Stout from scratch

To make home brewed stout; take one 1930's recipe book and the following ingredients -

Scratch your head and ponder what *Spanish* is. Ask your Northern other half who informs you that it is liquorice (which apparently is what they call it 'up there'). Wonder where to get *black malt* and decide to replace it with chocolate malt. Realise that 'in those days' they had bigger pans but manage to cobble it together with a variety jugs and pots. Weigh the chocolate malt.


Weigh the Fuggles hops.

Weigh the dark brown sugar.

Using your biggest pan, boil up some water, add the hops and malt. The kitchen becomes infused with the intense aroma of strong, black coffee.



Add *one pennyworth of black Spanish* - bought from a traditional sweet shop. Briefly wonder what *one pennyworth* looks like and hazard that it is probably an ounce. Read the recipe and find no mention whatsoever of when to add the BS but bung it in anyway.

Pour the bitter melange of chocolaty boiling glop onto the dark brown sugar in a brewing bucket and top up with cold water to three and a half gallons. Add ale yeast and leave overnight. Return to find it is doing very little so chuck in a tablespoon of baker's yeast which does the trick.



Three days later, strain and keg up, adding half a pound more sugar and making a phenomenal amount of mess in the kitchen in the process, not having a funnel or large enough jelly bag. After a few more days, tentatively tap off a glass and be very surprised when it actually comes out looking like a 'real' glass of stout, tasting deliciously of coffee and dark chocolate. Even better chilled.

Alcohol content unknown. Read the inscription in the recipe book and whole heartily agree;

Not getting away

This has to be the dullest set of photos I have posted in my entire five years of blogging. In another world, this would be a post about a few pleasant days in the Lake District...but the fates were against us. Two hours after booking a pod at a nice camp site in Boot, Eskdale, a gunman went on a shooting rampage in that area of Cumbria (as many people reading this will know; it seems to have been covered globally). He eventually shot himself in the very village we were headed for. Devastating for the poor families and communities and our little problems pale into insignificance by comparison.

Ignoring this very bad omen, we packed our rucksacks anyway. Our landlord finally sorted out a new washing machine (after several years of our old one flooding the kitchen) and wanted to fit it while we were away - he rang to let us know just as we were getting ready to leave and everything came to a halt while we cleared our tiny kitchen so that the plumber could get in. We set off. The weather forecast was set to rain and storm all week. It rained on us, off and on, for nearly four hours of biking against a cold wind.

Past Birmingham the bike began grinding. We stopped a couple of times while Andy WD40'd the back wheel. It got worse. We drove slowly and - I think - illegally along the hard shoulder of the motorway, turning off into a souless hotel on the edge of Warrington. We weren't going anywhere except home. The AA insisted on sending out a repair van - just in case. It took him an hour to arrive and then as we expected, he had to ring a recovery van. Which would take two hours to arrive.

We waited in that grim car park - no shops or pub in sight - until 5.15. I took a nap on the tarmac, being blessed with the ability to sleep pretty much anywhere. When the AA recovery did arrive, he cheerfully announced that he'd only be able to take us some way home, as he was coming to the end of his shift. But he was a nice man and as soon as we arrived at his stop point, another AA truck pulled in and we switched over. By now it was about 8.00pm and we had had enough.

We finally got home at ten. At least there was a keg of home brew ready; we needed it. I am trying to look on the bright side of it all and have been playing Polyanna's 'Glad Game'.

1) I'm glad we weren't victims of a mad gunman.

2) I'm glad we didn't actually crash the bike on the motorway.

3) I'm glad we managed to get through it with a fair amount of humour and Dunkirk spirit.

4) I'm glad we at least returned to our dear little scruffy, falling down cottage in the Cotswolds, not some ghastly graffiti strewn tower block on the edge of a city.

5) I'm actually sincerely glad that the holiday DID fall through, as there have been a few problems with my present job which needed sorting out and would have been worse to deal with next week.

6) So despite being dragged reluctantly back to my studio, I'm glad to have had the extra days to work, even though I am still desperately tired.

7) I'm very glad have a spiffy new washing machine which could probably fly us to the Moon if we asked it nicely.

BUT

I am not glad that I didn't have the chance to send postcards of the scenic Lake District to many of my friends who haven't heard from me for sometime. I had a long list...



However we have our first courgette and first cherry tomato growing in the poly tunnel and the bike is not only mended but didn't cost too much to fix. The sun has returned and things are looking up. Next time we will take more notice of bad omens.

Ancient History

After another week of beating down the backbone of a deadline, I found myself idly flipping through an old sketch book, from my college days. I seem to remember Andy gave me this little old book, when it was blank- we both liked working in vintage accounts books. He stamped the boat logo on the front, from a handcut stamp. We had started living together in the second year of our design/illustration BA and were fired up creatively.This is now ancient history, 1992 - 1993.

I crammed this little book (8 inches wide and four inches tall) with all the things which interested me - things found in the street, receipts and tickets, packaging, stickers - every graphically or typographically curious thing I discovered was stapled into this - and other books. The teapot illustation below is a photocopy of an illustration by Natasha. She was in our year and a friend, also an illustrator. Now she bakes the most amazing cakes - which are often illustrated, in edible inks, with her gorgeous work. I must have pinched or begged this copy from her - little did we know then how life would pan out, or that one Christmas she would send me some of her sublime gingerbread men.

But I also filled it with tiny sketches in dip pen and watercolour - my *chalky* paints in my student box being the despair of one of my tutors.

Here, lovingly preserved at the top of the page, is a little shopping list which Andy must have written one day - 'Dog, New knee, Haircut'. I am sure he got the haircut, but his knee still plays up.

These are pre-scribbles and colour studies for a lino-cut I did one summer, when we were allowed to play in the print room. There are inspirational magazine cut outs and a tiny scrap of quilting fabric - all valuable planning I learned, which I still use today.

...and here is one of the finished three colour prints, a bit rough and ready and slightly off registration.

I seem to have had a *thing* with imaginary fishes -

- though I also studied photos of real ones, to capture the essence of *fish* in my head. One of the regular things people say is 'oh I wish I could draw things straight out of my head'. But everything I draw has some basis, originally, in studies from life.

Andy hijacked my book and stamped his territory with one of his scary woodcuts. Not a very happy one. Hormones.

Mind you, I wasn't much better sometimes...

I also used my book for tedious lecture notes and here, a silk petal sprayed with a 'Tresor' sample. It used to be my favourite perfume, though I didn't have any, it was way beyond our student budgets. I popped into shops to have a little spray when we were in town. A few years later Andy bought me my own bottle, which I still have now. I didn't know then that perfume went 'off' and wish I hadn't been so frugal with it, but had just used it and enjoyed it.

I am still inspired by many of the things captured in this memory book - much of it is seeped into my imagination and it leaks out when I create. Although a lot of my themes were abandoned over the years, as I developed as an illustrator and curbed my whimsy to become more commercial, things have swung full circle and now I am able to indulge myself again with my latest jobs - and this time I get paid!

In the final year I was mixing textiles, embroidery and letterpress into my work. A bit radical in those days, as it was just on the cusp of the digital age and scanners were new, voodoo machines which only a few could use - or afford. Reproducing collaged artwork was usually too expensive to contemplate for book illustration Here is an old receipt from King's Fabrics. which seems remarkably cheap compared to today's fabric prices.

I found that I loved making detailed thumbnails for projects - and still do. I do so much planning in my tiny scribbles that things are usually sorted out there and then, so that the blow up is just a formality, as I 'know' where everything goes in my head.

How I enjoyed dip-penning imaginary figures - usually on their own, or at the most, two. Often by a sickle moon. No change there then.

There are one or two James Reeve poems in there, with my feeble attempts to illustrate them. Many of his books were, of course, illustrated by my all time hero, Edward Ardizzone.

A book of four first class stamps for a pound! Watercolour paper samples and fake tattoos.

I was also constantly drawing little houses, I think I drew these from a television programme - I still constantly draw little houses. I don't think I will stop, even when I finally have my very own.

This will be a dull page, unless you are the one or two people who were at this college with me - my old Polytechnic library card, fixed in my book after we graduated.

The lump of card seen poking out of the sides is a fat cat from a fruit box - an excellent source of graphic images, fruit crates and stickers. Remind me to show you my fruit sticker collection some day...

No, not that one-

- the other one is far larger - in my BIG sketchbook!

(Links still being updated)

Coming up for air

Another job completed, packed up and off on it's travels and another deadline notched up. Just one more big one to go and life might resume an even keel.

In order to get the work done, I've had to turn into a virtual hermit, but things are getting a little easier (she prayed, with her fingers tightly crossed) and I've even managed to update my antique blog template so I can be like all the other kids at school with *followers* and things. Marvellous.

I have many forthcoming thank yous to say to certain lovely people who have sustained me with gifts over the last few months, but this is a special thank you to my friend Janet of The Empty Nest, who caused a bit of a stir in our superb little Delicatessen (one of the few 'real' shops in the village), or rather, the box she ordered for me did. I was shuffling about at the back of a loose queue of well dressed, sharp faced *ladies*, who were ordering all manner of gorgeous things, feeling rather out of place in my scruffy combats, waiting to buy a little pork pie to take with me to a cricket match. When it was finally my turn, I asked for my pie, only to be handed this amazing box of delights -

There, in the middle, nestling like a good child at Sunday School, is one of my beloved local Cerney Pyramids, prince of cheeses and a rare treat. Also Barkham Blue, Cotswold ham, and my pork pie, made across the border by the Cotswold pudding Company in Gloucestershire as well as one of their famous puddings . And for good luck, Chris the kind deli owner popped in a box of Willy's World Class Cacao, which might be familiar to those in the who saw the TV series. I literally gulped for air as Chris explained who had sent it and staggered out of the shop with the *ladies* watching me. And although I had to take some work to the cricket match...

...it was made more luxurious with an impromptu little picnic and some Selvedge and Country Living magazines. Thank you so much Janet for making me feel very special at a time when I needed it most.

(I am in the process of updating my previous links, so don't worry if you've been there and now aren't (most of you) will be again!)

How to save a bee

I opened up the polytunnel on a cold, grey afternoon and heard a dull buzzing. There, twitching feebly in the soil, was a tired bumble bee. She probably wore herself out trying to find an exit and the chilly, overcast weather can't have helped much. I remembered something I'd heard about sugar syrup, so I gently coaxed her onto my hand and took her inside.

I placed her on a saucer and quickly mixed up some cold water and caster sugar, making a liquid syrup she could drink and dolloped it on her plate. She was so dopey and weak I had to carefully steer her to the puddles, but once she realised what it was, she began drinking.

As her feet were slipping I popped a leaf under her. After about five minutes she seemed to have drunk her fill and was anxiously crawling about, already a little stronger.

I took her back into the garden and settled her on a pot where she collected her wits, had a little wash and eventually - well, see for yourselves! (There is some lovely birdsong in the background too).

Bees are having a dreadful time of it, with the combined efforts of mankind and diseases; although we can't keep a hive, I am going to make more of an effort to look after the weary ones, especially now I know how easy - and effective - it is. When the bees die out, we are not far behind.

edit - many thanks to Jill of Third Age Musings, for letting me know that this was a Red-tailed Bumblebee, Bombus Lapidarius and I now wonder if she was a Queen, emerging from hibernation?

Would like...

'TWIN BEDS' 2002

...to rest for a very long time - no chance of that happening. I've not got the time (or much energy) for anything except this job but I miss my blogs and I miss my internet friends, who I hope will forgive me for not being *around* much.