What ho everyone. What is new? Not much is new with me, except I can't remember how to write a web-blog anymore. That is because I am 'Instagramming' pictures of graffiti, cats and babies, and looking out of the window a lot.
"Stop being so bloody lazy and write your blog", said my friend Charly. It was her birthday on the 9th of September and I can't think of a good present to give her that doesn't involve yachts or private Zumba lessons with Bruce Forsyth, so this post will be a sort-of birthday present until I see something good that I think she would like. (NB she gave me a brass chip fork on a chain and that is hard to beat, so finding the good thing may take time.)
Anyhoo, here's what's going on.
Doing a bit of work
I am doing a part-time freelance thing that is extremely interesting, and I am a) learning a lot and b) working with people I like. It is pretty good and if I can keep this up I may do it forever. The main benefit is not having to be in an office all day. Other benefits include:
- not having to do conference calls;
- not having to worry about anyone's 'performance review';
- not having to pretend you like people who you wish dead;
- etc, with the "etc" being all the things I have written about before.
Signing up for courses
WTF etc. I have signed up for 2.
1. Intensive One-Day Course In Interactive Marketing And Advertising;
2. How to Sew.
I am looking forward to the second one more, but the first one will allow me to nod more sagely when people are talking about for e.g. internet pricing models. This is the problem with being old and working in the marketing: you have to keep on top of all the channels otherwise the young people (who couldn't write a strategy, build a fee proposal, talk a hyperventilating client off a cliff, spell or make a TV ad if you paid them) will be clicking their fingers in your face and calling you 'Daddy-O' when you happen to comment that getting 12 'likes' on a Facebook page is not going to contribute much to an objective of for e.g. increasing unprompted awareness by 12% or increasing value sales by 23%.
Watching TV
I really like TV. Here are my favourites:
The Great British Bake-off. If Mary Berry ever said "Oh you CLEVER girl" to me I would cry for 12 days. I want to touch Paul Hollywood with my pastry brush and I'm not going to wear surgical gloves when I do it.
The Real Housewives of New York. I will not hear a word against this programme. It is terrible and glorious all at the same time. Anyone who watches it will agree with me when I say Carole Radziwill is fantastic and LuAnn de Lesseps is a massive pikey with a man's head who is not French (as she claims); her mother was French-Canadian. It is not the same thing (not better or worse, just not the same thing).
The Real Housewives of Vancouver. Anyone who thinks all Canadians are nice just needs to watch this programme for 2 seconds. They are terrible people (apart from the one with the weird accent who likes boys).
Downton Abbey. I haven't watched the new series yet but I know it will be good. Won't it?
The Thick of It. I mean really:
Also, wasn't 2012 good.
Going to the Gym
Not doing super-well on this front yet, i.e. twice a week, but better than before, i.e. not at all for two years. I have a 'personal trainer' who I think will be better than the hapless Anuja. The reason I like her is that one year ago she weighed as much as me (i.e. far too much) but had surgery to get thinner and makes no bones about it. I am not going to have surgery but I am going to do her devil programme 3 times a week and we will see if I can lose 20lbs by Christmas.
Making jam
A lot of jam. This is about 1/10th of what we got out of the plum and apple trees:
Enjoying this excellent coffee pot cosy, designed by Hazel of Amsterdam:
Going to Toronto, which even the dogs wish they could escape from:
Finding Isaac "Figgy" Newton in the garden
And using the wood burning oven we (and 15 friends) built in the garden. That's a whole other post, but here it is before the roof went on:
And now, to the gym, where I will sweat like a killer and do unladylike situps.
"I will go after the Olympics is over. It is bound to be terrible. Everyone will be depressed because we will lose everything, the busses will be broken and breakfast in even the most rubbish places will be over 50 British Pounds".
As it turns out, only the last was true, and I was wrong. It has been brilliant from where I am looking (in Canada) and from what I can gather from all friends in London (which is where I am from and was born), it has been fantastic and not that much bother in terms of cycle lanes and Belgians clogging up the tube.
In fact I have watched the Olympics from Montreal and cried my face off for nearly two weeks. Crying episodes included:
1. All of the opening ceremony, non-stop welling OH THIS IS SO LIKE US I DO NOT CARE WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD THINKS I AM SO HOMESICK give me the wine"
2. Anyone trying not to cry at their national anthem (all countries)
3. Anyone crying at their national anthem (all countries)
4. The first notes of the National Anthem (ours)
5. Roger Federer letting Andy Murray win
I did not cry in the closing ceremony, but I do think that Danny Boyle should have done a BOGOF.
Anyway, I am going to London tonight. Here is why:
1. To see some headhunters and see if I am unemployable (should we decide to move back to the yewkay);
2. To see some headhunters who, although they are in London, are in charge of International and therefore may be able to tell me if I am unemployable (if we stay in Montreal);
3. To see the finest hairdresser in the universe - a man who is also a stand-up comedian and is doing fewer and fewer haircuts as his comedy writing gets more and more famous;
4. To see a man in Harrow-on-the-Hill about my ankles;
5. Most importantly, to see people and have a nice time.
I will go from London to Hastings and back, and to Amsterdam and back, and then I will go back to Montreal after two and one half weeks. In the meantime, please continue to send in your questions and I will answer them (with enthusiasm) when I am back.
Pip "Blighty!!!" Pip
NWM
p.s. this is how I feel when I think about going to England
Good news, loyal readers and fans! My inevitable return to some kind of money-making enterprise will be delayed a little longer, for following yesterday's excellent post, I now have a new (albeit unpaid) occupation: answering your questions with the help of Spons' Household Manual (1897) and/or Every Woman's Enquire Within (1938).
Here goes:
Is there a remedy for insomnia?, writes Jane.
There is a lot of advice in Spon, but it boils down to a point of view along the lines of: if one weren't such a wetsy, it wouldn't be a problem. For e.g.:
"The difficulties about sleep and sleeplessness - apart from dreams - are almost always fruits of a perverse refusal to comply with the laws of nature .... If only he would get up and do a full day's work, of any sort, and not dose during the day, when next the night came around his 16 or 20 hours of wakefulness would be rewarded by a sleep of 9-10 hours in length."
If that doesn't work, Spon recommends having a wash in carbolic soap, a short walk of 20 minutes, staying off tea and coffee, hop pillows, and not eating for an hour before going to bed. Last resort: "common raw onions raw, but Spanish stewed onions will do".
Not a last resort: "Recently, the dangerous and lamentable habit of promiscuously taking sleeping draughts has unfortunately become very prevalent, entailing misery and ill health to a terrible degree".
Let that be a warning to you all.
"Do either of these excellent manuals have chapters on travel? Having just spent two days cursing my way through three airports I think I need some remedial packing training", writes Megan.
"Having prepared your luggage" (which takes WEEKS and a lot of polishing), "we come to the packing itself". Familiar advice follows, including tissue paper, folding, hats in hat boxes and rubber corks in bottles sealed with candlewax. But this, it seems, is all you need to know:
"Pack tightly - this is the real secret of success, for when everything is wedged together, nothing will shake about and so get crushed." (Every Woman's Enquire Within, 1938).
Spons is no good whatsoever; perhaps people didn't travel in 1897, but there is one piece of advice that I'd like to pass on, namely that you should "never take white petticoats for rough travelling; a striped coloured one is best. Take black lace neck scarf and gauze veils."
DES asks: "Is cleanliness next to godliness? I have such a suspicion that standards in these matters have been raised absurdly high in these germophobic times, and that your experts might have a more reasonable view, along the lines of having a bath once a week whether one needs it or not, except for houses, if you catch my drift."
There are entire chapters - huge ones - in each book about cleaning. No God chat, but as far as Spon is concerned, being clean/cleaning is essentially the answer to everything. I am not a medical historian etc but I have the feeling from reading it that they had just found out about germs and quarantine and what-not; there is an entire chapter on the different types of chemicals you need to dispose of medical waste (from poo to snotty handkerchiefs). I have however looked up "Infant bathing" and here's what he says:
"Never put a child to bed dirty. The whole body should be washed every day. Young babies and infants should be bathed and well washed every morning in warm water, and thoroughly dried afterwards....young infants are best washed after their first meal, older children before breakfast."
No shirking for you, young man. Get in the shower immediately. (Also, there is no chat about 'fallen ladies' etc., if my inference is correct.) What are the foremost duties of my servants?, writes Special K. Every Woman's Enquire Within was written in 1938, and this is a written for the post-war housewife who, likely as not, didn't have servants at all; as far as I can see, there's no mention of them. I can't find anything in Spon about how to manage servants, but they clearly exist as there is all sorts of chat about where they should sleep, eat and sit: "Servants' beds should never have valances round them, as it encourages a habit of keeping boxes and rubbish under the beds." It is mysterious. I sometimes think Spon is writing for a Mr Pooter type of person - there is a great deal of advice on plumbing - but then he'll throw in a recipe for lark pie, which makes me wonder who he's writing for. Perhaps there is no advice on duties of servants because everyone just knows how to do it. Strangely, I can imagine Lady Redesdale might have had a copy of this book.
That's it for now. There are a lot of good recipes, parlour games, beauty advice and medical bits and bobs in both, by the way. HINT HINT.
Pip "Keep 'em coming otherwise I'll have to find a job" Pip NWM
Dirty skirting boards that are over 100 years old should not be cleaned with modern substances like 'Cillit Bang' or 'Easy Off Fume Free Oven Cleaner'.They should be cleaned using proper old-fashioned methods that involve scrubbing, rubbing, tinctures and the sort of chemicals that were banned in some Eastern European countries as recently as 1983.
Luckily for me - and also maybe you, of which more later in this post - I have two books full of such methods. This is just as well, because my own skirting boards (c. 1908, i.e. not that old for England, excitingly antique for Canada) are the sort of filthy that makes visitors ignore your pristine lavatory bowl and leave your house convinced that weevils live in your pants.
Book One:Every Woman's Enquire Within
A.C. Marshall, editor of Tit-Bits Book of Wrinkles (who, exactly, Tit-Bit was, and where his wrinkles were is another matter altogether) also edited this magnificent tome, first published in 1938. It is only for "Home-loving women", and touches on a range of topics including Home Management, Character and Fortune, General Knowledge, Home Maintenance, Etiquette and Correspondence and Practical Home Cookery.
Book Two: Spons' Household Manual
Published in 1897, this book reckons that ladies can cope with more than fortune-telling, and includes chapters on Water Supply, The Larder, Thieves and Fire, Receipts for Dishes, The Sickroom and Domestic Motors. (FYI the Spons are E & F N Spon).
Both books are very relevant in 2012. Of this I am convinced. For e.g., the very first paragraph of the preface of Spons' Household Manual could not predict that one day people in for e.g. Portland or Stockholm would be knitting the very socks on their feet whilst nipping down the sourdough starter hotel to chat to their mates about rennet:
The same is true of Every Woman's Enquire Within, which was extolling the virtues of a nice firm brush long before anyone thought that people in Hackney would one day be selling dustpans and brushes for 35 British pounds.
All this leads me to two conclusions:
1. That I will one day have clean skirting boards; more importantly
2. That I must offer a service to you, my adoring readers and/or fans.
Here's how it works:
You can send in a question (in the comments box) about any topic, and I will look it up and send you Advice From The Past. If you are lucky, you will get 1897 advice and 1938 advice (which would be like comparing now to 1971, which not many of us like to do). If you are really lucky, the Sponses and A. C. Marshall (guided by me) will also be able to fix whatever it is that ails you.
Come on then ! Let's see what you got !
Pip "Rub it with tincture of myrrh" Pip
NWM
P.S. This post is inspired in part by The Voice of Boo's v. excellent posts on Nancy Spain. I have not yet told her that I own The Holiday Inn International Cookbook (1970), which is dedicated to Ruby "Doll" Wilson and contains a recipe for "Beef A La Holiday".
