Author: aspinalllucy

Carrots, Onions, Celery and Potatoes

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‘Soffitto, is an aromatic mix of onion, carrot and celery, is the base for most sauces, soups, stews and braises in Italian cuisine. A ratio of 2:1:1 of onion, carrot and celery is generally agreed on, but some regions of Italy prefer to include other aromatics such as garlic, parsley, rosemary and bay. In some instances, bacon or pancetta is also added for an even richer flavour base.

Soffitto is the Italian word for ‘fried slowly, as after the vegetables have been finely diced they are then gently cooked in a generous amount of olive oil and sometimes butter. Traditionally chopped with a mezzaluna and stirred with a wooden spoon, the soffritto should be cooked until dorata (golden brown). Doing so releases all the flavours from the vegetables, resulting in a rich basis to begin any dish.’

Well, thank you Great British Chefs website.

( I just want to say that I cut and pasted that from their website but might like to point out that whilst soffritto means sauted slowly, soffitto means a ceiling. I am nothing if not a bit slapdash, but just saying.)

Now, I am a huge fan of soffritto and indeed, sorry to admit this but I stole a mezzaluna from a rented apartment in Brussels owned by an Italian woman, and I use it all the time – even now in Deepest Sussex.

I have to say in my defence, she was getting in house clearers after we left, and her corner bath with jacuzzi jets was rubbish. Just saying.

In case you need to know, a mezzaluna is a curved blade with handles either end and very useful for chopping things finely – herbs for example, but in this case onions, celery and carrots for home-made soffritto.

I might get back to making my own soffritto in large and time-consuming batches and freezing them, but for now Waitrose is a great help.

There isn’t a meal of the right sort which can’t be improved by some soffritto.

Any stew/casserole, stuffed cabbage leaves, soup, the alarming-sounding but actually very good lentil cottage pie….

And, whilst on the subject of there is the soffritto passata which also comes ready made.

I am sure that there is a reader or two out there, sucking their lips with disapproval at the thought of processed food, but on the health stakes, we are not talking a frozen deep fried mars bar here, people.

These are the bases for some good home-cooked food.

Chop up some celery and carrot and slowly sauté it gently in some olive oil, not too much because you want it to caramelised not stew. Peel and chop up some potatoes. When the celery and carrot are slightly carmalised, its takes say half an hour, add in some onions and garlic and, oh a bay leaf or two, some oregano and you could add a sachet of ready-done soffritto, just to add even more depth and body but you don’t have to.

Add in the bottle of passata and the potatoes and cook until the potatoes are soft, and you have a soup.

I add in some stock made with Marigold bouillon powder to thin it out a bit. Maybe a slurp of chilli flavoured oil. One way or another, you will need to add some seasoning.

And should you have some leftover greens they can go in, or indeed finely sliced raw greens put in when the potatoes have cooked for a bit but still need a few more minutes.

If you are in a hurry, you can skip the caramelising half hour, but it does make a difference.

Or you can just add a sachet of the ready made soffritto to the passata, add a bit of water and you are done.

Whilst we are on the subject of potatoes – well I am anyway – my life would be very sad indeed if potatoes were not around.

All shapes and sizes, all flavours, endlessly useful, cheap, versatile and yes I know, heavy on the carbs but until I am diagnosed with diabetes or a strange allergy to potassium, they will stay well up my favourite foods list.

( I may have mentioned before but one of my desert island meals would be a good salad and chips. Indeed, it might be the meal I rescue from the waves.)

Anyway, I could bore you with potatoes recipes but before I do that, I was interested to find out that Maris Piper, a very useful and easy to please variety is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the most popular variety in Britain.

I was hoping the name had some romantic history but apparently, the Maris came from the Maris Lane where the plant breeding institute which had spent many years making sure this new high yield, disease -resistant potato variety, was located.

The Piper was suggested by the main scientist’s son – and he, the main scientist, won The Queen’s Award for Technology in 1982 for his potato. Who’d have thought?

Wrongly but entertainingly, the slang word for potato, spud, was said to have originated in the initial letters of the Society for the Prevention of Unwholesome Diet.

Apparently, but boringly, it is more likely to be based on derivations of the word for a small knife/dagger/blade which was used to dig a hole in which to plant the potatoes.

As for King Edwards:

‘It was bred by a gardener in Northumberland who called it ‘Fellside Hero’ and passed into the hands of a grower in Yorkshire and in turn a potato merchant in Manchester who having no use for it passed it onto John Butler of Lincolnshire. He in turn purchased all the seed stocks available and multiplied the variety on 50 acres of land before renaming the variety King Edward on the advice of a potato merchant.’ Wikipedia

I do wish I was buying Fellside Hero rather than a dead rather uninteresting monarch….

I am writing this on a wet and dark February evening in Derbyshire, so the sweet, just-harvested-from-the-garden, first early potatoes feel like a long way away.

A bowl or Rockets, or Jazzy or Vivaldi – bring on early summer.

And the idea of nipping back to France and having lovely yellowy Ratte potatoes in a little bistro somewhere also seems unlikely – not that they are not grown but ‘nipping to France’ is a much more laughable idea than it used to be what with one thing (Brexit) and another….

I think I have said this before but there is little better than mint butter with new potatoes and it has amazed me during my many years on the planet, there are people out there who have never heard of this.

So good salted butter left out of the fridge to soften. Fresh mint (from the garden if you can) chopped with a mezzaluna or sharp knife. Mix two together and slather on the freshest new potatoes you can lay your hands on.

Meanwhile, on dreary Sundays, bubble and squeak.

My friend Wikipedia, says the name derives from the noise the frying ingredients made in the pan – but when it was first named that, in the 17th century, and the ingredients were beef and onions.

My friend Wikipedia, also gives you a whole page on recipes and recommendations from chefs. The twentieth century , based on potatoes, recipe started when rationing meant potatoes were a more likely ingredient than lots of leftover beef. And cabbage is the traditional vegetable.

But, potato cooks, feel free to use what you fancy. As long as you start with mashed ( quite coarsely ) with butter but no milk or egg, potatoes, feel emboldened.

My grandmother always called spring onions scallions and they were always added – not raw you understand but cooked. Some pre-fried bacon or leftover meat, chopped up brussel sprouts, herbs like dill or parsley and roasted garlic,…. I have, though only once, used gently sauted red peppers and won’t be doing that again – wrong vibe all round.

However, some variations would be considered heresy and do you know what, I don’t care.

Some cooked cauliflower mixed in and then some cheese.

Yes I know that does not count as bubble and squeak, but with a little grainy mustard in the mix and should you be of that disposition, a slice of good ham underneath, who’s going to quibble on names?

So, make your potatoes and whatever you are putting in with them. Make them into fishcake sized patties, put in the fridge until you need them, but at least 30 minutes.

Heat some olive oil and if you like, a dollop more butter, and fry until brown and then turn over and again fry until nicely, deliciously, crisply browned.

You have your Sunday supper – Antiques Roadshow or The Great Pottery Throwdown, fire lit, and all is well with our world.

.

Russians in America

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As I have mentioned before, ad nauseam you might think, coincidence is a major part of the enjoyment of working in an Oxfam bookshop.

These are rather esoteric coincidences, but that’s what you get sometimes so buckle up.

Someone rang to ask if we wanted some volumes published by the Haklyut Society and I said yes. 

I had seen a few before and know them to be nothing-if-not-niche history books. And worth putting online.

They came in in pristine condition and the donor admitted he had not read all of them from cover to cover.

Now, given that among the donation were three volumes of The Artic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger – I am not entirely surprised.

( Though I was surprised to note this must have been where Phillip Pullman got his name for the artic explorer Scoresby in his Northern Lights Trilogy. 

Are you keeping up?)

Now, if you were thinking, ‘Well, they’ll be sat on the shelves for a while.’ You are wrong, they had sold before I got back to the shop to take a photo for this blog and to prove I was telling the truth about them.

Anyway, there were also two volumes of Russian California.

So,

‘Sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast.Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia’s Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.’

I am not sure how you would get two volumes out of that but as the Haklyut Society publishes ‘scholarly editions of primary records of voyages and travels’ maybe there were more bored settling Russian sailors writing diaries than one might expect.

And they seem to be convinced that the Russians came earlier and left later than Wikipedia thought.

So, I can hear you asking, who was this Haklyut who inspired this society of arcane travel history books publishing society?

Well, first of all his name is pronounced Hak’loowt which I found good to know as I had been struggling with various alternatives.

No, not Dutch as you might think.

Born and bred in Herefordshire – that was a surprise (and indeed the area I grew up in, by coincidence.)

Their family taking their name from the ‘Forest of Cluid in Radnorland’ apparently.

Richard’s father was a dealer in furs and was a member of the Worshipful Company of (aptly-named) Skinners.

Richard had a good education, got ordained, was around in Elizabeth and James I’s court and the was a significant promoter of the colonisation of America and was the chief promoter of a petition for ‘letters patent’ to colonise Virginina.

So, now you are feeling a lot more educated on Haklyut than you were an hour ago. No, it is fine, don’t thank me.

Anyway, on the same day that the Haklyut books came in, our champion donations-sorter came upstairs with a map.

And there it is showing Alaska ‘owned’ by the Russians.

The map was printed in 1865, just two years before the Americans bought it for $7.2m dollars. See below.

Now I disappeared down a rabbit hole of the history of Russians in Alaska and below is a short summary of what I found out – but feel free to think that you might not need to have even a very short version of this corner of history.

By the time the sale treaty was signed, Russians had been in Alaska for 125 years.

In 1741, Vitus Bering (he of the straits fame) was spurred on/ordered by Peter The Great to find out what happened after the end of Siberia. 

One voyage failed but on the second one they found the edge of Alaska. Bering died of scurvy but his ship mates returned loaded up with skins of sea otters, foxes and seals – and whetted the fur-appetite of Russian dealers.

So, the Russians headed back to Alaska asap.

Alaska wasn’t empty of people. There were an estimated 100,000 native people living there.

There were some trading arrangements set up but relations were not great once the Russians started taking leaders’ children as hostages and using their more powerful weaponry, for example.

On the Aleutian Islands, again for example, a pre-Russian population of about 17,000 plummeted to 1,500 as a result of disease, capture or fighting.

And they brought over Russian Orthodox missionaries to do what missionaries tend to do. And, the most visible trace of the Russian colonial period in contemporary Alaska is the nearly 90 Russian Orthodox parishes with a membership of over 20,000 men, women, and children, almost exclusively indigenous people. 

In search of somewhere just a little bit more clement and less demanding that you were a very rugged man, the Russians headed south and set up a trading relationship with the Spanish and Fort Ross in 1812 – just 90 miles north of San Francisco Bay. 

Fort Ross in its early days

Russian Orthodox Church Fort Ross

But they were half a globe away from St Petersburg, it was tough, cold and 

‘By the middle of the 19th century, profits from Russia’s North American colonies were in steep decline. Competition with the British Hudson’s Bay Company had brought the sea otter to near extinction, while the population of bears, wolves, and foxes on land was also nearing depletion. Faced with the reality of periodic Native American revolts, the political ramifications of the Crimean War, and unable to fully colonise the Americas to their satisfaction, the Russians concluded that their North American colonies were too expensive to retain. Eager to release themselves of the burden, the Russians sold Fort Ross in 1842, and in 1867, after less than a month of negotiations, the United States accepted Emperor Alexander II‘s offer to sell Alaska. The purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million ended Imperial Russia’s colonial presence in the Americas.’ Wikipedia

So the wildlife and local people were killed off. And, of course, that is not just the prerogative of Russians. See also America, the British Empire and many, many others.

And one man’s ‘revolt’ is another person’s definition of fighting to reclaim their own land, customs, rights. 

Life Lessons

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Recently I spent a weekend with my amazing niece and because we hadn’t seen each other for ages, I treated us to a lovely place in Derbyshire – and taught her another thing.

The place was the kind of pub with rooms that all pubs with rooms should be – nicely done rooms, great staff, very good food, a busy bar with walkers, family gatherings and a carpet of dogs.

So, we relished the comfy beds, she got a lot of use out of the roll top bath, and we ignored the rule that you can’t eat chips on consecutive days.

We successfully charity shopped – who knew that either of use needed a nest of 1960s plastic tables or a ski jacket when no skiing was on the horizon – mind you its cold up north.

The rest of this weekend is between me and my lovely niece – what we talked about, her extraordinarily thoughtful takes on issues personal and political, bigger breakfasts than we had planned, why we laughed, what she is thinking of doing, what made her eyes widen when I told her about my past. ( In my defence, she did ask.)

I’d like to claim that as her aunt I have taught her valuable stuff about how to live life, what I have learned and could pass on to her but actually it boils down to two things she has already taken to heart, and one which I taught her this weekend.

My niece is the only one of my nearest and dearest who does not need nagging into drinking enough water during the day. 

Water drinking is an aunt/niece badge of honour and we compare notes about how annoying it is to try and get people we care for to do more than take an occasional sip of the liquid of life.

Now, we can talk about that for a long time but we won’t bore the rest of you – except to say a pint of water – just that lovely stuff from the tap – would do you the power of good and no coffee/tea/coke/ginger beer is not the same thing. Actually.

It didn’t stop us drinking wine, but we did have large water chasers. Just saying.

The second life lesson I taught her was something I also taught her early on in life and another thing which has stuck.

There is something very good about a bacon sandwich made with pesto and a really good in season tomato.

So, before you sneer and reach for ketchup of brown sauce, give it a try.

You can toast the bread or not, up to you.

Butter on one slice, pesto on the other. Thinly sliced tomato, crispy bacon. And you are done.

The third lesson in life came this weekend when my amazing niece was shown, took it to her heart and relished, the delight of chips dipped in peppercorn sauce.

It would be great to be able to say that I had taught her to appreciate herself as much as I do, that I had given her life skills to navigate her way through life with an inner happiness, or a love of amazing challenges or just remembering me in a good way, but a couple of tasty ways to eat and appreciation of a large drink of water will have to do.

She will more than manage the rest of her life on her own.

My Christmas – yes a bit late

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When we, in the Oxfam bookshop, began planning Christmas it was a) August/September and b) I had reasonable expectations there would be just me and the Best Beloved with a smattering of scrambled eggs and salmon, sone lovely fizz, and watching the traditional-for-us’ All Aboard The Sleigh Ride’.

(I know this is breaking into the narrative but I need to tell you that All Aboard is the mesmerising, no-narrative film of Sami women (and a few men) and their reindeer, and their snowy landscape.  BBC 4 for anyone reading this who can get it.

Worth watching on all sorts of levels – not least for the amazing swingy reindeer-hide coats and leggings – just saying.)

So, as it turned out, in December, a deux turned into a neuf.

My offer to work every weekend in the run up because I would not have much to do, and others would, turned into a rather rash promise.

Just thought I might intersperse this with some photos of the tables we did in the run up to Christmas – all in the planning you might recall started in September….

Now, here is the thing. I prepped and planned on my days off – bread sauce, cranberry sauce, stuffing x2 – one vegetarian, one sausage meat – mushroom and cheese wellington, mackerel pate, cream cheese and blue cheese pate, of course ordering a turkey….

Well, enough showing off.

So, I thought, I would be relaxed and have masses of time on the day to watch the children opening presents, chat about life with the grown-ups, dog-walking and generally looking like a relaxed host.

After all, the furniture had been re-arranged to make sure there was table space ( thanks to a table rescued from the shed to add to kitchen-table length.)

And we had bought four extra dining chairs at a house clearance place to make sure we had something more than an awkward mish-mash of ill-fitting chairs.

( Dear reader, they are now for sale on facebook and e-bay and seem to have sold for £10 more than we paid for them – Christmas bargain.)

Somehow, the relaxed me never quite appeared. 

I realised – far too (bloody, excuse the language,) belatedly that they would all have been happy with something other than turkey and all the trimmings – and I would have not had to repeatedly say afterwards that they were all welcome again, but the full Christmas dinner was not happening again.

Everyone was just happy to spend time with siblings, cousins, family….

I had suggested to the BB that I would serve everything in the foil dishes in which they could be cooked but he, ( a rare event on kitchen matters) said no – and that everyone would be keen to help with the washing up of proper serving dishes, rather than throwing foil away.

Thank you dishwasher designers/manufacturers is all I can say…. and everyone else in the room thought it had been a good-enough idea….

After the Christmas day(s) there is the lunch with stepfather and his ‘lady-friend’, lots of bed changing, Christmas decorations to be taken down and boxed up for next year ( house and shop), long dog-walking to catch up on and opening the bottom of the dresser ( to put away said serving dishes) – to find the crackers I bought and completely forgotten about.

The BB says keep them for next year – can you pull crackers if you are serving cottage pie? 

Watch this space.

Serendipity and Coincidence

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It has rarely been a time when serendipity and coincidence have worked out so well for our Oxfam bookshop.

I have said before, and no doubt will say again, one of the delights of volunteering in an Oxfam shop is serendipity – you can’t order stuff, you can only open a box, delve through a carrier bag, and find what you find, look at something which makes you smile.

This, dear reader, is a long list so don’t say you weren’t warned.

So, where will we start.

Someone came into the shop and asked for books on weather. 

He said his family had decided not only would they shop for Christmas gifts in charity shops, they had a theme – weather.

We we always, always have books on weather – clouds formations, climate change etc etc – but not this time.

Three of us scoured the shop upstairs and down, but nothing. 

Of course, after Christmas we have had lots of books which would fit the bill, but nothing at the time – sorry customer.

On the other hand, here is a good news story.

So, a couple came in, the same day, and asked for for an old  leather-covered bible. Not a request we get often.

And we often have one.

But not this time.

Apparently, their son had confirmed as a Christian as an adult and he loved second-hand stuff, shopping in charity shops etc.

And, they were not in a great hurry so I took their phone number, and said I would let them know if I found one.

One day, after the planning and work ( bearing in mind we have been doing this since August) and whoo-ha of Christmas, I had time to set out, clear out, rootle through the stash of ‘old and interesting’ books and found a bible dictionary which was not only leather bound, but presentation bound.

(That means, just in case you don’t know, it was bound especially to present to a student with a presentation certificate pasted inside. And it had marbled boards and page ends – no I don’t have a picture so you need to Google what that means if you are interested.)

And, sorry I did not take any photos.

It seemed to me to be a long shot of what the customers wanted ,but called them anyway saying they were under no pressure to buy, just a thought.

They turned up about an hour later, were delighted, paid twice what we had priced it at, and bought a coffee-table book (we had had for a very long time) on the most beautiful bibles in the world.

Later he sent me a text message saying how delighted they were and how much they had appreciated the ‘effort’ we had made to get what they wanted.

 As ever, there is something special about uniting a book with someone who is going to really appreciate it.

Next, serendipity and coincidence is more prosaic.

So, after Christmas I was thinking about that table to out out and I thought of cookery – what a surprise, my friends might say – and had a few old books and magazines relating to cookery which I thought might make a (slightly) interesting table.

I was upstairs sorting all this stuff out to fill a table when the volunteer downstairs let me know there had been a(another) donation.

When I abandoned my task and went downstairs, I found the donation included a copper kettle, a kitchen bowl, a set of cheese knives.

Sorted.

Finally, and thank you for keeping going this far, the end is nigh.

Sometimes I have a plan weeks in advance about table displays but sometimes I come in on a  Monday and wonder how I am going to make it work.

On one of these Mondays recently, I decided to put out books that were set in different countries.

Of course there were a few travel books, but also novels, history, etc etc. 

Now, there is nothing as useful as signalling your rather arcane theme than a prop and hey ho, someone, about twenty minutes later, donated a globe and some foreign coins. Thank you whoever you are.

And on the same day that it was announced Ronald Blythe had died at the age of 100 – most famously the author of Akenfield. Guess what I found stashed behind a pile of Jane Austen and John Betjamin…..

This is nearly the end.

Sometimes you have a donation which is not so much a delightful, serendipitous addition to your plan, as something you have to take a deep breath and think how on earth are we going to make this work.

A horse’s saddle.

Well, yes that was a bit of a surprise as a donation because it is not often we, as a book and music shop, get a saddle as a donation.

Apparently, someone brought it in and said her mother, a rider, had died and asked her daughter to give one each of her saddles to three charity shops in the town. (have to say, I have not seen saddles popping up all over town…)

So, instead of getting a bonus for a pre-planned display, we have had to build one around it. We have a lovely display of countryside and the saddle is front and centre.

God only knows what we do with it if it doesn’t sell – us volunteers, are so fed up of moving it out of the way in order to go to the loo.

And just as we thought we had sorted one large, in the way, unusual donation, we got a guitar.

One of our great volunteers was called in to tell us what it was worth. Some calling around and he came up with a price – £175 – a big deal for us.

So, my plans for the table were jettisoned smartly and here’s hoping it will sell before we have to drill holes in the wall and ‘erect’ a guitar holder.

Fingers crossed we have a guitar playing horse rider shopping in Petersfield this week…..

A Day Of Coins

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Serendipity is part of the charm of working in the Oxfam bookshop. Usually it as about books but yesterday, it was about a remarkable you man, coins and stamps.

Now I don’t often work a Saturday afternoon but I have to say it is always interesting – a different demographic from a weekday, and busier – less time to do the titivating, tidying, sorting stuff that you can do Monday to Friday.

( As ever, a long-read warning but it is a heartening story so you might want to carry on at least for a bit.)

Anyway, there I am at the till with two Duke of Edinburgh Award young people doing their volunteering stints when in walks a young person of say 13 years old. ( I am surrounded by young people and it is making me feel old….)

The DofE young women are doing books, but he is not interested in books, he asks me if we have any pre-decimal coins, foreign coins and/or stamps.

Well, as it happens we did have a load of coins which a lovely volunteer ( at the other end of the age spectrum) had sorted into organza bags. 

Last year we had unearthed a stash shoved under a workbench in the shop and which had been there for some years – and we sold them in aforementioned bags.

People bought them to put sixpences or threepences into their Christmas puddings, or bags of old pennies to ‘amaze’ their grandchildren, or foreign banknotes to play Monopoly with. We did well.

In case you need to see what the pences are:

So, she and I had decided to do the same this year and she waded through bags and bags and sorted them into pre-decimal British coins, foreign coins, silver coloured, brass coloured, etc etc. They were in a box upstairs.

‘Well,’ I said to the young man I will call Tom, ‘ We do have some. Do you want to have a look?’

He did and spent more than an hour sitting on our shop sofa, riffling through and telling me – and indeed customers – about when silver sixpences were phased out (1947), what the print runs of Penny Red stamps meant in terms of value, pulling out the incredibly light ( probably made from Aluminium) coins from Romania and much more.

He told me/us that his grandfather was a coin and stamp dealers and left Tom his collection – now stored in a large container – which is now working through.

Some of the stamps are now at Gibbons, he has sold some of his own and his grandfather’s collection and used the first money to buy a dog – but, he admitted, his Mum does most of the dog walking and feeding. Well what a surprise.

Customers came and went and Tom carried on, still telling me stuff in between me taking money from book buyers.

At one point, there was him, me and just one customer who said, ‘ I have a bag of old coins and I have never know what to do with it. Could I bring it here and and if there is anything valuable, I am sure you will identify it and Oxfam can benefit?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom and I together.

So, he eventually left taking some stamps and coins to research, and coins he had bought.

‘Thank you so much for trusting me with these,’ he said.

‘Well, I have your phone number and I do trust you. And thank you for an interesting afternoon,’ I said.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said – and I am sure he will.

Book buyers kept me busy until almost closing time when a young woman came in and said,’ This is a long shot but do you take old and foreign coins?”

‘Yes, we do’ I said and she gave me the last donation of the day.

It was indeed a day of coins.

The Story of Mankind

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Hendrik van Loon got sent to my house when I was languishing with Covid, bored, and couldn’t go into the Oxfam shop.

He arrived in a box with a collection of other books that I could ‘play around with.’ ( And more of the other books another day.)

And he is enchanting. Well, the book is, yet there are aspects to Hendrick’s life which have more question marks than enchantment – but more of that later.

Now, before you begin, I must warn you there is a long schlepp ahead of you. There are lots of images as well as words.

And I dedicate this blog to Mary and Bob – no they are not dead, off enjoying Irish music in the pubs of West Ireland – but they reminded me to tell some more Oxfam stories. Thank you to you both.

Just so you know:

(January 14, 1882 – March 11, 1944) Hendrick van Loon was a Dutch born historian, journalist, and children’s book author.

So, apparently this is a book he wrote for his children and ‘The Story of Mankind tells in brief chapters the history of Western civilisation, beginning with primitive man, covering the development of writing, art, and architecture, the rise of major religions, and the formation of the modern nation-state.’

The chapter on Moses comes between the chapter on the Sumerians and the Phoenicians who

He not only wrote but also illustrated this book, and isn’t this great?

This is not a short book, so Hansje and Willem must have had to have a good few nights when their dad read it to them.

But if ever there was a book written to be read out loud, this is one of them. Tell me  when you read these starter pages, you can’t hear a Dad’s voice? 

Don’t worry I am not going to go through the whole book with you, even the most loyal of readers are not going to accept a commentary on nearly 500 pages from ‘The Setting of Stage’ to ‘The New World.’ 

So, I am just going to give you some of the drawings with the occasional snippet of the words. 

Now that has to be a pre-historic marine-caterpillar dressed up as a palm tree – which is a bit of a stretch as the first movement of sea to land vegetation.

And it has guest appearances later in the story of civilisation:

Interestingly, there is little mention of dinosaurs – a paragraph or two. But I assume that it was Jurassic Park (1993 – yes that long ago) that lit the fire under (primarily) boys’ fascination with anything called something ending in ….saurus.

And there are maps which I am sure the Best Beloved, will study as he is writing his history book, meanwhile Jess has better things to do:

So, here are some of the illustrations which are nothing if not a snapshot of the subject:

and the BB would agree – blue sky and ancient monuments, what else would you need, well maybe a beach
Pretty sure this is the equivalent of a postcard….

Is it my imagination or are those trees walking quietly towards the Kremlin?

Yep that is a mountain pass

Now I am not sure of Hendrik’s views on all of the religions of the world though neither of these look altogether happy about their allotted lot:

Just mentioning the palm tree, and not entirely sure that is an authentic costume, just saying….
Moses not looking convinced

Just a quick note on Hendrik.

He wrote lots (and I mean lots) of books – check Wikipedia. 

Wikipedia also told me that Hendrik married an Eliza and had his two sons, then after leaving her ‘had two later marriages’ to another Eliza, and a Frances. Then he left Frances and went back to the second Eliza.  Keeping up?

That is quite a lot of marriage stuff to fit in between writing dozens of books on everything from The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom, followed ( inevitably) by The Fall of The Dutch Kingdom.

Multiplex man, or the Story of Survival through Invention, Life and Times ofPeter Stuyvesant (no, not the cigarette brand), and Man the Miracle Maker – all in 1928.

In case you were wondering, he was married to Frances in 1928 so either blissfully happy and creative, or hiding away in his writing room and keeping very distracted and busy.

And he had a look of what for him was the modern world:

I can’t claim I will be finding all Hendrik’s books and settling down to a decade of reading, but one I would have been interested in finding donated to the shop one day:

A World Divided is a World Lost, 1935. Could have been written in any of the last few years….

And he knew what he was talking about:

‘After having revisited Germany many times in the 1920s, he was banned from the country when the Nazis came to power. In the summer of 1938, during an extended visit to Scandinavia, van Loon met with refugees who had recently fled Nazi Germany and who gave him first-hand accounts of the terror that they had experienced.

His book Our Battle, Being One Man’s Answer to “My Battle” by Adolf Hitler (1938) earned him the respect of Franklin D Roosevelt, in whose 1940 presidential campaign he worked, calling on Americans to fight totalitarianism.’

But then I found this review and my enthusiasm has been a bit dented:

‘I was delighted to find this little booklet. Mr. Van Loon is one of my favourites. I was so excited. I wondered how he was going to deal with the title subject in such a short space – four chapters.

Well, he didn’t really. In typical Hendrik fashion he set the subject up in a simple but clever way. It took three chapters. I thought I might be going to get a proposal for tidying up the partisan-ness that we see in American government, for enjoying it and for making it work without the resorting to personal rancor, the utter refusal to listen or the telling of blatant lies. Didn’t happen! Chapter four waltzed off on to a different subject completely. I felt that the work presented in this pamphlet might have been intended as the beginning of another Van Loon book. Now that could have been fun.

Still, it is vintage Van Loon language and syntax. I love it for that. And for his illustrations!’

And this is a philosophical ending – thank you Hendrik, Bob and Mary.

A Day of Reuniting

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If you want a good Oxfam story, this is one of my better ones. 

But dear reader, there is what we called as journalists, a long dropped intro.

Which means you have to wade through some stuff before you get to the nub of the story.

Here are a few things I have said before and all of them happened today:

1)If you wait long enough there will be every printed thing/book/pamphlet turn up in your Oxfam shop – there is something printed on every topic you could ever imagine.

2)There is a good home for some special books – places they belong.

3) It is a such a buzz to pick out something dusty and strange and make 2) happen and get some money for Oxfam, and make people happy.

Well, of course not every printed item turned up today, but at the bottom of a book of not very interesting books, something really unusual turned up. 

How it turned up in an Oxfam shop in Petersfield, I will never know and sometimes as a book sorter, I really wish I could hear the story of the donation. But we very rarely do – and I mean very rarely. 

After all, someone comes in with a few boxes of books and if we are lucky we can ask them to Gift Aid them ( if they do we get 25% extra from the government on every book we sell), and they are on their way. 

Often they are bringing in books from aged/dead/going-into-a-care-home parents and really haven’t looked at what there is.

Anyway, enough delay, let me tell you what I found:

This is the particulars for a major estate sale in 1926.

Now, I couldn’t find another one for sale – which needless to say dear reader, means it is rare and a rather interesting read.

A bit of research, thanks Wikipedia, meant that I found out the estate was bought by Colonel Edward Clayton from the Wills family – indeed should that be ringing a vague bell, they were the founders of Imperial Tobacco Company and ‘in 1966 was the family with the largest number of millionaires in the British Isles, with 14 members having left fortunes in excess of one million pounds since 1910.’

In 1994 Edward’s son sold it on to Ralph and Suzanne Nicolson who now run the house as what looks like a very nice indeed holiday let. 

Clearly, a phone call needed to be made.

It turns out the family had tried to buy the a copy of the particulars but weren’t successful so they are said ‘Yes please’ to buying our donation.

Now, that is what I call a good day’s reuniting.

A Laugh In The Museum

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Now there is no other way of putting this, I am about to show you quite a lot of holiday snaps so if that thought does not make you slightly breathless with anticipation, now is your chance to leave the room.

In case you are still with me, these are not (well maybe just one or two,) snaps of sun-kissed landscapes and wine dark sea – more of what made me laugh in Athens museums.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a museum and like very much looking at history and great works of art, but sometimes there is, intentional or not, amusing stuff.

See what I mean?

Now this is calling out for a better caption writer than me……

My best guess is the unseen censor is being told in no uncertain terms that it is well past six pm and no, music does not do the trick.

Now just because something is old, it may not mean that it is automatically a very good example of the potter’s art.

It may well have been found during the archeological dig of a rich person’s house, but hey who hasn’t kept something with no intrinsic artistic value but some sentimental attachment.

I rest my case

This made me laugh out loud which is not de rigeur in museums but really…..

I do realise that she may well have been a woman of a certain physique, but come on. Lechery is one thing, coy peeping of a nipple is another, but to distort her to fit round the dimensions of a chair……

Now, these are the images of Mohammed’s footprints which he left on the rock when he went to heaven in 621 for one night to talk to the prophets and Allah and brought back messages for the Muslim faithful.

Apparently.

All I can say is that apart from the slightly odd second toe being longer than the big toe, they look remarkably well conditioned feet providing a good basis for supporting a body.

My pilates teacher would be delighted, I thought but then on a whim I looked up what it meant to have a second, longer toe and guess what……

‘A Morton’s toe otherwise called Morton’s foot or Greek foot or Royal toe is characterized by a longer second toe. This is because the first metatarsal, behind the big toe, is short compared to the second metatarsal, next to it. The longer second metatarsal puts the joint at the base of the second toe (the second metatarsophalangeal or MTP joint) further forward. It is a type of brachymetatarsia.’

And, ‘It’s widely believed that a longer second toe is associated with being ill tempered and it’s recommended to keep one’s emotions in check.’

Who knew?

Meanwhile, Livy, a Roman writing about the appearance of Bacchanalia arriving from Greece offered ‘a scandalized and extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia, with frenzied rites, sexually violent initiations of both sexes, all ages and all social classes; he represents the cult as a murderous instrument of conspiracy against the state. Livy claims that seven thousand cult leaders and followers were arrested, and that most were executed. Livy believed the Bacchanalia scandal to be one of several indications of Rome’s inexorable moral decay. Modern scholars take a skeptical approach to Livy’s allegations. (Wikipedia)

I love that last sentence.

Anyway, Bacchus and his followers are all over art – shedding their grape vines and overflowing cups around the place – and often there are satyrs.

So here’s hoping these are depictions of should-know-better satyrs and not young children with inattentive parents.

And finally, just because I can’t resist it….

Books & Covers

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So, if you are still with me, lets’ go to Warren Hastings.

He who went through an impeachment trial brought on by Edmund Burke and whose biography appeared in our shop.

Malleson’s Life of Warren Hastings bound by the Relfe Brothers with a presentation binding but no presentation certificate.

If you want a translation of that paragraph let me tell you a bit more.

Usually with a binding like this, you would usually get a printed presentation certificate pasted inside with teacher handwriting saying something like ‘to George Robertson for excellent marks in history.’

Now, the Refle Brothers are really well known quality book-binders but can you find their story/history on Google? – well actually no.

No Wikipedia page – and yes I do give Jimmy Wales some money for all the use I make of his site.

So, if you look you can find books for sale with Relfe bidding and they are pricey, but you can’t find out anything about them – or at least, I haven’t yet.

The page edges are marbled and I have flicked them to see if you do that a picture appears. If that was the case we would have a while lot more money to look forward to. 

So next time you see a book in a charity shop with marbled edges, just give them a flick and happily pay the money they are asking.

Now, you often get good bindings on really boring books and I am not sure that the boy ( usually) who got it was terribly excited about reading it.

Indeed the copy we have looks pretty much unread….

But see the hand-tooled gilt and the spine bands and the original marbled insides. Nice, very nice.

Now back to Warren Hastings.

So Edmund Burke took two days to read the charges in Hastings’ impeachment. Mainly they were related to embezzlement, extortion and coercion.

The House of Commons sat for 148 days over seven years to hear this case.

In 1795 the House of Lords acquitted him and the East India Company, for whom Hastings worked, gave him a pension of £4,000 per year backdated to when he arrived back in England.

Hastings said the legal fees had pretty much bankrupted him but then he had lived in ‘considerable style’ in his London house throughout the trial……

And in 1788 he bought an estate in Gloucestershire for £54,000 had the house remodelled classical and Indian decoration, and gardens landscaped, and re-built its Norman church……not that living on lentils and no heating then. ( See also Rushi Sunak, again.)

Meanwhile, the East India Company was not just about trading.

Originally chartered as the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies”,the company rose to account for half of the world’s trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, saltpetre, tea, and opium. 

The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. (Wikipedia)

(Should you need to know more see my Best Beloved’s one-day-to-be-published history of Europe book.)

The EIC was either the beginnings of the glorious British Empire on which the sun never set, or the rapacious company implying all sorts of greedy, coercive, pseudo-rulers who imposed, stole, acted with impunity and had little interest in recognising they were not in charge – and indeed they became in charge.

I leave you to decide.

According to a site called History Reclaimed, ‘The impeachment of Warren Hastings was an act of imperial soul-searching unparalleled in history. Although Hastings was eventually acquitted, his trial was a warning to all future imperial proconsuls that they too could be called to account by the British Parliament. 

He was the first British Governor-General who launched India’s cultural renaissance way back in the 1780s.  Of all Britain’s imperial proconsuls, Warren Hastings was undoubtedly the most curious and learned about Indian culture and famously declared: “I love India a little more than my own country”.  

He became fluent in Bengali and had a good working knowledge of Urdu and Persian, the languages of the Mughal elite.  One of his most enlightened acts as Governor-General was to promote the founding of the Calcutta Asiatic Society in 1784.’

And, according to Wikipedia, ‘He and Robert Clive are credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India.

Getting a bit of an idea where Malleson is coming from.

Malleson was certainly on his side – a hagiography I would suggest but then with a Relfe binding, someone is going to buy this book because they have judged it by its cover.