Eat, drink and be merry...

While noting Christmas charity donations, Tom said:

"Of course, it doesn't really matter whether we sent the blind dogs a cheque for twenty euros or five million, they won't have time to cash it before the world ends anyway."

"No, and the dogs won't have time to undergo their training either."

One of several such conversations.

" Be funny if it did happen though, wouldn't it? We'd be laughing on the other side of our faces then..."

There have been some numerogical weirdnesses, not only will tomorrow be 21/12, palindromic, today is 20.12.2012, and the other week was the 12th of the 12th of the 12th.  Which also happened to be my birthday, don't know if this gives me any privileges in apocalyptic terms.

I had a nice day or two but forgot to take the camera out when we went up to the seaside to eat, because the weather was so frightful, I didn't really want to go out at all but Tom said he'd drag me out by the scruff if necessary.  And it turned out rather lovely, with sun breaking through the mist and shining off the wet sand, and the little lighthouse on the harbour wall all looking pastel and sculpted, and distant flashes off the waves beyond.  The deserted terraces were rain-washed and puddled and sodden, the viviers were drained and empty of crustaceans, but inside the restaurant was cosy and warm, and I ate crab maki and fried sea bream with winter squash confit, and the crême brulée had bits of broken gingerbread on the top which tasted Christmassy.

And I came into my internet radio which means I no longer have to choose in the kitchen between the under-shelf task lighting and The Archers, plus I've discovered a non-stop early music station with a rolling display of what they're playing. It's like some early music nerd's i-pod on shuffle, which may well be what it is.

~

So in the expectation that I will be able to get through all the submissions before the end of the world, Alphabet Soup continues, with

elegant ballerinas and greedy giraffes

 astonishing physical geography

and wild and wind-swept islands.












I'm really having quite a lot of fun.

In the Soup

Just a quick one to say that the on-line open exhibition Alphabet Soup which Shellie Byatt and I are curating over at Clive Hicks-Jenkins' Artlog has kicked off with works by Stephanie Redfern and Philippa Robbins. To see the post click here.

I'll be posting something for the exhibition there every day until Christmas Eve, and I strongly recommend you visit.  There has been some truly wonderful, varied and substantial work submitted for the exhibition from all kinds of artists; it really is a pleasure and a privilege to be working with it - and being allowed to post freely at the Artlog feels as if I've been given free run of someone else's very sumptuous home! I'm not inclined to make much commentary on the work myself, beyond what the artists themselves have said about it; it speaks for itself of course, and Clive's very fine, intelligent and generous commentariat will also have interesting and illuminating things to say. I'll try to put a link and a sample of the work here for each post too.

Thanks for your fun and interesting comments on the last post, I'll try to get back to them and indeed post again here on my own account when I can!

H is for Hand: Philippa Robbins

~

Moon: Stephanie Redfern

Pumpkins and kippers for soup, and a bombastic bloater.

Got a couple of collages done for Alphabet Soup today.  I think I'm probably on course to get perhaps a half-dozen completed, with ideas for the rest which might or might not come to fruition once the deadline heat is off.

So here is P for pumpkin:

That thing in the middle of the right-hand pumpkin flower is a messed-up scribble, which I meant to do something to correct but forgot to.  But the good thing about this technique is you can stick stuff on top!  So I think I'll make it a bumble bee.

The next one proved to be somewhat topical:

Kippers.  I have mixed feelings about these smoked members of the herring tribe, indeed about most smoked fish really. We used to get them in England that were boil-in-the-bag, from a man with a van who came round.  His stuff was so expensive the kippers were all we could really bring ourselves to buy, and I know that b-i-t-b is shameful and Not Proper Food but these were just so good and so easy and didn't stink the place out.   Now I often swear I will not buy kippers here again, but then Tom looks at them with such longing I give in, knowing the ordeal I have in store in the preparation of them, often for a dry, salty, disappointing result.  Those vacuum packed Breton smoked herrings in oil are not much better, but at least you don't have to wrestle with fins and bones and stuff, and they don't smell quite so bad.

So when we were at a low ebb in the supermarket the other day and my dear one's eyes fell upon a bloater, or un bouffi, as it is known hereabouts in pleasingly transparent translation (and as an adjective it seems that also means 'bombastic' according to the dictionary), instead of saying 'put it down it's disgusting' as I might have had I been feeling stronger, I allowed him to put it in the trolley.

I have never actually handled a bloater before; it took me a couple of days, until today, to square up to the thing and only then did I realise it was whole, all it's innards still contained within its plump form - hence its puffiness and its name, I suppose.  Fortunately it was in a sealed pack and well within it's eat-by date, as the well-documented 'gaminess' and it's bloating tendencies might have been really unmanageable.  I was by this time feeling slightly stronger and less self-sacrificing, and picking over it's smoky, slimy guts, jaundiced eyes, intact gills and hairy bones I felt little compunction in saying that 'I am only putting myself through this because I love you and because I'm still feeling mortified about smashing up the car, so yes I am largely doing it out of guilt.' He ventured to say he might not in fact enjoy it much under those terms but I said he'd bloody better do so.

But then something happened when I looked at the generous and firm portion of roe that emerged from it, which one source described as the cook's treat, I couldn't help myself thinking, and saying aloud: 'That looks good!'.  The bronze, gold and silver skin with its delicate criss-cross patterning was also rather exquisite, and by the time I'd cleaned up the fillets and put them, with the roe, under the grill, and having eaten a good portion of Jean-Paul's crisp and cleansing scarole salad, I was coming round to the idea that I might have some after all.

It really was very good indeed, much better than any kippers we've had here, and it was very inexpensive.  The roe was saltier than the flesh, but spread on a piece of bread was very interesting too.  So I will buy them again, now I know what I'm letting myself in for, or else find a way to persuade Tom that dissecting and preparing a bloater for consumption is a project that he really needs to engage with for his moral, intellectual and spiritual betterment.

(Kedgeree is also a good smoked fish option, and also begins with a 'K'. Kippers don't in fact make one's breath smell, so kissing is not completely out of the question.)

Three good things for today

We got invited to visit Jean-Paul, our stonemason, and his girlfriend Huguette.  The live in what was once a fairly ordinary concrete house on the edge of a small town near here, but which JP has entirely covered with salvaged stone, perfectly shaped and pointed.  They ply us with wine and coffee and rather too much sweet stuff, but the best bit it JP's loft, which covers the whole house and is, very tidily, full of his stuff, including a set of toy models: a little house, a yellow crane, a very fine die-cast Manitou (like a JCB), and a fork-lift.  On the day of his sixtieth birthday and so of his retirement, when he would have given up the full-sized versions of these things, he said, he came downstairs to find these laid out on the kitchen table for him.  There was also a figure of a man in working clothes with a shovel, which, I pointed out, was somewhat out-of-scale and too large for the toy vehicles and plant.  Well it's only an imitation, he said.

~

Laying the fire before we went out, so it only needed a fire-lighter and a match when we came home.  The chimney needs sweeping, but an advantage of this windy weather is it's drawing better than usual. (Which doesn't make up for the hammering the south-west of England is taking, I know.)

~

Part of young Eve's bird alphabet, which arrived today by e-mail for the Soup.  The girl is seriously gifted.

Cutting up vegetables for Alphabet Soup: the wholesome action of taking a pair of scissors to something you've made.

There is now just under a month to go to the deadline for Alphabet Soup exhibition at Clive Hicks-Jenkins Artlog.  A generous deadline, as probably any manager, editor whatever of any experience, or really anyone of any common sense,  can tell you, is not necessarily a guarantee of a result. People commit enthusiastically, maybe make a start, then put it on the back burner with a sense that they have all the time in the world, then before they know it, the deadline is nearly upon them, other things have suddenly become urgent, and something has to give...

Not everyone works like this, some people get stuck in from the off and produce over and above (go Leonard Greco!), but many do.  I should know, I am one such, even when it's a project I've taken at least some responsibility for.  In fact I made quite a few false starts, and part of my dithering has been because I had a plan  but didn't in fact like what I was doing, and went about it reluctantly. I set off with one theme, did one piece and decided I didn't like the style and the medium, stayed with the theme but changed the style and materials, decided though these were working it was really the theme I didn't like, changed to a theme I preferred but then the style and materials didn't work for it, reverted to the first kind of medium... 

Anyone would think I was a serious artist, but serious or not, one has to be happy in one's work, as my mother used to say.  So there I was, creating an 'edible alphabet', pen and ink drawings done with fine-liners of the kind I was knocking out with happy facility when I was about sixteen (with a Rotring drawing pen then, cheap, good quality fine-liners didn't exist, Ball-Pentels were the closest, remember those?).  Only they weren't as good as the ones I was doing then.  I also had an idea to give each one not only an 'A is for...' label, but a kind of alliterative legend, for example A would be 'Amazing anyone first ate an Artichoke'.  I have completed the whole twenty-six of these ( tough depicting a foodstuff for 'i' - so I've resorted to 'Ingesting insects?  I'd instantly be ill!')

I was, still am, quite happy with this formula, and I'm actually still quite happy doing that kind of tight, illustrative old-fashioned line work, the kind of thing I grew up with, it's nostalgic, small-scale, clean  and portable so can be picked up and put down easily.  But I still didn't really like the finished pieces.  They hung together badly, looked dreadful in the scans, the borders were wobbly and soppy and oh, that awful, jejune schoolgirl script of mine!   

So I picked up a big pair of scissors and chopped them up! 

And after I'd taken the photo I screwed up the outside bits with the script on and lit the fire with them! It was great. 

So now I'm on the fourth, or the third-and-a-halfth attempt. I'm not quite sure how it will finish up, but this way I can play around with different collaging possibilities; for the script I may well print something with a proper font and sticking it on.  We'll see. What you see here are an artichoke, some beans and a cauliflower, some nuts and an orange - guess what I'll be doing for 'p'? I'll post some more as I go along.

Submissions are still open for the Alphabet Soup exhibition until the end of the month, details here.

Alphabets.

Recently, I very happily agreed to help to curate an on-line exhibition of art on an alphabet theme, called Alphabet Soup, at Clive Hicks-Jenkins very wonderful Artlog. This followed the success of the maquette exhibition at the same place (all to be found here), and the enthusiastic interest in Clive's own alphabet primer, a riotous delight from moveable Anatomy, Bird and Cage to Xerxes king of Persia, the Yule Log and Zephyrus.

Visiting the Artlog, as well as seeing the marvel of Clive's own work, one can be led along avenues of exploration of more exciting, original and talented visual artists than you can shake a stick at, and getting involved with this project has already brought me into contact with quite a few of them.  I don't have to even be in their league, just be willing to be sent their work, sort through it and present it at the Artlog in the fullness of time.  Shellie Byatt, whose idea Alphabet Soup was, is also involved with the curating, so I've got some serious back-up.


The idea of the exhibition is to create alphabet pictures, including lettering, you know as in 'A is for apple' or similar.  No need to complete a whole alphabet, but we reckoned a minimum of about five letters of your choice. If we get a lot, which we might, we might just take a selection but will happily provide links to where further work might be seen on-line. The other stipulation, to create a harmonious feel to the final exhibition and to offer a bit of a challenge, especially to artists who love to colour, is that it should be in black and white (and shades of grey between, of course) but each picture should contain one other colour, perhaps as an accent, so for example if 'E is for Eve', she might be holding a red apple.


The deadline is the end of November, with a view to presenting it in the week or so leading to Christmas.  A long way off yet, it may seem, but giving time to develop ideas without rushing busy people too much.  And it's open to all, not just professional artists, so please feel free to join in.  Submissions and enquiries to be sent to me at lucy-dot-kmptn-at-gmail-dot-com.  No rush to send stuff in, but it's nice too know who and how many might be involved.  Again, the exhibition will be at Clive Hicks-Jenkins Artlog (not here at Box Elder). The call for submissions is here.

~

And suddenly there are alphabets everywhere.  Wondering about the possibilities of something fruit and vegetable or otherwise food based, I went to my copy of Larousse Gastronomique, which was handed on to me very generously by an older friend who said she no longer wanted it, and this particular, English, edition dates from the year of my birth, 1961 (it first came out in 1938).  

Moules marinières - in terracotta on a blue chequered table cloth with a nice glass of wine, what could be better? - adorn the frontispiece, but I also found, which I had never noticed before, that each alphabetical section has a delightful illuminated letter heading, in black and white.  Here's a selection:

It's fun identifying the elements: 'A' is easy, apples of course, and also apricots, artichokes, asparagus, but what is the quarter-circle in 'B', along with the beans, blackberries, and presumably bread, or brioche? I suppose it's a piece of beef.  'E' for eggs is beautifully simple, but is that odd-shaped thing in 'G' Gruyère cheese or what?  It took me a while to work out that the circle under the herrings in 'H' was a selection of hors d'oeuvres... 


The other book I looked out was this one.

This was under the Christmas tree for me the year I turned six, or perhaps seven.  We had had an exceptional (we didn't travel abroad much as a family) holiday in France and Switzerland, and I had expressed a wish to learn French.  I remember its cloth bound spine with the red capital letters of the title visible outside of the wrapping paper - it's a big book and perhaps there wasn't enough paper or something.

It was a very special book, still is.  The quality of the paper, print and binding is very good, and it's all colour, which not many books were then.  I can't imagine it was available in the small town where I grew up at the time and was probably bought in London.

It has a selection of vocabulary in alphabetical order:

again it's fun to try to work out what the pictures show -since they don't always feature in the chapters themselves; the fish, which I thought might be a bony anchois, (anchovy) is I think in fact illustrating les arêtes de poisson, fish bones ( and checking the spelling of that, I find that the same word is used for the beard of barley, an etymological connection nicely shown by the picture.

The green thing in the bottom left of 'B' defeats me,

as does the red bit of origami in 'C'.

Each word used in a sentence, here are a couple of the more lugubriously amusing ones (most of them are nicer)

This apple is bad. [You bet, look at that worm in it!] 

Roland is a bad playmate. [ Not only does he kick his mate in the fesses but he carries a catapult, wears patched trousere and his cap the wrong way round, le petit voyou! ]

I have cut myself, my blood flows. [ Never mind, it can water the furrows.  If it's impure anyway.]

Then there are lovely full page illustrations of different categories:

 Veg and fruit - for an English provincial child of the 60s, raised on Mrs Beaton rather than Larousse Gastronomique, not only the French words but the very existence of celeriac, endives, aubergines and quinces would have been a mystery.

Fish: now Larrousse G says a cod is cabillaud, which is what we buy them as now; morue is salt-cod.  Aiglefin (haddock) is more usually now églefin.  Fish translations continue to exercise me.

I love this illustration of geographical features.

Here's the page for 'K'; I can remember my mother telling me there was no K in the French alphabet.  Alas she was not always right (just annoyingly often).  Indeed, one of the Gallic concepts most detested by red-blooded English traders seeking metric-martyrdom begins with a 'K', that's to say the kilogram!


I would like to say that the book inspired an early epiphany and long standing love affair with the French language which has stayed with me always, but I'm afraid it didn't. In fact it was originally published in France for French children of school age as a 'playtime book', a fun adjunct to learning to read and write their own language (this was in 1963, pre-1968, rather stodgy pedagogic times...). I was no infant prodigy, and without access to spoken French, barely having learned to read and write in English, I found it frustrating and closed to me, and knowing it was a special, precious book added to rather than overcoming this.  I was momentarily impressed with its size and colour, but frankly, at that age I liked naturalistic pictures, preferably of animals - another board-back picture book I had at a similar age, containing photos and called 'Animals Everywhere' I devoured endlessly.  Quaint little French children behaving correctly in incomprehensible language didn't really do it for me.


The book was passed on at some point, and I assumed it was lost, if I thought of it at all.  Then a few years ago, while visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Mayenne, I was browsing their bookshelves and found it again.  It was very worn and battered and had been sadly abused and much scribbled on, it had presumably been given to my niece (she who now makes me laugh more than anyone but who was something of a petit voyou herself when she was small ) to play with.  But they had kept it, and were happy to see it returned to me.  Now I enjoy it very much, and though some of the language is a bit old-fashioned, I find it quite helpful for some areas of vocabulary and construction.

What made me look at it with regard to the Alphabet Soup challenge were the alphabet letter forms on the endpapers, which I can remember fascinating me.

They are entirely constructed with animal forms, in black and white and tinted each with a different single colour.  They look much older than the style of the rest of the book, and the curious thing is the animals shown often don't seem to have much relation to the letter they are forming, in French or English -

The beaver in 'B' might do, but the fish doesn't; the hinds and hounds in 'H' might, but none of these correspond in French, and the marmoset and lobster creatures have no names beginning with 'J' or 'Y' in either language that I know of, so altogether they are a mystery, but an appealing one.

(Apologies for the poor photo quality of these images; the books were both rather too big and cumbersome to scan, and the light wasn't great when I took the photos, but they give an idea.)