Day 27
It is very hot today - and oppressive. I feel a storm is on its way.
The book starts with a description of the house. Ashenden is one of those beautiful golden eighteenth century house built between London and Oxford. It is described in loving detail so that we have a very clear picture of what it is like. Sadly, it is now in distress. Reggie Lyell has just died having outlived her husband and money by many years. She has been unable to maintain the house and its state is nearing critical. She has left it to her middle aged nephew and niece - Charlie, a photographer based in New York, Ros, a left wing doctor from Reading. He wants to sell (if they can find a buyer), she would like to keep it,
The first section ends with this dilemma reaching stalemate.
What follows is a series of vignettes of the past life of the house from its building to Reggie's death. Each short story has the house at its centre and we can see how its history reflects the history of the country and shapes its eventual fate. Some of the stories are quite short, but they glow with life, reflecting all the emotions that humans feel.
At first I found the story quite slow and I took time to engage with Charlie and Ros, finding them rather superficial, but when we went back in time, I became absorbed by the house and its inhabitants, so it was worth making the effort. The book had much more depth than I had expected.
I gather that this is the author's first work of fiction. She has since written another, If I Could Tell You, which I am trying to get hold of. I think she is an writer to watch.
Music
I was lying on the sofa this afternoon half reading, half dozing, in the oppressive heat when this exploded all round me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XJba0kPcug
It was featured in the film Babe, but don’t let that put you off. This is the final movement and it was a technological sensation because the organ is the grand organ at Chartres Cathedral and it was piped into the studio hundreds of miles away.
Turn the volume up as high as you can and let yourself be carried away.
Wonderful!!!
Food
For the past few days my diet has consisted of runner beans, French beans, courgettes and strawberries – not necessarily on the same plate.
With these ingredients, fresh from the garden, the best way to eat them is the simplest.
Vegetables
· Put the green vegetables in boiling water and boil until tender (4 – 6 minutes).
· Drain and serve with a dusting of sea salt and black pepper and lots of butter.
Strawberries
· Hull the strawberries and cut in half.
· Dust with sugar and leave in the fridge for half an hour. Eat with cream (Jersey, if you can get it).
Or, if that is too much effort, hold by the leaves, dunk in sugar, then in thick or clotted cream, place in mouth and repeat until finished.
Today's Picture
This is The Harvest by Camille Pissarro, one of my favourite painters. He was born in 1830, on the island of St. Thomas which is, I think, in the Virgin Isles.
When he was twelve, Pissarro was sent by his parents to a boarding school in France where he first discovered the masters of French Art. Although he returned to St. Thomas, and his family's mercantile business, he couldn’t settle and came back to Paris where he began experimenting with art, eventually becoming an influential member of the Impressionist movement with friends including Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. His career was so long that he also became active in Post-Impressionist circles, continuing to paint until his death in 1903.
Although he had a studio in Paris, Pissarro preferred painting outdoors painting life as it happened. His paintings seem to be observing life as it is. They feel in no way staged or composed.
Tragically, a huge body of his work was destroyed in the Franco-Prussian war (1870/1871).
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