June into July 2024
How’s your summer so far? June is so pretty in the UK, lots of green and the first flush of roses and wild flowers. My pots have later flowering plants mostly so I’m waiting for alliums, agapanthus and rudbeckias to show me their colours. The hydrangea though is in flower with more blooms to come. I love that they’ll tinge with pink as they eventually fade and start to dry.
I’ve been writing drafts pieces for my livre de cuisine, circling around, you could say struggling with the main concept still, but finding the detail much easier; there are a lot of recipes written up already. They need framing though. I could use the train journey with my young mama from Fribourg to London in the 60s where each stop inspires main courses, desserts and small plates, a croque monsieur from the buffet de la gare in Lausanne or crêpes suzettes in Paris for example. Stops as chapters seem promising and there are about the right number.
It’s my bedroom’s turn for redecoration, just painting and window dressing. The skirting boards are damaged in places and I’m not sure more filling and sanding is the answer. We could replace them with reclaimed Victorian pine but the cost of labour and materials is high. Someone suggested mdf but it doesn’t breathe and I don’t want to invite damp and have to use a dehumidifier. So the window will get a bronze pole, some long linen curtains in a pale colour maybe from West Elm and we’ll decide on the walls and skirting boards later in the year. There’ll always be reno work happening in housette but projects may well get smaller.
New this month is a reupholstered wing chair; it’s been well over 10 years since we last had it recovered from the original chocolate brown plush, this time the silver grey has been replaced with a caramel coloured velvet. It’s Mr D’s command chair, he laughs when I called it that. I’ll add the photo as a note as it’s not back from the upholsterer yet.
I’m excited to recommend these two books, one about a young girl reading Proust for the first time and the second the opening volume of Proust’s famous collection, A la recherche du temps perdu. The idea is that the story of Clara helps us read Proust whose works have long been considered difficult verging on impossible. Clara’s story is charming and it really did inspire me to try Du côté de chez Swann reading it in different ways, sometimes aloud, often really quickly with passages tabbed for rereading. No one else’s prose comes close. Both books are easy to find in translation.
Clara reads Proust Stéphane Carlier (2022)
Swann’s Way Marcel Proust (1913)
I can’t mention Proust without a little side note about madeleines, those little honeyed sponge cakes that brought back sweet memories of his grandmother’s kitchen. We probably all have a taste and scent memory perhaps a simple breakfast or tea time treat that takes us back to childhood, your very own madeleine de Proust. Friends have come up with buttered toast, hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows, apple crumble and flapjacks straight from the oven. Do tell me yours in the comments. I’d love to know. I processed the photo to make my madeleines look story bookish.
As summer has properly opened her doors, I’m planning days out fruit picking, swims at the lido and shopping in Bath. My exam marking will be finished by election day on the 4th and I hope we’ll also be toasting a new government with a glass of bubbles on Friday; I just hope voters turn out in large numbers. Our MPs majority is only 800 here in Cheltenham so there’s a good chance for a change. 2024 is election year in many countries; I hope we’ll all see some improvements in our lives.
Well, back to marking those essays on An Inspector Calls, by far the most popular choice of modern text for the exam. It’s relaxing apart from when the handwriting is small and loopy.
Wishing you a smooth finish to the end of term and a fun start to the holiday season.
Love,
Francey
PS I’ve taken out the opening salutation, reader is sounding too odd.
What wonderful memories. I loved reading about the marmalade tart and yes not all cream is the same. We only had cream on Sundays in London in a little jar/ bottle from the milkman. Swiss cream was a different thing altogether served a a wooden bowl with a taste of new mown hay.
Thanks Brigitte
Kindest regards,
Francey
Another wonderful letter Francey, read today from the luxury of my bed with a cup of coffee.
My favourite teatime treat was my mum’s marmalade tart. Mum’s teatime cakes were always the same. Either a big fruit cake or little queen cakes. They were hit or miss as mum couldn’t be bothered to weigh out ingredients, often resulting in dry cakes which were sometimes a little burnt.
Where mum failed in cake making, she excelled in pastry making with her cool hands and light touch. Her pastry was always melt in the mouth and buttery. The perfect foil for the bitter marmalade, which was always Robinsons so we could collect the Golly tokens to get an enamel Golly badge. Different times back in the late 60s.
If we were lucky we got a dollop of tinned pasteurised cream. I didn’t taste real cream until I went to stay with a penfriend in the Austrian Tyrol. Her mum baked cakes every afternoon and they were served with lots of schlagsahne. Cream that came from my friend’s uncle’s farm a short walk away which we collected in a churn each day.