Somewhere else

When I was a small girl I used to spend Saturdays wandering around London with my father. One of our regular haunts was the Arts Council shop which I seem to remember was in Saville Row. The counter near the front of the shop had a display of postcards in front of it which was at my eyelevel and I remember being entranced by a picture that seemed as real as a photograph. I realised that it couldn’t be a photograph as the people in it were wearing strange old fashioned clothes but even at that age (about five) I knew that my drawings would never be that good. The postcard that I went home with showed William Holman Hunt‘s “The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple” and I still have it, along with many more showing the work of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

I suspect it was the fact that there were grown up ladies dressed as princesses in their paintings without anyone finding it silly that made them interesting as well but even at that age it was impossible to ignore the skill of these artists. The sunlight of Victorian England was trapped in their canvases and the extraordinary jewel like detail of every flower and strand of hair was a shock to my senses. For a child I had spent an unusually large amount of time in front of well known canvases and although I liked some of them I can’t remember feeling the same way about what I had seen before then.

Whatever the reason for my interest the Pre-Raphaelites still have a hold on me and when I saw that Birmingham Art Gallery and Museum were displaying the Burne Jones “Perseus” series (which belongs to Stuttgart’s art gallery) I suggested (without any hope of his agreeing) that Birmingham might be an interesting place to visit. Bearing in mind that he was facing four hours of driving I was a bit surprised when he said “yes”. The car doesn’t get used for much more than the commute to work a few miles away and shopping so this was a real expedition. We checked out parking in Birmingham’s city centre and he set up the sat nav.

I had intended to get up early but managed to oversleep so we set off later than planned. We live in an area where the suburbs start to break up into industrial sites and scrub so it wasn’t long before we were into open farmland. I don’t think the landscape could be described as particularly dramatic but on the way there and back I couldn’t help thinking how lucky I am to live here. Rolling hills, hedgerows and huge old trees. Cows, sheep and the occasional bird of prey, chilling out on a fence post and watching the traffic.

A visit to Birmingham was an opportunity to see my favourite source of quilt making supplies “in the flesh”. The Cotton Patch even provides a few parking spaces. Crammed very neatly into this small shop are fabrics from all over the world, magazines and books, and everything you could possibly need to make the perfect quilt. I have always wanted to buy one of the many Japanese magazines they have available so, head still buzzing from the motorway, I tried to look through them but then just caved in and bought the first one I had seen. I could have bankrupted myself in minutes there so I stuck to the plan and one magazine was my limit.

The sat nav decided to take us through Moseley via Shirley Green which has a lovely red brick Baptist church. We decided that Hall Green was a lot like Edgware and Moseley was definitely like Southall, even down to the traffic. The architecture is largely Victorian red brick and it occurred to me, as it has in the past, that this sort of thing survives when no one can afford to pull it down and rebuild. Lovely small intimate buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century with the occasional 1930’s bit of Art Deco, battered but still in use.

At last we managed to get into the city centre and after a couple of wrong turns we found the chosen car park. It was a short walk to the gallery past some really beautiful and recently cleaned buildings. That part of the city is pedestrianised and we walked through a mall into a large piazza like area with curved steps where people were sitting in the sunshine. Within minutes we were in front of the strange dramatic grey green canvases and drawings produced by Burne Jones in the 1880’s and 1890’s, displayed against rich teal walls. We are so familiar with Pre-Raphaelite art from reproductions in books but there is nothing quite like the real thing. For one thing the images in glossy coffee table books are sometimes larger than the actual painting. Like the teeny weeny “Death of Chatterton” by Henry Wallis. We mused about “Beata Beatrix” and “Proserpine”, made knowing “we used to be art students” type comments about their techniques and then wandered off to see some of the rest of this surprising gallery. There followed the obligatory visit to the shop to buy some postcards and then it was back into the sunshine for something to drink and, alas, back into the car for the long drive.

Home, backs aching and heads spinning, it was hard to get used to the fact that we had been a long way off and back again in the same day. We ought to do it more often, other people would, but I wonder how many would travel that far because of a few old paintings. Still mad for the Pre-Raphaelites after all these years. And still buying postcards.
http://www.bmag.org.uk/

http://www.cottonpatch.co.uk/

http://www.preraphaelites.org

　
　

An allotment show in suburbia

On Saturday I went along to the local allotments and gardens association autumn show and dropped off the albums of photographs that I had taken of earlier events. I felt that these should be archived as the membership of the association gets smaller and gardens in the area disappear under concrete. There were many of the same old faces, the same reliable people who have kept things going through good times and bad. A stall selling local honey, another selling bulbs and plants, and work by a local artist.


There is something about the very ordinary surroundings of the church hall that makes the flowers and vegetables on display look even more extraordinary. Spiky orbs of orange and red chrysanthemums against the long maroon curtains, pale wavy discs of squash against the green baize of the exhibition tables. I expect someone does tidy up before it all gets going but no one seems to mind the stacks of plastic chairs and the odd mix of screens. The produce is what counts.

Admission is free to these shows that take place in the spring, summer and autumn but it is taken as read that you buy a raffle ticket when you go in. Prizes include the usual bottles but we won a walnut tree last time. It will be a decade before we get any walnuts out of it but we were delighted.


Some might feel that our association is in something of a time warp but I find the sameness and regularity of these events reassuring. It is low tech and quiet, relying on face to face, human contact and legwork. There is no website or email address. I suspect that these modern facilities would increase the membership but it would trade a special, indefinable quality for convenience. When I walk into that church hall I know that it probably looked very much the same in 1956, and in 1978. All that has changed is the fashion and hair that has either fallen out or turned grey.

When the association was founded almost eighty years ago the area that I live in was a shiny new suburb, built alongside main roads, a few Victorian buildings and a railway line. Property speculators encouraged the founding of garden associations and front garden competitions because the bare patches in front of the new houses did nothing to enhance the look of the place. By encouraging householders to turn the muddy plots of land around their homes into gardens they knew that they would add value to their development without having to spend any more on it themselves.



Within twenty years of its being founded the gaps had been filled in by Tudorbethan and Art Deco semis and the gardens were being pressed into service to help those on the Home Front. They became a vital resource and garden associations came into their own. Once the Anderson shelter had been built the space around it was used to fill the gaps that rationing had left. Suburbanites who would never have been interested in growing potatoes suddenly wanted the advice of those who had been growing them for years. The allotment society was the best place to ask and many more clubs of this kind were founded.



I find it sad that, at a time when the UK is undergoing such a positive change in attitudes to the environment, these associations are disappearing because no one is prepared to run them. Most of those running the one we belong to are retired or very elderly and are actively seeking new organisers. I play a small part by pushing leaflets through doors three times a year and putting a poster in the window but I can’t help thinking that many people pay lip service to the environmental movement but can’t be bothered to part with the £2 annual membership fee or walk two streets to a church hall where these events take place. These associations usually offer a discount to their members which can mean quite a saving to someone on a tight budget. They are a great example of a local, green, community resource and in spite of a renewed interest in growing vegetables they are literally dying off.

There will be a time, not that far away in the future, when we will have to start growing our own food just as they do in Cuba, where every spare foot of land is being put to use. When that time comes we will need all the good advice of the members of such associations to make every seed and drop of water count. Let’s hope that they are still there to help us out.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=82416

　

Forbidden fruit

The fig tree that belongs to my neighbour is heavy with fruit. I have a fool with a fondness for bonfires to thank for this. Two years ago, whilst in the process of taking in hand the neighbouring rundown property, he began burning bits and pieces one morning and kept this up for five hours. I was a bit concerned that he might set fire to our shed and then, quite possibly, our home. Before I went out I spoke to him just to make sure that he was aware of my concerns, just in time as it turned out. He was about to pull apart the fence panel that we had propped up to cover the gap in the fence (that our neighbour was in fact responsible for) and burn that too.

Most of the stuff on the pyre came from the garden that he had been “tidying up” and I mentioned that as much as I loved their cherry tree I was certain that it was responsible for the cracks in our walls as it was so close to our house. Half of it was leaning over the fence and some of the branches almost touched the walls. He claimed that the roots of a cherry tree never spread that far but the cracks in the concrete on our side of the fence told another story. When I pointed out the sticky cankers all over its trunk he said that it would need some looking after but I was glad to see that within a few days that he had looked after it to the point of cutting it down.

I do miss the cherry blossom and the sherbet scent in the spring. The cherries were nothing special but still edible. Some years ago I got annoyed that the starlings were the only ones getting the benefit of them and actually asked if I could have them. I had found a recipe for pickled cherries and was determined to use them for it. For several weeks I kept running outside to scare off the birds and finally picked as many as I could reach. Then I spent a sticky, juicy hour removing the stones. I didn’t have the right kind of pan for the purpose and used a Le Creuset casserole pan but I did have the right kind of preserving jars.

By the time I got around to cooking them up it was around 11.30 at night. I heated up the vinegar with the brown sugar and brought it to the boil. Unfortunately cast iron retains heat too well to allow it to cool down quickly when needed so the bloody thing boiled over and the boiling hot sugary mess ran all over the hob top. My eyes watered as the kitchen was suddenly filled with acrid fumes. There was just enough left to put the cherries into and I spent some moments holding my breath while handling a very hot glass jar into which I was pouring an equally hot cherry/vinegar/sugar mixture. It didn’t explode so I got something right. The lid went on easily and tightened perfectly as the vacuum was formed. By now it was 1am, the back door was open and the kitchen looked like the site of a dangerous experiment.

The next morning I proudly pointed to my jar full of pickled cherries. “They look like sheep’s eyes” he said and went to work. That jar went onto a high shelf and was eventually binned after living there for quite a few years.

I did make blackberry jam on one occasion and we were both surprised at how purple it was, I’ve always meant to make more. The strange thing is that there don’t seem to have been that many this year in our garden. I try to pick as many as I can because if I don’t the rats and the birds will get them and spread them around the place. As a consequence there are brambles and cherry trees everywhere.


I don’t know if the rest of the country has been affected in the same way but in west London we have been blessed with an abundance of free fruit. There has been enough of the right weather at the right time to leave the trees along the A40 quite literally dripping with fruit in shades of gold and red. I’m not sure what these trees are, damsons probably, but unfortunately their proximity to a road with high pollution levels means that I can never take advantage of that harvest (this doesn’t stop one woman I’ve seen picking and eating berries as she walks along even though I’ve mentioned the risks to her). The pavements alongside it are sticky with rotting pulp and I have to watch my step because their slippery skins and small hard stones can send you skidding, especially after it rains.

One morning I found myself peering out of the window at one of the self sown trees at the wilder (OK, scruffier) end of the garden. At first I wondered why its leaves were turning so early in the year. Then I realised that these autumnal dabs of gold were in fact the same kind of fruit that I had seen at the roadside. I had never seen fruit on it before. Even the ornamental plum, Prunus cerasifera nigra, is strutting its stuff in the fruit department.

Unfortunately there is only one fig tree but as I said I have bonfire man to thank for the abundance of them that now hang on my side of the fence. Once he had hacked down the cherry tree he managed to prune the fig in such way as to leave all the fruit on my side. Thanks to the way the shed and the fence are arranged I can pick all those figs the moment they have ripened. I consider it payment for five smoky hours and summers spent with the windows closed because my neighbour liked his Beethoven loud.