Font Sunday: Tea tins

The Design Museum in London plays host to a photo-sharing afternoon on Twitter every Sunday, all about fonts in different contexts. There's a different subject each week, and people share photos of interesting fonts.

Today's subject was tea packaging, which was the perfect excuse for me to grab a few of my tea tins, chop some bits from the garden, and join in the font photography. You may have noticed that I am a big fan of pretty containers (especially anything Tiptree) and of good tea!

There isn't much flowering in the garden now. I had some hollyhocks, but they've been eaten by caterpillars or some other hungry so-and-so. (The Very Hungry Caterpillar seems like an adorable story until you notice the downside of hungry caterpillars). But I had fountain grass and bunny-tail grass, sedum, a few asters, salvia, and a couple of David Austin 'Cariad' roses.

The tall tin is from Postcard Teas - a lovely shop on Dering Street, just off New Bond Street. The owner, Tim d'Offay, goes to the tea plantations himself to see how the tea is grown and to check the conditions in which the workers are living. The teas are delicious, and if you go to the shop, Tim or one of the other lovely people working there will make you a cup of the tea to try before you decide which to buy.

The shorter tins are Wedgwood. As well as teapots and cups, the company also makes beautiful tins of tea, in different shades of blue.

The pink Cariad rose was especially welcome after yesterday's rugby result. I've never understood rugby, but after living with lots of Welsh rugby fans in Swansea, if I had to support anyone, it would always be Wales!

Finally, here are George Orwell's instructions for making a good cup of tea. The article was called 'A Nice Cup of Tea' after the phrase that brings us such comfort, but I think "good" is more appropriate. Also, the phrase "nice cup of tea" sometimes reminds me of the film Vera Drake; not very comforting! I agree with most of what Orwell says, particularly that the best tea comes from India and Sri Lanka (I am a bit biased, though), that it should be very strong and leave you feeling "wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it".

I'm about to embark on a research project for university, and I know the one thing that will help me to get through marathon study sessions is an endless cup of tea!

Coming Up For Air

I found this diary entry by accident a few years ago. It was in my book where I had all of my notes for my dissertation that I'd written a couple of years earlier.

4/8/05

Four weeks ago, I was in a car going from Oxford to Henley-on-Thames for my first real Orwell "pilgrimage". I was in the middle of rereading Coming Up For Air, and [my partner] had just finished reading it for the first time. On the way to Henley, I got a phone call from my mother: "Don't drive through Central London, there have been some bombs." Bombs? When we watched the news that morning, they just said there had been a power surge. So we turned on the radio and yes. Three bombs on the Underground, the top of a bus blown right off, twenty-something people dead, witness after witness, chaos upon chaos. Bloody hell, I thought. This is a bit too Coming Up For Air.

I turned the radio off, [my partner] pulled into the car park, and we sat in silence for a minute. "I don't think we expected it to be quite so Coming Up For Air," he said. No. It was scary and weird.

I'd hoped the trip would evoke all of the nostalgia that Orwell, through the character of George Bowling, felt about his childhood in Henley ("Lower Binfield"), which he remembered "always in sunny weather". The day we visited the town it was on-off rain. Windy rain that makes it hard to hold an umbrella up, and put me in a snappy, irritable mood. This wasn't the Golden Country I'd expected.



The year after the attacks, I went to Queen Mary's Gardens in Regent's Park before I went to work. I wouldn't have felt right going to any of the memorial events that were happening that day, but this one thing - the public being invited to place purple carnations in a mosaic template - felt different. It felt like a small way of paying my respects and showing my empathy without being intrusive. I got there at 8am and they were just setting up. A woman with brown hair and a kind smile gave me a carnation and I placed it in the mosaic. I watched for a while, and then I went to work.

Throughout the day, people placed these carnations and the mosaic took shape, becoming a giant flower with seven petals. In the evening, there was a service where relatives of those killed in the attacks placed yellow gerberas in the centre of the giant flower.

Yvonne Nash, whose fiance Jamie Gordon died in the attacks, read the e. e. cummings poem, i carry you in my heart, at the memorial service in Regent's Park in 2006. Her friend, Lucy Smail, had designed the floral tribute. 

Yellow gerberas will also be laid today in Hyde Park as people think about the people who died, those who lived through that morning, and the loved ones who have been bereaved. 

Nineties Penguins and other book covers

I saw that there was a talk today at the Victoria and Albert Museum for the London Design Festival. It was by David Pearson (who's designed some fantastic covers for new editions of Orwell books) and Jim Stoddart (an art director at Penguin), who were both discussing book covers.

It got me thinking about the books that have leapt off the shelf to me because their covers were so enticing. I have three bookcases full of books, thanks to varied interests (flowers, gardening, films, art, counselling), book splurges in bookshops, and charity book sales at my old publisher (a sister company of Penguin).

Collecting books in the nineties, when I was studying English at college and then university, was a happy time. I remember two of my friends buying Beloved by Toni Morrison because they liked the cover of the book that was sitting on my desk. I'd bought it because it was an option on our reading list and...I liked the cover! None of us enjoyed the book, but oh well - it made us read a book we might never have read otherwise. I also bought several books because they were recommended by the Manic Street Preachers - as their biographer Simon Price said, the Manics probably did more for teenage literacy than the GCSE English Literature syllabus. I bought my own copies of books that I'd taken out of the library dozens of times in my teenage years (Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Tess of the D'Urbervilles). Penguin brought out new covers for their modern classics in the nineties, and I thought they looked beautiful (as well as containing fantastic reads).

When I started working in publishing, I would spend hours in Hatchards or (the old) Foyles or the huge Waterstones at Piccadilly after work. I would add book after book to the pile in my hands, resting them on a shelf while I looked at a new possibility. I often wanted to buy yet another copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Madame Bovary because I'd seen a new, beautiful cover, but I couldn't really justify spending another £5 to £10 on the same book, I did buy second copies of books just for their covers at the charity book sales, but the books were sold for 50p so it didn't seem so indulgent.

I did spend a lot on a third edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four, because of corny reasons (it was in a bookshop in Blackheath - which is where Orwell and his first wife, Eileen, went horse-riding when they were courting) and because I don't suppose I could justify buying a very expensive first edition, even if I found one. A third edition, published by Secker and Warburg, still feels pretty special to me.

I really like my two copies of Cold Comfort Farm, especially the more comic-style one, which suits the tone of the novel. It was a 50p purchase from work - the joys of working for a publisher!

I do like old book covers. Penguin's orange covers are well-known and well-loved - I've even seen intricate nail art inspired by the designs. Here are three of my orange Penguins - two new copies (The Girl from the Fiction Department and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) and one old (Lucky Jim, with cover art by Quentin Blake).

I even developed an author crush based on an author's book covers. I saw a bright pink Faber and Faber book called Kitchen by a woman called Banana, and thought I must try this! Banana Yoshimoto has such a lovely writing style, I went back and bought three more of her books: Asleep, N.P. and Lizard. It's slightly jarring that the last two books are taller and wider, but no matter - the covers are still stunning.

There are plenty more wonderful book covers I could share - graphic novels such as Maus, The Killing Joke, and Tamara Drewe are stunning, and flower books are beautiful - I've shared a couple here before. I'll save the rest for another post!

Hall Place Gardens, the Lion and the Unicorn

I took my little sister to Hall Place in Bexley a few weeks ago. She seems to enjoy the sensory experience of being outdoors, whether it's a beach or a park, and Hall Place has some beautiful gardens and a cafe that is usually packed. The gardens are free to visit, and the grounds were full of families enjoying the sunshine.

There is an exhibition of Quentin Blake's art for hospitals on display until the end of the summer, included in the price of admission to the house. Quentin grew up in nearby Sidcup; I went to the same secondary school as he did, and he drew the cover of the school yearbook when our headmaster retired!

My sister took this photo of some pansies near the glasshouse.

Here's the bigger picture.

There's a wonderful timeline along a path, with key events in history and labels telling you where certain plants came from.

There were apple blossom trees, and confetti of blossom decorating the grass.

There were irises and tulips, beautiful wisteria, and some incredible-smelling clematis next to a checkerboard tower. Garden clematis is such a wonder when you are used to the unscented, wholesale varieties.

You can't miss the topiary giants, based on the symbols of the United Kingdom. I'm only familiar with the lion and the unicorn because of Orwell's essay, but there are also other symbols: a griffin, a white lion, a white horse, a greyhound, a black bull, a falcon, and a red dragon. Aha - that's where pubs get their names from!

And lastly, here are the rose garden and the cut flower plot. They promise colour and scent in the summer.

We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which even when they are communal are not official – the pub, the football match, the back garden, the fireside and the “nice cup of tea”.

George Orwell, The Lion and The Unicorn

England vs. Spain

Today I have been enjoying one of my favourite spring flowers - the bluebell.

Here are my English bluebells, which I deliberately bought, next to some Spanish bluebells which have appeared all over people's gardens. I am not entirely sure if they are the Spanish or the English-Spanish hybrid, but they are bigger, upright, with thicker stems and huge leaves. They are more strongly scented than the delicate English ones, but maybe because there are more flowers on the spike. In the language of flowers, bluebell means constancy; if only there was such constancy when identifying bluebells in Britain! The Natural History Museum has helpfully put together some information to help people identify the bluebells they see. The museum is also collecting information from people who have logged their sightings.

I can see why florists prefer to use the stronger Spanish bluebells in their work, but I love the thin stems and drooping heads of English bluebells.

My question is: which bluebells did Winston pick for Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four?!

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.

The Golden Country

Since it is also World Book Day today, I thought I’d share a passage from my favourite book, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Whenever I see bluebells, I think of Winston and Julia on their secret first date.

“The bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was impossible not to tread on them. He knelt down and began picking some partly to pass the time away, but also from a vague idea that he would like to have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl when they met. He had got together a big bunch and was smelling their faint sickly scent when a sound at his back froze him, the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs. He went on picking bluebells. It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl, or he might have been followed after all. To look round was to show guilt. He picked another and another. A hand fell lightly on his shoulder.

He looked up. It was the girl.”

The Tree of Gernika

I went to visit my penfriend in the Basque Country last month. We’ve been writing to each other for 23 years, and in all that time we had only met once, when she came to visit London in the 90s. The Basque Country is incredible – the beaches and mountains are gorgeous, the sea is a lovely blue-green, and the architecture is beautiful. And the people are very laid back and friendly. We got to see many places – San Sebastian, Gexto, Bilbao – but one place that meant a lot to me was Gernika (Guernica in Spanish). I’d studied the Spanish Civil War as part of my dissertation on George Orwell, and had read about the destruction of the city in 1937 when it was ruthlessly bombed by Germany’s Condor Legion (the fascists in Germany and Italy were supporters of Franco).

The town was almost completely destroyed, but this oak tree, a meeting place for the local Basque community, survived. The remains are still preserved.

A new tree, formed from an acorn of the original oak, stands outside the meeting house.

Gernika is a beautiful place now. I’m glad I got to see it, so that my thoughts of the city are no longer limited to a catastrophic event that I read about in history books, but a combination of the tragic past and the enchanting present.