Wednesday Window: Doodlemum

Doodlemum is that remarkable thing: a word-of-mouth runaway success. Angie Stevens used to love drawing, and then she had children... She hit upon the idea of documenting family life by doing a sketch a day, and she put them on her blog:

Someone had the bright idea of making a book of them, and it will be published tomorrow:

I love it, for its style, and its brilliant depiction of family life in all its crazy moods. The chickens are pretty cool too!

Angie Stevens has also made some contributions to the recently published Musings on Mothering, a beautiful anthology of art, poetry and prose about mothering.

Wednesday Window: International Edible Book Festival 2013

Love books? Love cake? Then, as they say, you’re going to love this!

I’ve been a fan of Playing by the Book for some time, and last week it featured a post to get the brain working overtime: the launch of this year’s International Edible Book Festival. 

Yes, that’s right: edible books. In short, anyone can enter, and all you have to do (hollow laugh) is create a cake which either looks like a book:

or features a character or scene from a book. Check out this Pinterest Edible Books page for inspiration. My favourite is the extraordinary Minas Tirith -

and I've always loved Mog -

though my daughters were quite taken with the Gruffalo too:

If you want to enter, you have until 20th March - all the details are here. I can’t wait to see the results!

A poem for Valentine's Day

Valentine


Foolish as I am, I once accepted
advice from a poet, who suggested
an onion as the thing to light your fire
and kindle wild the flames of your desire.

The scent - long lingering layers on your skin -
seemed luscious even when the joke wore thin,
but watching silent tears course down your cheeks
was something I was haunted by for weeks.


Fiona Lewis
with apologies to Carol Ann Duffy

Wednesday Window: Salted Caramel

Through today’s window is my new vice - salted caramel ice-cream. I discovered this in a certain large supermarket just before Christmas and it is heavenly. Strangely, salt with caramel seems to be a very modern flavour; according to those who track such things, it first appeared in this country only about ten years ago, when an inventive chap called Gerard Coleman of Artisan du Chocolat devised sea-salt caramels: little salty toffees covered in dark chocolate and dusted in cocoa. I’ve yet to try one of these, but I hope it won’t be long before I get the chance. In the meantime, the ice-cream is pretty darn good! 

If you fancy yourself as a cook, I've also found a Nigella recipe for salted caramel sauce, which I'm hoping to have an excuse to make very soon:

• 75g best quality unsalted butter
• 50 g soft light brown sugar
• 50 g caster Sugar
• 50g golden syrup
• 125ml double cream
• half to one-and-a-half teaspoons fleur de sel*

Step 1: Melt butter, sugars and syrup and butter in a small heavy based pan and let simmer for 3 minutes, swirling every now and again.
Step 2: Add cream and half a teaspoon of fleur de sel salt (not table salt!) and swirl again, give a stir with a wooden spoon and taste – go cautiously so that you don’t burn your tongue – to see if you want more salt before letting it cook for another minute on the stove, then pour into a jug for serving.

*I don't know what fleur de sel is, but we've got some posh sea-salt flakes in the cupboard so I'm planning to use those and see if it works.

Enjoy!

Wednesday Window: A Woman of San Germano

Last Sunday I spent a very happy couple of hours exploring the Ashmolean Museum with Poppet. She eventually led us into the Pre-Raphaelite gallery, where I was particularly taken with this painting: 

It's a beautiful portrait of breastfeeding, and I love the colours and the way the woman is framed by the vines. Poppet wanted to know why there's a pumpkin at the front, but I'm no art historian so we had fun discussing it - "Maybe she's going to make pumpkin soup for tea?"
"Or maybe it's Halloween?"
"Or maybe the artist just wanted to practise painting pumpkins?"

I love the story behind it too. The whereabouts of Martineau’s painting were unknown from the 1930s until about four years ago, when someone inherited it from their grandmother. Having been identified, it was offered to the nation in lieu of inheritance tax, and once accepted by the government, given to the Ashmolean Museum.

A very similar woman wearing identical Neapolitan costume (some people believe it was in fact the same model) features in a painting by William Holman Hunt, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, with whom Martineau shared a studio in the 1850s. There's more about the two paintings here.

Austen's Pride and Prejudice

This should have been published last week, but better late than never!

It's 200 years since Pride and Prejudice was first published, and hot on the heels of lots of splendid coverage in the media I'm all aflutter once again about my favourite book. It's become so popular that it's no longer particularly cool to like Pride and Prejudice; it is somehow more sophisticated to say one much prefers Persuasion, and that Anne Elliot makes a more interesting heroine than Elizabeth Bennet, but I've never been particularly cool, so I don't see why I should start now. I think Lizzie Bennet is the kind of person I'd like to have as a friend, and I love the way she speaks her mind, even if she occasionally gets it wrong. I remember very clearly the first time I re-read the book since school, and I was struck by how forthright she can be, particularly when speaking of her feelings to Mr Collins and Mr Darcy, when they each propose to her.

I have nothing academic to add to the countless discussions of the book, but I do have a very important question about the men. In the TV and film adaptations, why oh why is Wickham always so much less handsome than Darcy? It is important in the development of Elizabeth's feelings for Darcy that she fancies Wickham from the start, and when Mrs Gardiner observes them together "their preference for one another was enough to make her uneasy". When Wickham appears in the story, he is described as "needing only regimentals to make him completely charming. His appearance was greatly in his favour: he had all the best parts of beauty - a fine countenance, a good figure and very pleasing address." Darcy on the other hand, "drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien and the report that was in general circulation within five minutes of his entrance, of his having ten thousand pounds a year."
 

So in the book they're both handsome, yet in both the otherwise excellent BBC adaptation, and in the more flawed film with Keira Knightley, Wickham is significantly less attractive (to my eyes at least) than Darcy. Wickham often comes across as whining and shifty, while Darcy gets away with being smouldering and moody. Is this discrepancy to help those few sorry individuals who don't already know the ending to root for the right guy? Or is it just because generations of people have come to think of Mr Darcy as synonymous with perfection, to the point where it would be sacrilegious to allow another character to come close? And Wickham, being a thorough cad, mustn’t dare be handsome as well. I jest (a bit) but it is annoying. 

The story is more subtle and more interesting if Elizabeth's fancy for Wickham and consequently her readiness to believe him seriously wronged by Darcy, is given its full weight. And if we are to believe that she really fancies him, it would help if he were played by someone gorgeous - like Dominic Cooper as Willoughby in Persuasion. 

The entertaining ITV spin-off "Lost in Austen" (2008) came closest,  casting Tom Riley as Wickham against a slightly constipated-looking Elliot Cowan as Darcy, although they also changed the story and the characteristics of some of the characters (including Wickham), so maybe that doesn’t count!

But I suspect I've rambled more than enough. If you're still with me, please raise a glass in praise of Austen and Pride and Prejudice - still fabulous after 200 years!