Random Jottings

Happy New Year

May the next year be peaceful and happy for all you lovely peeps out there who read this blog and make me feel so happy when I hear from you all.

 

Merry Christmas

A Sustainable Christmas - another rant

You will probably remember my recent rant about magazines and how their banging on about empowering women etc irritated me beyond measure. If you do not and wish to read it, then the link is here.

I had a huge response both on and off blog about this posting. I have more or less given up on magazines now but last week I bought a Christmassy edition of a glossy just for a treat and to see what was being discussed. (Usually these mags say How to have the Best Christmas EVER, but as I had the best Christmas EVER last year according to them, not sure how I can top it).

No matter.

This one is of Vital Import.  It is a Guide to a Sustainable Christmas. Over 90 guilt free (or in this case gilt free) festive ideas.

I started to bristle before I even opened it. I noted the sub-title “from your decorations to the dinner table, how to have a celebration that packs a stylish punch without stressing the planet”

OK I am off. FFS. How about ideas about how not to stress yourself? The last thing on my mind when I am peeling the sprouts or stuffing the turkey is the planet. The ice cap can melt and the polar bears can become extinct as far as I am concerned when I am dealing with Christmas Lunch.

“Antiques are regarded as the most sustainable way to furnish your home”  it seems that whether you have a Georgian chest of drawers or a Victorian dinner service, these pieces tick all the boxes when it comes to longevity, style and a LOW CARBON FOOTPRINT (my capital letters).  I have to say that when I make a cup of coffee in my Coronation Mug dated 1953 the words carbon footprint have never crossed my mind.

Gifts – try to use independent shops in your area (in the sea of the High Street if you can find one that is not M&S, Debenhams, Matalan etc then good luck to you)

Wrapping gifts – plain brown paper is recyclable (a lot of the foil stuff is not it seems. We are told this with explanation marks!!!!!!!) you can glam it up by using stamps, twine or trimmings.

Home made presents – these are thoughtful and are GREEN. (Don’t make them too far in advance else the only green will be mould)

Make sure all presents are posted in good time. Well, YES.

After this you can relax as there will be no last minute department store dashes. There that makes you feel better doesn’t it?

Now you are so relaxed that come Christmas Eve you have plenty of time on your hands and so if you are not tearing your hair out and screaming because your husband/wife has forgotten the sweet sherry which is the only thing Gran will drink, and you have made 100 mince pies (whole meal pastry natch) and the cat hasn’t brought down the tree, then guess what you can do?  You never will. I know you won’t so I am going to tell you.

 Why not organize a family craft evening?

Yes a craft evening.

Children will love making popcorn garlands or pomander for the tree!!!!!

They will they will they will. Trust me.

Now if you have not bought your presents and are currently gnashing your teeth in frustration and panic may I offer you some suggestions?  “Learn the skills to give an extra-special environmentally friendly gift this year”   I presume you need to start learning these skills at least six months before hand.

So we are given details of workshops for candle making, wreath making (no not funeral ones), bread and baking, ceramic decorations, willow animals (Oh I lurve the idea of making willow animals. So useful) hand iced biscuits and Christmas lettering.

Decorations – make your own wreath. You need to get foraging folks and we are told that our back garden is a brilliant source of evergreen leaves (though what you do if you live in a flat I do not know) Yeh right. But don’t bring the greenery in too early else it will dry out.   Why not save it up to do on Christmas Eve? You know that family craft evening I mentioned earlier. You can do it at the same time.

If you have been sent “loads of gorgeous cards” then hang them on the wall using bio-degradable twine. Once that is done you can have a go at making some paper chains or snowflakes from your stash of scrap paper and materials.

What stash?

And we are back to the Night Before Christmas again.  “For a relaxed evening with the family why not make edible decorations for the big day? Garlands of popcorn and dried fruit for the tree, gingerbread baubles or posies of herbs (which you have foraged for in the back garden no doubt) are all kind to the planet”

All that is left to do is to sit back and “marvel at what you have achieved”

I mean who writes this total and utter bollocks? WHO WHO WHO?  Have they any idea what real life is like. Quite frankly by the time Christmas Eve has arrived the last thing you want to do it make edible decorations with your children.  If they are small all you want is to get the little sods into bed and asleep so you can creep in later and put the stockings at the end of their beds. If they are older they will be too busy on their Playstations or their ipads to be interested in stringing together dried figs or other crap.

But we are not finished yet. Oh NO. Now you need to take some time to yourself. HAH! Have a bath, a slug of gin, raid the peanuts?  That would be too common. No this magazine’s idea of time to yourself on Christmas Eve is to set the table for Christmas Dinner.

IRON the tablecloth (I do apologise for the shouting)

IRON the tablecloth gawd help us. We then “adorn” it with our favourite antique ceramics, glasses and cutlery. Some natural greenery and handmade place names (which presumably you have made during the family craft evening) will complete the look.

Antique drinks trolleys are a key trend….the mag says so therefore it is.

So now is the time to stock it up with glistening decanters, crystal glasses and mixers. If you don’t have a trolley (and let us face it most of us use the kitchen work surface) then why not set up a DIY drinks station on a sideboard or a window ledge?   Why not indeed – just make sure it is out of reach of children’s sticky fingers.

And if you survive this Mindful Sustainable Christmas then do not forget to Recycle in the New Year.  But if you have done what you are told, theoretically you should have nothing to chuck out.  No paper, no decorations (you have eaten them all) and as all your presents were wrapped in vintage napkins or tea towels (no I am not joking this was suggested) then cometh the bin men you will have nothing to show them.

After reading this magazine I felt the strongest urge to go out and buy the crappiest, most plastic toys I could find, wrap them in glittery non-recyclable wrapping paper, get a plastic Christmas tree, loads of non solar fairy lights, as much Blue Tac and Sellotape as I could lay my hands on and sit down on Christmas Eve stuffing my face with chocolate and drinking gin.

Which, let’s face it, is what most of us will do.

Bah Humbug.

This holier than thou, woke, virtue signaling load of bullshit magazine is now in the bin and I will not be recycling it.  So there.

Random Ramble on a Tuesday

My apologies for my absence. I have had a busy week, as probably we all are, with Christmas on the way.  Parcels have been sent to my daughter in Australia, the postage costing more than the contents, all shopping done and just the wrapping up to do which I undertake on Christmas Eve with Carols from Kings on the tv.

Last week I had my own Carols from Kings with the slight difference that it was Carols from St Johns. I went to Cambridge and attended a family concert in the afternoon held in the chapel at St Johns where my daughter Helen is a Fellow. The utter gorgeousness of Cambridge never fails to make my heart lift and I consider myself fortunate to have Helen there as I now have access to places which might be difficult otherwise.

 

It has been a horrid few years in the UK with the political scene and the deeply unpleasant sight of Parliament engaged in internecine fighting and backstabbing and my opinion of its inhabitants, which was never high, plunged to hitherto unimagined depths of contempt.  Now all that is over. No matter what political opinion one may hold, and I am not going to engage in that here on Random, we now have a government with a majority and the chance to govern instead of naval gazing. 

That feeling of thankfulness and utter relief was with me on Saturday and though I know God does not take sides, I did send up a little prayer in the chapel that perhaps we could all start being a bit nicer to each other in the year ahead. We shall see.

The service was delightful and aimed at children. The vicar or canon or whoever (not sure of the hierarchy in college) gathered the children around him on the steps of the altar. Beatrice would only come if I went with her which I did (getting up afterwards was a trifle problematic) and told the Christmas story with the use of different bars of chocolate. Very amusing and ended up by telling us that Marvels had happened, Herod was up to his old Twix etc et. Went down very well.

We then had lit candles and processed around the chapel and out into the lobby singing O Come all ye Faithful when the organ thundered out. Before the Blessing the organist went potty - played a collection of carols with all the stops out and the sound shook the rafters. It was simply wonderful and I came out in goosebumps. I found the whole afternoon quite emotional and was on the verge of tears most of the time. The sound, the beauty, strolling with my family around St Johns afterwards on a glorious winter afternoon, sun going down, what a day.

I have to say the tea in the hall afterwards was sumptuous! And just to let you know that I do not live on a higher plane all the time, in the evening I babysat and the girls and I sat in our onesies with drinks, chocolate and Pringles and watched the final of Strictly Come Dancing.....

Read a couple of Christmas mags this week. Be warned. A rant is on the way.

Slightly Foxed Christmas Prize Draw - Result

Good morning everybody wherever you are. In the UK it is pretty chilly so I am sitting her in my dressing gown and keeping warm until I can get myself into gear and get dressed.

I have now done the draw for the lovely prize of the two Rosemary Sutcliff novels published by Slightly Foxed. I folded all the bits of paper up carefully so I could not see any names and stirred them round.

And the winner is:

Please contact me Jenny with your details and I will pass them on to Slightly Foxed and ask them to get the books out to you so you have them for Christmas.

I don’t know where you are located but SF said they will post anywhere.

Congratulations and thank you to all of you who took part.

Rosemary Sutcliff - Slightly Foxed Christmas Prize draw

A few weeks ago I read Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff in the gorgeous new edition from Slightly Foxed. I had not read these Roman Britain novels as a child as I always preferred her stories set in the Tudor period. Well, I missed out on a treat then, but discovered them later on in life where I think I appreciated them more than I would have done as a teenager.  My thoughts on Eagle of the Ninth were posted here.

Since then I have read the next book in the series, The Silver Branch, and found the same enchantment, the same breathless excitement in the fight and/or flight scenes. I do not know how she does it, but I found them totally gripping and filled me with tension until I finished reading.  Sue Gainsford recently wrote about the two books on the Slightly Foxed website and this is what she had to say about the final battle:

"Near the end of The Silver Branch (1957) comes a nail-biting, heart-pounding account of the epic battle, nearly a hundred years later, that famously ended in the destruction of Calleva (modern Silchester, where still the evidence of former glories and catastrophes can be glimpsed). As the battering-ram beats down the great gates of the basilica, and the horde of screaming barbarians pour through, with slaughter in their hearts, fire leaps up to the rafters, engulfing those sheltering there in waves of black, acrid smoke. High up in the blazing building the young surgeon Justin Aquila is, like his ancestor Marcus, careless of his own life – ignoring the advancing flames he cradles an elderly, fatally wounded gladiator and comforts him by conjuring up memories of the crowds who cheered his victories long ago, in the arenas of Rome. It is magnificent stuff"

Yes it is magnificent stuff and the power and beauty of Sutcliff's writing is quite breathtaking.  There are two other books in this series, The Lantern Bearers and Frontier Wolf. They are due to be published in the autumn of 2020 and I am not sure I can bear to wait that long - but I will. Well, I have to....

What I love about these new editions is that they retain the original illustrations. The Eagle of the Ninth was illustrated by C Walter Hodges who I absolutely love. (I have a copy of the Little White Horse on my shelves, a very old hardback edition with his enchanting drawings and I cherish it) and The Silver Branch by the  by the equally wonderful Charles Keeping. I love the way these illuustrations surround the text on certain pages, like a tapestry and so beautifully drawn and imagined.

This is a slightly wonky picture taken from my copy but I just wanted you to see just how these marvellous black and white drawings add to the narrative

Now those lovely peeps at Slightly Foxed have very kindly said they will send a copy of the first two novels in this series to a lucky recipient. They post all over the world so there is no border limit here.

So I will ask those of you who would like the chance to lay your mitts on these WONDERFUL books to leave a comment below and tell me which is your favourite Rosemary Sutcliff novel. Though this will have no bearing on the choosing of the winner (I will draw names out of a hat) I am just interested in hearing about the stories you love by this author.

Today is 2 December and I will leave the draw open until 6 December and I will make the draw then. I want to leave plenty of time to enable the winner to receive the books before Christmas.

And if you do not win, then please consider sending a bijou bank transferette to Slightly Foxed and buy them. You will not regret it.

Good luck xx