It's starting to feel like November

I got a bit of a shock to my system on Monday when I was cutting foliage for the museum, and began to really feel the cold. It didn't help that every time I cut down branches of eucalyptus or magnolia, I got a load of cold rainwater falling on me too!

That night, I went to my first football match in a couple of years (fortunately it was an away game in glorious South East London), and tried to remind myself that it wasn't that cold; my first ever game was at the end of November in Sunderland, before Grand Central ran direct trains, and I remember the bitter cold as we waited for our connection at Newcastle. It didn't help that we lost 4-1 and Roy Keane (allegedly) resigned by text message afterwards! Also, on Monday, there was a lot of jumping up and down, which also keeps out the cold. I was very glad of the win, even if we didn't exactly play well enough to deserve it.

At the Garden Museum, I seemed to have one minor incident after another, with me managing to forget German pins, extra reel wire and extra ivy, and running out of recycled floral foam. In the end I did a foam-free arrangement for the porch with bowls and chicken wire. It's not my favourite way to do flowers, especially if it's a low arrangement, but apparently it's more eco-friendly. Here it is coming together...sorry about the light. I forgot it gets dark soon!

And finally:

And here are the reception flowers. Lovely scented narcissi and alstromeria, mixed with eucalyptus, magnolia, recycled physocarpus sticks, and a berry that I don't know the name of.

Lastly, a few of the cafe table posies.

If you are out enjoying fireworks or a bonfire tonight, stay safe, and have a good Guy Fawkes' night!

Daring to dream

I wasn't too thrilled about the football today, but hey ho. There will be wins in the future...and red and white flowers from the garden in the meantime.

The Road to Wigan Pier

Well played, Wigan. That was an exciting FA Cup final and although I always support the underdog (unless the underdog is playing Sunderland), I was especially pleased for Wigan. And as an unrelated flower point, I did like the white rose buttonholes, although it looked like only Dave Whelan's and his wife's survived the game!

I went to a friend’s wedding in Wigan earlier this year, and I was excited to have an excuse for another George Orwell pilgrimage. After today, as far as I’m concerned, this has been Wigan’s year!

Orwell wrote The Road to Wigan Pier after living with working class families in industrial towns in the north of England; the first half of the book is an account of his visits and his observations and the second half is an essay on the issues of class and socialism that come up in his work. I read it one summer holiday while I was at university, around the time I was devouring all of his books that I hadn’t read before – Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Burmese Days, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia and A Clergyman’s Daughter. I’m pretty sure Coming Up for Air was the last book I read, a year or so later. I bought most of these second hand from bookshops in Greenwich and Camden, and managed to get all four volumes of the collected letters and journalism second hand too. My main recollection of The Road to Wigan Pier is Orwell’s account of following coal miners as they worked, and the way in which he was treated differently because he was seen as a gentleman:

Even with miners who described themselves as Communists I found that it needed tactful manoeuvrings to prevent them from calling me 'sir'; and all of them, except in moments of great animation, softened their northern accents for my benefit. I liked them and hoped they liked me; but I went among them as a foreigner, and both of us were aware of it. 

I couldn’t believe it when I walked along the canal and saw Wigan Pier for the first time. It looks like a pair of metal skis. I was flicking though my old copy of The Road to Wigan Pier in the car, and I couldn’t resist posing for cheesy picture with my book. I’m sure Orwell would roll his eyes if he saw that photo, so I won't include it here.

There’s a new pub called The Orwell just across the canal. I don’t think Orwell went to a pub while he lived in Wigan, but I expect he’d still be pleased with the recognition. They did a great, strong pot of tea – and that, he would appreciate.

RHS Flower Show Cardiff 2013

I visited my friends in Bridgend last weekend, and we took advantage of the glorious weather on Saturday to go to the RHS Flower Show Cardiff. Apparently, that turned out to be the busiest day in the Cardiff show’s nine year history, with 9000 people visiting.

Daffodils were all around us, as you’d expect, with some brilliant names – Baby Boomer, Sophie's Choice, and Doctor Who (Quality Daffodils developed this variety to celebrate the television show, filmed in Cardiff, which is fifty years old). Quality Daffodils won the award for the best exhibit in the marquee (you can see a photo showing the length of its gorgeous display) and what is incredible (and fascinating for a florist) is that the display was of cut flowers which had been painstakingly cared for and arranged. There were other spring flowers, including some stunning primulas, a pale and pretty muscari called Babys Breath (which, fortunately, has the usual bubblegum scent and not the slightly nasty smell of gypsophila) and an astilbe called Drum and Bass Pink! Pheasant Acre Plants, who I’d seen at Wisley (and who most of my indoor bulbs are from) also had a beautiful display.

There were more stalls and fewer big garden displays than some of the other flower shows, but there were still many beautiful displays by the growers, and a colourful exhibition of literary-inspired, plant-filled wheelbarrows which were made by Welsh primary school children. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Treasure Island were popular choices, but there were also great entries inspired by The Hobbit and Rapunzel, as well as one where I didn’t know the book but I liked the Cardiff City FC symbolism and the beautiful fritillaries and daffodils!

 The atmosphere was fantastic – maybe because of the location (right in the centre of the city, by Cardiff Castle) or maybe Welsh families are more outdoorsy than English ones (I’m sorry, what an unpatriotic thing for me to say on St George’s Day!) – but it felt like a festival rather than a flower show, with people sunning themselves and eating the delicious ice cream that was served in several stalls. And after the longest, coldest winter that I can remember, it was a joy to see blue skies and blossom-filled trees, and feel the warmth of the sunshine. By the time I returned to England on Sunday, the narcissi and fritillaries in the garden, which had been so shy to grow, had suddenly shot up and blossomed.

Jack and Ginger

Here are some pictures of more baking things from the last few months.

These were for a Sunderland vs Man City afternoon – the red came out pink and the blue came out lilac, but you get the idea. The food itself, rosewater jam tarts, raspberry and vanilla cake, and chocolate cupcakes, all went down a treat. We won’t talk about the score though.

Some orange and poppyseed cakes, and chocolate, burnt toffee and vanilla cakes that I made for friends.

I got two baking books last year, including the latest Great British Bake Off book. Here are two cakes from it. The first is salted caramel cake, which is sickly by the time you’ve finished making it, but delicious the next day, once the caramel has left your senses. The second is a Union Jack cake – it’s just a cut and paste job, but a fiddly one. I ran out of icing sugar, so the ready-roll icing on top has unsightly seams! It was a welcome home present for my old mentor who had been travelling for a year (you can read her and her husband’s blog here – there are lovely stories about the places they saw and beautiful photos).

Here are my gingerbread houses – not nearly as pretty as the one in the book. Guess what I ran out of again?! They transported well though, as long as you have someone to drive slowly and someone to hold onto the base very carefully. And they tasted nice. The big one was for my friend who I’ve known since we worked together way back when we were doing our A-levels, and the small one was for my sister (I helped her to eat it). The leftover gingerbread dough was used to make shapes.

I went on a little break to Yorkshire and Derbyshire a few years ago, going around different towns. I had parkin for the first time, and thought I must learn how to make it. It’s the most amazing ginger cake – treacly, chewy and dense. I finally made it, and although it wasn’t nearly as nice as the parkin I had in Yorkshire, it wasn’t bad for a Southern effort.

Finally, bagels, which I am not that fussed about, but wanted to make after I saw them make them on the Bake Off. They sound like more effort than they are – making dough, quickly poaching them, and then baking them – but if you like bagels, I think they’re worth the effort. The taste and texture is less plastic-like than the ones you can buy from a supermarket. In case you wondered, they do have holes in the middle, but they shrunk in the oven!

This is south London

Last weekend, people from Lewisham and neighbouring boroughs came together for the Chinbrook Meadows art and craft fair. The fair ran for both days, and what glorious, sunny days they were. Children laughed and ran, adults and toddlers played football together, a lovely lady called Jo Jo bought chips for everyone to share, and music was provided by Alioune and his African drum.

There were stalls selling homemade jewellery and greeting cards designed by Ved Yilkan of V Seven Designs, photography by Lisa Hafey of Lemonade and Lamingtons Art, African clothing and art by Alioune and Helena Samb of SAMB Arts, as well as a charity tombola for Dementia UK, face painting, and portrait painting.

V Seven Designs

Lemonade and Lamingtons Art

And I did a flower stall for the first time! I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed the learning experience of seeing what people liked and what they were less keen on (everybody likes roses, especially when co-ordinating colours are massed together.) I also learnt which cut flowers can stand the sun (single stem roses, chrysanthemums, hypercium berries) and which are a bit more delicate (dahlias, spray roses) – I was spraying all of the flowers with water every hour, which prompted one man to nickname me 'The Reviver'! I made my first buttonhole with a Blizzard rose on Saturday, which reassures me that I'll be able to do the same for my friend's wedding in October!

One lady wanted small posies for her kitchen, and another wanted roses and flowering mint to thank her friend for babysitting. Jo Jo kindly bought all of my remaining bouquets and posies at the end of Saturday for herself and various people at the fair, including Carol who organised the fair and had been working flat out in the cafe all day.

Friends from Chislehurst, Bromley, Croydon and Blackheath came to visit me – one minded my stall while I ran home to get sundries that I’d forgotten, and another entertained us with his drumming and footballing skills.

I’m grateful to them, Carol for organising the event, and the other stall holders I met. But the biggest thank you goes to my dad, who helped me enormously, took lots of photos, and was pretty good on the drum.

The day after the London riots last week, people from towns that had been badly affected grouped together to clear up the mess and help locals restore their businesses and homes. Young people in particular wanted to prove that they should not be stereotyped as trouble-makers in a broken society. Lewisham at 9am on Tuesday did not seem ‘broken’ at all. And last weekend, it was idyllic. If only the world had seen these pictures instead.