Testing, Testing

By the time I reached my first class in university, I was quite familiar - too familiar, in fact - with exams. But a new adversary was waiting for me in ARTH 1200 - the first-year course, a requisite for the following four years of art history classes. That was the slide test. In a darkened room, with a slide projector facing a screen, we were barraged with images, sometimes dozens of them, and asked to identify the image, its maker, its material, date, and two or three points of significance. This was rounded off with a few images paired together to prompt the essay portion of the test. We did these a handful of times per semester, the worst cases being when the tests were cumulative, and we had to keep the prehistoric cave paintings firmly in mind even as we juggled early Renaissance painters.

Some of these tests felt fair, reasonable, even. Even those cumulative tests in the first year felt doable, because it’s fairly straightforward to differentiate an Archaic Greek kouros sculpture from a Golden Age Islamic mosque in Cordoba. Were there moments when I forgot who painted The Raft of the Medusa and stared, unblinkingly, eye twitching, at the projected image, willing it with all my being to give up the answer? Yes, of course. It’s Gericault, by the way. But, generally speaking, slide tests in the first year were okay.

When I got to upper-level classes that were more specific, things got trickier. There is an in-between period in an art history degree where you have moved beyond the general, buffet-style first-year course wherein you cover dozens of cultures and several millennia in a term. Still, you have not yet made it to the research-and-paper-heavy fourth-year classes, where endless essays replace slide tests. These were the years of ARTH 1320 (Medieval Art) and ARTH 1450 (Chinese Landscape Painting) and, perhaps most difficult of all, CLAS 1340 and 1350. You’ll notice that those course codes are not in the Art History department, but in Classics - a new field, and one to which I did not have an immediate attachment. I like textiles, and those are pretty thin on the ground in the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. Instead of chitons and togas, we studied kylix after kylix, amphora after amphora. Were they distinguishable? Barely, and only by the figures painted on their surfaces. To make matters worse, the professor of CLAS 1340 (Greek Art), a man with an impressive moustache and a complete disdain for students, did not provide us with the slides to study. Instead, we were expected to memorize the images after a single viewing during class time. I hastily scribbled little sketches of each piece of art alongside my notes, hoping against hope that I would remember that the kantharos decorated with Hercules fighting the Nemean lion was from the 3rd century BC, while the kantharos painted with Hercules fighting the Lernean hydra was from the 2nd century BC—maddening stuff. The following section was Roman Art (CLAS 1350), taught by a different professor who was a bit more forgiving but completely obsessed with slipper lamps. Not a class went by that we did not spend some time, usually, quite a long time, talking about slipper lamps. They are small, palm-sized oil lamps made of clay and resemble a slipper, with one pointed end and one rounded end. I remember very little from the rest of that class.

I have now been on the other side of this equation, as it were, teaching first and second-year courses to students who similarly do not relish slide tests. I have tried to be a bit kinder to them, offering them the slides to study from beyond class hours, and avoiding tricksy questions such as those in my ARTH 1420 course (Byzantine Art), where I had to differentiate the Church of St. Demetrius in Vladimir patronised by Tzar Dimitri, or the Church of St. Vladimir in Dimitri patronised by Tsar Vladimir, who was Tzar Dimitri’s eldest son. I jest, but only just. And I offer them the same mnemonics I developed to survive these tests, such as the parts of a cruciform cathedral set to the tune of “Head and Shoulders” or to memorise the artworks in order so they know that Sofonisba Anguissola’s Self-Portrait definitely comes before Sonia Delauney’s Rythme (1556 and 1938, respectively). I will admit that, while marking is not generally a joyful experience, sometimes the desperate attempts at answers or go-for-broke responses become highlights in the drudgery of grading. I will also confess that I am not totally convinced that slide tests (and exams more generally) are the best tools for adjudicating a student’s work or progress, but here we are. To all those art history students who are in the process of plowing through their own slide tests, I can only promise that this too shall pass - slide tests will eventually become a nostalgic experience about which you will wax poetic, as I have just done.

Jennifer

Night Light

Nighttime is just about the most comfortable part of my day. Partially, that is because the heat and humidity tend to drop - a bit - so while the daytime feels like living in a pot of hot soup, things become marginally more pleasant and bearable once the sun is down. I can go outside for a walk, or leave the window open and enjoy the delicious breaths of perfumed wind that drift in, bringing the scent of daylilies with them. Things become quieter, too. I turn the fans off at night, so the constant whir of their blades and motors stops only when day has ended. I’m sure you can tell by now, dear reader, that summer is not my favourite season, and the kind of humidity one finds out East is still foreign to me - and I to it.

I have lived all my life in cities. Two big ones, and one medium one, and for a brief time, a tiny one, really more of a town, which just squeaked past the population requirements, pushing it toward city status. In all cases, I have been used to the soundtrack that usually accompanies such places, especially at night. The thrum of cars, the indistinct murmur of people talking, of neighbours walking overhead and dogs barking in backyards. This is my normal. But every once in a while, especially in summer, I long for a different kind of night music.

‘The Lake’ is a kind of catch-all term that people from the Prairies use to describe leaving the city. “I’m going to the lake” could mean there is an actual body of water at said destination, or it could mean roughing it in a campground with a tent, or it could mean a carpeted summer home with a dishwasher and a flat screen television. In my childhood, ‘the lake’ meant a cottage facing out over a dark, root beer brown lake in the White Shell (the lake was quite safe, just full of tannins). The cottage had non-potable water, mismatched furniture, and black bears, so our trash had to be driven to a special garbage site and locked in a caged dumpster. There was a green canoe, an orange paddle boat, and a dock with a rickety ladder so you could inch your way into the freezing water, one rung at a time. The living room of this cottage is burned in my memory, very likely because of a pair of taxidermied ducks on one wall, and a similarly stuffed goose over the television set, which did not get a signal but could play the three or four VHS tapes on offer. I watched Muppet Treasure Island on repeat until my parents were close to mutiny themselves.

Daytime at ‘the lake’ was full of swimming and cavorting around in the woods and devouring watermelon and swimming some more and taking one of the boats out to see the litle island in the middle of the lake, and reading on the dock and throwing dried peas to the flock of geese that visited and hanging towels to dry on the porch and banging the screen door and using my father’s binoculars to spot otters and muskrat and practicing somersaults in the lake and hunting for sliders and playing in the reeds and losing a shoe in the mud and listening for mice in the boathouse and running everywhere. There was too much to do and only so much daylight.

Night was a different matter. I was not keen on the dark at home, in my streetlight-lit suburb, but at the lake, the blackness that settled over everything wasn’t just the dark - it was The Dark. I would lie awake sometimes, trying to see anything, my eyes wide and staring into nothing, but there was no light to be had. Going to the bathroom or getting a cup of water was a terrifying prospect to a pre-teen with an overactive imagination. And when there is no light, no visual data to be had, one becomes very aware of sounds. There were birds who sang themselves to sleep as the sun dropped, and sometimes a loon would let out a crazed, heartbroken whoop in the night, but mostly nighttime brought a symphony of insects. There were crickets (very pleasant) and cicadas (horrible), and worst of all, the solitary mosquito, with its squealing, maddening hum, searching for a late-night snack in the dark - and I was the snack. Of course, the minute you turned on a light, the droning would stop. Was there a more satisfactory, glorious moment, though, when you did finally slam a hand down on said mosquito, and your room would go blissfully, beautifully quiet?

I had a little battery-operated toy lantern, which I used as a nightlight. It was green plastic and shaped like an old-fashioned hurricane lantern, with a handle on top and a flat, circular base. It threw a wan pool of light in my otherwise pitch-black room, casting shadows on the walls and keeping the monsters in my mind at bay. They say you can never go back, which is true, but, oh, dear reader, what I wouldn’t give for the deep, untroubled sleep of a ten-year-old who had played herself to exhaustion, watched Muppet Treasure Island until her eyelids grew heavy, and then drifted into dreams in the darkest, quietest, most peaceful room on earth, her nightlight burning faithfully beside her.

Jennifer

Going to the Ex

There is one Exhibition in my hometown every summer, although it is not a replica of the Great Exhibition: it’s more of a temporary theme park, with rides, games, fried food, and cheap plastic trinkets. I’m not wild about rollercoasters, so I’ve never been the Ex. My preference definitely swings towards events that are more specific to the Prairies and Midwest: agricultural fairs. These usually contain some combination of horse shows and cattle competitions, prizes for the biggest pumpkin or best rooster, festivals dedicated to corn and apples, sheep shearing, tractor pulls, and, charmingly, children’s pig wrangling. You can find a startling array of jams and preserves, wood carvings, quilts, ceramics, and other useful knick-knacks at these events, complementing the livestock and poultry.

Preparation for a fair of this kind is key. You will be on your feet all day, so comfortable shoes are a must. But there will also be every domesticated animal known to North America, so it’s best to skip your brightest white sneakers, and closed-toed shoes are preferable. It will be blisteringly hot, so a big hat and light clothes are a good bet. Do not try to look like a farmer or a cowboy - the real ones will be able to spot you a mile away, and frankly, so will everyone else. Be ready to drink lots of water and reapply sunscreen like it’s going out of style.

You will start with the horses. They will be surprising - you are very likely to see horses bigger than you thought it possible for horses to be. Seventeen, eighteen hands high, with hooves like dinner plates and backs you cannot see over. These are the gentle giants, the plough and draft horses, descendants of the muscle on farms of old. They are intimidating to look at, but usually quite sweet in nature. The ones you want to watch for are the ponies. Small, barrel-bellied little hellions, with wild eyes and nasty tempers, Shetlands are especially moody. As a general rule, I avoid them entirely. In all cases, regardless of size, their barns will smell pleasantly of sweet hay and manure, of homemade fly spray and hoof oil. This is a divine perfume, exclusive to such events.

There will be cows next. These will be the cleanest cows you’ve ever seen. They will be, like the draft horses, astonishing in size, and positively glowing. They will chew their cud placidly as an energetic teenager curries their backs with aggressive swipes. The calves, weaners, and stirks will be curious and inclined to explore everything with nuzzling noses and tongues. Like human toddlers, they explore the world by putting things in their mouths.

If there are sheep, they will be the most delightful of all the livestock. Their lambs will stick close by, tails wagging at startling speed, especially when feeding. The sheep, too, will be cleaner than any you’re likely to encounter, but that might be hard to spot at first. Generally, they are decked out in blankets or fly sheets, little sheep-shaped outfits that cover them, nose to tail, to protect them from flies and keep their gleaming fleeces clean in their stalls. Most of these sheets go over the sheep’s head, with eye and ear holes cut out. They tend to have a sort of Sheep from Space look about them, like little sheepy astronauts, which is very possibly the most charming thing you’ll see all day.

You will admire chickens and roosters with unusual plumage, especially those with feathery feet. You’ll exclaim over the excitement of sheepdog trials and the excruciating sweetness of little pink piglets, nosing in straw and staring up at you through impossibly long lashes. There will be dog and cat shows, and the usual solo llama farm represented by some very bad-tempered llamas, alongside the enthusiastic knitter who raises them for their wool. She - and it is always nearly ‘she’ - will be more than happy to show you how a spinning wheel works, and sell you a skein or two of her finest alpaca. Very often, the creature who produced the wool in question will be made known to you on the label, so you can say ‘thank you’ to Betsy, Pumpernickel, or Steve for their gift.

A word on food: the choices on offer may make you quite giddy. Turkey legs, roasted and eaten like a medieval lord; huge sandwiches, impossible to eat with dignity; funnel cakes and ice cream, melting down your chin; cotton candy, sticky and sickly sweet, in unnatural colours; and gallons of lemonade, with significant pucker power. Tread with caution - fair food is one area in life where less is more.

When you have seen every possible stall and show, filled your arms with jars of pickles and jellies and wildflower honey and your mind with memories, it will be time to pack up and go home, to say goodbye to the fair until next year. I can promise you the best sleep of your life after a day in the sun, and a newfound appreciation for the smell of manure. I’ll meet you there next summer.

Jennifer

Camelot

You know the Richard Burton - Julie Andrews musical, Camelot? It details that age-old story of Guinivere and Arthur and Lancelot, with jaunty show tunes and frankly stunning costuming, and an excellent original soundtrack album. I was reminded of it this past weekend, when I attended my first Medieval and Fantasy Fair.
Let me set the scene. It was hotter than Hades, the steamy, sticky heat that is a specialty in Quebec. I wore an enormous sun hat and only the lightest linen clothes, and still felt sure that I would melt by the end of the day. Happily, there was much to distract me from the sweaty, pressing weather. Immediately upon arrival, we were delighted to encounter a handful of ponies and some quite nice dappled grey horses, munching hay in their paddock. The pony’s mane and tail had been very skillfully dyed in a rainbow - the reason for this would become clear later. There was live music and dancing, demonstrations of archery and swordplay, a court jester festooned with bells, stilt walkers, face painting, and purveyors of a startlingly wide range of goods for purchase.
There was also an ongoing display of 17th-century French warfare tactics, which meant that for much of the day, live cannons and muskets fired with little warning, and smelled strongly of sulphur. There were people dressed as pirates, as dragons, as mermaids, as Orcs and other mythical creatures from Tolkien, with more rubber elf ears and flower crowns than you could shake a stick at. During the literal horse and pony show (wherein some pretty high-level dressage was taking place), the tie-dyed pony in question had been decked out with a sparkly horn to make him into a minuscule unicorn, albeit with the characteristic barrel belly so many Shetlands have. He was charming and delighted the small princes, knights, fairies and dragon hunters in the crowd. Frankly, I was delighted by him too.
Now, some of you may be thinking, ‘well, none of that fits the Medieval category’, and you’d be right, dear reader. You’ll notice that the organisers of this event very cleverly tacked “and Fantasy” onto their medieval fair, so that any and all could ostensibly fit in. However, this link between fantasy and the medieval world reminded me of this week’s episode. For some reason - possibly the Victorians, perhaps the Camelot musical, or some other, unknown connection - people seem very ready to associate the medieval period and its loosely understood aesthetics with the worlds of fantastical beings, heroic deeds, and fair damsels. As we saw in this week’s episode, the medieval period wasn’t actually all that full of damsels in distress, and the closest we come to fantastic beasts are in the marginalia of illuminated manuscripts. Perhaps because the era is so distant, so very far away from our own, it lacks the sharp detail in our imaginations that more recent periods possess, and so we are happy to fill in the blanks with whatever suits our fancy.
And it isn’t just modern folks, like the ones I met at the Medieval and Fantasy Fair. Remember Camelot, the musical? The whole thing ends with Richard Burton plaintively asking that we, the audience, remember that the magic and mystery, the pleasantness and inevitable tragedy of Camelot, existed—a place where it never rained or snowed out of season, where love blossomed as a matter of course, a place of shining glory. But of course, whether in the Thomas Malory stories or the musical, Camelot is itself a fantasy, too. Maybe, after all is said and done, that’s not a bad thing. Perhaps it’s a help, not a hindrance, to have a fantastical place to escape to on the weekends, to let our fancy run wild, and if we choose to call that place Camelot, then so much the better.

Jennifer

Bad Hair Day

I have never had a hair dye fiasco, very possibly because I read Anne of Green Gables as a little girl and was duly warned off trying to mess with Mother Nature too much. I have absolutely had bad hair days. The fringe I had in elementary school, which I did not know how to wrangle successfully, probably did not help matters. But, before elementary school, before I read Anne of Green Gables, there was a very bad, no-good, awful hair day.

On weekends, I woke up very early and played in my room, or sometimes went downstairs to watch cartoons. My parents would have coffee in bed while I entertained myself, usually setting up melodramas with my stuffed animals. So it was one fateful Saturday morning. As my mother tells it, she and my father were enjoying their coffee, half-listening to me talk to my toys in my room. And then, alarmingly, my running commentary faded into silence. As anyone with children will tell you, silence may be golden, but it is not your friend. And then, according to my mother’s memory, a little voice pierced this worrying silence.
"Uh oh.”
My parents flew from their room to mine, coffee long forgotten, and stared down in horror at my handiwork. I had gotten my pudgy little hands on a pair of craft scissors and gone to town on my bangs. As a three-year-old (and until about the age of ten or eleven), I had a straight, fine fringe, usually split by an untameable widow’s peak. But that morning, evidently displeased by my unruly hair, I had slowly and methodically cut my bangs - off. There was a tiny stiff line of what was left of my bangs sticking straight up from my hairline, and the rest lay on the floor.

My poor mother. There was no chance of saving my fringe - there wasn’t really any fringe left to save. She whisked away the scissors, explained very carefully that we do not cut our own hair, and did her level best to cover my shameful hairline with a headband. The headband situation would become my reality for about four months while my mirco-micro-micro bangs grew back out again.

Since then, I have had bad hairstyles - does anyone else remember the sidebangs of the 2000s, or the crispy frying sounds of a wet-to-straight flat iron on damp hair? - but have never attempted another DIY haircut. I learned that lesson the hard way. I do still have a store of emergency headbands - just in case. What I do not have, and may never have, is enough apologies to my long-suffering parents. Sorry, Mum.

Jennifer

Painted Wings and Diamond Rings

You know, dear reader, diamond rings might be well and good, but when I was writing the script for this week’s episode, I was first reminded about rather a different kind of jewellery. I had a small, choice collection of dress-up gear as a kid - a sparkly tutu skirt my mother made, decked with gold sequins, a glittery fairy wand and crown, and costume jewellery. There was a strand of plastic orange star beads, and a set of multicoloured wooden beads that, to my childish mind, smacked of Cleopatra’s finery. These paired very well, in my estimation, with the stick-on earrings someone had given me, that came by the dozens on a sheet of paper, and which did not stay on especially well. These trinkets ornamented my queenly garb (an old dressing gown) or marked me out as an all-powerful witch (a black cape) or adorned my stage outfit for those times that I was a ballerina-singer-musician-superstar. I might have gazed in awe at my mother’s real jewellery box, but the objects in it were not for playing with. So, at least to pre-school Jennifer, the plastic stuff was more valuable, because it was more useable, and because it was mine.

Later (say, around twelve) I was allowed to walk the blocks to the local convenience store or corner gas station, and buy a bag of pick-and-mix or a syrupy slushie, and I can still recall the thrill of getting a ring pop to enjoy, feet dangling from the bleachers near the baseball diamond in the school grounds nearby, full of sugar and the kinds of eager, unmitigated excitement girls have when they are twelve, before it’s been squashed out of them. Someone knew how to make a dandelion crown, and there were inevitable trades and gifts of friendship bracelets, pony bead keychains, embroidery floss hair wraps. This is the sort of jewellery that comes with summer camp and late July nights, when your skin is sticky from the heat and you’re walking home with friends, talking a hundred miles an hour and feeling a kind of certainty and boundless joy that becomes rare, endangered, sometimes extinct, in adulthood. The bracelets and crowns might not have precious gems, but they were, without question, valuable - and while they might not be as storied or famous as the Koh-i-Noor as we discovered in this week’s episode, they were heavy with meaning.

Jennifer

Something Up My Sleeve

When I was little, I had this incredible floral dress, smocked on the front, which I adored. Green-blue ditsy print? Check. Peter Pan collar? Check. Lacy trim? Check. Long puffy sleeves? Check. I was so keen on this dress that I wore it for days and refused to give it up in exchange for clean clothes. Eventually, my mother had to wrestle it off me, but it continued to be a favourite until it was thread-bare and too small for me. I miss that dress. Well, let me clarify: I don’t really want to wear a little girl’s summer dress these days, but I would like to find clothes that make me feel the way that dress made me feel. Ah well. Perhaps that kind of fever-pitch adoration is specific to childhood. Maybe I do want to wear a little girl's summer dress after all.

Or what about that excellent red pinafore - the one emblazoned with Scottish terriers, that inevitably went along with matching tights and a little white shirt, and shiny buckled shoes. I would absolutely wear that dress today - sure, maybe I’d skip the dog-printed tights and the patent leather mary janes, but I would wear a nice plaid pinafore every day forever if it were socially acceptable (and maybe even if it weren’t.) These days, you may be surprised to learn that it is not common to find adult women’s clothing that feature black and white terriers in a jolly little line, trimming a skirt, more’s the pity. At some point, we all decided that we no longer wanted velour kitten sweatshirts or giraffe pajamas, much to my sadness and confusion. I long for vibrantly coloured stirrup pants and denim bucket hats, with big daisies on the front. Or how about my first pair of jeans, embroidered and emblazoned as they were with lobsters on the pockets? Who among us doesn’t want lobster jeans?

I am being facetious - but only slightly. Perhaps it isn’t the specifics of the clothing - the animal designs, the bizarre embroidery, the coordinated outfits - it’s the way those clothes meant only joy, only feeling like myself, only satisfaction before I tore off to make magic potions in the bathroom sink or organise a safari in my backyard. These days, of course, jeans do not immediately spark joy, with or without lobsters: they induce panic and fretting, and sometimes quite a lot of math. Am I this size or this size? No one knows, and no one can know - sizing for women’s clothing is one of our universe’s greatest mysteries, like quantum physics and the Crazy Frog song. When faced with impenetrable sizing systems and endless choices, all dubious - high-waisted, low-rise, skinny, straight, barrel-leg, wide-leg, stretch, distressed, selvege, vintage, boot-cut, flare, cropped, ankle, shaping, five-pocket, acid-wash, dark-wash, light-wash, jeggings - maybe embroidered lobsters would be welcome. Perhaps we could use cheerful crustacean friends to guide us through an ocean of jeans.

Anne goes basically feral about the ideal dress - puffed sleeves and all - and I think, especially in this modern world of fast fashion, of vanity sizing, of the tyranny of choice - perhaps we might like very much the simplicity of having only three dresses, as Anne does, and an extra special one for Christmas - puffed sleeves or not.

Jennifer

Be True to Your School

My high school experience felt quite normal to me, but in the years since my graduation, I have learned that this is not so. I went to an all-girls school, for one, and wore a uniform about which I have mixed feelings even to this day, for six years. My school was also very small, so any sporting event was reason enough to get all the students (all five hundred of us) on the bleachers in the gym to support each and every team. Volleyball, floor hockey, basketball, handball - you name it. If there was a game on, we were trouped into the gym, handed noisemakers and cheerleading pompoms, and encouraged to scream ourselves hoarse. This was quite different to our normal way of life. If, in class, the volume rose too high, our teachers were wont to look ferociously down their noses at us and utter a single word: “Ladies…” This shut us up every time. So imagine our delight at not only being allowed to be loud, but down right spurred to do so! I didn’t always follow the games especially well, not knowing the rules of most sports, but it wasn’t hard to holler along when everyone else did, and chat with my friends in between screaming sessions.
Perhaps the best part about all this school spirit was our mascot. Our school teams were the Flames, and an image of a lighted torch always accompanied our high school’s motto and name. It’s not a bad team name, as sports teams go, and you could do worse than a torch as a school logo. Someone had obviously gone to a lot of trouble to make a torch mascot costume, worn by an enthusiastic girl in the grade below mine, and she did her mightiest to work us all into the appropriate frenzy - dressed, as best as I could tell, as a bright orange onion. The torch costume was not convincing, and I have to assume that competing teams were bewildered and perplexed by a school that stamped and bellowed when bidden to do so by a human-sized polyester allium bulb.
Now, of course, we had chants, and charming little songs, and made all the noise we could muster with the school-sanctioned hand clappers, tambourines, and even kazoos (an ear-splitting experience we only did once). Our school did not have cheerleaders (too small, and only girls), so when faced with school events, the received wisdom seemed to be that if no one was a cheerleader, then we all were. My mother has often remarked that a church with a good choir will often have a congregation who slacks when it comes to singing hymns, and the same maxim appears to be true of high school sports events. If you have no cheerleaders to lead chants and bounce around energetically, then the ‘congregation’, as it were, must take on the mantle and do it themselves. So it was: I routinely shook a tambourine and howled for sports I didn’t understand, adding my voice to the din when our side got a foul, whatever that was, or scored a goal - or was it a try? I didn’t know, and I cared less.
Mob mentality gets a bad rap, probably rightly. But there was something thrilling and exciting about leaping up with my friends and all four hundred and ninety or so other girls when the basketball team won their provincial tournament, shrieking and jumping up and down so enthusiastically that the bleachers shook. I did not know the first thing about three-pointers or travelling, but I did know that the girls on the court were ecstatic at their success, and it was intoxicating to join them in their joy. Besides, there is nothing quite like seeing a schoolmate - sobbing with elation (her sister was on the team), running up and down the length of the bleachers, inciting greater and greater throes of wild celebration - dressed like an onion.

Jennifer

House of Dreams

In the fifth installment of the Anne series, our beloved protaganist moves into her very own home, her ‘House of Dreams’. Anne’s House of Dreams has lombardy trees and an old-fashioned garden, china dogs on the mantle, and drift wood in the fireplace. My house of dreams is a bit different. I have, in the course of the research for this project, looked up those china dogs, and they are green, so my house goes without a Gog and Magog.

Instead, my house of dreams has a window seat, kitted out for our cat’s express use, which looks out over the front garden, which is planted in the English style - that is to say, higgledy-piggledy, barely contained wildness. The facade is brick, ensconced in trees and box hedge with a creaky gate that squeaks as you come in. There is a light on over the front door to welcome you in, and a sonorous doorbell. The front door has a kickplate and a charming doorknocker in the shape of a robin.
Every seat in the living room is furnished with an obvious place to put a mug of tea and a book. There are books in every room. The kitchen is always stocked with goodies for sharing: the sorts of things that you put out when friends drop by. Sweating jugs of lemonade and iced tea for the oppressive heat of summer afternoons; spiced tea for crisp autumn mornings; cookies and hot cocoa for winter Sunday visits that curl up in the embrace of wool blankets; peppermint tea for misty springtime gatherings. Sunlight streams in the windows and handmade curtains wave in the breeze. The floors pop and creak when you walk down the hall or up the stairs. There is a dog snoozing in a basket beside my desk as I work, and the cat, of course, has taken up her post in the bay window, surveilling her domain. There is local art on the walls and the strains of music coming from my husband’s office. There are spare beds and extra slippers, sweet-smelling soap and fresh flowers from the garden.
Oh, the garden! Follow that curving stone path from the back door past the raised beds and the vegetable patch and the trellis and the esplanaded trees. Just as you wish for a place to sit, a charming bench comes in to view, partially hidden by forsythia and shaded by Japanese magnolia. There isn’t any grass, just flowering thyme and a carpet of clover. The dog loves it. You’re likely to meet a cheerful neighbour over the fence, who will compare notes on the coming rain and bulbs they planted in the spring.
However, despite all these differences, there are some similarities. Just ike Anne’s home, my house of dreams is also fictional.

Jennifer

My Cup of Tea

I am not a coffee drinker. I have tried coffee, many times, and it’s just not for me. I know it is a popular beverage, guzzled by the gallon or sipped in Italian cafes at eye-watering strength, loaded with flavoured creamers and sugar or stomached black and bitter, but while coffee smells absolutely delicious, it tastes very much to me like a soggy rug. I cannot imagine why someone would wish to begin their morning by drinking a cup of dirty molded carpet out of a car recently returned from the Outer Hebrides, but to each their own.

But tea? Tea is…well, my cup of tea. Every morning, I get up and fill up the kettle, choose my mug, drop a tea bag or strainer full of leaves into it, and wait for the water to boil. My kettle reminds me of a spaceship - it’s round, and glows blue while the water heats up. Then I wait for the tea to steep - this is a persnickety process. Some varieties, like the decaffeinated Earl Grey I favour in afternoons, are pitifully weak and need to steep for a long time, unless I want to drink a sad, grey cup of hot water, which tastes as though someone in the next room said ‘tea’. But the loose-leaf chai that usually starts my morning is powerful stuff and needs a scant few minutes to produce a robust, spicy, warming cup, perfect for the chilly days of winter. Now that the temperatures are rising, I still reach for tea, but more often I am reaching for haystack, or Earl Grey, or white tea, or genmaicha, a Japanese green tea that is mixed with popped rice, which has a toasty, slightly sweet flavour reminiscent of caramel and popcorn.

I started to drink tea as a kid, sipping ‘baby tea’ - essentially, quite a lot of hot milk with a bit of tea - with my mother. Since then, tea has become a panacea, an all-purpose potion. It soothes sore throats, sadness, and social interactions. Someone coming over this afternoon? Tea. Sweating in the summer heat? Tea (iced, of course). Working in a chilly office? Tea. Need a break from that work? Tea. Heavy-duty chats with a friend? Tea. Meeting an acquaintance at a coffee shop? Tea. Tea does it all - wakes you up, calms you down, warms you, cools you, busies your hands, stills your mind. Tea, it seems to me, answers all questions.

And that’s only the drinking. The making of tea presents a whole world of possibilities. Filling the kettle, preparing your cup, pouring the water, watching the tea steep, adding milk, curling your hand around the mug - what a beautiful, day-starting dance! To say nothing of choosing your mug or cup. Should it be the novelty owl mug, which holds a bathtub’s worth of tea? The demure botanical print mugs, with matching green tea pot, passed down to me from my grandmother? Or the even more delicate china cups, rimmed with pale blue flowers? The mug brought home from that trip with that friend? I reached for the art history mug when I was grading papers as a teacher, and now I favour a book-emblazoned cup when I write. But no matter the mug, I know that the ritual of making tea, and then of drinking a cup (or two, or three), will set the world to rights and give me whatever comfort I need. You could say it suits me to a tea.

Jennifer

Make your cake and eat it, too: Part 1

Fruitcake (Bara Brith)

Now, dear reader, this is a fruitcake, but it is not the kind people typically eat at Christmas. Those recipes usually call for a lot of tricky-to-find ingredients - candied this, glazed that - and one usually soaks the resulting paving stone of cake in a lot of rum. Frankly, dear reader, this is the sort of recipe my mother can handle, but I am not grown up enough yet to face it. Instead, I offer you a simpler recipe that produces a snacking cake studded and sweetened with dried fruit - similar to the Christmas fruitcake, it is old-fashioned and satisfying, but much easier to pull off. This cake is called bara brith, Welsh for spotted bread, named for the plump, tea-soaked fruit that features in this loaf cake. Why did I choose this one? Well, because like a traditional fruitcake, bara brith relies on dried, re-hydrated fruit for its sweetness and texture. Plus, it’s a personal favourite. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Ingredients:

300 g mixed dried fruit (you’ll typically see raisins or currants, but I am partial to chopped apricots or cranberries, too - follow your heart here, dear reader)
200 g sugar
zest of 1 orange
250 g hot black tea (the variety is up to you - I like Earl Grey because of its bergamot oil, which combines well with the orange zest)
350 g self-rising flour
10 g mixed spice (this is equal parts cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and clove, but I measure these out with my heart, not a teaspoon. Skip the clove for a more modern flavour)
1 egg
50 g softened butter, plus extra for the cake tin

Instructions:
In a large bowl, mix together the fruit, sugar, and the orange zest. Pour the hot tea over this mixture, and allow to soak overnight.
Heat your oven to 160 C. Butter and line your cake tin with parchment.
In a large bowl, combine flour and spice thoroughly. Add the fruit mixture, including the liquid, in thirds, mixing thoroughly. Add your egg and butter, then mix until your batter is well-combined and somewhat stiff. The cake is dense, so the batter will be, too.
Bake for 60-75 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. If you notice the top begin to brown too much, cover the top with foil.
Leave the cake to cool in the tin, about 10 minutes. Then put your finished cake on a baking rack and allow to cool completely. Serve slices on their own, or with butter. Tea is not a requirement, but the two go together very well. Enjoy!

Make your cake and eat it, too: Part 2

Layer Cake

This recipe recalls the layer cake that Anne makes with anodyne liniment in this chapter, but you’ll no doubt notice, dear listener, that this recipe contains no liniment of any kind! Instead, what we have here is a cake for celebrations - birthday parties, extravagant picnics, tea with your best china and best friend, or just a particularly delightful Sunday afternoon. Also know that you can substitute the more Victorian fillings and finishing details with your favourite buttercream frosting to bring this cake into the twenty-first century, to suite more modern tastes!

Ingredients:

1/2 c butter, melted, plus more for cake tins
2 c sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for cake tins
1 tbsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 1/4 c granulated sugar
1 c milk (2%)
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla (definitely NOT anodyne liniment!)

Arrange the oven racks so your cakes will sit in the centre of your oven. Preheat your oven to 350 F (180 C). Butter and flour two nine-inch cake pans. Set them aside.
In a large bowl, add you flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Mix together.
Add the melted butter and milk to the flower mixture and stir to wet the dry ingredients.
Beat the mixture with an electric mixer (or a whisk, if you’re looking for a workout!) for about a minute, until thoroughly combined.
Finally, add your eggs and vanilla to the batter, then beat for another three minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl.
Pour the batter evenly into your cake tins. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into each cake comes out clean. Allow to cool for at least ten minutes in the pan, and then completely on a cooling rack, once de-panned.

Now, the world is your oyster - at least, when it comes to this cake. You could choose a luscious, wobbly lemon curd as filling, a ruby-bright layer of raspberry jam, or the glowing sunset of apricot preserves instead. You could go for a Victoria sandwich and pair strawberry jam and freshly-whipped cream as your cake’s filling. And, as mentioned above, any favourite frosting is always an option. Like a sandwich, this cake can contain all sorts of delicious and delightful fillings, depending on your mood - so have fun! When it comes to the top of your cake, you can leave it bare to show off the delicious middle of your creation. You could dust it with powdered sugar and decorate with fresh or dried fruit or preserved flowers for an extra special touch. Or if you wanted to get really Victorian, you could try a layer of marzipan to seal the deal! Or, if you are hoping for a finish that is less taxing but still very satisfying, a simple powdered sugar glaze will harden if allowed to cool, adding sweetness and a little texture to your cake. Sounds like good eating, however you slice it!

Jennifer

Make your cake and eat it, too: Part 3

Pound cake

The original recipe for pound cake, as we discovered in this week’s episode, calls for a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Not only does that make an absolutely gargantuan amount of batter, but it is also very expensive - it uses A LOT of eggs and A LOT of butter. Thankfully, the ratio is the thing: all we have to do to get a smaller, more manageable final result, is to reduce our amounts. If you want a crowd-sized, historically accurate cake, dear reader, go for broke and use a pound each of every ingredient. Otherwise, you’ll need the following:

Ingredients

1 c butter, softened, plus butter for the cake pan
1 c sugar
5 eggs
1 c flour, plus flour for the cake pan

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees C. Butter and flour two 13x9 cake tins, or an equivalent-sized Bundt pan.
In a large bowl, cream your butter and sugar together until they are light and creamy. Because there are no chemical leaveners in this recipe, you must cream your butter and sugar together very well, until all the sugar has dissolved (you can test this by pinching a bit of the mixture between your fingers and feeling for sugar granules - when fully mixed, it should feel smooth). When properly creamed, the mixture will also be a paler colour, because of all the air you’ve added in.
Mix in your eggs, one at a time, and stir together to combine.
Finally, add in your flour, in two or three additions to make mixing easier and less messy, until just combined. Be careful not to over-mix your batter; that will make it tough.
Divide your batter evenly between your two pans (a scale can help with this, but you can also eyeball it) and smooth the tops with a spatula.
Bake in your preheated oven for 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the cakes comes out clean. If you notice that your cakes are browning too quickly, tent them with some aluminium foil.
Allow your baked cakes to rest in the pans, about 15-20 minutes, and then transfer to a baking rack to cool completely. Serve in slices on its own, or pair this flexible multi-tasker with fruit, ice-cream, a simple powdered sugar glaze - anything that makes your heart happy!

Now, there are many ways to add other flavours to this recipe - lemon zest for a lemon pound cake, vanilla extract for a vanilla version, and any sort of flavoured frosting (chocolate for instance) to up the tasty factor, but there is also something really charming and satisfying about the original. Enjoy!

Monster Mash

I have an over-active imagination. I always have. As a kid, watching a frightening scene in a movie (and the bar for what I counted as frightening was astonishingly low) could leave me with nightmares for weeks. My parents found it easier to skip through a lot of films, or end them early, than to be woken up for the better part of a month by my tremulous voice calling ‘Mummy!’ every night.

Sadly, this tendency hasn’t gone. It’s sort of cute when you’re three. When you’re thirty, though, it becomes a lot less charming. I saw a still - just an image, mind you - of Gary Oldman as Dracula in Coppola’s 1992 film, and now my brain is absolutely convinced that Gary Oldman-Dracula lives in my shower, waiting to pounce when I get up for a drink of water. Horrible, vivid images plague me - at times, my mind offers up a long-fingered hand, with nails overgrown and cracked, that presses against my bedroom window and leaves smears of blood on the glass. This is sometimes replaced by a heavy body with sinewy arms dragging itself up my hallway, legs immobile, eye sockets empty. A face leers out at me from my bathroom mirror, eyes wild and wide, with too many teeth and face stretched into a too-wide grimace - but I only see it in the corner of my eye, in the half-light of evening. And now, Gary Oldman in a ludicrous wig and velvet robe joins these apparitions, licking blood from a razor, strangling hands poised to snatch at me from behind my shower curtain. I know, I know that these things are not real, cannot harm me - in the light of day. But at night, when the air is still and dark, it is quite a different matter.

So you can imagine that Hallowe’en presents some problems. Hallowe'en is a complex time of year for me. I love sweets, but hate to be scared. As a child, trick-or-treating was never really in my wheelhouse, so my parents and grand-parents adjusted the traditional system to accommodate a shy, fearful pre-schooler. Instead of going from door to door, hollering childish threats at people I'd never met, we went straight to Gramma and Grampa's house. I wore my customary mouse costume, the one that was, to my memory, made of shag carpet, and could go over my clothes instead of a parka and snow-pants, which are often as necessary for a Winnipeg Hallowe'en as the requisite plastic pumpkin bucket.

I did not scream “Trick or treat!” at my grandparents' front door. I didn't know about 'trick-or-treat' as an option for Hallowe'ening. Instead, after labouring up their front steps in my stuffy costume, I rang the doorbell and called “Hallowe'en apples!” in a sing-song voice. I have no idea from where this chant originated. I didn't have any apples. Whatever the logic (or lack thereof), that is what I shouted, and without fail, my grandmother would open the door and exclaim over my costume before ushering me inside for home-made treats and other forms of extravagant spoiling. This was the extent of my Hallowe'en experience: in fact, until I reached school, Hallowe'en meant dressing up and visiting Gramma and Grampa's, two of my favourite things.

But then I began grade school, and Hallowe'en took on fuller meaning. Suddenly there needed to be an indoor costume for school, and an outdoor one for trick-or-treating. I still went to my grandparents' house dressed as a mouse, but during the day, I had to have something different for the costume parade and the other festive activities on offer. My mother was kind enough to provide me with a sparkly tulle skirt and leotard, which worked very well for a ballerina, or, when furnished with a plastic crown and wand, a fairy. (When I got older, more adventurous costumes like Queen Cleopatra or a bunch of grapes seemed like good ideas). The costume parade consisted of twenty-odd first-graders marching around our classroom in a circle. I hated promenading up and down for people to gawk at me, so the costume parade made me squirm. I recall heaving a sigh of relief when we were finally allowed to sit back down in our little desks and glue facial features onto paper pumpkins, or make ghosts out of tissue paper. The worst part of the day was no doubt Madame Gordon's French lesson. We trouped down to her classroom in our now-wilted costumes and sat in the creaky wooden desks before her. There was typically a crossword puzzle and a word search for us to hunt down 'sorciere' and 'citrouille' and 'phantome', which I was perfectly happy to complete. But then, with what I maintain was gleeful cruelty, Madame would plonk her ancient tape-player on her desk and make us sing along to a terrifying song: 'C'est l'Hallowe'en.' In retrospect, the ditty itself was harmless: I have listened to it since then, and it's basically a few descriptive verses, with a bouncy, repetitive, chanting chorus of “C'est l'Hallowe'en, c'est l'Hallowe'en”. But the recording was laced with eerie sound-effects that matched the lyrics. Particularly, the scratchy violin that illustrated the coiling nature of “un serpent bleu” sent a frisson of nerves jangling down my spine.

Hallowe'en continued in this vein for some time before it changed again. High school brought on parties, where I was expected to wear costumes and bring snacks. I was happy with this situation. I will admit, however, that I didn't quite get the memo about sexy costumes. Now that I was old enough to make my own costuming decisions, I had a good time coming up with what I thought were fun and interesting choices. I went as Marcel Marceau's Bip the clown one year, and as the Dead Sea another. I made a red felt cape, antennae, and wore pearls for a lady-bug costume of which I was particularly proud. Later costumes included Spinelli from the television cartoon Recess, and the Paper-bag Princess from Robert Munsch's book by the same name. Clearly my tastes leaned towards what might be called juvenile.

It was around this time that I began to learn more about Hallowe'en itself. All Saints' and All Souls' Day from the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church were meant to be spent remembering the dearly departed and praying to the litany of saints. Indeed, the name Hallowe'en derives from All Hallow's Eve, where 'hallows' is a synonym for holy or sanctified. This tradition carries on in the Mexican Dios de los Muertos, or days of the dead, when lost loved ones are honoured with feasting and grave-side visits and offerings. In Europe, particularly in England, the fear of death came to override the memorial elements of the festival, and it was believed that alongside the spirits of the dead, demons and devils would walk the earth and wreak havoc. This notion was embroidered and developed to the point where many people believed (and some do to this day) that the gates of Hell open on the 31st of October, and that all the horrid things who take up residence there visit the physical world to spread evil and cause trouble. Tasty treats set out for deceased family members soon became peace offerings to assuage the brutal natures of these hellish visitors. In time, it became customary for people, typically young men, to dress as demons or angry ghosts, in part to blend in with the roaming ghoulies, and partly to enjoy the free food on offer. If nice nibbles were not available to placate the 'demons', these rogues, perhaps spurred on by their devilish counterparts, performed mischievous acts, meant to frighten or inconvenience, but not to harm, their stingy victims. This practice was called guising or mumming, and is the origin of our modern-day trick-or-treating. In a way, these traditions use humour and fun to mock death and the unknown, and give us tools to come to grips with things that normally confuse, frighten, and disturb us. I am particularly fond of the logic that dictates that if something or someone should scare you, you should laugh at it, and then feed it goodies. Maybe I ought to try that with Gary Oldman-Dracula.

Other scary traditions have become entangled with this holiday, so that now we are not in the least surprised to see werewolves, vampires, and monsters alongside demons and ghosts. These frightening creatures come to us from a variety of sources, including Gothic literature, folk tales, horror films, and national customs. Originally a holiday for all ages, the more recent focus on children at Hallowe'en means that downright cute and cuddly costumes and celebrations are commonplace. Such as, for example, a mouse costume, or visits to grandparents. One way or the other, I've come to like Hallowe'en, despite my distaste for scary stuff. It's a time of year when normalcy is suspended: indulging in buckets of candy (literally) is encouraged, the frightening and ferocious is embraced and fed tasty treats, and disguising yourself, as a monster or a mouse, is an essential part of the fun.

Jennifer

One Horse Open Sleigh

It is not the correct time of year to be day-dreaming about riding in a horse-drawn sleigh, but in spite of the flowers and budding trees, the image of a carved sleigh whisking through the snow behind a prancing pony (all right, a prancing cart horse), leaving nothing but clean sleigh tracks in its wake, is a delightful one. Add to that excitement the thrill of being unsupervised by a chaperone, as Anne, Diana, and their friends are in this week’s chapter, and suddenly a whole world of prospects opens up.

I remember very clearly when one of my closest high school friends got her licence. She was the first in our group of friends to get it, and similarly to Anne and Diana, our horizons widened. We could go where we liked, without having to ask for rides from parents or cranky older siblings. The world was our oyster, and we went wherever the wind (and a second-hand hatchback) could take us! In reality, that turned out to be exactly the same places we had gone in parent-driven minivans: the local mall, the cheap-seat movie theatre, school dances, sleepovers at friends’ houses. There were some minor differences, in the end, but they felt crucial at the time. The first was that we chose the music: instead of 102.3 Clear FM, which played what I derisively thought of as ‘soccer mom music’, we blasted sugary, mind-numbing indie pop, usually played from scribbled-upon CDs, filled with downloaded favourites of questionable quality. The second was that we always owed our friend gas money.

I never learned to drive. I took the classes and passed the test, and spent weeks practicing in a car with two steering wheels and two sets of brakes: one for me, one for the instructor. Behind the wheel, I completely lost my nerve. The thought of hitting something - or worse, someone - loomed so large for me that even getting into the driver’s seat sent my stomach plummeting to somewhere in the region of my feet. My enduring memory of trying to learn to drive is a view through the front windshield, the road coming at me so fast it made my head spin, hands obediently at ten and two, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my fingers turned white. I left indents in the pleather steering wheel cover. I can tell you, dear reader, from experience, that it is very challenging to drive and scream-cry at the same time: tears obscure the vision rather, which is not ideal.

Much earlier in life, I did learn to ride horses. So, frankly, I suspect I would be much more at home driving a ‘one horse open sleigh’ than behind the wheel of any motor vehicle. Someone once expressed incredulity at this bizarre set of skills, and to an extent, I see their point: I am perhaps better equipped to be an eighteenth century gentlewoman than a modern girl, educated as I have been to ride horses and knit and sew and paint charming cards and, horror of horrors, read novels. If I could lay my hands on a decent set of stays and panniers, I’d be all set. But my feeling is that choosing horses over horsepower is perfectly reasonable - they are much prettier, and they have self-preservation. I’ve seen Thelma and Louise: cars will go careening off cliffs if they are left to their own devices. Horses are much more sensible - generally speaking, in my experience, if you let a horse go where it likes, it will go home. Admirable creatures. Besides, they haven’t written any classic holiday songs about driving cars, have they? But a ‘one horse open sleigh’ was obviously a worthy enough subject to deserve its own hymn. Makes sense to me. Jingle all the way!

Jennifer

Sick

I get colds like it’s going out of style. Some people seem to get gentle colds that leave them a little sniffy, a little croaky, a bit tired by the end of the day. When I get colds, they knock me absolutely flat. The typical advice about drinking lots of tea and eating soup and resting is all very well and good, but, as my godmother says, if you leave a cold alone it lasts seven days, and if you treat it, it will last a week. Unfortunately, I am not a patient patient. I can tolerate being sick for about five seconds, and then I get cross. I have things to do! Who has time for lolling around in bed, waiting for a pestilence to pass? Being angry doesn’t help, but I struggle not to rage. Very quickly, I am swimming in a soup of self-pity, throat pastilles, disgusting cough syrup and a head that feels full of feathers. I often find myself reminiscing about how wonderful it was to be able to breathe, and desperately promsing whoever might be listening that if only this cold would go, I would never take my nose for granted ever again. This is a lie: as soon as I am better, I go right back to thanklessly expecting my nose and lungs and throat to behave themselves as a matter of course, but while the cold is in full force, I feel nothing but nostalgia for those halcyon days when breathing was a breeze.

It’s difficult to write about sickness, or pain. Pierce Brown claims that pain is a universal language, but I am not so sure. I know how my pain feels when I stub my toe or my dull, diffuse ache the day after a tough workout, but no matter how many words I throw at it, I cannot feel your pain, and you cannot feel mine. I am more inclined to agree with Virginia Woolf, who tells us that pain destroys language: the fuzzy, groggy, heavy-but-light, dizzying feeling in the head during a cold is how I experience it, but really, all those words don’t quite explain that particular sensation. A head full of feathers - what does that mean? Very quickly (in this case, almost instantly) I find myself devolving into metaphor and simile, waxing poetic about an experience that is anything but poetical. Suddenly, we are abstracting pain, something that is quite real, but cannot be made real outside of ourselves. We run into this difficulty at the doctor’s office - is my pain a one or a ten? How on earth should I know that? Maybe it would be better to use sounds to indicate pain, not words or numbers or a smiley face chart. The even, nagging ache of delayed onset muscle soreness is a low, rumbling hum. A stubbed toe starts out as a loud cry and softens to a whimper (much like the sound I actually make when that happens). Krrkrrrkrrrkrrrkrrrkrrr for the tension in my jaw; a high-pitched, unending sqreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee for that time I burned my hand on a pot handle. Pulling a splinter is a quick, churlish beep!, quite loud. Chronic illness is the grinding of ill-fitting cogs rubbing together: you may sometimes be able to tune it out, but it never ends. And colds? Well, those are almost certainly a grumbling, creaky mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmm in the throat, dry and raspy, like a growling dog. It might be strange, but in some ways rather comforting, to go into a doctor’s office, and when asked to describe your pain, let out a deafening bellow or ear-splitting shriek. It would certainly be more satisfying than meekly pointing at a face on a chart, and hoping to be believed.

Jennifer

Bathtime

I found a delightful, and rather strange book recently, full of recipes for…baths? The author contends that regular old bath water will not do. Instead, she insists that we must fill our tubs with intoxicating concoctions of such ingredients as flower petals, homemade bathbombs, orange slices, whole mint leaves, bags of tea, and almond milk. I have not tested this assertion, but the photographs in this book do make the endeavour appear very tempting. The author offers recipes and instructions for relaxing baths, invigorating baths, ones for meditation, ones for dry skin, and even hand and foot baths for, you know…hands and feet. Each of these recipes come along with music playlist recommendations and recipes for flavoured water or tea (to drink) that are meant to accompany the bather.

I am not, generally speaking, wild about baths. In this week’s episode, we touch briefly on how Victorians got clean, and how they did wash but did not bath, and frankly, that system of a standing wash would suit me right down to the ground - or washtub. I know some folks are all about long, langourous soaks in tubs, but I find baths boring and ineffective for getting clean. As a child, my mother had to sing “Keep the water in the bathtub” to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic to encourage me not to splash, which I think is a good indication that bathtime is only enjoyable when toys and violence are involved. Ernie and Rubber Duckie seem to like baths a great deal, but at the end of the day, they’re not for me. I find that you get into the tub, all ready to have your cares and worries melt away in the hot water - and within a few moments, you begin to feel a strange kinship with a boiled egg or a pot of soup. You can’t read without risking a sopping wet book - I avoid using my phone in the bathroom for similar reasons. I could put music on, but then I’d feel like serenaded soup. There is nothing to do in a bath. My frazzled brain becomes frantic, not relaxed, when faced with half an hour of sitting in water that grows steadily colder. I took an epsom salt bath for sore muscles a while ago, and my cat looked aghast at me, perched in the window, obviously terrified and perplexed about why I would choose to drown myself so calmly. Our old beagle, who has gone on to the Great Sofa in the Sky, had to get baths once in a while, and bore them with a kind of pathetic, long-suffering patience, staring up at me dolefully as if to say “why must you torment me so?” Frankly, I am inclined to agree with the wisdom of the beasts. Mostly, when I have gotten into a bathtub, I am waiting for it to be acceptable for me to get back out again.

This bath book though - wow, just reading it is very soothing. I may never put lemon slices and roses in my bathtub, but I am definitely a fan of reading about them. This is perhaps not dissimilar to my experience of watching Angela Lansbury’s 1989 exercise video “Positive Moves,” which is full of gentle stretching movements, peach onesies, and questionable midi piano music. I love watching that video. Have I ever done the little stretches, or rolled around on the floor a la Angela, on her pristine, rose-patterned rug? No, dear reader, I have not. But there is something deeply soothing about the fuzzy film quality and Angela’s cheerful voiceover about drinking tea and cycling or eating tofu ice cream for dessert. If you haven’t seen it, I beseech you to seek it out (it is available to watch online) and enjoy what feels like a time capsule and the beginnings of influencer culture. “Positive Moves” and the bath book both have a sort of dreamy quality, rather detached from reality. Where is this incredible bathroom, full of fruits and teas and herbs, and what is this life wherein I can dedicate half of my grocery list to bathtime decorations, and then promptly scrape all that organic matter off the bottom of my tub and deposit it directly in the compost? I can tell you one thing for certain, dear reader - it is not my life.

“Positive Moves” ends with Angela floating in a bathtub absolutely brimming with bubbles - luxurious and modesty-preserving! She certainly seems to be enjoying herself, floating around in an Olympic-sized bathtub, with French doors that lead onto a garden beyond her, and soft, glowing candles flickering on every horizontal surface. I long for the day when someone publishes an in-depth analysis of “Postive Moves”, and possibly the bath book also, so that perhaps, I can finally understand what it is about them that I find so fascinating. And maybe by then I will have relaxed enough to be able to enjoy a bath. It seems unlikely, but one can dream.

Jennifer

Raspberry Cordial

Raspberries, those tartly sweet little gems, fairly sing of dappled sunshine and the ripe tang of August, what I always think of as the Sunday of summer. This recipe for raspberry cordial captures that sweetness, and makes an admirable addition to a picnic, glowing like jewels and tasting like youth. If, like me, you are several long weeks away from the delights of summer and require this cordial to sustain you until summer does arrive, then frozen raspberries will absolutely do the job here. Make this in advance to let the flavours mingle, pack it away in a picnic basket, and enjoy, heartened by the knowledge that this cordial will not set you drunk - even after three glasses! Sippity sip!

Ingredients
10 oz (568) unsweetened raspberries
1 1/4 c (250 g) sugar
3 lemons, divided
4 c (950 ml) water

Instructions:
Put the unthawed raspberries into a large saucepan, and add the sugar.
Cook over medium heat, stirring occaisionally, for 20 to 25 minutes, until all the sugar has dissolved.
With a potato masher or the back of a spoon, mash the raspberries and syrup thoroughly.
Pour the mixture through a strainer, making sure you extract all of the juice. Discard the pulp.*
Juice two of the lemons and add their juice to the raspberry liquid.
Bring the water to a boil, then add the boiling water to the raspberry liquid.
Let the raspberry cordial cool, and then chill it in the refridgerator.

When the cordial is ready to serve, cut the remaining lemon into thin slices and garnish your glass with a lemon slice - so fancy. This cordial makes a welcome addition to tea parties, picnics, and summer afternoons. If you are so inclined, it can be added to sparkling water for an extra-refreshing kick, although I understand that not everyone likes their water to be fizzy - I have heard sparkling water likened to drinking bees, which feels like a pretty apt description.

*The original recipe calls for discarding the raspberry pulp, and you certainly can, but I hate the thought of so much food waste. I recommend saving the remaining raspberry pulp to spread on toast for breakfast, spoon over yogurt or ice cream, or pair with pound cake (the recipe for which you will find in a coming post!), a bit like coulis or jam. I’ve also had success with adding it to muffins or loaf cake, but do be aware that you may need to adjust your liquid and sugar measurements if you take this route. No matter how you choose to use the pulp, if you do keep it for future use, it must be refrigerated. Enjoy!

Jennifer

School Daze

Ahh, school. I spent a loooooong time in school - more of my life in than out, although eventually that balance will tip. The schedule of school no longer binds me, but still, September rolls around, the sun grows more golden, sets a little earlier, the wind gets a special tangy snap, and I find myself longing for a new notebook, a bright crop of coloured pens, natty school shoes, and, as Nora Ephron put it, a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils. I was very excited for my first day of school. My mother walked me to the front door of the dull red-brick building. My bangs had been fastidiously brushed, and my long hair braided and tied with two puffy, bulbous scrunchies, one at each end of my plait. September breathed its chilly air down the neck of my jacket, but there were leaves on the ground for stomping and swishing, so I didn't mind. Mrs. Albers-Jones, my first-grade teacher, was a kind and soothing sort of person, with a soft, low voice and long printed cotton skirts that swirled around her legs and brushed the tops of her sandals. The classroom was bright and busy: the cloakroom and the tickle-trunk were jammed together in one corner; our little Formica desks stood stolidly in the middle of the room; a flattened, defeated carpet of indeterminate colour was offered to us for sitting on while Mrs. Albers-Jones spoke to us. One little girl near me was weeping noisily, drawing constricted breaths between sobs. I was confused at her tears, but no one else seemed to be taking much notice of her, so I turned my attention back to Mrs. Albers-Jones.

I remember pieces of that morning in fuzzy flashes. We got our own file folders with our names on them, where we were to put our homework and assignments. We tacked up our names over the hooks in the cloakroom so we knew where our jackets and boots would go when winter came. Mrs. Albers-Jones read to us from a book, but it was too long to finish. She walked us around the classroom, showing us where our math booklets were, and where we could sharpen our enormous red pencils that had no erasers, and where the eraser tin was if we needed to erase anything, which of course, we often did.

The morning seemed to pass in a blur, and suddenly shrill bells were screaming out the call to  recess. I had been to a sort of school before, having gone to daycare, and knew about name-tags and packed lunches, desiccated glue sticks and sharing, dog-eared books and cubby-holes. Recess, however, was new to me. I filed out in frightened obedience with my classmates, and was suddenly faced with a never-ending playground, swirling with other children who seemed to know exactly what recess was for, thank you very much. To my left, there was a creaking wooden play-structure, crawling with screaming creatures. Two hills, one big and one small, swelled out of the ground before me: I could not determine their purpose. To my right was a field, or as I was to later learn, three fields, where painted steel goal posts stood sentinel over soccer games. Around the corner from the little stone steps upon which I was still hesitantly perched was a black-top, painted with yellow lines to mark out the four-square court, the hopscotch, and the tether-ball circle. I ventured first to the black-top in search of a friend who was in an upper grade, but she was busy with her own friends of her own age, and I was left standing alone, watching a game of four-square which I had not yet learned to play. I wandered back to the big hill, which was closest to the door from which I'd come. I didn't know how long recess was meant to be, so I thought it would be best not to wander too far. I sat and played with the grass, building a little house for some pioneer ants who were without shelter, like my then-heroine Laura Ingalls, and went on to build a little fire pit with some sticks and a swimming pool from a dead leaf, which was empty at the time, but, I reasoned,  could be filled with rain water. I was sitting next to a rut in the big hill, a kind of impromptu path which had been worn down from so many children walking up it, and just as I was putting the finishing touches on my splendid ant villa, a boy with lights in his runners that flashed each time he took a step went pelting past, bellowing ferociously, and trod on my wonderful architecture.

I looked up at his retreating back, my mouth hanging open and my brows meeting beneath my fringe, but before I could utter a sound at this monstrous brute, an ear-splitting ringing sounded from the school bell. I dusted the dead grass from my pants, and scurried down the hill. Another shriek, this time the voice of a child, joined the bell's horrible noise. I wondered who was screaming. Surely it did very little good to scream at the end of recess? It wouldn't make it go on longer, and the bell was already making enough racket on its own, without needing the help of some unfortunate creature on the playground. I glanced around to see who was shouting.

It was me.

Jennifer

Down on the Farm

Each morning, I make a cup of tea, and usually add a splash of milk to my cup. The milk comes from a waxed cardboard carton, emblazoned with a company logo and charming little drawings of rolling hills and grazing cattle. This morning, I stared at the milk carton while my tea was steeping, and thought about those cartoon cows. Even before the agrarian revolution and industrialisation, most dairy cows did not graze on unending ranches - dairy farmers kept their cows close to home to make milking easier and faster. These days, most dairy cows do not see the light of day - they spend their lives indoors. Grazing is the domain of beef cattle. The drawings on my milk carton are a sweet, appealing falsehood, relying on the ignorance of city slickers like me to sell an idea about darling dairy cows with names like ‘Betsy’ and ‘Mildred’ and ‘Daisy’, a sort of mix between Beatrix Potter, Marie Antoinette’s pretend farm at Versailles, and James Herriott.

I suspect those who grow up in more rural environments, with closer access to the realities of cattle farming, might not be so easily fooled by my milk carton. Similarly, I suspect the sons and daughters of farming families do not normally wax poetic about cows, which I am about to do. One of my first jobs was to muck out stalls at the horse barn where I learned to ride, in exchange for lessons. Across the gravel road from the horse barn was a cattle pasture, often populated with a handful of placid cows, chewing their cud, swishing their long tails, standing stolidly together, staring into the middle distance like the noblest dukes. These were beef cattle, and they had rough, shaggy coats, broad creamy-white foreheads, and stubborn looks on their faces. They grazed, unbothered, in nearly all weathers. There was something very charming, very appealing about them, clustered in little groups of three or four, jaws working interminably, but I never went near them. I grew up around horses, and their peculiarities (which are varied and legion) are at least familiar to me. But the ways of cows are unknown to me. I am given to understand that they can be dangerous because they are so curious - they likely will not mean to hurt you, but you can easily be stomped upon or trampled by a cow who has gotten very close to you, and brought all her nosy friends along for an investigation. In my experience, if you go into a horse pasture (especially if you are swinging a halter and rope from your arm), then the horses will slowly and determinedly stroll away from you. It is good practice to bring some form of bribery along with you to collect a horse, or make peace with chasing them all over their field. Cows, apparently, may well wander up to you and surround you, all inquisitiveness - not an ideal trait in an animal that weighs as much as a small car. Horses tend to be wily, flightly, particular, and given to strong emotions. Cows seem, at least to me, to take life more philosophically.
The same horse barn that kept ponies also, for a time, had flocks of sheep. Sheep are quite a different kettle of fish. They are trusting, generally quite sweet-natured, placid - and very stupid. I once watched, incredulously, as a ewe stood at one end of a field, calling for her lamb who stood alone at the other end. The lamb and ewe were crying out for each other pitiously, with equal vigour - but it did not seem to ever occur to either one to cross the field. This went on for some time. A ram from the same flock once had a ferocious battle with fence post. I could not possibly say who won. But one cannot help but feel a special affection for sheep, who gaze upon humans with such obligingly, eager little faces. I don’t think it’s a mistake that so many shepherding cultures imagine the relationship between humans and God through the metaphor of sheep and shepherd. They (the sheep) have no idea what is going on, but they are not worried, because you are there, and you will take care of them. I’m afraid the implications for the brain power of humanity isn’t great, but the sheep aren’t wrong - we will look after them, the wooly little idiots, if only because we know how badly things would go for them if we didn’t.

Jennifer