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Patching the Patchwork Quilt

When I first left home, many many years ago, my mother gave me a patchwork quilt which she had made for me. It’s a fascinating piece of family history to look at – it contains patches made from both my school dresses and those of my sister, fragments from skirts and dresses I associate with particular family holidays, pieces from lots of my mother’s dresses that she wore to work, and even a few bits from some lengths of Egyptian cotton that I haggled for in the souk in Aswan on my first big solo holiday.

I use it as an extra layer on top of my duvet on cold winter nights, and Christopher used to sleep under it regularly in the summers instead of using a duvet as it was cooler. Over the years it must have been washed and tumble-dried literally hundreds of times, and it’s beginning to show its age. Many of the fabric patches have faded badly – with the surprising exception of the Aswan cotton which is still pretty much unfaded. I chose better quality than I had realised at the time! In fact it’s very clear that the quilt is made up of varying qualities of fabric. It’s not just a case that some patches have faded more than others. Patches made of particular fabrics are less robust than others and are disintegrating with age.

It started with the edging, which began to fray quite badly in places. A couple of years ago I bought eight metres of bias binding and bound the edges all the way around. That fixed the fraying problem, and also made a surprising difference to the look of the quilt, unifying it a bit like a frame. But then some of the patches of particular fabrics in the body of the quilt developed holes. It’s not the stitching which has given way, but rather the warp and weft of the cotton fabric itself. I don’t think it’s moth holes, just wear and tear. Fortunately, because it’s a true patchwork quilt and the pattern is random rather than regular, it’s moderately easy to mend it by appliquéing another patch on top of a holed one.

I washed the quilt again over Easter, preparatory to putting it away for the summer, and noticed that it had developed a load more holes. I didn’t have any suitable cotton fabric to hand to mend them with, so put it to one side until I could get to a fabric shop to buy a suitable end-of-roll remnant. The knitting shop in town also does some sewing supplies, and the woman there directed me towards her stock of “fat squares”. That’s not a term I’d come across before, but seems to be craft-shop code for an expensive way to off-load fabric remnants to quilting enthusiasts!

I’ve spent this afternoon patching about eight holes in the quilt, and it now seems to be sound again. And I’ve got most of the “fat square” left for running repairs if necessary next year.

25 04 2015 icyjumbo nostalgia Comments (2) Permalink

Paxman-style Pants Rant

A few years ago, Jeremy Paxman was in the news complaining about the declining quality of his new M&S underwear. He was of the considered, and somewhat forcibly-expressed, opinion that they no longer provided “adequate support”. Being Paxman, he got a personal reply from the CEO of M&S and was invited to bring the offending items along to a meeting to discuss the issue. I don’t expect that to happen, but I have to say that I too share his concerns about declining underwear quality!

Like many (even maybe the majority?) of women in the UK, I buy my knickers in bulk from M&S. I was most disappointed with the quality of the last lot. For a start, the company has discontinued the supremely-comfortably (and largely VPL-free) “side-seam free” style. That was annoying. The member of staff on the shop floor in the Worcester branch couldn’t tell me when they were discontinued, or why, or what the closest available replacement style was. I thought that showed a major degree of indifference to their stock and customer needs. I ended up buying a pack of five plain knickers for £5. That was a very good price I thought – too good to be true in fact. The cotton is extremely thin, and one pair only survived one wash before the fabric gave way and I’ve had to darn them! That’s absolutely ridiculous – I don’t want throwaway underwear! And nor to I want to spend my weekends darning my smalls!

Come on M&S – no wonder your share price is in the doldrums. Sort out your quality issues, work out what people want to buy, and offer it to them at a fair price. And for heavens sake make sure that underwear – for both male and female customers – provides adequate support and coverage without dissolving into holes at the first wash!

18 04 2015 icyjumbo invective Comments (1) Permalink

Arcadia

My first use of my Theatre Membership was to buy a standby ticket to the Saturday matinee performance of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. This is apparently meant to be “one of the greatest plays of the last century”, and I’m afraid to say that I’d never even heard of it. It’s probably not something I’d have bothered to buy a full-price ticket for, so the membership is already having the desired effect of broadening my cultural horizons.

The play is set in a country house, in two time periods – the very early nineteenth century and the present day. The set was quite stark – just a big long table and chairs with some french windows behind, but it was cleverly done in that props left on the table in one time period were often used as a critical part of the next scene, set in the other era. At the end, characters from both eras were on stage at the same time, and as the modern-day people were in 19th century fancy-dress for a ball, and the son of the house, Augustus/Gus, was played by the same actor in both eras, it got quite confusing!

The plot was quite convoluted, revolving around the efforts of some modern-day academics to piece together the truth about what happened in the earlier period – which of course we the audience could see unfolding so we knew what really had happened. It had some sharp points to make about academic rivalries, and how people can get so caught up in believing their thesis that they will ignore any information that contradicts it. One of the main modern characters was a thoroughly unpleasant and up-himself academic, who was absolutely convinced that Lord Byron had killed a minor poet in a duel in the grounds of the country house and then fled the country to escape the consequences. We could see what actually had happened, and knew that he was completely misinterpreting the evidence.

Surprisingly (at least to me), critical to the plot were some fairly fundamental discoveries and concepts about chaos theory, fractals, iterative equations, entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Newtonian dynamics and the Arrow of Time. One of the modern-day characters was a mathematician working on a PhD in population dynamics, and one of the principal nineteenth century characters was a very precocious home-schooled teenage girl who was years ahead of her time as a mathematician. I think her character was probably based at least in part on Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace. I had to think harder than I’m used to on a Saturday afternoon, but fortunately as an engineer I’m pretty numerate and was familiar with all the mathematical constructs presented. Much of the rest of the audience consisted of coach loads of pensioners from the surrounding district, and I overheard some of them complaining in the interval that they were struggling to both hear and understand what was going on!

Overall, it was a very interesting and thought-provoking play. I’m not sure I’d rank it in the top five 20th century plays, as advertised, but it was well worth getting a half-price seat to fill in a Saturday afternoon.

12 04 2015 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Arcadia Permalink

Theatre Membership

When Christopher was alive, we went so regularly to Malvern theatre that we spent many years as “Members”. One memorable year we were “Silver Members” which gave us I think 18 top price theatre tickets to be used as we chose over the course of a year, plus two free cinema tickets per week. Mostly however we were “Bronze Members” which just gave us four pounds off up to two theatre tickets per production for a year, plus a pound off two cinema tickets per week – we went to enough shows most years to easily recoup the investment of purchasing the membership in the first place.

Since Christopher died, I’ve kept going to the theatre and occasionally the cinema, but haven’t to date found it worth while to renew my membership. Since I now go on my own, the maths has meant that I’d have to go to virtually one show per month to make it worthwhile, and I’ve not had the energy to do that. Plus, the programme of shows meant that there wasn’t enough each year that I actually wanted to see to make it cost effective.

The programme this spring/summer though looks really interesting. There’s quite a lot on that I’d be interested in seeing. Even better, since we were last members, they’ve tweaked the membership benefits to make them more valuable. Members now are spared the pernicious “booking fees” which add 12% to the price of the ticket, and get membership of the Standby Club included. That means that you can phone up on the day of a show and buy standby tickets for the best available seats at a heavily reduced price. I was dithering about whether to take the plunge and invest in a Bronze Membership when my sister kindly offered it as an early birthday present. I thought that was an excellent idea – it’s going to give me an incentive to go out to the theatre and cinema more often, and if I’m feeling bored on a Saturday afternoon I can try for a cheap standby ticket to the matinee performance of whatever happens to be on.

So overall, I suspect that over the next year I’ll be writing a good number of theatre / cinema reviews as I make good use of my birthday present. Starting with Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia which was on this week.

11 04 2015 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Theatre Membership Permalink

Retro Owl Cushion

I’ve had a very lazy few days off over Easter. Apart from the trip to the theatre on Saturday, and lunch with some friends on Sunday, I’ve largely just based myself at home, re-charging my batteries. One of the ways I like to unwind is by making things, and I was pleased to discover a “Retro Owl Cushion” kit in the pile of Christmas presents that my sister brought up with her last month. I’d completely forgotten about it, as indeed had my mother who gave it to me! A long weekend seemed the ideal time to break it open.

The kit came in a small cardboard box that promised that it contained “everything you need” to make the cushion. I was dubious – the box was far too small to include the stuffing, and indeed I’ve found from experience that most such kits don’t. Certainly the last kit I made didn’t come with stuffing. I racked my brains to think of where in Malvern I might be able to buy a bag of toy stuffing on a Bank Holiday Monday, and drew a blank. Fortunately, however, I’d underestimated the kit manufacturer, who was far more resourceful than I’d expected. Tucked away in the cardboard box was a vacuum-packed bag of polyester stuffing, which was rock-solid and extremely compact. When I snipped the plastic bag to release the vacuum, there was a satisfying “hiss” as it immediately puffed up to four times its original volume!

Retro Owl Cushion

Retro Owl Cushion

The owl cushion itself was very satisfying to make. The instructions were incomplete (as they so often are in such things) and I had to refer to the photo on the box quite a lot to work out what I was meant to be doing. The colours are indeed distinctly “retro” and are a rather horrifying reminder of the seventies! I’m told that orange, brown and yellow have become very fashionable again lately – surely that must be in a heavily ironic manner?

07 04 2015 Gillian nostalgia
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An afternoon of utter silliness

This week, Malvern Theatres has been showing Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense. I hadn’t originally intended to go – I have an absolute aversion to P.G. Wodehouse; can’t stand the silly-ass-about-town, thick-as-a-brick Bertie Wooster; and am totally unsympathetic to the parasitic lives of the upper-crust as portrayed in the novels, which I refuse on principle to read. However, when my sister and her husband were here a few weekends ago, they told me that they’d seen the production in London and had thoroughly enjoyed it. They convinced me to give it a go, though I did make sure I bought a cheaper seat half-way back in the auditorium, so I wouldn’t have wasted too much money if it turned out to be as cringe-worthy as I feared.

As the usher was showing me to my seat for the Saturday matinee, I said that I hoped that I was in for an afternoon of utter silliness. She laughed and said that it was certainly that – she’d seen it on Tuesday and had had a great time, so when she was asked to do another shift on Saturday, she was very happy to sit through it again. She said that she too hated Wodehouse, but that the play was a lot of fun to watch even if you forgot all about the plot (which was, admittedly, extremely flimsy and far-fetched) and just sat back and enjoyed the acting and the comic timing. Which was pretty much the verdict that my sister had pronounced too.

There were just three actors – Wooster (Robert Webb) was on stage the whole time, recounting and re-enacting a recent country house weekend that he had attended. Two other actors played all of the other parts – Jeeves (of course), two other butlers, three women (including one of the formidable Aunts), a policeman, a seven-foot tall thug, a blustering magistrate, a vacuous fool who was a friend of Bertie’s, and probably others that I’ve forgotten. The comedy largely came from the precision timing, the lightning-fast changes of costume, and the inventive use of props. One scene I particularly enjoyed was when the blustering magistrate, in a tweed suit, was having an argument with his niece, who was wearing a lilac skirt and jacket. Since both characters were being played by the same actor, he was dressed half-and-half in each costume and had to keep turning backwards and forwards to play both parts. That was laugh out loud funny.

So I’m pleased to say that my sister was right. It was indeed an afternoon of utter silliness, but a lot of fun too. I’m by no means a convert to Wodehouse, and have no desire to read up on Aunt Dahlia, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Sir Watkins Bassett, or any other of the preposterous characters. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

04 04 2015 icyjumbo Day out Comments (2) Permalink

Oven-glove Inertia

Nearly twenty years ago, shortly after Christopher and I were married, a deaf and dumb hawker came to the door of our flat selling household goods. Christopher was a much softer touch than me, and felt emotionally blackmailed into buying some oven gloves from him. It turned out to be a bad buy. As oven gloves go, they were pretty crap, frankly. They didn’t wash well, had very little padding in them, and you definitely risked burns when using them to take something out of a very hot oven. We soon bought another, much more robust set of oven gloves, and for the past fifteen years the thin ones have been relegated to the dining room, to be used only to put moderately hot dishes on the table.

I’ve never liked them, but seem to have fallen into a sort of inertia regarding them. After all, if you own a set of oven gloves, it seems entirely extravagant to throw them away and replace them with a new set – even though in this case they were barely fit for purpose! But I got burned once too often this week, and decided I’d Had Enough. Just because Christopher had bought them didn’t mean that I have to live with them for ever. Waitrose have got some classic, well-padded, washable oven gloves for half price at the the moment, so I have bought a pair and consigned the inadequate ones to the bin. It’s absolutely ridiculous that it feels so liberating to throw away a pair of oven gloves!

03 04 2015 icyjumbo house Comments (1) Permalink

Pottering about

I was back at Eastnor Pottery on Sunday. The clocks had gone forward, and it was a real struggle to get out of bed – I was still fast asleep when my alarm went off. The weather outside was pretty unpleasant – very strong winds and heavy rain, which wasn’t conducive to leaving my nice warm bed! But I forced myself to get up, as I knew I’d enjoy myself at the pottery once I got there.

I was pleased to note on my way out of the house, that despite the driving rain there was no puddle on my newly-laid path. That’s its first serious test and it’s passed with flying colours.

I last threw some pots two months ago, and since then Jon the Potter had let them dry out to the “leather-hard” state, then wrapped them in plastic to preserve the remaining moisture. They can stay like that for several months, which means I can go to the pottery as often as it suits me, and pick up my work-in-progress where I left it off. Last time I was throwing the bodies of a number of gravy boats, so my first job on arriving at the pottery was to make some handles for them, then leave them on top of the kiln to dry out to the same leather-hard consistency as the bodies of the jugs. If you try to attach wet clay to leather-hard clay then it will dry differentially and crack or pull itself apart.

You can just roll out clay to make handles, but I much prefer the more organic look and feel of a pulled handle. The trouble is, pulling the lump of clay is really not an activity to be done in mixed company! It’s frankly obscene, and I have to be careful not to catch anyone’s eye while I do it, or I’ll collapse in a fit of the giggles! I sat in the corner, trying to be inconspicuous, and made half a dozen or so handles to have some spare. While the handles were drying out to the correct consistency, I turned the underneath of the jugs to neaten up the bottoms. Then it was a case of attaching the handles and finally decorating the three best resulting jugs. I won’t know how well they pour until they’ve been fired – unfortunately there’s no way of telling before then. If I filled an unfired jug with water to try it out, it would just disintegrate. So the safest thing to do is to make some matching saucers to catch any drips!

30 03 2015 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Pottering about Permalink

Sorting out the drive and path

I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with the state of the path leading from the drive to the front door, and finally decided that Enough was Enough, and I’d get something done about it. It was made of square concrete slabs, probably about 40cm on a side, and was anything but flat and level. There was a large depression at the drive end, which formed a big puddle every time it rained, and turned to sheet ice in winter. It was getting to the state that I needed to put sturdy boots on just to put the bins out! Further up the path the slabs were so loose that they rocked if you stood on them, and were really becoming quite a trip hazard.

I could have just had the builder relay the existing slabs, but I’ve never liked them. We had the majority of the drive block paved with small dark grey setts when we had the extension built, and I wanted the path relaid to match. It took three men two days to do the work, but they’ve done an excellent job and I’m very pleased with it. It doesn’t quite match the drive, but I think it will once it’s had a chance to weather in a bit. It looks really good, and most importantly it doesn’t wobble and has been laid with a suitable camber so that it drains properly without forming a puddle!

While the builder was here quoting for the pathway, I also asked him to have a look at the sloping part of the drive which goes down onto the road. That’s the only bit of the drive that wasn’t block-paved, and was made of badly rutted and pot-holed concrete. I wanted the holes patched up and filled in. The builder hates doing what he calls a “bodge job”, and tried to convince me that I needed the whole area dug up and completely relaid. I told him that was the wrong answer, it wasn’t going to happen, and he should think again! I only wanted it patched, not completely redone from scratch. He finally conceded that it would be possible to pressure-wash the potholes clean, and to fill them with quick-drying cement. He clearly was uneasy at only doing part of a job, pointing out that it was difficult to know where to stop as there were so many potholes of different sizes. I said that I expected his men to use their professional judgement to do a sensible job within the parameters that I was prepared to pay for, so he reluctantly agreed to give me a quote!

The team filled in the potholes once they’d finished the path. However, the cement wasn’t quite as “quick drying” as they claimed. I took the precaution of phoning up before I left work to check that it would be ok to put the car up on the drive, and was told to wait twenty minutes before coming home, by which time the patches would be firm enough to drive over. In fact I left it over half an hour, but the cement still wasn’t dry and I put an impressive set of tyre tread marks in the newly laid cement! Fortunately, it wasn’t too hard to smooth them over with a bucket of water and a brush, and I resisted the temptation to sign my initials in the cement….. It does all look a bit of a patchwork, but was far more affordable and less fuss than getting the whole slope relaid. It should last a good few years before it needs redoing, by which time it could well be someone else’s problem!

27 03 2015 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Sorting out the drive and path Permalink

Dinner at The Terrace on the Hill

My sister and brother-in-law have been staying for the weekend. Since I owed them at least a year’s worth of Christmas and birthday presents, I decided to take them out for dinner to Malvern’s best restaurant. The Terrace on the Hill is a brunch / light-lunch / afternoon-tea-and-cakes place during the week, but on Friday and Saturday evenings it morphs into a high-end dining experience run by a Michelin-starred chef. I’ve had lunch there, and wanted to try out the dinner service – but it’s definitely the sort of experience that needs to be shared. There was no point going on my own.

There is no choice about the food – each week the chef decides on a seven-course tasting menu, and that is what you get. The small print on the menu says that “all dietary requirements are catered for”, but I’m not sure how that works in practice or how much notice you’d have to give. They publish their weekly menu on Facebook each Thursday, and my sister confessed that she’d been “cyber-stalking” them for the past few weeks to see what sort of meal she’d let herself in for! This week’s menu was:

Canapés – very fine cheese straws, tuna tartare, and some sort of cream cheese & fennel concoction;
Borscht with dill creme fraiche – I loathe beetroot, but this was actually surprisingly pleasant;
Ham hock tortellini carbonara – really, really good. We all loved it;
Hake with miso sauce – beautifully cooked fish with oriental flavours of sesame and ginger;
“Coq au vin” – deconstructed, with roast breast of chicken, braised leg, shallot, mushrooms, and a red wine sauce. It was very pleasant, but frankly the most “ordinary” out of the courses;
Elderflower and champagne jelly with strawberry meringues – absolutely gorgeous. We all agreed that this was our favourite course;
Duck egg custard tart, poached pear and pear parfait – very rich. The pear was lovely, but the custard tart defeated me and my sister;
Coffee and Petits fours – mini bakewell tarts, lemon tarts, madeleines, chocolate truffles and tuille biscuits. My brother-in-law managed his share, but this was a step too far for my sister and me. However, the waiting staff were very happy to box up the uneaten treats into a doggy bag (which looked very like a cardboard handbag!) and I brought them home to eat at my leisure.

There was, as you might expect, a comprehensive wine list to accompany the food. At my sister’s suggestion, I’d booked us a taxi there and back so that we could all drink. We decided that we’d fully enter into the spirit of the “tasting menu” by also having the wine package. This was a trio of glasses – a white, a red and a dessert wine – specially chosen by the chef to accompany the menu. It worked out at about half a glass per course on average, which was about right. However, the smallish glass of white wine had to stretch through the soup, starter and fish courses, and the large glass of red wine was only poured just before the chicken arrived, and had to be guzzled over just the one course before it was time for the dessert wine. That didn’t quite work for us. If we were to go again, I think we’d probably just get a bottle of something that we were in control of pouring so that we could pace it better.

Overall, we all thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The food was delicious, inventive and beautifully presented. I don’t normally eat a huge amount in one go, but was very pleased with how well I managed to pace myself, and did full justice to the first six courses. It was only the custard tart and petits fours that defeated me! It’s just the sort of really good restaurant that Malvern needs and I really hope that it succeeds. Certainly, it was full last night which bodes well.

22 03 2015 icyjumbo Day out
food Comments Off on Dinner at The Terrace on the Hill Permalink