Journal Entries
MVP's NaJoPoMo 10th
Posted Nov 10, 2014
For me, making jam is a useful way of using up fruit in season. This summer, I made blackcurrant jam from the fruit growing in our garden. The bush has fruited reliably for many years, although I do nothing to it, whereas vegetables I've carefully composted and sown often fail to produce anything at all. Blackcurrant is an easy jam to make because it sets well. I've sometimes come back from our old house in France with bags full of fruit and made jam - cherry, apricot and quince with apple. The cherry jam remained runny but I managed to get apricot to set by including a bag full of stones in with the fruit when I cooked it. (I think the pectin content of the fruit is in the stones.) Quince on its own is best made into jelly, but quince and apple jam set well and had a distinctive flavour. For some reason there were no quinces this year - they all went bad on the tree.
But for me, making marmalade is special. This may be because I remember helping my mother making marmalade, although I was rather in awe of her pressure cooker, which hissed like a domesticated dragon. It helps that the Seville oranges used for marmalade are in season in January and February, when it is pleasant being in a warm kitchen. But there is somethin therapeutic in stirring marmalade - the swirl of orange liquid, the sound of bubbles rising and the scent of oranges combine to produce a kind of benefient magic. 
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MVP's NaJoPoMo 9th
Posted Nov 9, 2014
Today is I for Ireland.
My maternal grandfather was born in Dublin. According to Mum's account, he came from an affluent Protestant family but ran away when he was 17. I don't know why - arguments with a stern father, a relationship with a poor girl? He ended up working in a car factory in Coventry, in what must have been the early days of the automotive industry, and met and married my grandmother. They had two daughters, with about 10 years gap between them, my mother being the younger.
When Mum was 11, her mother died and her father was unable
or unwilling to look after her. Mum went to live with her sister, who already had a family of her own. Grandfather became a strange and difficult man - even refusing to go to my parents'wedding. He lived until I was about 13 but I scarcely remember him. He certainly took no interest in me.
Mum never forgave her father for abandoning her. However, if I look at this story with a contemporary understanding of the way the mind works, I would guess that grandfather was depressive. Maybe at the time when his wife died and he was left to cope with a young daughter while still needing to work to live, he came close to clinical depression. In those days- and we're talking about 1925 - there would have been little sympathy for him. He would have been expected to pull himself together and cope.
When I was 11, my family moved from the Midlands to South-East London and more or less lost contact with my aunt. According to my brother, there was a falling-out between her and my mother. My guess it was about the care of their father, who was by then in his late eighties. I can understand my mother taking the view that she shouldn't have to do much for him, because he never did anything for her. My aunt, being so much older, would have remembered him as a younger man, when he was active and charming.
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MVP's NaJoPoMo 8th
Posted Nov 8, 2014
Today is H for Hungary.
My mother-in-law was Hungarian, of Jewish family, though she rejected all religion. She was born in the rural south of the country but her family moved to Budapest. In those days, she might have been regarded as a blue-stocking, because she loved studying, particularly science and she got a PhD in Chemistry and Physics at Budapest University.
There was always antisemitism in Hungary and, when the Nazis moved into Austria, my mother-in-law must have realised that it was a good time to leave. She saw a description of a product by Laporte, in England and she wrote to say she thought she could improve it. They offered her a job but, by the time she came to take it up, war had broken out. She made a difficult and complicated journey across Europe.
At Laporte, she developed an industrial clay product, called Laponite, now widely used in industry. She remained in touch with friends and family in Hungary, though some of them died in the holocaust. Although not uncritical of Britain, she remained clear that it was a better place for her to be than Hungary. She said that, when she arrived in Britain, she was required to report to the police. When she got to the station, the policeman said "Do sit down, Madam." Such politeness surprised her.
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MVP's NaJoPoMo 7th
Posted Nov 7, 2014
Today is G for gardens.
I count myself a gardener but I also want my garden to be wildlife friendly, so I'm content to let the grass get shaggy and leave a pile of wood sitting in a corner to encourage insects. This is a good excuse to be a bit lazy. 
When people come and offer me lawn care services, I say no, I prefer my biodiversity (also known as weeds) to their plain green grass.
We have small front gardens front and back and a strip down the side, which is North facing. There we planted bushes and now have overgrown shrubbery. At the front we have lawn, 
, rhodedendron and buddleia, which ought to encourage the 
. At the back, we have a camelia, a small magnolia and a small vegetable plot.
In the autumn, I cut back many of the shrubs and compost the small vegetable plot. In the spring, I'm enthusiastically planting spinach and courgettes (zucchini). But my enthusiasm doesn't last, as I lose plants to slugs and birds 
. The soil is heavy clay and, at this time of year, my lawn resembles a paddy field. I also have a complaint with the local authority which glibly tells people how easy composting is. We get rats.
A bit further north, there is a string of famous gardens: Nymans, Sheffield Park and Wakehurst Place. They are, I think, on the sandstone ridge and they're famous for their rhodedendrons, camellias and trees. Wakehurst Place hosts the Millenium Seed Bank and also claims the country's biggest Christmas tree.
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MVP's NaJoPoMo really the 6th
Posted Nov 6, 2014
Today is F for France.
10 years ago we bought an old house in France. It's in a little village on a hill near the Lot. It was a farmhouse, so it has two barns, one of which still has cow stalls in place, and a ruined prune oven. The house is built of limestone blocks, but there was a crack running down the front wall, which turned out to be subsidence, so we had to get concrete walls built in the cellar. We've also had the roof retiled and a new septic tank installed.
The back garden is mainly grass with fruit trees, which sometimes produce cherries and apricots, plums and apples. It slopes down to the west, which means we get views over the nearby valleys and sunsets over the distant hills. The garden also means that we spend a lot of time mowing the lawn, cutting back bushes, pulling out weeds. I'm sure weeds grow faster in France! The front lawn is easier to mow, so we put a table on it and eat our meals there, with occasional glasses of 
.
The area has a series of limestone ridges, separated by valleys with little streams. On some of the hills are bastide villages, which were founded in the Middle Ages and fortified. When the weather is good, we go for walks or cycle rides but some of the hills are too steep for us to ride up.
If all this sounds idyllic, it creates a lot of work and, when the weather is bad, there is little to do except sit in the house and read.
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