PRETTY FAR WEST

this is the bunting

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 14:34:00 +0000

This is the bunting. No one cares, I know, but to me as it hangs on the partially freshly painted sheds it emits the white heat of hope.

With the arrival of the bunting, everything I had ordered has been delivered to me and I am gazing into that void of purposelessness one enters when nothing Has Been Dispatched and is On Its Way To You Right Now, Mise!

Once more, I suppose, unto the online shopping breach. Revs up Etsy, suspends critical faculties.

Blogger has such a cavernous calm nowadays. Just me and Mamie and Dwight (not your real names) kicking about amid the shards of the stained glass windows. I could buy you a little something, perhaps bearing pictures of endangered animals. You have been so needlessly loyal, dear Mamie and Dwight.

I promised the shed some bunting once I have painted it

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 21:31:00 +0000

Now that David Davis has given way, first to Dominic Raab, and then to an executive percentage of Theresa May, Monsieur Barnier through sheer longevity is taking on the status of a Godfather. The music suggests he will be the last man standing.

The shed, being so old, is difficult to paint. You waft a brush at it and the plaster crumbles off. But only one side remains unpainted now, and of course the back, which is Disgracing Us in the Community, being visible from the Wild Atlantic Way, but pish to that.

I hope I haven't jumped the gun too much by hanging the celebratory bunting on the west elevation, the one with the broken red door. I must take a snap of the bunting. You will all be dying to see it.

is this a hotel?

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Thu, 14 Jun 2018 11:02:00 +0000

No.

After using them, the cup and saucer must be strictly hand-washed,

dried and put away.

This is not a hotel.

the dream of a lighter life

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sun, 18 Feb 2018 12:46:00 +0000

If, God forbid, I ever die, I don't suppose my great-grandchildren will want the Elvis Costello Songbook or the bejeweled Indian tunic, amply embroidered with elephants. So I planned to clear the attic of these dear items, along with everything else, even the potentially useful dried leftover paint and the framed Certificate of Profound Thanks.

Zeal gathered pace and it was announced on Tuesday to the assembled household that acquisition of new belongings must cease immediately. We will live with what we have, such as it is. An exemption for chocolate was requested and granted and there, I thought, the matter rested.

But Wednesday was Valentine's Day and the usual pony appeared from Scottish Husband. I look out the east window in dismay and there they are, the Valentine ponies, paddock upon paddock of them, cantering away.

colourful cake

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 09:57:00 +0000

A birthday cake I made lately.

The first layer is almond ginger,

the second cherry,

the third vanilla.

Thanks for asking.

a new hat

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sun, 16 Jul 2017 12:36:00 +0000

As the years went by

and Pink Daughter grew up,

it seemed that she gained less satisfaction

from her childhood hobby

of crafting clothes for Teddy.

I will be posting any second now

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 10:08:00 +0000

Checking in here, I find a few kind comments and only the one post so far this year, from January. That's perfectly disgraceful! Call myself a blogger! Etc.

So I will be posting any second now.

Some keen observation around these parts makes me doubt the scientific validity of 'any second now.' You would think that 'any second' genuinely means any second, and that the word 'now' would skew the probability to favour sooner seconds rather than later seconds. But I have heard people say they will get up any second now, or tackle their homework any second now, and experience tells me that they are implicitly excluding the early range of available seconds, thus ruining the necessary randomness suggested by the word 'any.'

Sometimes I have not seen the actual getting up take place for hours, or the actual homework for days.

But I guess what happened is that I got caught up in all the 2017 hoo-ha about President David Brent taking office in the USA and got with the zeitgeist, becoming vegan and crusading against plastic and trying to uphold rights, and indeed I am still busy with all that, and hope you are too, but these are my elevenses.

And I will be posting any second now.

my condensed book

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 14:04:00 +0000

For decades now I've had the vaguest notion, like yourself, of writing a book. Something that will fly off the eye-level shelves, perhaps 'The Hue-Chooser's Daughter: a Guide to Land Rover Restoration' or some annotated minutes from meetings I've had the great pleasure to attend.

But the years chug past, and I am in my forties, although I don't consider them to be 'my' forties, but rather forties that someone else has gracelessly foisted upon me with an exhortation not to stay up for them. So I am thinking now that I will bypass the cinema screen and go straight to DVD, as it were, by writing the condensed version of my book. This approach avoids the nitty-gritty of character-development and nuance, and frees me to hone in on plot-line. No doubt there are fine plots on the internet that I can steal. And there we are.

Golf-playing honchos of the Reader's Digest who are reading this, I invite you to get in touch now. The Condensed Books Commissioning Editor, the CEO or other C-Level executives only please: someone who is empowered to sign the uncondensed cheques. I am here ready to put down my doughnut the very second the phone rings.

Golf Biscuits through the mists of time

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sat, 31 Dec 2016 14:37:00 +0000

O lost friend of my youth rediscovered. Golf Biscuits were a staple when I was a child, from the hefty Good Housekeeping volume that the President gave Mother. I believe she still has the book, but that much-used page is gone. And then one day the recipe appeared on the trusty old Internet, in the Vintage Cookbook Trials!

The good, kind person who posted it there does not speak highly of them but they are as delicious as ever, either plain or with chocolate.

That rustic look is Entirely Intentional, excuse me. I add chocolate to biscuits by placing a few lovely Callebaut chocolate chips on top of them and returning to the oven for a minute, then spreading. No doubt you have a better way.

Note that they contain 2 oz sugar. 1 oz suffices, really.

Siberian Sourdough Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 10:14:00 +0000

It doesn't matter one little bit that I seldom post here any more, because I have been baking my own sourdough bread.

The sourdough starter, a token of thanks, borne in Tupperware on Aeroflot to Ireland by Dame Ada Lamb and her companion on their last Grand Tour of Europe, is fresh from the Gulags or Steppes of Siberia; I forget which they said exactly.

It is centuries old.

The French, with their finer sensibilities, appreciate that sort of posturing. The phone rang and it was Canal Levain++ asking me whether I would appear on their panel discussion on over-sized jugs and whether to hang curtains across the washing-machine alcove.

At first I said No, as I say No to everything, but then I asked myself, "What would Samuel Beckett have said?", and I said Yes. We aesthetes must stick together.

So all these months have been stamped with the knead and rise and bake of the sourdough bread to the beat of the warming world. And now great fame.

I will have to turn off the comments here. It has been so long since I commented over at your blog; certainly for no less love of you and your fabulous flowers and slipcovers but rather through languor and, ultimately, moral turpitude.

Not commenting makes me feel guilt-stricken and nervy. I am prone to that.

Still waiting for the cakes

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 12:15:00 +0000

We are still here on our lengthy vigil for the cakes that have yet to reach us. Meanwhile, struggling on, we make our own, wonky though they may be.

The above is a 9th birthday nest, but I should have made it in the shape of a lone frail tree, faltering in the forest. Why?, you politely ask. It is because I sense that the dear old amateur lifestyle blogging community is losing its fizz.

No one, now, proudly shows off their low-carbohydrate courgette spaghetti. Chairs sit round, un-reupholstered. Nothing is painted a milky shade of grey. Everyone is too busy following their desk exercise regime to note that they saw a sparrow in the east this morning, and liken it to Jesus.

People have decamped to other rides in the great social media funfair, rides that are faster and shinier and where there is a promise of coins, or at least a fake watch or a small teddy. A stern, chill wind blows across our collective refurbished verandah.

down these green streets a woman must go who is not herself green

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 23:13:00 +0000

Thanks to a flat tyre
I went to no St. Patrick's Day parade
Drank nothing green
Stood in no chill breeze
Took no photos
(Here are no photos)
Hid from no hearty people
Queued in no queues
Passed no remarks on how fine the fiddles are,
and your hair, my dear, and coat.

But, rather, stayed at home,
muttering to myself in my minority language
as I transplanted a rose,
curmudgeonly as I pleased.
O joy, O joy, O joy.
O flat tyre of perpetual joy.

we dare not entertain

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 12:46:00 +0000

The done thing in rural Gloucestershire, where Scottish Husband had settled down before he moved to Ireland, is to have one's friends and neighbours around for Christmas or New Year. Drinks 6-8 is the formula for the invitation: a restrained occasion involving delicate canapés and mutual admiration of lawns and distant royal connections.

[Jane Ray, from the Guardian]

He asks me whether we should host the same sort of event here in the Pretty Far West. Unhesitatingly, I shoot the idea down. Our friends and neighbours would have no truck with Drinks 6-8. They would arrive whenever it suited them, leave in February, if then, and wonder why we were being so glaringly parsimonious as to limit drinks to only 6 to 8 per person.

where is the hill?

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 12:13:00 +0000

Looking up from their pot noodles, my daughters engage one another in a sudden burst of dinner-table conversation on whether their mother is over the hill.

“Where is the hill?” the younger one asks.

[the flowers are lasting mightily well this autumn]

Buoyed by my application of a free sample of face cream that will re-activate my youth and regenerate my radiance, I place the hill firmly and confidently at 90, aeons away from me. “The race is not to the quick, nor the so forth to the so forth,” I tell them, “but it is up that hill.“

In the excitement of the pot noodles moving on to instant jelly, the topic is abandoned. Later, struggling with my entry in the best Lego ninja turbo-destroyer contest, I wonder whether the face cream might have been a placebo, yielding only imagined radiance.

[experimenting with homemade chocolates]

I ask Google where the hill is. Google is usually so definite, so helpful: Banjarmasin is the second largest city in Borneo, coconut oil is the answer to climate change, slight backache is a sure sign of smallpox. Information at our fingertips, Power to the People. But Google is not sure.

And so I ask you: where isthe hill?

Now that this is Heaven (op. 351)

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 11:55:00 +0000

Pink Daughter has gleaned notions of Heaven from her reading. She asks me whether it is possible that we are all dead and that this is Heaven.

[We dry the lavender over the range]

This thought has never occurred to me before so I give it some consideration and reply that yes, it is highly likely.

[When we tire of the lavender fluttering down into our pans of goulash and risotto, we dry the lavender elsewhere.]

As this is now Heaven, it is important to make it seem thus. We order a four-tier box of chocolates, the fancy sort with drawers and gilding on the coffee creams, and send the rest of our money to ease poverty in Uganda.

National Geographic (op. 350)

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 09:06:00 +0000

"Everything I know, I learned from the National Geographic magazine," I told my distant neighbour, Mary Assumpta.

I could see her taking that on board. She nodded respectfully, clearly understanding at once that here was a force to be reckoned with, a font of information, someone whom she should invite to be on her team at the next table quiz held by the Ladies of the Parish as part of their ongoing fundraising for the flat earth hypothesis. She patted my arm and asked me to tea. Mary Assumpta is a good baker. I accepted.

A tribeswoman of the Western Atlantic Seaboard poses by her scant crop of sunflowers and cornflowers. Her land has been hit by the rains this summer and her south lawn is impassable.

What Mary Assumpta didn't realise is that I meant just one issue of the National Geographic magazine. Last month's, to be precise. If you want to know about the Jade Sea, Laos, taxidermy or Pope Francis, I am your woman. Anything else: no.

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post. It is a matter of honour with me to reply effusively and individually to all commentators (or acerbically to the meanies) but occasionally my honour lets me down.

Quickly before it's September (Op. 349)

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 21:21:00 +0000

It will be time tomorrow morning to start once more on my winning ways with bread and cheese in school lunches. So this post is a marker to say that I am just about still here

as are my Nutella scones

and my dainty pink bucket such as is suitable for a harvest of fuchsia flowers picked by small visitors -- there is no need to write censoriously in; we left thousands for the bees, who like it here where no one turns on the radio to disturb their hum with running jumps at the human condition

and my pretty bunches of flowers from the garden, emblematic of an imagined utopia in which there is no impending tax return.

Those were three (3) things. To recap: scones, fuchsia, bunches of flowers. Now that Bloglovin' is bombarding me with its top posts, I note that they are all counted items. Seven ways to exercise at your desk. Six second chances at life. Ten steps to a better you. A better me! Four super Scandi suppers. This is my 349th post. Opus 349 if you will. Containing three things.

after the beach

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sat, 25 Jul 2015 17:34:00 +0000

Summer in the west, sand on the floor. I watch the restful Zara Home Autumn/Winter 2015 Campaign Film; it gives a sense that everyone will be home any minute now, and that they will all be fine.

back where they belong

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 11:41:00 +0000

Lately I have gained an additional 4 letters after my name, bringing the total to 11, of which 10 are in upper case and 1 in lower case. This excludes bracketed descriptive elements such as "(Hons)" and "(No, Really)".

Despite which, my overriding purpose and quest in life, the force that drives me and the focus of my considerable zeal, is to Put Things Back Where they Belong.

First in the room in which they belong, and then, at a finer level of detail, in the place where they belong. Folded correctly and facing the right way. With the blue next to the pink if they are cushions.

Hope is a Strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sun, 03 May 2015 13:50:00 +0000

We are back from our motor-tour of the East Coast of Scotland, which included a pilgrimage to the printing works of DC Thomson, publishers of The Beano. A great cry of joy rose from the back seat at the first glimpse of Bananaman, the Man of Peel, on the wall above the famous sign.

[The Beano, Blue Daughter's Top Favourite]

The statues of Desperate Dan and Minnie the Minx were duly viewed as well, and so the Culture & Heritage box received its tick.

My iPhone is like a great big hat I wear over my head when travelling: I hold it up in front of me and browse your blog and other, lesser pages (a careful comma) in the hope that people will leave me alone so that my Thoughts will catch up with me. Not that I actually have Thoughts as such, but what I do have, in splendid abundance, is Half-Formed Reflections, that swirl about in my head and demand tranquillity so as not to churn abominably before they morph into Sensibilities.

When I was young, the Reflections turned into Opinions, but I have conquered that now. May God stand full square between Me and the Opinions of Others.

[Wax and Wire by Loch Lomond]

I like to think that my Sensibilities, if I choose just the right set of blogs to follow and Twitter feeds to read and scholarly, percipient essays to skim hurriedly through on too small a screen, will become exquisitely honed and get me through life with no further input from the Non-Sensibilities aspect of myself. That is my Hope for a Better Life.

Scottish Husband tells me that Hope is Not A Strategy, but I give the matter some consideration as we drive through Fife, past the yellow fields of daffodils, back home towards our troubles and the bay window that is collapsing, and I say that It Very Certainly Is.

insufficiently acknowledged

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 10:33:00 +0000

If I weren't so busy I'd write my book. A memoir, I suppose, or an autobiography (do comment if you can tell me the difference), featuring all the famous people I know and little anecdotes that portray me in a good but modest light. Slim (very slim), with floral endpapers.

The imperative to write has been upped lately as I note the profusion of publication: dear Britta has cornered the international market in graceful housekeeping and the redoubtable Jane and Lance Hattatt are the authors of the entire modern gardening canon. You yourself surely have a Human Resources manual on Best Practice Redundancy Procedures under your belt, or a pamphlet of poems. I do admire your poems.

Anyway, back to me. All I have to my name is a few academic publications, a contribution here and there to other people's books and a smattering of thanks in their acknowledgements. The thanks are never profound enough, if you ask me, never fulsome enough. My own acknowledgements will be lavishly sprinkled with adjectives and adverbs, pages of the things. Every acknowledgement will have a little barcode beside it, which the acknowledged can beep with their phones to automatically post in their social media feeds:

There will be a frenzied flurry of liking and favouriting and there we are: everyone will be happy.

All I want is for everyone to be happy.

a cautionary note for all artists on the pitfalls of limited edition prints

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 20:31:00 +0000

Blue Daughter, after 7 years of passing no opinion at all on our large framed print of a painting of Brighton Pier, looked up one day from the morning kedgeree, waved her fork censoriously, and remarked that the artist had done a really poor job of the sand on the beach ...

... and that she wasn't at all surprised that the painting had scored only 27 out of 150.

an excuse in time saves nine

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 22:48:00 +0000

I heard a rumour that I had gone, but no. It has been a season of patient waiting until the Hattatts resurface in Norwich, and never having a quiet moment to click on 'new post' nor even to pursue what is the great love of my life and, indeed, the overarching challenge of our aeon: small storage solutions, typically baskets.

This is a wonky birthday cake I baked a little while ago, depicted on my honeymoon cake-stand. I will be back soon with topics of even less significance.

the least I could do

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 20:53:00 +0000

I have stood The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying on end. It is the least I could do.

for the hell of it

noreply@blogger.com (Mise) — Sat, 31 Jan 2015 14:03:00 +0000

The school filed across the road to a church service lately, so my daughters stayed behind with the few other non-Catholic children to caper and giggle. I asked Pink Daughter why they'd have Mass at such an odd time of year, as I wasn't aware that it was the feast-day of any of Ireland's A-list saints. She thought about it, and said that no one had given them a reason, and that the school probably had Mass just for the hell of it.

I hope you won't think this is incongruous in the midst of my trumpeted clear-out activities, but I have bought a new tea towel. It hangs above my shelf of mugs, and, in the spirit of Kondo anthropomorphism, I feel it encourages my crockery to be picturesque.