Jun 11th, 2009

The tail end

A lot of species have tails. Short, long, furred, feathered. We homo sapiens don’t – although I think I read somewhere that the cocyxx bone at the bottom of our spines is a vestigial tail (or am I making that up?). It seems rather a pity that if we did once possess them, evolution decided they were unnecessary.

To tailed species, we must appear inadequate creatures. For think of all the uses a tail has.  It announces one’s place in the hierarchy – an erect tail is usually a sign of confidence and dominance while a tail held between the legs is a subservient, unconfident beast.  It also plays a large part in the mating game.  Consider the male bird of paradise or the peacock – where would he be in the romance stakes without a magnificent tail to proudly display?

A bird in flight uses its tail as a multi-directional rudder, enabling subtle shifts in navigation. And when they come in to land, their tails provide the perfect balancing point. (more…)

Jun 10th, 2009

The new look

Well here I am safely snuggled in the arms of my new hosted blog.  This baby was dropped on its head a few times but it’s tougher than it looks and this morning, there’s not a scratch on it.

Expect the layout to change almost daily for a while – I’m like a wee girl in a sweetie shop with all the themes and plug-ins that are available.  What I’m finding, of course, is that some of those tempting sweetie jars chock full of delicious things are actually incompatible with the version of Wordpress I’m running (2.7.1 for you version junkies).  And there’s mostly no way of telling that they are until you install them, when there’s a forlorn message saying broken theme. (more…)

May 27th, 2009

A red hot Yiddishe mamma

My passion for singers and their songs from the 1920s and 30s baffles my classically-minded friends. I won’t even try to explain it – they just hit me – hard – in a whole different place from Puccini or Bach.

Those French chanteuses whose influence was so evident later in the singing of Edith Piaf.  And Marlene Dietrich (but only in her early days and only in German). And oh – Mae West – seriously, she was sensational – the archetypal bad girl.

But today, let’s talk about the one – the only – the original red hot mamma – Miss Sophie Tucker (1884-1966). In fact, give me a spangly frock & feather fascinator and I’ll sit right down at the piano and do one of her numbers for you…

One of my mother’s favourite songs was My Yiddishe Momme and I realise now that it was Sophie singing it.  Now, Mother knew not a schmidish of Yiddish and if her Presbyterian soul had known of Miss Tucker’s background, she’d maybe have reconsidered. But that’s where I first heard Sophie Tucker. (more…)

May 26th, 2009

Shellac? Hell, yeah

I’ve been looking at my 78rpm shellac record collection.  The ones above are what I’ve called Various. They date from the 1920s through to the 40s. Although there’s some familiar names there with the big band names (Duke Ellington and Edmundo Ros), there’s a whole heap of weird and wonderful ensembles.  At the time, jobbing musicians were badly paid and so ad hoc bands were common, usually taking the name of the band leader.  You really have to know your record history (I’m a complete amateur, I don’t!) to know that an achingly sweet horn on a particular record was actually Louis Armstrong, for example. And look at The Seven Gallon Jug Band playing on the reverse side of the queen of the blues, Bessie Smith!

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May 25th, 2009

The school lunch box

From my lovely old (1920s?) American cookbook Any one can Bake (price $1.50) which was produced by the Royal Baking Powder Company. It has photographically-illustrated step by step instructions for making biscuits, bread, sponge cakes, angel cakes, cream puffs & eclairs – the list goes on and on.  It advises on table settings, oven temperatures and even a page on how to open the Royal Baking Powder tin! At random (p98) there are Swedish Sand Tarts (more…)

May 25th, 2009

Chocolate cornflakes

My generation was (I think) the first to discover the delight of Kellog’s Cornflakes covered with chocolate and put in paper cake cups. We had no idea they were so simple to make, we just loved the combination of crunch and sweetness.  Nowadays, even the thought of them makes my mouth ache! But these simple cakes (if you can call them a cake) have endured and been fed to hungry children for another two generations – there’s a TV ad running at the moment on ITV showing children helping their mother make them – just as I did fifty years ago. This is my mum’s original recipe.

May 25th, 2009

The very pegness of it

I’ve an abiding fondness for the humble clothes peg and its line.  And washing blowing in the wind is something that makes me feel like home.  Bringing in the line-dried clothes then burying your nose in them to inhale the sweet softness that air and sun have wrought. Here’s some photographs I’ve taken.

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May 21st, 2009

Bobby Bell and the doos

In tribute to Bobby Bell, a boyhood friend of my father’s.  Bobby kept doos and my dad wasn’t allowed to. Although Mother would have said her objections were all about ‘the mess’, I think the fact that pigeon racing was the Scottish working class man’s sport played a part.  Our family was going up in the world if she had anything to do with it…

saft, sleepy cooin’ frae above
the clock – set
at first licht
afore ah wis up
low voices so the wean didnae hear
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May 17th, 2009

A woman of her time

This is a kind of still-life composition of some vintage objects that I put together a couple of years back and photographed.  Here’s the story.

A small hall table, covered with a damask cloth, sits by the front door. The lady of the house has just come back from doing some shopping in the High Street, which was crowded and noisy. She takes off her second-oldest pair of cotton gloves – one should never wear one’s best gloves when buying cabbages at the greengrocer’s – and flings them carelessly onto the table.  She notices the red silk handkerchief, remembers that it fell out of her coat pocket earlier and resolves to put it away immediately after she makes a cup of tea.  She glances at this morning’s post – two postcards, one of them from Timothy’s rather dashing cousin in Munich – and sets them aside to read later.

May 15th, 2009

Dark chocolate or Melton Mowbray pie?

I just tweeted with the line Shostakovich is like intensely dark, bitter chocolate with orange zest and wondered how many composers’ music is associated with food in our minds?

Regrettably, this thought also led to thinking about people and their pet (often bedroom) names for each other which are loosely culinary, so I’d hesitate to describe Mozart’s music as a fluffy, mouthwatering muffin because, well look, we just won’t go there, okay?

But still Mahler is surely some Viennese pastry concoction with added schlag and Bach a flavourful river trout with fresh green vegetables? John Taverner a cup of green tea in an exquisite Chinese cup and Faure a brioche fresh from the boulangerie topped with strawberry preserve. (more…)