Summer Holiday in Cornwall

Cornwall has its own magic. Whether it’s the nostalgia of endless summer holidays, the ancient legends of King Arthur or the fabled light and skies that always attracted artists to St Ives,  there’s an air apart about Cornwall.

Driving down from Somerset, through Devon, all sleepy lush lanes, verdant hedgerows and trees, trees, trees, there’s a point when the rolling hills open up to brisk sea winds, when solitary wind turbines dot across the landscape and villages are built from stoic grey stone to withstand winter storms.

For some reason we never came west on childhood holidays in my family. Grandparents were in Edinburgh and Norfolk, and it was always north and east on day long car journeys, testing parents’ patience with the eternal refrain of ‘how many more miles?’ So heading there with  our combined families wasn’t a nostalgic return but rather a new discovery for my brother and I, taking our kids there for some bucket and spading and family togetherness.

We were near Polzeath in a big house with ample room for us all up on  a hill above the Camel estuary. There were several beaches within walking distance  (even for my three year old niece though she demanded a shoulder ride every now and then) and it was a wonderful novelty for our farm kids to be able to get about on foot.

I loved the lanes edged by dry stone walls overgrown with flowers, the contrast between the vivid green of the hills and lanes and the steely grey of the local slate, the layers of history that are present everywhere.

The big painterly skies are a common thread with South Africa, but here they were delicate cloudscapes, as the weather blew hot and cold on us, a rainstorm hurtling across the horizon at lunch time, brilliant sunshine for an evening walk.

And we had the kind of weather when you put extra clothes on to go to the beach, but go anyway, only the adventurous going right in for a swim, the rest paddling and defying the waves with sand fortifications and spades.

Another short diversion on the way to the beach at Daymer Bay on the River Camel estuary was to St Enodoc’s church with its appealingly crooked spire and green grassy churchyard.

Apparently it was almost buried by the sand dunes for a couple of centuries before being excavated again in the mid 19th century. There’s a John Betjeman poem about Trebetherick that about sums up the kids on holiday feel of this particular corner of Cornwall. http://www.johnbetjeman.com/trebetherick.html

Four nights was all too short, we could have spent another week or two there.

Girls at Polzeath beach more interested in observing stranded jelly fish than surfing.

The lane leading down to the beach at Daymer Bay

We stayed in Evergreen Lodge, which is perfect for two families or a group of friends - lots of space, big kitchen, long tables, big sofas and a nice enclosed garden. Hope we can go back there one day!

England and Tintagel

We’re been back home long enough that England and summer seem a distant memory. We’ve acclimatised back to winter rains, winter sunshine and chilly nights, got used to school mornings of getting up in the dark and leaving before sunrise. There’s been a loss in the family, my husband’s oldest brother, who after a long degenerative illness was taken by a short sharp bout of pneumonia. Most of the family were luckily able to spend time with him before he went  and they will all be together next week for his memorial service.

It’s a light relief from sadness to be able to go back over the photos from our holiday, revisit the time spent with my family, getting to know my nieces and sinking into the soft pillow of English countryside, hedgerows tall and summer green, trees more than I ever remember, hills rolling, lanes winding, West Country accent soft and unhurried to my ears, now re-tuned to a South African wave-length.

The kids got a highly skewed view of England, all idyllic Somerset countryside, Cornish beaches and historic houses. No cities, no malls, no grim industrial landscapes. So if they get a shock when they encounter London as young adults, it will be all the fault of an unashamedly rural family holiday taken at an impressionable age!

The Cornish stone walls of the ruined castle at Tintagel

There were so many beautiful days that can’t all be crammed into one post, so maybe I’ll spread them out and start off with our visit to Tintagel in Cornwall. The craggy remains of an ancient castle perched high on a headland, it’s a romantic enough spot already, but at some stage someone decided it needed an extra dash of PR spin. To draw the crowds, a legendary connection to King Arthur has been inflated out of very little – supposedly he was conceived there. – and you can now buy plastic Excaliburs outside every little shop in the village, buy Merlin crystals and goodness knows what else. However much of a grockle (tourist) trap the village is, the castle itself is unspoilt, with dramatic views down the Cornish coastline and you can see why it was such a fantastic stronghold over the centuries – no-one would be able to creep up on you unawares here.

A further reason that Tintagel repels invaders of sedentary coach parties... the steep and narrow climb to the castle gate is enough to challenge anyone but a mountain goat. So though there were plenty of visitors when we were there, it never felt crowded and there is the whole headland to spread out onto once you’re up.

Of course once we were up there we realised that it was the perfect place for a picnic and that we should have grabbed some Cornish pasties at the ‘Genuine Cornish Pasty’ shop in the village and hauled them up with us. We managed to keep the kids going on the secret stash of mint imperials in my bag, long enough to appreciate the views, give parents heart failure by peering over the edge, investigating wells and walls and wildflowers.

When the brisk breeze became a little chillsome, we made our way back down the precipitous path, passed a whole lot more people struggling up and went down on to the beach to see the caves, perfect for smugglers.

And then there was a less thrilling walk back up to the village. The youngest member of the party got a lift up in the Landrover, which ferries the exhausted back up the road. The pasties once I'd queued for them, were huge, tasty and sustaining, even if they were crimped on top, which the internet has assured me was not a genuine Cornish habit but a Devon interpretation, and not one child balked at eating the swede (must be the only way in the world to make it palatable to kids!). They even said that my attempts at Cornish pasties were almost as good as the real thing!

Then it was back in the van to face the ever windy, motion sickness-inducing lanes and re-join my husband who had stayed home to make the bread, read his book and recover from a dose of flu which had caught up with him after the flight.

Tintagel is a gorgeous place and well worth a visit if you have strong legs – go in the morning before the crowds arrive and take your pasties and picnic up with you!

The cousins together at Tintagel

Kitchens of My Childhood

Corey at Tongue in Cheek wrote about her Mum’s kitchen, still the same kitchen of her childhood, full of baking and constant comings and goings of family. She sent me back to recollecting the kitchens of my childhood.

The front of the school where I grew up - not me in the picture!

I say kitchens, because there were two. The small galley kitchen in our flat and the big bustling school kitchen below. I grew up in a school, a small, English boys’ boarding school. The buildings were an old manor house in warm honey stone built for the local squire and his family in the late Victorian era. Spacious and roomy but not too imposing. Our flat was the upper floor in the servants’ wing forming an L to the main house. Our kitchen was small, the end of the wing partitioned off, high counters put in by the first headmaster and his wife, who were both tall, big windows just a bit too high, but light and airy looking over the stable yard.

There wasn’t much counter space for spreading out on, but my mother had a trolley that we used as an extra surface when baking biscuits or cakes and it is there that I remember waiting to scrape out the cake mixture, hovering, one foot in the green carpeted corridor, as she scraped as much into the cake tin as she could, us willing her to stop before it was all gone. It was there I learned to make drop scones, proudly serving up a plateful to a party of visitors one tea-time (was it the school governors?).

Every corner was used, cunning turntables on the corner shelf just inside the sliding door held all the little pots of baking powder and such like, another turntable on the wide window ledge held jams and honeys, bottles of orange squash and Ribena lined the counter, cereal boxes lived high on top of the wall cupboard, with the sliding glass door that one of us broke trying to climb and reach something. Tupperware lived in the cupboard underneath the trolley that needed just the right pressure to open. A blue padded top stool with a retractable step sat next to the trolley to reach the high shelves over the cooker. The four of us could just fit in to do the washing up if we stepped around each other carefully.

The big school kitchen immediately below my bedroom was another domain. Three big Agas in an imposing row kept it warm year round. A huge table stood in the middle, big built-in wooden dressers on two sides. In the days before stainless steel regulations took over, it was little changed from the old manor house kitchen, with painted wood cupboards and linoleum floor. In term time it was a hive of activity presided over by the cook and housekeeper.

I would sidle in with a  bowl on a mission from my mother to fetch flour, dried fruit or eggs from the store room. A big old fashioned scales with weights sat on the dresser. Three big metal dustbins held the flour (self-raising and plain) and the sugar. A metal dipper sat on top of each, to scoop out from the white powdery mountain inside, and I’d carefully weigh out however much I needed, adjusting the metal weights in pounds and ounces, for whatever recipe my mother or I was baking up in the flat, before scuttling back upstairs to our little kitchen.

The dried fruit required more exciting fetching. The first drawer in the dresser held a heavy bunch of housekeeper’s keys. Above the drawer hung a clipboard with the school menus for the week pencilled in. I would check it out regularly, my heart quailing if it showed fish for lunch on Friday, or relieved if a favourite pudding was planned. All the larders were kept locked, but I had the entree and could help myself to the keys and go and fetch whatever was needed.

The dim housekeeper’s larder held shelves stacked with dry goods and tins, and smelled of spice and raisins, in my memory at least. Whatever I was fetching I would be tempted to open the dry fruit cupboard and lift the lid of the tin containing mixed dried fruit (the cake mix with candied peel) and grab an illicit handful... There were three other interlinking larders with wire mesh screened windows and stone slab counters, dating back from the days before refrigeration and between them all the food for the school was stored. Apart from that there was the potato shed in the back yard, dark and slightly damp where the potatoes were stored in a heap still covered with earth. Milk was delivered daily, as the fridge for the whole school in those days was only the size of an average large family fridge today.

In term time I slipped in and out of that kitchen shyly and surreptitiously, politely greeting and then escaping back up to the quiet upstairs, occasionally lingering if it looked like there might be enticing tastes offered. But in the Christmas holidays the school kitchen became ours. My aunt’s family, and great uncle and great aunt, joined us and we would cook meals for the extended family downstairs, expanding into the school as if it were once again a family home and manor house. Then we would stand around the big table, my aunt, mother cousin and I, icing the Christmas cake, mixing up brandy butter with frequent tastes, peeling potatoes, preparing big meals.

The tall cupboard that contained food colouring and baking supplies was at our disposal for making peppermint creams with all the fancy cookie cutters. The Agas always kept the kitchen warm and toasty, unlike the chilly winter corridors of the school in holiday time, with central heating turned right down. By now I knew that the wooden sloping lidded box on the window salt contained salt not sugar – my toddler brother and I had discovered that, tricked by laughing kitchen staff, who were then less than thrilled when we spat our mouthfuls out over the clean kitchen sink!

We’d use the rattling metal school trolleys to wheel the food up the stone flagged passageway to the smaller dining room, or to take tea things, always a proper afternoon tea with bread and butter, cake and biscuits, through to the wood panelled main hall which we transformed into a sitting room, grouping all the sofas and chairs around the huge fireplace, the school Christmas tree adapted for our own use.

After Christmas with the new school term, we shrank back into our little upstairs kitchen again.

Those tastes of a big warm kitchen with a central table stayed with me. My dream kitchen was formed by the descriptions in Rosemunde Pilcher novels of a kitchen stretching the width of a London basement, welcoming friends and family to sit around and chat, sofa at one end, room to stretch out and bask in the warmth of baking and cooking. And that is what I now have here.

A kitchen that stretches into sitting room, a big table where everyone can sit around, scents of baking bread and biscuits. And I almost never cook fish on Fridays!

What do you remember about your childhood kitchen?

When I Was 35

From where I stand now, 35 doesn’t seem so very far away. A short stretch across the plateau of family life, surely not much has changed in the intervening 10 years? Reading Charlotte’s post on her life at 35 and casting my mind back, I was surprised to discover how much has changed in my life since then. Even more surprised when I read her post of several years ago about being 25 and found that I'd followed her lead that time too and written a post about my life when I was 25. So much I had forgotten about. Thanks Charlotte for setting me off on a nostalgic voyage of re-discovery once again!

When I was 35 I was adjusting to having two children, our new baby daughter having just joined our two year-old son. I was busy learning the tactics of diplomacy, compromise and negotiation. I learned to read aloud as I breast fed and survive on very little sleep, as our son had conveniently given up day-time napping, just as his sister came along.

When I was 35 we lived in a tiny two bedroom house in South London with a pocket handkerchief garden. We’d spent four months living in South Africa the previous year, but had returned to London try and make sure that our business would support us when we moved for real. We still thought we could keep a foot in both worlds. Two years later, we moved to South Africa anyway and plunged in with both feet. Now we’re living in a spacious straw bale house that is the opposite of our London house in almost every way.

When I was 35 I was finding out what it was really like to be a stay at home mum to two small children. When our son was a baby we’d lived in the photographic studio that was both home and work, and there was always someone around to hold the baby, if I wanted to go to the loo or cook a meal. My husband was usually around, even when working and our baby son was happy to be handed around a group of admiring photographer’s assistants.  Living in a house a commute away from the studio, there was just me and two kids for most of the day. I had to find my own resources and quite often my husband would arrive home to find me slumped on the sofa with a howling child on each side of me, as I let the afternoon meltdown run its course.

When I was 35 the toddler groups at the local Waldorf school were a regular weekly outing, a necessary escape from the house. I didn’t then know that my kids would end up going to a Waldorf school themselves, but I loved the wooden toys, crafts, natural fabrics and friendly atmosphere.

When I was 35 I bought organic products from Sainsbury’s and Tesco. I could get organic flour and organic everything for very little more in price than the regular products. Fair trade chocolate slipped into the trolley every so often too. Then we moved to SA and to my dismay I could hardly find any organic products on the shelves of supermarkets. It took me a while to figure out alternatives over here, and even longer to realise that even better than buying organic would be growing our own  organic produce.We're still a long way from being self-sufficient but enjoy harvesting tomatoes, guavas, almonds, strawberries and veggies.

When I was 35 I had still never cooked a Sunday roast. We had Sunday lunch whenever we visited my parents in the country once a month or so. In South Africa my mother’s Sunday roasts were no longer within reach, so I finally learned to cook my own and now we have them almost every Sunday, except in summer when the very idea brings me out in a sweat.

When I was 35 my life not only revolved around my children but was absorbed completely in their whirlwind. Now my life still revolves around them, but there is a calm space in the middle of the whirlwind, where I can work and write and occasionally imagine that I am separate from them.

When I was 35 jeans and a black Gap rib jumper with a Burberry sheepskin waistcoat were my winter uniform. The Gap jumper is getting a bit holey now, and I’ve bought new jeans since then but I’m effectively still wearing the same winter clothes as then and that warm waistcoat has survived remarkably well – to whoever left it behind in our photographic studio all those years ago, I am eternally grateful!

When I was 35 I developed strong arm muscles from pushing a three wheel buggy up and down the steep hills to the local park near our house. I probably got far more exercise then than I do now, as walking was the easiest way to get out of the house. Now I manage to keep my arm muscles strong by kneading bread dough every other day.

When I was 35 I had never even considered writing for either work or fun. I read avidly as I always had done, and collected books for my kids to read one day, but was too much in awe of writers and their expert weaving of words into enthralling stories to even dream of becoming one myself. Now I write for work and fun, but am still nowhere near writing the stories that I love reading so much.

When I was 35 I was just starting to discover homeopathy and other alternative medicine. I liked the practical stuff,  but crystals, reiki, past lives, angels and such like were way out of my comfort zone. Now I’m getting comfortable with all that woo-woo stuff and discovering a spiritual side of me that I didn’t think was there.

When I was 35 I had never heard of blogging. I made new friends who lived close by and had toddlers and babies to share play dates with. Now I have new blog friends on the other side of the world and blogging is the social lifeline that toddler play dates once were.

When I was 35 my garden an outdoor space with a clothes line and a few small trees hopefully planted. I never really got to grips with it. Now at 45 I finally have a successful herb garden much to my own surprise.

What were you doing when you were 35? This isn't a meme, but let me know if you are inspired to join in the retrospective!

Toy Memories

All it takes is a toy, to make the years slip away and take you back in time.

There is a certain plastic fire engine with loads of buttons, that we gave away to Tina, who cleans for us, for her little boy. He is now 2 ½ but was born premature with water on the brain, so has had a hard start to life with much time spent in hospital and he was not expected to live for long. Her love and devotion has kept him going however and he is now getting stronger, though his development is at least a year behind his age. She usually leaves him with a carer while she’s at work but at the moment can’t find anyone, so has been bringing him with her this week.

So the red fire engine has re-entered our lives. The electronic siren, singing voice and exhortations to Grab a Star (I think) that used to drive me crazy when my children were small, are back, playing interminably in the other room, as I sit at my computer.

I am transported back to when my toddler son was given this fire engine for Christmas. We were living in a flat in South London: one of those terraced houses with two doors; a flat upstairs and one downstairs, backing on to an embankment with the station and the main railway line for the Gatwick Express. The landlord lived in the upstairs flat, a very sweet older gay man, and it was him who presented our son with the fire engine, thus inflicting its dulcet tones on us for the next five years!

It was a strange period in our lives. We were in the flat for only nine months, until we bought our own house further out, but it was the first time I’d been home alone with our son, while my husband went in to work every day. Before that we’d lived at the studio: work, home and baby nursery all combined in the one office space, with lots of people coming and going. I had to adjust to a routine with just one small toddler to base my day around, and soon a new pregnancy that made shopping a sick joke, with the local Sainsbury’s within walking distance, but having an unfortunate mix-up of smells at the entrance, so that instead of smelling the bakery as you entered, it seemed that it was the fish counter that welcomed you (though it could have been my oversensitive hormones).

This was the time when we would go for a slow walk down the street to watch the diggers digging up the street or walk to the local parks to pass the afternoon. I tried to avoid driving too often which would mean losing our parking place and having to park miles away. We had our first ever Christmas tree, bought in the street market and small enough to sit on a table, for which we made our own star decorations out of card and silver foil.

Every morning our son would howl desolately as his father left for work, making him feel awful. He’d spend hours helping me with the washing up, getting us both soaked in the process. This was also when I discovered the Waldorf system, with a toddler group at the kindergarten close by. His discovery of television, which we’d avoided till then but which became a survival tool for those too early mornings with Sesame Street, showing every morning at six, saving our sanity when our early waking son had been awake for an hour already. The desperate anxiety of a croup attack in the night. Terrible tantrums for a several week period when he decided that baths were no longer an option, hair washing even less so and teeth were not to be brushed ever.

So long ago but all brought back as if it were yesterday at the touch of a button and an irritating tune.

Catch-Up Meme

How to fill the hole of a whole month's absence from my blog? Instead of wringing my hands and apologising madly for being such a bad blogger, citing reams of extenuating circumstances, I should of course take a leaf from Special Agent Gibbs' book in NCIS, his rule number 9 being 'Never Apologise'. So I shall just swan in and borrow Meredith's meme designed for catching up with friends you haven't seen for fifteen years in ten simple bullet points. Fifteen years/one month... the answer has to be bullet points:

1. The rest of our time in England was packed full of seeing old friends, most of whom we hadn't seen at all since we moved to SA. It was wonderful how easy it was to pick up the threads again as if no time has passed and so great to see them all. Each of our children got to meet one of their name-parents (our equivalent of god-parents) again for the first time in about three or four years, and it was amazing to see that they still had an instant close connection with them, following them around and climbing all over them as if they'd seen them every day of their lives.

2. From a quiet Somerset village we went to stay for one night in a friend's North London flat in a street full of take-aways. The novelty of pizza and Chinese, the thrill of nipping down to the shop two doors down at eight o'clock in the evening for milk and butter for breakfast had me bouncing around like a kid playing house, but after a noisy night filled with London traffic and pub closing time I was very happy to be moving on - even though I was leaving my husband to several more nights of take-away food and noise, while he stayed in the big smoke for some work meetings.

3. We went to North Norfolk to a typical seaside town. The children invested their pocket money in shrimping nets and we had one perfect sunny morning on the beach, building castles and looking in rock pools. The other windy, cool and rainy days we spent riding on a steam train, walking in some amazing rhododendron woods, playing croquet and trawling the souvenir shops in an agonizingly slow pocket-money spending-spree.

4. We discovered the joys of Satnav borrowing our friends' Tomtom to talk us into and around South London. Apart from the fact that I was concentrating so hard on it that I missed a turn that I used to know off by heart, it worked well and the novelty of it kept us all entertained for ages. It did have a major wobble once on our return journey when it tried to send us back into London again, instead of the road we knew we were supposed to take. We almost followed it and then rumbled its cunning plan and got ourselves back on the right road again, much to its annoyance.

5. We had a totally touristy day out in central London and introduced the children to the joys of trains, the tube and London buses, took in the dinosaurs in the Natural History museum and ate ice cream in Trafalgar Square. We even took a cab and asked the driver to take us to Victoria Station via Buckingham Palace, thus underlining the fact that we are no longer cool Londoners. The children were rather disappointed by Buck House - not their idea of a palace at all.

6. The first thing that struck us when we reached home was how enormous our house felt after all the houses we'd stayed in in England. It has since shrunk back to its normal size and feels just right again now.

7. Role reversal on the domestic front as a big re-writing and editing project has chained me to the computer for the last two weeks and my husband has been doing the school run both ways to give me more time to work.

8. Middle Daughter's birthday that she had in England this year still had to be celebrated with a party at home complete with treasure hunt and cake, so last weekend was spent composing a butterfly treasure hunt and the weather co-operated with sun-shine and the first white daisies flowering.

9. Middle Daughter finally had the dental surgery that we agonised over for so long and then postponed for months because she had a cold every time it was booked. The whole general anaesthetic thing was majorly stressful for both parents and not something that I want to have to do again with any of my children if I can possibly help it, but she is fine, her teeth are fine now and it's over.

10. We've been ODing on NCIS watching series 3 at a rate of two episodes per night, every night and then being so horrified at Gibbs' apparently retiring that we had to go out and buy the next series for my husband's birthday present. Nothing like a bit of stress, drama, corpses and tension to make you look forward to your evenings on the sofa in front of a fire.

Normal blog service should now be resumed and I may even get round to posting some photos, I've hardly even looked at them yet myself. Lots of love and thanks to everyone we saw, as well as those we didn't quite manage to meet up with this time. It was great to go back to England and after the initial disorientation it's great to be home again too.

In Memory

On Saturday we had the memorial service for my father, held at the school where he was headmaster for 23 years and where we grew up. There was a huge turn out of over 200 old pupils, teachers and people who had worked at the school in his day, as well as family, friends and even ex-pupils and colleagues from his previous schools. There were some wonderful speeches, which will have let him know just how much he was appreciated by his former pupils and which brought back many memories for us all.

The quote of the day went to my 2 year old niece, who we’ve met for the first time on this visit. During the service she noticed all the people behind her, who had bowed their heads for the prayers. “Everybody hiding!” she observed in delight, thrilled with this new game!

Thinking July meant sunshine we’d all planned on wearing summer outfits and debated whether tights would be too hot on a sunny day, but we needn’t have worried - it was rained upon in true English style! There is something about the English character that comes up trumps in the face of adverse weather conditions and maintains a wonderful note of optimism by continuing to plan outdoor events, with a balmy idea of floating around in summer dresses on green lawns, Pimms or scones and tea in hand, despite the frequent realities of shivering in cotton frocks under ineffectual umbrellas. Our memories hold on to some universal ideal of croquet, tennis or picnics under blue skies and endless sunny evenings, despite the fact that the last really long, hot summer we can reliably remember was in 1976, when bathwater was rationed in my first term of boarding school!

The idea had been that after the service the old pupils, parents and friends would be able to wander around the present day school and watch the children playing tennis, cricket and any other sports that would be going on, enjoy strolling around the gardens and woods before sauntering over to the front of the old building where tea would be served on the lawn. As the service drew to a close the light pattering of rain on the sports hall tin roof crescendoed to raindrops drumming overhead and everybody scurried over to the main building and crowded into the old school hall for tea, creating a convivial but well sandwiched atmosphere!

The girls did wear the pretty summer dresses and sandals that my mother had bought them for the occasion, just adding leggings underneath and, even though the rain lashed down at a fierce angle, had plenty of fun running around the building and making raids on the sumptuous plates of sandwiches, cakes and biscuits that were piled high on trestle tables around the hall.

I don’t think any of us stopped talking for a moment after the service, as there were so many people we hadn’t seen for years coming up to introduce themselves, shake hands and say nice things about him. I haven’t had enough practise being in the spotlight and did my best to carry off the role of ‘family’, but there is a certain skill needed to conclude one conversation gracefully as new people keep coming up to start another one, besides the challenge of trying to recognise people you haven’t seen for twenty years. There just wasn’t enough time to have proper catch up conversations with other members of the family either, but it was still lovely to see everyone and there was a real buzz to the occasion too.

The day before we had been over to the school to set up a display of photos, both of my father and of my children’s school in South Africa (as we are setting up a fund in his memory to sponsor the school fees of one or more children there), and we took the kids with us so they could see where my brother and I had grown up.

The school has grown a lot since then, with new buildings built over the vegetable gardens and double the number of children, but once we had signed in and put on a Visitors badge in accordance with EC regulations, we were allowed to go exploring and found that much of the original building is still much the same, so we could show them all our old hiding places, including the trap door in the ceiling of the linen cupboard leading to the roof space, which was the one that intrigued them the most!

It was amazing how much the feel of the place was the same, despite many new buildings in the grounds. The same stone flagged corridor in the kitchen passages, the same polish smell of the wooden floors of the hall, even the same oil smell in the cellars from the boilers that run the central heating system. There is something about the building that retains its friendly family feel. It must be soaked into the warm golden stone that went into the original manor house 150 years ago when the local squire built it for his family. Try as the pupils might to conjure up some spooky ghost stories to tell after lights out, they never can make them really convincing, as the house just doesn’t have that shivery feel of being haunted.

I had to keep restraining the urge to show the kids all the out of bounds areas, like the way out to climb on the rooves, strictly forbidden of course and probably dangerous, but it would have been fun to show them where our names are carved in the lead … it must have been my teenage self calling to me, partially left behind there in the stones of the place where I grew up!

Rainy Days Out

We spoke to the family in South Africa today and it has been raining solidly for four days there – good solid winter rain filling the reservoirs to overflowing, just as it should do on a good year.

Here it has been raining too – English summer rain guaranteed to pour down in torrents whenever an outside event is planned in July! It was Middle Daughter’s birthday last week. For the first time in her memory, being away from home, we broke with tradition and didn’t have a birthday party with treasure hunt for her birthday, but organised an outing instead to Monkeyworld in Dorset, which is an amazing primate rescue centre that the children have seen for years watching the programme Monkey Business on Animal Planet.

Her birthday dawned overcast and showery looking and, mind in Africa-mode, I wondered whether we should postpone the outing, picnic lunch and all for a finer day. I’d forgotten that in England you go ahead anyway, that there might not be a finer day for weeks! We actually had a lovely time. The intermittent showers saw us sheltering under cover listening to a keeper’s talk on Woolly Monkeys, or picnicking under the covered terrace of the café, or stopping for an ice cream under a wonderful African-inspired, thatched boma. In between we were able to see several of the animals that the kids knew from watching the series and listen to a few more keeper’s talks, watch the troop of ring-tailed lemurs and the baby chimps. At the end the sun came out in full force and dried up the rain so the children were able to clamber over the rope structures in the playground too, with bright patches of blue sky behind them.

Talking about the experience on the way home our son was conservative in his praise – we’d seen it all from the visitors’ perspective and it was interesting but he thought it was better to see it from the keeper’s perspective on Animal Planet, he said. It’s a shame that reality doesn’t quite live up to TV… The girls decided that if they got left behind they’d go and live in the lemur enclosure as they liked the sound of their diet, as described by the keeper – fruit and nuts definitely beat the capuchin monkeys’ mixed diet with frogs featured on the menu!

More rain today with drenching showers demanded drastic measures to get the children out of the house, which is just a little too small for them to be cooped up in all day long. We took them out willy-nilly to Yeovilton Air Museum, completely ignoring Middle Daughter’s protests that she didn’t want to go and see some old aeroplanes.

She did manage to rustle up a little interest in flying some of the model planes and seeing how the controls on a harrier work and also survived the simulation experience of being on board an aircraft carrier, with all the noise and mayhem of planes landing and taking off. Youngest even said afterwards that it was nice . The hardest part of the experience was in manoeuvring through the gift shop at the end, with £1 pocket money burning a hole in their purses. Finding anything desirable at that price was well-nigh impossible and we ended up comparing the relative merits of pencils and rubbers, pens and notepads. The decision process took at least twenty minutes, by which time we were desperate to get home for a cup of tea and found that the sun had come out at last. Maybe it will shine for our next trip out on Wednesday, but I'm not betting as much as a souvenir pencil with keyring attached on that as a certainty!

WTSIM Summer Pudding

It still seems so strange to be spirited into the middle of an English summer, the weirdest thing being the evenings that stay light until ten o’clock. The children are in bed, but still wide awake and chatting away, unconvinced that it really is bedtime, even though it’s way past their normal time.

We’ve had soft summer weather, some sun, some cloud, a threat of drizzle that fades to nothing, warm enough for T-shirts, with a gentle breeze now and then that teases you into a warm top, if you stay still too long. It’s hard to remember that we still need to wear sunscreen even under a cloudy sky.

Out in the garden the children have discovered wild strawberries nestling under their leaves and found that they are only sweet once they are red all round - the one in the photo looks completely plastic but tasted wonderful!

Today was the village street fair and my mother had our roles all organized – our son was to run the marble race that Grandpa used to do every year, with a wooden marble run that takes two marbles hurtling down parallel to see which is the fastest. She ended up manning it herself most of the time, as he wandered around watching all the other attractions.

I helped on the bric a brac stall and took my children’s money from them as they repurchased several of the things that we had donated, including half my old keyring collection! They couldn’t believe the purchasing power of three quid in bric a brac and have now amassed a collection of ceramic birds, soft toys, little boxes, cushions, bags and stuff that will need to be fitted into their cases on the return journey … I was kept so busy inventing prices for pots, ceramic knick-knacks, a playstation and all sorts, that I didn’t take any photos at all, even of my two older children, who had been persuaded into presenting the bouquets, after the fair had been pronounced open.

The hardest part was clearing up at the end, when we had to sort the leftovers into piles for the dump or to take to a charity shop. It was hard for me to send anything to the dump, when it was perfectly good to use still. In South Africa there is always someone who will be able to use something, however well-worn it is. Here we had to send a load of mismatched glasses and unwanted electrical goods to the dump, as nobody could think of anyone who would take them off our hands.

When I saw the theme of this month’s WTSIM event hosted by Jeanne was Berried Treasure, I knew that I’d be making a Summer Pudding at least once after I got here and in fact my mother had already planned one for this weekend, just in time for the deadline.

It has always been one of our favourite family puddings, the epitome of an English summer. Purple berry juices transforming stale bread into a luscious, jeweled slice of flavour to be smothered in cream and savoured. The classic version has redcurrants and raspberries in I think, but ours has always majored on blackberries, with raspberries and loganberries and had apple in to bulk out the berries. Blackberries are really an early autumn berry but my father was always an industrious gleaner from the hedgerows and usually picked enough to freeze for the rest of the year. You can use any sort of berries for this but they need an edge of sharpness, so strawberries and blueberries on their own would be too bland and sweet.

Summer Pudding Recipe

500g / 1 lb mixed berries

500g / 1 lb cooking apples

½ - 1 cup sugar

1 loaf stale white bread

These quantities are approximate, as it depends on the size of the bowl you use and how many berries you have. This does a medium size pudding basin. The sugar needs to be added to taste as the berries vary in sweetness. You are aiming to sweeten them enough to be pleasant but not sickly sweet.

Slice the bread thickly and cut off the crusts. Line a pudding basin with the slices, patch-working them together so that there are no gaps.

Peel, core and chop the apples and put them in a pan with a little water and sugar and stew gently for 5-10 minutes until starting to soften. Add the berries, which can still be frozen, and plenty of sugar.

Warm them over a medium heat, but don’t let them boil. As soon as a simmer is reached they are usually already tender enough, as you want the berries to retain their shape.

Spoon the stewed berry mixture into the bread-lined bowl until they are level with the top of the bread. Any left over juice can be kept to pour over it later. Put a layer of bread slices on top to seal in the berries.

Put a saucer or small plate that just fits into the top of the bowl on top of the bread layer and weight it, so that the berries are compressed and the juice soaks into the bread. Leave it for at least twelve hours and make sure that it stays weighted down.

Serve by turning the pudding onto a plate and pouring over a little of the leftover juice wherever the bread still shows white. Serve with double cream.

Oh to be in England!

Green… burgeoning, blossoming green, the English countryside in full flood of a generously watered summer. Trees billowing over hillsides, clouds billowing in the sky. Busy roads, speed traps, impatient drivers beeping, as I struggle with the gears of the hire car. Winding country lanes, one car wide, lined with lacy white cow parsley, jagged with stinging nettles, tall hedges blocking the view except at farm gates, which give glimpses of low rolling hills, patchworks of fields, spreading endlessly to the horizon.

We got here safely and survived the first leg to Jo’burg, despite the fact that our son discovered that he suffers from motion sickness in planes and moaned and groaned into a sick bag for the second half of the flight. Luckily our stop-over at Jo’berg enabled us to dash to the pharmacy for pills to quell the nausea and the endless miles to walk between Domestic and International, the maze of confusing signs, specially designed to employ several staff just to stand around and field bewildered travellers, gave plenty of opportunity to re-acquaint our feet with the ground and get our circulation going in preparation for the next ten hour stint.

Their aunt had thoughtfully provided activity bags with colouring books, puzzle books, crayons and pencils, which helped pass the time and the moving pavements kept the kids busy at the boarding gate, as they went round and round, backwards and forwards. Nobody managed more than three hours sleep on the plane, but had the novelty of being allowed to watch unlimited movies on the in-flight system and we discovered The Golden Compass, the movie of the Philip Pullman novel, which was excellent. I even switched over to it, as it was miles better than the lame romantic comedy that I’d started off with!

Arrival at Terminal 5 provided more opportunities for exercise, with the transit train not working, but the kids had survived the flight in good spirits and stepped out gamely. We even made it through passport control, with Youngest on her SA passport, putting on her standard ‘looking at strangers’ frown. Then came a friend meeting us for breakfast, mango smoothie wiping out two of Youngest’s spare outfits, the trek to the hire car place and a struggle with fitting three car seats into the back of the medium estate car we’d booked. Our oldest son was resigned to the indignity of a booster seat, but we just couldn’t fit three seats in a row. The arms of the booster seats interlocked and jabbed into the next child. In the end we took him back into the hire office and lined him up against the measuring chart. His head was close enough to the line that he’d pass muster, with marginally thicker shoe soles, so we handed the one booster seat back, feeling like we were living dangerously, in this newly regulated land of three points off your license for the slightest misdemeanour.

Finally we headed out of Heathrow’s concrete jungle, towards the lush green hills of Somerset. The kids slept most of the way, waking only to see Stonehenge through sleep-blurred eyes.

None of them had any clear memories of Granny’s house, our son only remembering playing on the stairs and that the carpet had been green then, so much exploring had to be done and discovering of Mummy’s old toys that had come down from the attic specially to meet them.

They’ve had a busy two days settling in and we even braved the shops to change the wellie boots that Granny had got them for different sizes (with more symptoms of motion sickness discovered in Youngest, though that was probably due to my less than smooth driving as I struggled to discover the optimum gear ration and grappled with the multiple roundabouts, speed limits and traffic of the metropolis of Yeovil!) – they’re jolly fancy ones too here, with fairies and fashion victim girls and camouflage patterns adorning them, much prettier than the bog standard blue ones from our local farmers coop at home.

Granny had arranged for our son to get some cricket with the local boy’s cricket club yesterday and there’s the village street fair on Saturday, so they’re being plunged into English village life already. Middle Daughter said yesterday that she wouldn’t mind living here. Right now they are having a raucous time with a wooden marble run that is now on its third generation of kids and the sound of cascading marbles is echoing around the house from the upstairs landing. Watch your footing as you reach the top of the stairs as one misplaced marble could have you cascading down them too.