I think January is always a bit of a challenge! This second New Year of a global pandemic is no exception. I’m aware that we personally are quite fortunate in the grand order of things, but at this time of year it’s not always easy to see beyond the immediate circumstances. Despite our continuing caution and many precautions as we are both pretty vulnerable, Boxing Day brought me a streaming cold, temperature and banging headache, and the Zoe Covid app recommended a PCR test which wasn’t available even to order until the next day. The welcome negative result arrived after a couple of days on New Year’s Eve; well done to the lab and Royal Mail. The bug, however, is still taking its toll and we weren’t able to join friends as planned for lunch today, so I was feeling a tad sorry for myself, if I’m honest.
I decided to start the January Challenge from 64 Million Artists to kick-start myself into action as I thoroughly enjoyed doing it in 2020 and last year, though the ‘Covid malaise’ of creative inertia took its toll on me in 2021. I think I did actually finish all but one in the end, but failed at the stage of collating the results when the fragile mojo deserted completely! I thought I’d give it a go again this year so this is the ‘one line self-portrait’ challenge we were set today.
I have a small notebook that I had great fun making in a West Yorkshire Archive Service workshop earlier this year and had decided to use as a sort of ‘commonplace book’ for 2022, so the January Challenge will start it off nicely.
Drawing and painting are not my forte, so this was definitely out of the comfort zone: I took to photography in part because I can use it to create the images I want but cannot create with pen or brush. The eagle-eyed may spot the tracing paper I used in order to set the portrait outline, too! Finally, in my own defence, I would just add that I really do feel as wobbly and rough as I look there!
A distinctively South African (Cape Malay) dish, this is apparently traditionally served with ‘Yellow rice’ – long-grain rice cooked with a spoonful of turmeric added to the water for colour and a handful or raisins thrown in for good measure, plus sambals or side dishes.
I tend to add add any suitable ‘sides’ along the lines of a west African ‘groundnut chop’ accompaniments, such as handfuls of coriander, cucumber ribbons in lime juice, fried onions, chopped pawpaw or mango with a sprinkle of lime or lemon, salad leaves, chopped oranges, chopped chillis, chopped sweet red and green peppers for colour… The fresh fruit and veg cut through the richness of the lamb. I sometimes add a few toasted almonds and sometimes finely chopped dried apricots to the rice. You can happily ‘cheat’ with a packet of pilau rice, too!
Mrs H. S. Ball’s chutney is ideal to serve with and use in the cooking, but you can get good supermarket own-brand chutneys with apricot or peach. If you can’t get these, just use apricot jam – you can add a teaspoon of vinegar if you think it might be too sweet. You can also throw in a few finely chopped dried apricots to the meat mix to add to the fruity flavours.
To serve 4 -6 (though I have made double to feed 6 with no leftovers!)
2 thickish slices of white bread
10 fl oz. milk (300 ml) – caution – will be used in two halves
4 good tablespoons apricot/peach chutney or apricot or peach jam (yes, really!).
A clove of chopped garlic, or a good squeeze of garlic paste/heaped tsp of lazy garlic.
2 teaspoons mild (or medium) curry powder (garam masala would work, too)
Half a teaspoon of salt and ground black pepper to taste
2 large eggs
2 bananas
2-3 bayleaves.
Pre-heat oven to 180 (160 fan), 350F.
Put the bread in a bowl, pour over a scant half of the milk and leave to soak. Fry the onions and lamb, adding the garlic after a minute or two. Add the curry powder and continue to fry gently until the onions are translucent and soft and the lamb lightly browned. Remove from heat. Fork through the bread and milk to break it up and add it to the cooling lamb mixture, mixing thoroughly. Season well and stir through the chutney or jam. Pack the mix into a baking dish about 1.5” deep.
Peel the bananas, slice lengthways and arrange on top of the meat mix in a pattern, garnish with the bay leaves. Beat the eggs and remaining milk together and pour gently over the top of the meat mix. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until the custard is golden and set.
Garnish with coriander, slice and serve with the various ‘trimmings’ and a selection of chutneys.
Bobotie ready to serve. This was actually double quantities.
We were fortunate to have our booster shots against Covid today, especially in the light of the local case rate escalation published by the ZOE project. Sitting waiting in the (mercifully quiet) doctor’s surgery I was reminded of a friend’s exhortation when she posted a shot of a beautiful historic building ceiling to remember to ‘look up’.
Whilst the aesthetic appeal of the GP surgery and its ceiling might be more limited, looking up did bring a view of a cheering, bright blue sky, which I chose to take as a good portent, hence the phone snap. Not a brilliant image but I’ll keep & post it as a salutory reminder to keep looking up for the things we may otherwise overlook and to look for the bright spots when circumstances can feel overwhelming.
I’m no gardener. The gardening gene of both my parents passed me by, but I have always appreciated a garden even if not being very adept at looking after one. This means I am always disproportionately chuffed when I actually manage to harvest edibles or have flowers flourish!
Courgette flower fritters
Summer is pretty much over in the garden here; the last few ‘Octoberries’ are sparse now, the bedding plants need an autumn refresh, the tomatoes have been pulled up after a summer’s bounty and the courgettes have just had a last flurry of flowering. With frosts impending, I took the chance to pretend we’re still in summer and made our annual treat of stuffed courgette flower fritters.
I first made these on a holiday in Italy with friends, where the villa owners had kindly left the Elizabeth David batter recipe to hand! The local market had an abundance of flowers and my friends were willing guinea pigs.
Since then, I have sometimes grown courgettes (zucchini) as much for this little treat as the veg, though this year we have cropped well and with the supply chain issues (thank you, Brexit and Covid) the garden has handily supplemented a slightly erratic supply.
The recipe works well with a tempura-style batter too, but I do like to use the David one. 4 oz flour, 3 tbsp olive oil, salt, 3/4 tumbler (sic) of cold water and an egg white, whipped until stiff. She recommends stirring the oil into the flour & salt, making a thick paste, then adding the water slowly – add enough to make a thick creamy mix. Let stand for 3 hrs, then fold in the whipped egg white. If too thick, add a little cold water but you want a thickish coating mix.
I hadn’t planned this properly so didn’t have the more traditional ricotta for stuffing. I have simply put a chunk of good ‘melty’ hard cheese inside in the past when similarly unprepared, but it’s not that easy to seal the flowers!
Raiding the fridge gave me grated mature cheddar which I bound with a small pot of mild, soft, medium-fat goat’s cheese, adding a grating of Parmesan and a few shredded basil leaves. A scrape of nutmeg finished off the mix. I left this in the fridge until ready to cook.
After washing the flowers and taking out the central pistil I scooped in a heaped teaspoon of the now firm cheese mix, folding the petals to seal in the cheese. I kept the baby courgettes attached, though the odd one separated.
The final stage was to dip them in the batter and fry in small batches in a light oil, keeping the fritters warm in the oven after draining until all were ready. A final taste of summer!
I do a fair bit of slightly desultory genealogy and also quite a lot of transcription work for a family history society. I admit I’m probably not the fastest kid on the block with either, as I do tend to go down rabbit holes when I come across mysteries or something intriguing. Add to that the small pleasure of serendipitously coming across & following up things that amuse me, and you’ll see I can be endlessly diverted! I thought I’d just pass on a few of the more obscure occupations that have crossed my meandering path of late.
The cotton and woollen industries of the Pennines and elsewhere are ripe sources of sometimes esoteric, now mostly lost, trades. In the 1861 census I found 11-year-old Jane Farrow living in Rochdale, with the occupation of ‘Reacher-in of Ends’, more usually done by small boys. The drawing-in frame was part of a weaving machine and the Reacher-in would pass the ends of the threads, one by one and in order, to the Loomer who would then thread them over the healds (heddles) and through the reeds on the beam. Her older brother and sister also worked in textiles as Woollen Mule Spinners.
Salt’s Mill:, Saltaire Run the Chain. Image: Ruth Bourne
Another Farrow, Emma, aged 20 in 1861, born in Heptonstall, Yorkshire and by now living in Rochdale, has a deceptively charmingly-named occupation of Throstle Piecer, Cotton. The Throstle was a spinning machine which was supposedly named for the sound it made, though I doubt it was as soothing as thrush song! A Piecer’s job was to rejoin broken threads during spinning, dodging machinery all the while. A Spinner would often employ their own children directly, keeping the money in the family.
Whilst we often assume a division of cotton in Lancashire and wool in Yorkshire, the trans-Pennine trades do cross boundaries. In 1871 in Halifax, one household has both a Cotton Throstle piecer and a Woollen Jobber. A Jobber does minor repairs to drawing frames, spinning mules or other textile machinery, and does other ‘odd jobs’ under the direction of the overlooker (supervisor) of his department.
A 1909 baptism record from Halifax shows the father’s occupation as Hoist Tenter, who attends to the working of a hoist and is often also a Bobbin Carrier, taking bobbins of thread to the looms ready for use by the weavers. Any weaver without a constant supply of thread and relying on piece work would be very unhappy!
Thomas Robertshaw of Northowram is listed as a Carpet Taker-in. Apparently this role has a lot of names in various contexts, including Loomer, Warp Taker-in and the more common Drawer. The Taker-in attaches the weaving beam to the drawing-in frame, and draws each warp yarn separately, with a hook, through the eye (or loop) of the heald, and through the dent of the reed in a loom.
A motley mix of professions from some Halifax school admission logs ca 1871 includes:-
a Horse Clipper (who would hand-clip and also singe the coats, manes and tails):
a Tin-man, which instantly conjures up the Wizard of Oz these days but refers either to a tinker/tinsmith or by extension, to a tinware seller:
and an Iron Shingler, who would process wrought iron as it was removed from the furnace.
In 1911, Thornton Holdsworth in Bradford is a Store and Time Keeper, which at first seemed redolent of Dr Who but, more mundanely, a Time Keeper turns out to be someone who records the time of entry and departure of workpeople in a book or has charge of timekeeping clocks and check boards and who superintends “clocking” in and out and related jobs, then passing on the information to the cashier for wages.
I liked the domestic details of the 1871 Chair Bottomer and the Clothes Prop Maker, both of which no doubt need explaining to anyone younger than I am. (I have a childhood memory of running out behind my grandmother’s terraced house to help hold up one of the already overlong clothes props that held up the washing lines cross-crossing the narrow back street so that a van could drive along without taking the laundry with it!) The Chair Bottomer would probably have been a caner as depicted here, or just possibly a carpenter who would adze the shaped wooden seat of a chair.
A 1911 Tripe Dresser sounds slightly Monty Pythonesque now that tripe has pretty much disappeared from most of the country’s menus. Another one from the textile side that sets the mind to some strange visualisations is this Under Overlooker (Spinning) (i.e. deputy supervisor of the spinning department) from a 1910 record.
I’ll finish this on another Halifax entry, as I found some Wire drawers in my own family background. These made wire by drawing a metal rod through a series of ever-reducing holes. I am trusting that this particular entry refers to the gauge of the wire rather than the intellectual capacity of the workman – Thick Wire Drawer!
It was a pleasure to introduce a friend from photography club recently to the Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings, which she’d never visited even though she lives pretty locally. It’s a lovely facility and everyone we have taken there has thoroughly enjoyed it.
Avoncroft was England’s first open-air buildings museum, in the tradition of the Scandinavian Skansen, and has an eclectic selection of 30+ buildings from a post-war prefab to a working windmill via a mediaeval merchant’s house and a jail.
You could hardly get further from the sea there, though, so why the Waves? I was taking some slightly desultory photos almost on autopilot, and a lovely barn there has some great worn stone flags which I thought would make good textures. While processing the images later, I saved a few fairly ‘straight’ versions for texture use but then a long-lost creative mojo that I just faintly recognised from pre-Covid days peeped in and I started to play around…
I know they’re nothing special (Hokusai they ain’t) but they do represent an important small step for me, back to some creativity, I hope, so I will nevertheless celebrate them!
A young David DobsonAn even younger Jean (Morton), still in her teens here, I think.
I thought it apt to give these photos of my late parents, David and Jean Dobson, an airing now as it was Fathers’ Day on Sunday 20th and the 21st June was my mum’s birthday – and the official opening of the strawberry season as her birthday treat in our family!
I’ve always loved these photos. There is a hand-coloured version of mum’s too, which as a small child I thought very glamorous.
It’s some 20 years since we lost mum and almost 40 since dad died suddenly and much too young, but both are still very much cherished and present in memory.
In the first stages of easing the current, pretty comprehensive lockdown, we took advantage of a sunny day a couple of weeks ago to pop down the road to Spetchley Park Gardens which had not long re-opened their gates.
We have remained very cautious throughout the pandemic, and it was almost exciting to be able to go out without planning and pre-booking (we became members last year with that in mind). It was interesting to see how this simple, very local outing (just a walk round the gardens, no cafe visit, not meeting up with anyone as it was a bit spur-of-the-moment) still provided us with the illusion of having a big day out!
Spring had arrived, it seemed – and that was the second illusion, as sitting here writing on a wet, blustery, almost wintry Bank Holiday Monday would suggest.
Some of the garden was still tucked up in its winter woolies, but the magnolias and many other plants were blooming beautifully. Ducklings and goslings were (IRL) zooming round the lake, peeping, piping and looking for all the world like clockwork toys.
The final illusion of this little handful is the image that I shot for the vivid spring-green colours and peaceful reflections that attracted me. The floating weed gave the burgeoning tree the illusion of having its full summer foliage. Inverting the image completed the illusion.
Day 28 of the January Challenge: a 10-minute creative task each day. The task today was to write a boringly mundane conversation, then add the subtext.
A Mundane Conversation – From the sick bed
He: Is it a bin day?
She: Yes, today’s bin day.
(Giddy spin day, a little sin day? Perhaps a win day? A gin day, a ‘has-bin’ day, a staying in day…)
He: Which colour?
She: I think it’s the green.
(Colour you say? An iridescent sheen, Or flamingo pink in which to preen? Maybe it’s an azure, as yet unseen. Rainbow opalescence or aquamarine…)
Yes, it’s green.
…..
He; That’s done. Coffee?
She: Would love a cup o’ tea.
(Stay me with flagons, Comfort me… Or, just some tea and sympathy.)
Random Thoughts 