chuffed.

Time of Plenty

Then came the autumne all in yellow clad,

As though he joyed in him plenteous store,

Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad

That he had banisht hunger, which to-fore

Had by the belly oft him pinched sore:

Upon his head a wreath, that was enrold

With ears of corne of every sort, he bore;

And in his hand a sickle he did holde,

To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.

SPENSER

I do love this time of year. I like the sunshine of the days and the crisp chill of the mornings and I like that all the fruits of the hedgerow (bar the sloes) are ready for the picking. This year has been so good for fruit. My strawberries did very well and one or two plants are still fruiting, my apple tree was so well laden that a small branch broke under the weight of the fruit before they were fully ripe, I'll have to jelly them. But my first love has always been the wild fruits of our countryside: the elderberries, now just going over; the blackberries, to be picked before Michaelmas (lest the devil gets in 'em!); crab apples on the canalside* near where we live; and damsons and bullaces, old fashioned fruit so good for jamming and preserving.

Of course you can make a good gin with damsons**, just as you can with sloes. I've done it and the taste is just a tad fruitier that that of sloe gin. You can also make a great, easy setting, jam*** which is my personal favourite as it's nice and sharp and really good on generously buttered toast, preferably eaten whilst watching Sherlock Holmes on the telly on a rainy Saturday tea-time. However, this year we made chutney from our damsons. It was a bit of a family affair, the girls helped by squidging the damsons to remove the stones and stirring the chutney whilst it was simmering and I hope they'll remember that they made it when we sit down to cold cuts and chutney this Boxing Day. You'll find the recipe I used here, it's Delia Smith recipe so you just can't go wrong.

I'll be doing a lot more preserving this month, as a friend of ours from church always gives away free marrows from his allotment, so I'll make this chutney too, also I'll have to jelly my poor, fallen apples, perhaps with the last of the elderberries, and I may even go blackberry picking this weekend with the girls, if we get enough of them I'll jam them and if not I'll just stew them and make a pie on Michaelmas.

Now, I've been doing a lot of knitting over the summer and I think the knitting phase will continue throughout the autumn. I'm just finishing off my final bolero, just like the one above, but in petrol blue, and with a picot edging rather than a cable edge. These boleros have been fun to knit, particularly for my little one as they take on two and a bit balls of Wendy Mode Aran, which is cheap as chips in the shops at the moment and a good yarn for knitting kid's clothes (NOT HAND WASH! Hurrah!). However, the bolero fad has faded and my eldest has requested that I knit her some new gloves, I'm sorely tempted to use a vintage 1950s pattern I have for some fairisle ones, but I think she wants the gloves before summer starts so I may find a less ambitious pattern! I will post on them if they turn out to be exciting.

Well, I must be off now as I have to tidy up Dulcie's room. It's a pig sty (or, as my youngest says, a pig sigh - know this, gentle reader, the state of the room would indeed make a pig sigh) and I'm letting her off tidying it up because it is her first week of secondary school and she's feeling a bit overwhelmed. Oh, but before I go, did you know that the brilliant Tales from the Green Valley is being repeated on BBC4 on Tuesday evenings, 7:30? Well, you do now! Anon goode huswives, anon!

*You find crab apples on the canalside becasue the bargees would throw their apple cores onto the grass verges by the canal.

**If you want to know more about making sloe or damson gin I could post about it in October, but just let me know if it interests you.

***This is a great jam to make for the beginner. If you want the recipe email me.

Thank You Monix!

So I'm back from Spain, the lovely parentals, and 101 degree heat to autumn in England, life as usual (which I like) and a blog award from the delightful Monix. To be honest with you I'm a complete chicken about accepting blog awards simply because I don't like to go about nominating people and leaving others out, however with this one I'm just going to get over myself and do the award properly.

First, I have to list seven things about myself, which you in turn, gentle reader, may find amusing. Here goes.

1. I'm a horribly boring muso. In fact I'm such a horribly boring muso I could be a bloke. A single bloke in a pub trying to make conversation. I'm that boring about music. There are few genres of music that I haven't been "into", I've gone through jazz phases, classical (particularly the English pastoral and choral music) phases, I know more show tunes than Weyland Smithers, I'm into folk, selective country, classic pop and indie. Please don't get me talking about music, I'm so boring I could make your eyes bleed.

2. That being said, I can recite the lyrics to (rap, if you will) Bring tha Noise by seminal rap combo Public Enemy. Base. How low can you go? Death row, what a brother know. Once again back is the incredible, rhyme animal...I like to do it in a cheery, English schoolgirl manner, because the original is rather cross. When I rap my husband wets his knickers.

3. I adore poetry but can only remember one poem verbatim. It's This Be the Verse by Phillip Larkin. It's not a very pleasant poem but I did it for A' Level and taught it for A' Level and it stuck. My professional opinion of Larkin is that he's a right miserable old bugger.

4. I come from a long line of ne'er do wells. My grandfather (who was actually very nice) was shot during the war when he was on leave - up to no good, bad lad.

6. I don't use public libraries. I always forget to hand in my books on time and run up massive fines. The DH used to go into town on a Saturday morning to sort it out for me, which was both a brave and loving gesture, as he used to call the fines lady he dealt with "Conan the Librarian", she was a bit of a dragon.

7. All of a sudden I'm a respectable member of the community. I'm a mother of two, a dutiful wife, a school governor, a regular communicant (delightfully Anglican phrase, methinks), a junior church teacher, a Christening/Baptism prep lady, a jam maker, a soon to be member of the MU. Being a respectable member of the community unnerves me slightly, I'm waiting for the day when somebody takes me to one side and say: "Dulce Domum, we made a terrible mistake. We've just found out that when you were ten you stole a chocolate eclair from the Woolworth's pic'n'mix."



Oh, I feel like I've unburdened myself. You won't tell anybody about the pic'n'mix incident will you?



Here are my nominees for the award. All great bloggers who are well worth a read. Oh, and I won't be offended if you don't want to accept the award.



1. Frances at Left-Handed Housewife cracks me (considerably) up. She's so funny and she can write, which is as it should be as she's a professional children's writer. She's actually JK Rowling, but don't tell anyone.

2. Angela from Tracing Rainbows is also a respectable member of the community, she's even more respectable than me because she's a pastor's wife. I'm also pretty sure that she doesn't have a shameful chocolate eclair episode in her history either. She's funny, likes old hymns and knows her way around a pudding.

3. Jodi from Gumbo Lily is great. A hardy farmer's wife who knows her stuff, great recipes, good gardening, oodles of common sense and lovely photos of the landscape of her farm; a vast American landscape so different from what I'm used to.

4. Nan, from Letters from a Hill Farm, lives on the other side of America to Jodi, and she's well worth a read. She's bookish and likes her film and music, she's gentle and could probably win a gold medal in an international tray bake competition.

5. Nikki, from Rural Writings, is another gentle soul. She's a Canadian blogger, a farmer's wife, a mother and a grandma. She's full of practical advice, information and enthusiasm for her way of life.

6. I don't know Kindnessgirl. She's a new blogger to me, but I like her optimistic ethos and her commitment to goodness and practical love. It's a blog which is well worth a read.

7. Last, but not least, is Jenny from Little Jenny Wren. Jenny is my oldest blog pal. When I started my first blog (about simple living - I live simply in the suburbs, like Jenny) Jenny was one of my first commenters. I love her blog, I love her dolls and think she's jolly nice too.

Oh, honourable mention goes to my friend Sarah whose blog is not online at the moment, but if she ever starts up again I'll let you know as she's funny, ever-so-slightly cat obsessed, and a true thinking Christian.

Blimey, well if those nominated want to join in, here are the rules!

1.Thank the person who nominated you.
2.Copy the logo to your blog (or at least into the acceptance post...).
3.Link to the person who nominated you.
4.List 7 thing about yourself people may find interesting.
5.Make your own 7 Nominations.
6.Post links to those 7.
7.Leave them all a comment to let them know you nominated them.