Better Homes Than Yours

I have bought Living Etc magazine. I do this occasionally and it is invariably a mistake. Normally if I buy a home magazine I buy Your Home, in which the Homes look – and I say this carefully – as if a normal person has decorated and perhaps had a bit of building work done, then gone on a spree around Home Sense: i.e. they mostly look achievable, and what my house might conceivably look like if I made a bit of an effort. The homes in Living Etc are not achievable and it just depresses me. They normally have one of the following:

- A woman with 5 children under 7 whose home is absolutely white, with a white Terence Conran suede sofa. ‘No it isn’t impractical!’ she trills, brightly. ‘You just have to be organised!’. Somewhere in the house is an antique tailor’s dummy with a silk dress from Alice Temperley hanging from it. It is subtly conveyed in the photographs that the children have all passed their Grade 7 Oboe, are the most popular children in their respective peer groups, and enjoy eating broccoli.

- A couple who taught themselves to be electricians and builders while working full time jobs as Barristers/ Senior Television Executives, and thus renovated their house in Notting Hill on only £500 and a Heal’s gift voucher from Daddy.

- A man who gave up his job as a Barrister/ Senior Television Executive to make pointless things out of reclaimed wood, instantly brought in the equivalent of his previous salary, and has hand carved his kitchen out of an old crate. Which he found at the side of the road. And he has also adopted the cat he found sitting in it.

- A woman who ‘sources adorable little things’ from flea markets in Paris and has a display of manky little bits of lace above her bed, along with a framed shoe from when she was a child. Somewhere there will be a winsome line from a winsome poem stencilled on something, and a chest of drawers that she has distressed with sandpaper and the application of dabs of white paint. I am trying not to gender stereotype with this one and if I ever see a man in Living Etc doing the same I will come back and edit this post.

Anyway, this month there is a woman who lives right in the middle of Borough market and ‘just loves the bustle’, and another woman who has put lots of balls of wool in a big glass vase ‘to make a colourful display’. Readers, I do not think that woman can be a knitter, although perhaps I have overlooked the decorative possibilities of that ball of turquoise fun fur I never quite know what to do with. So I am going to quietly put Living Etc away before Partner finds it and makes fun of me (Partner calls such magazines ‘Better Homes Than Yours’, after a magazine Marge was reading in The Simpsons), and I am going to go and wash up, then read my catalogue on tiles. Tiles! Who knew there were so many different kinds! Shall I be let to sleep,/ Now this perpetual morning shares my bed?

(By the way, I’ve got another interview tomorrow, with Heloise Toop, who is a Cambridge artist who paints the most fantastic portraits – so do check back ;-) ).

WIP Wednesday is distracting me from Home Improvements. Good!

It’s WIP Wednesday – thanks again to Tami, and her admirable mastery of the Mr Linky widget, for hosting! Well, my major work in progress this Wednesday is the new fire we are currently having fitted in the living room, which has practically involved rebuilding the house. Nothing we ever do to our house is ever simple, because, as Partner says, it is a knackered house, and we should accept that, give up trying to make it look halfway decent, and drink wine. Anyway, we now have a big hole in the wall – in a slightly different place to the hole that was in the wall previously – and Partner and I can spend the rest of our lives arguing about whether we should have had the fire lower, after spending the morning shouting Higher! Lower!, like terrible parodies of Bruce Forsyth, at the poor fire-fitting man while he patiently moved the fire up and down for us to see what it looked like. In the meantime, it is my job to make cups of tea every twenty minutes and force them down the fire-fitters’ throats, as if they were baby birds (I’m not suggesting I’ve got the hard part of the bargain).

But onto more conventional WIPS. I’ve finished piecing the top of the Subversive Guerrilla Quilt, and here it is (standard disclaimer: don’t judge me on my woodchip. I’m having a fire fitted. I’m making an effort).

OK, look, be honest. Do you iron your duvet cover either? Reluctant ironers unite!

As with everything I ever do, I spent the entire time sewing this together thinking, Oh God, it looks crap, I’m a crap person, I can’t even make a decent quilt, nobody loves me, etc, and then the moment it was finished I decided I adored it with a burning passion, and basked in my smugness for a good afternoon. But I’ve got to say, I’m not looking forward to trying to quilt it. Do I have a long-arm quilting machine? Why, no. Do I know anyone with a long-arm quilting machine? {Looks pensive and chews knuckle}. I think my plan is to quilt it in quite a basic way (i.e. just on the squares), by (short-arm, non-walking-foot) machine, with a mixture of brute force and determination. Possibly while eating a bun. Does that sound like a plan?

I need to iron that seam again. God. O Photography! As no art is,/ Faithful and disappointing! as Larkin said, inbetween being a great big irritating commitment-dodger

This is the skirt of the Anna Maria Horner Evening Empire Dress. I won’t tell you how long I’ve had this cut out, because I don’t want you to think I’m disorganised, but I got to it eventually, and I will try not to leave it for another 3 months before I sew the bodice. I’m pleased with it so far, and I’ll do a review of the pattern when I’m done.

It's chunky, it's funky, it's I-can't-think-of-another-rhyme-unky

And this is my Cheadle. I’m not convinced I’m getting gauge (OK, look. I’m not getting gauge but I’m not sure whether it will be disastrous or not). The wool is Debbie Bliss Donegal Chunky Tweed and I actually really like it, it’s great for this pattern. I bought it from The Black Sheep recently while it was on offer so for the price especially, I’m a happy bunny.

And moving away from tangible woolly things, I’ve got a couple of less tangible FOs to tell you about – forthcoming articles! I’ve got a piece coming up in Bespokezine, a new zine put together by Jess Van Den – available now for preorder. I’ve also got a how-to in the December issue of Sewing World, and an article in the next issue of Cuntastic (I was trying to explain this one to my Aunty Kath in the British Museum café when she had an attack of deafness which necessitated my yelling ‘it’s an anti-consumerist critique of sex toys, Aunty Kath!’ loudly across the cups of tea). I’m very excited to be a part of all of these, so if anyone happens upon them, do let me know what you think!

Happy Wednesday WIPing, everyone.

Pen and ink are not dead. They're just feeling a bit delicate.

Dear blog readers,

I look exactly like my brother. I'm sorry Dan, we will never escape our genes

The Friday Interview: Diana from Magickal Realism

Today’s interview is with Diana Rajchel of Magickal Realism.

Diana from Magickal Realism

I first came across Magickal Realism through etsy, and I’ve bought (and I love) a few of Diana’s scents. I’ve always been really in to perfume, and, like a lot of people, I can divide the periods in my life up according to the perfume I was wearing at the time (and I shan’t be revisiting Opium. But a sniff of CK1 takes me right, right back. Don’t judge me ;-) ). I was lucky enough to discover Magickal Realism at a time when I was starting to become a bit bored with mass - market fragrance offerings, and wondering if there was an alternative: well, there certainly is, and I’d encourage anyone who’s balking at the thought of buying the latest Jordan fragrance or whatever nonsense Boots are pushing this week to have a look round at some indie perfumers, who aren’t all hung up on the conviction that we all want to smell like pretty flowers or fabric conditioner. Diana’s scents are genuinely different, and have a complexity about them that is very seductive. Also, the names are fab. Who doesn’t want to smell like a vampire groupie? I certainly do. Diana does lots of other stuff too, and I can recommend her writing first hand as I’m a proud owner of the Spellcasting Picture Book, which is great. Anyway! On with the interview!

I think we'd all rather smell like Vampire Groupies than like Corporate Clean Vanilla Fragrance no. 126

1/ Can you tell us a bit about yourself, and what you make?
If you asked me my vocation a year ago, I'd likely style myself a writer who makes perfume. Nowadays, I just identify as an artist. I'm at an odd convergence in my career: a plus size blog I started in 2007, mainly to help other plus size women find more clothing sources than the usual suspects, took off in strange and unexpected ways manifesting this year. (FatChic.net). Arguably, the plus size blog is what I'm best known for, despite writing occult nonfiction for more than a decade, and running a magical oils business that became a perfumery over the course of that time.

In terms of crafting, I design perfumes. Once in awhile, I also make body products - usually melt and pour soaps, scrubs and bath salts. Although I planned to get away from it when I started Etsy, I've found myself drifting back toward creating unique occult supplies such as the incinerate incense papers in my trashion line.

Samhain ritual fragrance. It's coming up, you know! Plan ahead!

2/ Which of the things you’re working on at the moment are you most excited about?
Aside from the book I'm writing I'm having a great time making the origami incense bats. I plan to add penguins and other shapes as my skills increase. I'm even looking into Polish paper cutting arts, although at this time I find the approach intimidating.

I'm expanding my trashion line to include trashion accessories. Right now I have bottle cap/wine cork incense burners waiting for listing.

I have in development "uncrossing bombs." These little skulls fizz when they hit water, and are intended for use in uncrossing spells where someone finds water preferable to fire. Once I sort out how to ship them in one piece, I'll have some fun with them.

3/ You use only natural products in your main (non-Trashion) line, which is is very unusual for a perfumer. Why did you make the decision to go all natural, and do you find it restricts you or frees you up?
Going all-natural was not, initially, a conscious decision. I just wanted to work with chemicals that I had the best chance of understanding - and that meant working with natural/botanic origin materials. I've found since then that despite claims by IFRA, natural materials do have a lower rate of allergic response than do synthetics. As a person with chronic idiopathic urticaria, (hives, all the time, with no fully identifiable cause) I've become invested in understanding allergies and allergens. There's no way to serve everyone when it comes to chemical choices and allergic concerns. Why? Because you can be allergic to anything if your body decides to be at any time, water included. Using natural materials I do seem to enjoy better success at avoiding someone's histamine minefield.

Also, popular synthetic scents annoy me; I consider them the olfactory equivalent of Celine Dione and modern country western music. Yes, a lot of people love them, but for me... nails on a chalkboard. The result of the current approach to fragrance is a lot of the same stuff over and over, and since fragrance takes a very different kind of imagination from other materials, it ends up with a lot of people asking only for what they know. Synthetic musks, grapefruit and certain florals are now essentially like elevator music - 4 chords and seven years ago, as Huey Lewis and the News might say. [just a note from me to say I agree totally! ;-) ].

Take thy beak from out my heart and take thy form from off my door!

4/ Does being a Wiccan influence the way you create, or the kinds of scents you make?
Yes, and I've found it's a looping influence. Whenever I drift, someone asks me to come back. I began in the business making magical oils on custom requests under the name Medea's Chariot. I quit for a few years, and decided to revive the perfumery with heavy rebranding in an attempt to move to a slightly more mainstream market, but found that my steadiest customers buy my fragrances most for magical purposes even now. So even though I started to move away from it, I was brought back to it by popular demand, and this happened before I wrote the spellbook. I'm considering starting a separate store for aesthetic perfume shoppers now and giving Magickal Realism over to fellow neopagans completely because of this.

When it comes to new scent designs, they happen either because someone requests it to suit a purpose or need, or because I see something I want to capture in scent. Often the requests reflect a magical nature, enough so that I design all my fragrances according to an astrological model I designed to determine formulas.

5/ Has running your own perfume business changed the way you feel about mass market perfumes? Are there any mass market perfumes you enjoy?
I found myself looking at mass market perfumes much more seriously after I began designing myself. I began to realize, ironically, how over-fragranced the western world has become and how we limit our vocabulary of scent. Even laundry detergent gets perfume added to it. Despite the aesthetic limitations of mass market perfumes, I came to acknowledge some real artwork out there amidst the chemical flow. While I strongly - STRONGLY -disagree in the trade practice of nondisclosure of materials in perfume, I acknowledge that some perfumers using synthetics demonstrate real talent in what they create. I'll let the Environmental Working Group (http://www.ewg.org/notsosexy) take on the issues of what's hiding in those synthetics. The way I see it, I might not find the process for pigmenting paint thrilling but I can still admire a Da Vinci. I just have to take responsibility for what I paint myself.

My mainstream favorites are admittedly few, but I do have them. The two standouts that I love (and can't afford) are Tom Ford's Black Orchid and Coco Mademoiselle. I will sometimes wear Preferred Stock instead of one of my own fragrances. It's hilariously popular with men, who all comment on my yummy smell and then stare at me in horror when I tell them I'm wearing a men's cologne. The way the world has been brainwashed into olfactory gender roles affords me endless amusement.

For nostalgia's sake, I also keep around a bottle of Love's Babysoft Jasmine and I'm hunting down Muguet. I may try to track down Charlie Express! and Le Fleur since I wore those perfumes in high school, and it's fun to look at my autobiography in perfume.

6/ I loved your Spellcasting book, and I understand you’re writing a new book at the moment about Handparting, the Wiccan divorce ritual. I think divorce, and the end of a committed relationship generally, is something that cries out for a ritual to mark the change: do the people you’re talking to generally seem to find Handparting rituals a positive experience?
Yes, I am currently writing a book about handparting, a Wiccan ritual for releasing people from marriage vows upon their divorce. I'm hoping to go the traditional publishing route with this one, which these days may mean a physical book or at least something you can pull up on an ebook reader. I'm currently seeking an agent, and I'm also asking neopagans who have experienced at least one divorce that happened more than a year ago participate in the survey: http://survey.dianarajchel.com
It's long and intense, but it also allows participants to bookmark pages and come back as they can.

Of the respondents on my survey so far, the few that have had handparting ceremonies find them positive. I was unable to conduct one during my own divorce, and I would like to think that a formal ceremony followed by "here's some codes of conduct you might want to try" would have been infinitely helpful. As it was, I stumbled through and made more of a mess of what was already a mess. While there's no way to make any divorce, even an amicable one, easy, I felt like younger Wiccans in particular might appreciate the book or perhaps use it as a flotation device.

What I like about grounding is, you can also do it by having a cup of tea and a nice piece of cake. True fact, this is recommended in one of my books

7/ Are there any other perfumers you particularly admire who you’d like to tell us about?
Anyone involved in Rebel Perfumers rocks, really and truly. They're all passionate about forging their own aesthetics in scent, and somewhere I'm stashing a piggybank so I can find a way to try them all.

8/ David Tennant, Matt Smith, or someone else?
Oooh, best question EVER! [note from me. Yay!]. I actually started my Whovian travels with Peter Davison, but I identify Christopher Eccleston as MY Doctor. He brought a gravitas and alien human-ness to the role that brought the series back to life while acknowledging the loss in the first place. I really do love all the actors who played the Doctor; the character is so much more than the actor that plays him, and they've all captured that essence of a hyper-intelligent alien with ADD and low sense of self-preservation beautifully.

____________________________

Thanks Diana for this – I really, really enjoyed your answers (indeed, I’m going off now to click my own interesting button! That isn't a euphemism!) and I’m going to check out your recommendations, because I’m completely fascinated by perfume (and if anyone else is into perfume as well, can I also recommend this book, which is one of my favourites). I hope the Handparting books goes well too, because it sounds great. Thanks again. (Check out Diana on her website, etsy shop, or plus size style blog).

Have a nice weekend, everyone ;-).

Quilting. The new Guerrilla Art Form.

One of the things that always brightens my world a little bit is graffiti. I love graffiti (I even don't mind the dodgy kind), and I wander about taking pictures of it sometimes (you know, when I can't find any random cats to photograph. I did nearly take a photo of a hairy little terrier outside Homebase, though, because he just looked so tragic, but then his owner came out to get him and I felt I shouldn't intrude on his incandescent joy).

Just off Portobello Road. 5 million tourists with their cameras pointed in the other direction, me photographing 2 men standing near a signpost. It is a wonder I do not get arrested

I love the colours, the style, everything about it. My best graffiti experience was going to the outskirts of Prague to look at a modern art gallery, and the tube (I can't remember what it is called in Prague) went through a completely graffiti-covered urban-wasteland-type landscape which was very striking. Sadly this was before the days I had my digital camera always on hand, ready to whip it out at a moment's notice in order to photograph urban artwork and passing furry creatures, like a Photography Ninja. I was completely thrilled, then, when I went to Habitat the other day (home improvements. And I say again, Do Not Do It),  to see new and really dramatic graffiti on the corner of Newmarket Road, which is one of the, shall we say, less attractive parts of Cambridge. Indeed, Newmarket Road looks a bit like capitalism chewed it up and spat it out, with a side order of boarded-up shops and dirty concrete. The graffiti looked amazing, though. Today I went to bother the people at the bathroom shop opposite to get an estimate, and while I was in the area I took some photos:

Well that certainly brightened things up. Perhaps they considered and discounted Magnolia

This is about fractured enactments of femininity. There, I saved you the trouble

And this is how my hair feels today

It's by a group called Blight Society – they also have a blog with more photographs, if you want to look (and you can see why the location needed cheering up. Somehow it never gets any sunlight either, I think that makes it seem worse). You can also buy artwork from their site, from £1, thrillingly. I shall certainly be checking back to see what's selling for £1, and I think I actually recognise some of the styles from stuff I've seen around Cambridge. Anyway, this got me to thinking. I always feel like the best kind of graffiti is the kind that has a bit of an edginess to it. And – admire my segue, here, this is going to be worthy of daytime television – I feel the same about quilting. I'm nearly finished piecing the top of my quilt, and I can't say (says she carefully) that I feel it's entirely an aesthetic success. I think it's a bit too busy. If I'd had a full choice of fabrics I would have done it differently, and I think it would have looked better.

But... I did make it entirely with things left over from other projects, fabrics from charity shops, fabrics I'd swapped (and thankyou to Mumma Troll, your fabric is one of the best things in it!), and stuff like that. So although I do think it would have been more attractive if I'd planned a colour scheme and then bought fabrics to fit, I just can't somehow entirely get behind buying all new fabrics for a quilt. It seems wrong. The point of quilting seems, to me, to be that it's a blindingly effective way of making something lovely out of unusable scraps: going out and buying all the latest co-ordinating Kaffe Fassett, although it would produce something really beautiful, just isn't the same (I do love Kaffe Fassett prints, though. Not dissing him. Just saying). So, I'm happy with my scrappy quilt in terms of theory, even though some of the blocks do look as if they've been put together by a short-sighted monkey on acid. Anyway, here is the half I've pieced so far of the Edgy Guerrilla Art Quilt of Doooooooooom – you can judge for yourself if being thrifty was worth the aesthetic compromise. (You can be critical. I can take it).

I just don't know why this went so blurry. In real life all those horrendously clashing prints are as sharp as a pin

Now. Do check back tomorrow, because I've got an interview with Diana Rajchel from Magickal Realism. I was very happy she agreed to do the interview, as Magickal Realism has long been one of my favourite shops on etsy (indeed I believe I once bought some House Blessing oil from her: time to dig it out and scatter it about methinks), and it turned into a very interesting interview, I thought.

OK. I have linked graffiti and quilts, possibly not as good as my Yoko Ono/ Spratley cake link but I think that's enough for one evening. I shall now go and look at brochures with toilets in them and weep quietly. (I don't quite know how I became so bourgeois. If someone wants to take back my membership card, do. It's fine by me. I used to be cool).

My Secret Shame - exposed.

Here they all are oppressing me, dammit (are there any I've borrowed from anyone? Do shout)

Forgive me, internet, for I have sinned.

I have slightly more qualifications in English literature than are entirely compatible with being happy and well-rounded. I have a library on my doorstep. I have books in my house. I have a mother who brings me a bag of all the latest fiction, pre-reviewed and digested for me whenever she visits (‘don’t read this one, somebody dies and it’s miserable. This one’s funny, you can read that. This one’s by that man who wrote the one that was on telly. It’s not as good’).

And yet.

I do not read fiction. And what’s more:

I don’t care.

I'm afraid you can indeed see What Not To Wear in the left hand corner there. Look: you think I got to be stylish without research? And sweat?

Other kinds of books, goodness yes. Knitting books, craft books. Vintage sewing books. Books on Wicca. Books on politics. Books on sociology. Books on psychology. Cookery books. Books on feminism. Spell books. Poetry. Newspapers. Graphic novels. Bonus points for political feminist graphic novels. Travel guides. The Argos catalogue. Fashion magazines. Home Improvement magazines. I read all these all the time. I’m never not reading something like that. Is there a new critique of capitalism with a feminist eco slant somewhere? Marvellous. I’m right there. Some book or other about a thrilling new knitting technique? Here I come, credit card in hand. Obscure feminist craft zine with recipes, only available in San Francisco? Thank God for Airmail and Paypal. New Argos catalogue out? Here I am, skippety-skipping across the Beehive centre carpark to see if they’re doing anything different this season in terms of woolly rugs. If I’ve run out of anything else I read the Boden catalogue. Look, they send me hundreds. They make such an effort. Someone needs to appreciate all those little questions they ask their models. But fiction? No, nyet, nope, sorry, not interested unless you stick a few Kitchener stitch directions or a nice recipe in between chapters 10 and 11.

Ah, Le Chat, comme je l'aime. But I do not understand Tardi

So I am at a crossroads. I am wondering whether I should just accept a happy utilitarian future in which everything I read is Useful and Improving, or if I should bite the bullet again and engage with fiction. Because I must have read some at some point. Perhaps I should, you know, go wild and (try and) enjoy myself. It’s not as if I’m a total aescetic: I do read poetry (says she desperately). And I do like a bit of fiction. I like Dickens! I like things you buy by the yard where everyone’s emotionally repressed and married to the wrong people! I liked Harry Potter! But beyond that – as someone says in one of the Adrian Mole books (ok, I do like them as well), ‘I have never read Dostoevsky. And with good luck and a fair wind, I shall never have to’.

Do feel free to leave me any fiction recommendations, to tell me I’m wrong, or to sympathise (although, please: no Magic Realism. That is where I draw the line, and I draw it firmly). Those of you who know me in real life – feel free to tell me off. I know you all will. But I have broad shoulders. Me and the Argos catalogue, we can take it. Off to look for a woolly rug. (I want one in beige. I’m not adventurous).

Mr Fierce, and a Spratley Cake Recipe

It’s my mother’s birthday today, so Happy Birthday mother! Following my previous post, she would like everyone to know that it is actually she who is responsible for my love of sewing as she used to make my furry toys when I was little. She used to make a long furry sausage with eyes and ears, then she stuffed it with corrugated cardboard (yes really), sewed a bottom on, and that was my toy. I had many of these and my mother says that she and I spent many a happy afternoon rolling corrugated cardboard and stuffing it up the respective bottoms of Snowcomes (Snowcomes was white), Rover, and Mr Fierce. I have tried to get my mother to take photos but she says Rover et al are ‘all in the attic with their stuffing out’. Well, this seems quite an ignominious end, especially for Mr Fierce, but I will try not to be sentimental. Anyway, Happy 32nd Birthday, mother, and I am hoping Dan has a better handle on how old you actually are rather than how old you tell us you are, just in case you are ever kidnapped in Ecuador or something and one of us has to give information to the Foreign Office.

Anyway. Since I did my post about the evils of supermarkets, I have so far managed to reduce the money I spend in them by about £20-£30 a week, although I am definitely still buying some stuff there. The £20-£30 was very little effort, I have got to say, although I can see that reducing it further might take a bit more thinking about. I am certainly glad I am giving Tesco less of my money, because I was in there on Saturday and they were making a great big fuss in the fruit and vegetable aisle about sourcing things locally:

Stop criticising, all you nasty people. All our fruit and veg is British! Or at least a miniscule proportion of it!

Look! Look at their commitment to reducing air miles!:

Before supermarkets screwed up all our agriculture there were hundreds more varieties of apples than there are now. Thanks for the sop, though

And then when I looked where the apples came from:

Integrity. Ur doin it rong

There were some British ones – I think there was about one crate out of about 20. The rest were mostly from Portugal or New Zealand. Honestly, I don’t know how dim Tesco think we are. (Quite dim if you look at the Tesco Values customers supposedly want – I don’t know about you, but I can even manage compound sentences!). Anyway, I won’t go off on a rant, because I wanted to give you a recipe.

One of the things I have been doing recently is cooking much more from scratch, and for some reason I have been drawn to very boring, basic food of the kind that you will never see on Nigella. Why can’t food be boring and basic, though? It still tastes nicer than a ready meal. In fact I often think with these programmes where someone goes and tries to get people to cook proper food instead of living on deep-fried Mars Bars and turkey twizzlers, they should just say, why don’t you just stick a baked potato in the oven, yum (I do see that wouldn’t be very exciting: it’s probably best for all of us that I’m not involved in television).

So in the interests of rediscovering more basics, I bought a book on Derbyshire cookery when I was in London recently (I was brought up in Derbyshire), and I found a recipe in it for Spratley Cake. Well, Spratley Cake is as unglamorous as it sounds. It is essentially a big flat Garibaldi biscuit. But I made some Spratley Cake and it was quite delicious although, it has to be said, not attractive. While I was considering whether the photo I had taken of it was just too ugly to put on the internet, I found myself listening to the Only Album By Any Of The Beatles I Can Stand To Listen To, (and even then I suspect Yoko wrote most of the good bits. Go on! Unfriend me! ;-) ):

O if only I knew someone with a band who would let me cover this song. Hey! Wait!

And I thought, if Yoko can look like this on the album sleeve notes – unairbrushed and in a not very attractive jacket, with that expression of slightly irritated tolerance – I can show you my rough-looking Spratley cake. So here it is:

There were some bits which looked a bit better but we ate them very quickly

And this is the recipe, here. I used slightly more pastry than this – 6oz (made with 4oz flour and 2 oz butter), and honestly, it was lovely, I shall certainly be making it again. It would be fine as well if you don’t have any fresh mint (we have some in the garden – it’s not worth buying any for it, it would just be delicious in a different way without).

There is one huge, huge problem with making things from scratch, though. They are much, much more moreish and delicious than things you buy, so unless you quickly invite everyone you know round to your house the minute you make biscuits, you end up eating more. I fear my rear is expanding, possibly even as I type this. You know that saying about having to choose between your face and your figure when you get to a certain age? Well, I wanted to keep my figure. I didn’t think I’d get to choose explicitly, exactly, but I did think I’d have a bit of a say in it. And after years of stress and looking slightly haggard but fitting into all my carefully-curated vintage, I now I find myself looking bright eyed and healthy, with a muffin top. Bugger. How did that happen? I hope it’s not going to come down to a choice between breaking the stranglehold of the supermarkets and still being able to get into my Vivienne Westwood skirt. Activism. Always has its drawbacks!