Fitzrovia troglodytes.

I entered an entirely new world today; a world beneath the streets of London and one which I had never dreamed existed. I could only marvel at it, for it was ephemeral and fleeting, and I was a part of it for just a small amount of time.

It was the world of the pre-work, (literally) well-heeled lady "gymers".

 I had the pleasure of staying in a lovely hotel in a swanky area of London known as "Fitzrovia"; not a name I had heard of before, I admit. The area is more usually named Marylebone Village...(not at all pretentious).
The hotel has its own spa, pool and gym which are free for guests to use, but the facilities are also open to local residents, and when I descended in to the changing rooms, I was presented with a sight which completely threw me. I had thought there may be a few others using the gym, or maybe one or two swimmers, and based on past experience, the changing rooms in these places can be tricky to negotiate, with me not wanting to invade others' space, or using someone's favourite locker. However, nothing had prepared me for what I came across at 8.30 this morning.

The changing room was like an up-market beauty parlour, but one in which the beauticians had gone missing. Semi-naked women and girls, draped in snowy-white towels were seated at mirrors with hairdryers, curlers, straighteners, brushes, combs, self-tan, make-up, moisturisers, lotions and potions, and all self-absorbed in preparing themselves for work after their morning gym session or swim. I tried to not stare at the variety of womenhood thus arrayed, and busied myself in the corner, finding a locker, getting into my swimming costume and admiring the way in which the young woman next to me was applying her self-tan to her perfectly smooth legs.

I admit to being in awe. A tad surprised, and maybe even a little envious of the seemingly supremely self-confident women who floated around the spotlessly clean changing room, never really making eye contact with anyone, and donning designer dresses and heels before tippy-tapping up the stairs and into the hustle and bustle of the city streets two storeys above us. I wanted to ask them things, chat, pass the time of day, smile and say how amazing they looked. But there was no chat, for along with the no eye contact, there was seemingly an invisible shield about each woman, making her invincible, unapproachable and self-contained. They could have been the dancing princesses who each night wore out their dance shoes upon entering a faerie realm. I felt like a clumsy interloper, yet  a spell fell over me and I was bewitched.

I will never know how the self-tan applying young woman managed to be streak-free, for she wafted away as I donned my swimming things and then descended further underground to the pool, thinking that I'd now be surrounded by lithe mermaids speeding up and down the pool whilst I did my demure breatstroke in the slow lane. I was greeted by silence. The pool was empty. I had it, and the steam room to myself for 30 minutes until the space was invaded by two large, clumsy men, looking as though they felt they didn't really belong. (They didn't, I felt. They were too ogreish).

I returned to the changing rooms, and here too, all was quiet. No hairdryers, no heels, no flip-flops, for all the beautiful young women had seemingly vanished, vapourised and languidly departed for who knows where. Alone in the changing room, I felt though something of their lingering mystical presence, and as I took my turn at the hairdryers, I hoped that when I entered the gold paved streets of Fitzrovia, I too would be beautiful.

 http://www.londontown.com/LondonAreas/Fitzrovia/http://www.londontown.com/LondonAreas/Fitzrovia/

Wondering about pickles and preserves.

 ...And in the midst of the pickling and preserving of fruits and vegetables, I often wonder how these processes came about. 
We (I) use techniques that have been tried and tested over many years, but they were once an essential part of life, rather than a pleasurable pastime. Preservation of fruits, vegetables and meat and other products would once have been a necessity in order for communities to get through times of harsh weather; how did these techniques come about? How many of the preserved products were spoiled and lost? 


Think about jams, marmalades and jellies for a moment....

To make preserves which keep well, we require sugar. A LOT of sugar, so these products could not have been possible before refined sugar cane was abundant (and cheap) here. The gorgeous soft fruits of summer would not have been preserved and available in the depths of a cold, dark winter. Hard fruits such as apples and pears would have been the only fruits available, and then only if they had been carefully harvested and stored, and the mice and mould have not first devoured them. The jams and the consequent blurring of the seasons, with a little morsel of summer sunshine fruitiness available in winter would have been impossible.

What we now see as maybe a little bit of a whimsical, peasant-like, "hippyish" activity would once have been the preserve (pun) of the rich, for only they would have had the money with which to buy the gorgeous sweet stuff required for perfect preservation. So mass-produced jams were made available to the masses, but were adulterated with glucose syrup and thinned out with paltry-sized mushed-up fruits. Vegetables were added to what should have been pure fruit jams in order to bulk them out.

Small wonder then that home-made preserves were, and still are, so sought after. There is an art to the making of them. It requires perfect fruit; not as some may think damaged or bruised fruit, for that will spoil the product. Time of course is also required; the pan needs to be watched so as not to burn or boil over. I usually have to set aside an entire morning or afternoon to make a batch. Patience. The correct pan. Jars. Storage.

All of this I ponder whilst collecting the fruit, checking for blemishes, grading, weighing, stirring, pouring and labelling. Maybe you'll think about it too when you next open a jar of your favourite preserve...

Sunday 3 August 2014. More about gherkins.

I live in a small town in North Hampshire in southern England. It is called Tadley. There are odd stories about Tadley, concerning treacle, besom brooms and hot air balloons. We'll come back to those. (If I remember.)

Hampshire is a large county. It has coastline and beaches, docks and harbours, The New Forest, ancient woodland, ancient towns, new towns, military camps, airports, heathland, large towns and cities, small villages and hamlets, farmland, downland, beautiful streams and rivers, football teams, shopping centres, Areas of Outstanding Beauty, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, stately homes, great estates, parks, private and public land and some industry. It is a wealthy and consequently expensive part of England in which to live, and the county has been my home for the majority of my life. (I am neither wealthy or expensive, however. But I am not cheap, before you ask...and apparently I have expensive tastes.).

The part of Hampshire in which I live borders The Royal County of Berkshire to the north, Wiltshire, Dorset, (west) Surrey and Sussex (east) plus the Isle of Wight (south, and formerly part of Hampshire) and is 12 or so miles from the neighbouring towns of Basingstoke, Newbury and Reading. The town has an average age of 60, based on the figures from the last census, and people rarely move away, apart from the young people, who cannot afford to buy a place here in which to live. Those who go away to university may decide to live in their university town, or move to the aforementioned bigger towns where there is employment and accommodation.

I do a lot of walking around my town as we own dogs which require exercise. Our favourite spot for walking is Pamber Forest, which was once part of Windsor Great Park and is an ancient forest with wild deer, rare birds and butterflies. We also like to walk on Silchester Common and Tadley Common, which are both rare examples of heathland and which are  browsed by Dexter cattle and managed by local authorities. These areas of land are free for anyone to walk in, and there is some forestry work to manage the woodlands. In the past, there was also gravel extraction, and Tadley earned its wealth from these activities. I do a lot of thinking on my forays in to the woods and commons, and some of the thoughts will appear in these blogs, but not all.

This may seem far removed from pickled gherkins, but will I hope serve as a background to the gherkins and where they, and the rest of our vegetables are grown, for the surrounding town and countryside are an important example of how the English land ownership, allotments and property ownership of the past shape the lives of today's residents. The name "Tadley" was first recorded in the year 909AD, and is of Old English origin, meaning the woodland clearing of a man called Tada. (ref: The Oxford Names Companion).

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/index/your-area/localpages/north-east/tadley/tadley-attract.htm

Our allotments, of which we have 6 (or 7, depending on how it's calculated), form part of a large area of land situated within the ancient parish of Tadley and consisting of over 200 plots of land. The land is owned by a charity (Allotments for The Labouring Poor) and was originally established after The Enclosure Acts of the 19th century in order to give those families turned off of the land somewhere to grow food for their families. (More on The Enclosure Acts at a later time, if I remember. )



http://opencharities.org/charities/268506http:

www.nsalg.org.uk/allotment-info/brief-history-of-allotments/

Tadley is different from other allotments in that it is not owned by a local authority but by a charity. The money collected in rents cannot be used; it must be invested and the interest from the investments is available to residents of the parish of Tadley to "relieve need." 

We have had allotments for the past 6 or so years, and as can be seen from the photos, we have had to clear land which has not been worked within living memory. ..... I'll get on to the gherkins another time, as I seem to have wittered on quite considerably and you may now be losing interest. 

 If you have any comments or questions, about Tadley, allotments, or anything else really, please feel free to ask. I'll do my best to answer them. :-) 

Thanks for reading. Have a good week.

The First.

So, today, I was contacted by a friend suggesting I consider writing a "blog" about education, cooking, gardening, set dancing and a variety of other "stuff" which others may find interesting.

The first post will of course be concerned with gherkins. Or cucumbers. And the pickling thereof. This is my first ever time of pickling gherkins and is based on previous pickling forays.

1. Harvest gherkins of various sizes. We have never grown them before, but were given plants by another allotmenteer. They are planted in our polytunnel. The flowers are VERY attractive to bees. We have hundreds of fruits.
2. Prepare brine: 4 ounces of salt to 2 pints of water. heat until salt dissolves. Cool.
3. Prepare gherkins. Wash them to remove surface dirt and prickles.  We (my mother and I), left the diddy ones whole, the slightly larger ones sliced acrossways, and the largest sliced longways. Immerse the fruit in brine overnight. 
4. Next day, drain fruit and pack into clean heated jars. Pour on  cold, distilled, spiced vinegar and seal. 

We'll come back to the gherkins when we know the outcome re taste, crunchiness, spiciness etc. 
Tomorrow is another day. Watch this space.