It seems like a very, very long time ago ( time has warped) that I was busy bossing people around in the Oxfam bookshop, clearing out donations, looking for hidden treasures and reaching around another book sorter to put a pile of rejects into a plastic crate. Oh, those were the days….

But this weekend, we had a pop up village book swap/stall/get a new read event – and it was lovely.

I set up a WhatsApp group for our village of 70 households and someone put on a post asking for books for her mother.

That set me thinking that there must be other people looking for something to read, so I put a call out for people to donate books and leave them in our garage to disinfect.

With the benefit of Oxfam experience, and the knowledge that everyone sometime in lockdown has had a clear out, I said one bag of books per household…… I didn’t want a tsunami of books just a quality bubbling stream of good reads.

And in they came.

Mind you I was never sure that The Book of Sexual Disasters or Jeremy Clarkeson’s 4th book might fly off the ‘shelves’ and indeed they didn’t – maybe next time.

The weather was with us – so sandwiched in between cold and windy weather, we had a day of sun.

A neighbour leant us her long table, my best beloved went to Tescos to get banana boxes to display the books, and we stetted to set up.

People came and got books and chatted and swapped recommendations, and it was great to hear chatter around the yard – someone took a courgette plant I had been rearing and certainly don’t need, people waved from the lane, walked their dogs past us and stopped to take some books home.

I do realise this is a bucolic idyll blog and of course not everyone has that of a Sunday morning but one more nice story before I go.

So, one of the benefits of this horrible time is getting to know people I didn’t know, would never have met – we are a scattered hamlet – but now have and do.

I was delivering headbands – quite another story – on Saturday morning when I met up with  a couple and their dog.

She said she wasn’t coming for the book swap as she needed a book for her bookclub read which she was pretty sure we wouldn’t have.

‘Its called something like an impressive year,’ she said.

‘A Year Of Marvellous Ways?,’ I said.

‘Yes. That is it!’ she said.

‘I have it in the boot of my car,’ I said and gave it to her.

What was the chance of that….

This, dear reader, is my book of the lockdown.

And I have recommended it to six local people with very different reading habits and every one of them has loved it.

I don’t have one for you in the boot of my car, but I so recommend it 

Good reading whatever you are reading – but do go and find Marvellous, she is a real find.

Like many people, I am assuming, I have started keeping a plague diary. The problem is that like almost everything I do – especially at the moment – it is not well done.

So, I am left with a series of one line notes, written with no date and now seeming to be part of a list of memories from a far-gone era such is the time-warping experience of day-to-day life at the moment.

One aspect of our changed lives however is all too visibly present.

Jess was due a hair cut just as lock-down was called – in fact that day. With hindsight, I should have sucked her into the car, driven the five miles to her groomer – after all I wasn’t going to Snowdonia or Cornwall – and got her done.

But I didn’t, and now she is faced with the best-beloved using an array of more or less blunt scissors most days to just trim a bit here and there….

(There will come a day when I have to use those same scissors on the best-beloved’s hair and he will enjoy plucking my chin hairs – such are the admissions I am willing to make in these strange times.)

She is a sociable dog and has been very happy to have us both at home all day and a lot more people than usual coming walking past our garden.

She usually runs from one vantage point to another to bark at them – annoyingly I’ve no doubt though locals all call out ‘hello Jess’ – but now even she has largely given up on that, so many new people are coming past us.

Yesterday, we went for the full hour’s walk round a circuit we sometimes do. Usually the gardens I pass are empty but yesterday the circuit took twice as long as usual.

I met a lovely couple who gave me half a dozen eggs – they have chickens, ducks and geese so a interesting egg box – a lawyer working from home and helping asylum seekers, a volunteer for our local emergency group who I hadn’t ever met in person. ( She has a perfectly groomed dog and Jess was somewhat embarrassed as she might well have been.)

I met a family who are pretty sure they have had the virus but as we have no mass testing, they are not sure.

An asthmatic woman walking and living off the shopping from neighbours, a neighbour bringing me empty milk bottles.

So, this is the lovely neighbour who answered the call for the village to have some volunteers to deliver information including green, amber and red posters for people to put in their windows to indicate whether they were fine, in self-isolation, needing help.

The BB and I were having to get the packs together, work out who would deliver to each of the (only) 70 households and put them all together and in plastic bags hung on our back fence for those volunteers to collect.

It’s happening across the land I am assuming.

I am an expert at waving my hands in the air, saying I have a task to do and please could anyone come round and help. ( See also my wedding planning – done by a marvellous committee of women.)

This time, of course, that wasn’t going to happen.

‘Have a glass of wine whilst you do it,’ said my smart, thoughtful and oh so right neighbour.

‘Should have got a supply of white wine sorted,’ I texted back.

Ten minutes later a chilled bottle was on my doorstep. Lovely.

But they had no milk so I have upped my order from the milkman to supply them too. Thank you Matthew the milkman.

I haven’t written anything for so long that I am feeling rusty, and didn’t really want my return to be a plague diary – but hey ho.

Oxfam is closed, so all those lovely books ( and indeed the not so lovely ones – Jeremy Clarkson included) will be sitting there waiting for new homes for some time to come (perhaps not Jeremy Clarkson…)

Meanwhile, we usually are fans of hunkering down.

And usually that comes with winter and log fires and telly and the dog asleep on some piece of furniture, a stew in the Aga and friends for a long Sunday lunch.

Now it comes with all the above except it is Spring, and we can’t have anyone in the house.

We are the really privileged and I am seriously aware of that – we can afford to be where we are with no financial worries, we have a decent sized garden and are surrounded by fields.

But these are jittery times, strange times, no point of reference times, the calm before the storm times.

The times when you watch what is happening in Italy and marvel at the efforts being made to save lives and at the same time hope you never need to ask that for yourself or people you know.

I’d like to think this was bringing out the best in me but just like my inner cleaner, I am finding it quite hard to locate by better inner self at the moment.

But here are two things that made my day:

My lovely next door neighbour managed by a slip of the cursor to get 4 kilos of carrots in her Ocado order.

In a few weeks time she’d probably be able to sell those on some black market for shares in Zoom, but right now she has given me some.

My BB, never knowingly cooking a thing in his life, and who has a sweet tooth which he has been nurturing for all his years, did not seem to run through the options of soup, purees, carrot curry ( but then who would?) and came up instantly with carrot cake. (Recipes that don’t involve cream cheese all welcome.)

We are also about to spend some happy hours filling envelopes with advice and support stuff from our Parish Council for the locals, and another lovely neighbour offered to help.

Now normally, I would have flapped my hands and asked half the village in to help but had to say that we would manage.

She said, it would all go better with a glass of wine and I said, we should have stocked up with more of the white stuff – ten minutes later, a lovely bottle was delivered to our doorstep.

That will make today fine. Hope yours is too.

I am not sure that I want this to turn into an Oxfam-meets-cooking-blog, though maybe that would give it a niche following, but I have to say those two themes seem to be coinciding a lot.

And more to the point, the authors are mysterious.

So, here goes on cookery writer number 2.

Last week someone donated books from clearing out a family home – her mother’s, parents’, another relative – I am not sure. I was not on ‘duty’ just passing and having a chat with my colleague when she came in so I helped her in with her boxes of donations.

She pointed to a book and said, ‘You should look at the last recipe.’

I put the book aside to have a look at when I was next properly in the shop. ( And, luckily, it was still there when I did.)

And this is the last recipe:

And yes, I am not sure either whether children loved that teaspoonful and asked for more….

At this point, I should tell you, reader, this book is worth nothing in monetary terms.

It is not old enough to be valuable, it is not a ‘real’ recipe book, it is not written by anyone famous, it is a little bit of social history.

But it is interesting.

So, how come the ‘Recipe Book For Cooking’ ( and you do have query the possibility of a recipe book not for cooking, but moving on..) by Miss F Tharle dated 1935 has the first recipe dated 1934?

(Clearly, she was a jelly fan.)

In fact you have to go 15 pages to find a recipe dated 1935 and, by the way, except for two recipes – cheese soufflé and cheese straws –  the rest in those pages are all for sweet stuff.

We have Strawberry Soufflé, Coconut Cakes, Eclairs, Lemon Sponge, and more, before we get to Casseroled Chicken.

There are 68 pages before Miss F Tharle stops, and most of those are for anything you might fancy as a pudding, cake, dessert or just to satisfy your sweet tooth.

But what I can’t quite get is why a recipe ( Sponge Cake ) is dated 1935 on the page before one ( Brandy Trifle) dated 1934?

And the handwriting seems to be from different people. 

After Casseroled Chicken, the dating of the recipes stops, until Apricot Fancies on page 56 which is dated 1943, then Fruit Biscuits a few pages on, dated 1946, and much to my surprise, over the page, Lemon Cream, dated 1939.

Mind you, the Old Testament Cake on the previous page did catch my eye. No explanation of what to do – is that Biblical or what?

And the penultimate ingredient – 2 cups reduced to 2 teaspoonfuls of something I can’t make out.

So, from the book’s beginning in 1934/5 nowWorld War II has broken out, has been carrying on, and there are signs of it. 

(Personally potatoes are a big favourite, so points 1 to 4 are fine with me.)

Then the book has blank pages until at the back you come across another’s handwriting and interestingly, a conversion chart from American to British measurements.

And then the recipes are largely cut out from newspapers – ‘Recipes of Quality Collected by Lady Muriel Beckwith’ feature heavily.

Gone are the days of Chocolate and Vanilla Biscuits  and Apricot Fancies (1943), we are now looking at Game Hot-Pot and Canard Aux Olives.

Like all personal recipe books, there are a pile of bits and pieces shoved in at the back and interestingly, there are a number which are labelled NAAFI.

And reminders of the past, and that jelly is something to be enjoyed:

And even these paper doilies ( not a word I expected to be typing in 2019) are in the back – just put there by someone expecting to use them sometime soon…..

I have no idea who the author(s) of this little piece of culinary and social history are.

No doubt they are women. Were they related? How come the book has gone from one to the other?

Did all the people involved have a very sweet tooth?

Given that this book has come to us in Petersfield, not 50 miles from Brighton, and is a book of very largely, very sweet recipes, I do just wonder if Ruby Bran has anything to do with this book.

And I do just wonder whether the translation of American and British measurements meant at least one of our authors was a GI bride. If so, she left her cookery book behind and I am very grateful to have seen it.

PS Melting Moments:

So, if you read the previous blog you will have seen me raise a quizzical eyebrow at the woman who said she was so looking forward to village life where everyone was equal and everyone joined in everything….

More vignettes from the village festivities:

One:

A stallholder arriving and asking where was her chair, her table ( neither of which she had asked for/ordered/paid for) her help to get stuff from her car, and someone to help erect her gazebo ( none of which we have people on hand just waiting to do) and, by the way, where was Tim. 

‘Tim’ I asked, ‘Do you mean Tim running the bookstall? because I think he is sorting books.’ 

‘No,Tim my son’

‘I’m sorry I don’t know your son.’

‘Really? you don’t know Tim. Have you lived here long?’

‘Nine years.’

‘Well, when you see him, please send him to me immediately.’

Two:

Most of the village street has pavements either side but there is a stretch with houses and no pavements, and that makes it difficult to walk into the village without flattening yourself against a wall as posh cars on their way to Goodwood, or indeed many other vehicles on their way somewhere or another, come through.

At 8 am as the street was closed, a man stepped down into the road and stated painting his wall.

‘Nice day for it’ we said as we walked past.

‘The only bloody day for it’ he said.

Three:

A phone call at 9pm a day or two before the festivities.

‘Just checking you can organise me a lift.’

It turned out the caller was a man who sells homemade stuff and lives in the outskirts of the village and is no longer allowed to drive.

I was not sure that organising a pick up was in my remit but the Best Beloved said he’d do it.

Delivered, and set up, and sold out by early afternoon, I decided it was best to get the man home safely.

Called my Best Beloved who was on the Downs with the dog and asked him to come and get the chutney man.

A few minutes later BB called to say he had fallen and badly sprained his ankle so no, he couldn’t do pick ups and deliveries.

So, now I had a man waiting for a lift home, and an injured husband.

I grabbed the son of friends, handily having a nice time at the event and not looking like he was about to do anything important, and asked that he would walk man down the street, wait with him whilst I got my car, and I would collect him, deliver him home and then drive to find my injured BB.

He did that with a lovely good grace and all was done.

Man was delivered hime safely. BB delivered home, bag of peas on his ankle and me back to the festivities.

Now, if I tell you that the badly sprained ankle turned out to be a pretty serious and unusual injury and needed two hours of surgery to fix, there was various and somewhat eccentric other stuff around the homemade stuff man which involved a mysterious bottle of martini, you might begin to think, ‘there is more to running a village festivities than I would have imagined’ and you’d be right.

I was at a supper recently when one of the guests said she couldn’t wait to leave the ‘hustle of town life for a village where the community is so much more cohesive, and everyone joins in.’

Two thoughts went through my mind: she was talking about leaving Petersfield (Hampshire market town, population 13,000, one Waitrose, four bookshops, a real market twice a week, a thriving am dram scene….) not exactly London, New York, Tokyo….

And secondly, village life has more social strata than a sedimentary cliff face – and no, not everyone joins in.

We know this on both counts, us who do join in and organise the village festivities.

So, for those of you not familiar with our festivities, let me set the scene:

The village main street is closed on the late May Bank Holiday and along it there are stalls, entertainments, the pub is packed, there is human fruit machine, a barbecue and other food and a carousel and trampoline, a very lucrative bottle stall … .

This is a couple of members of the music trio and stallholders patronising the tea stall before we opened.

Then, behind the street there is a dog show, sheep shearing, people dressed up in the costumes of the 17the century, archery, a splendid and extensive pop-up bookshop which is called the bookstall but you need to think 1,000 books not just a few…

Just before the festivities open, there is a march by members of The Old Club, with a local brass band along the street and back and that opens the event.

( That morning they have walked the bounds of the village and brought hazels and willows to decorate the street ends.)

This is all organised by a small group, and to claim a modicum of respectability, we call ourselves a committee. 

Let me give you  two vignettes which might prove my points about village life:

One :

Last year, I took over the management of the stalls on the street.

My predecessor had been doing this for several years before he left the village and, in handing over to me, he said ‘you spend a lot of time and a lot of emails making sure it works on the day.’ He was right.

I was very nervous and, being me not him who did it more or less by himself, I roped in two great, efficient and organised women ( first rule: make sure your deficiencies are covered) to make sure we had a plan of what went where and how it worked. 

And one day, whilst nipping to the shop to get a few things, I bumped into a neighbour from over the road. 

I asked her if she might be willing to give up a couple of hours first thing on the morning to help get the stallholders in the right place, with their cars off the street in good time etc etc.

(Detail not my strong point but throwing up my hands and asking for all sorts of help – now that’s my forte.)

She said yes – and I was very pleased. 

Anyway, on the day my carefully drawn plan was just a bit lacking in detail (a few stalls forgotten) but generally it worked. ( see above.)

The neighbour turned up, with her husband, at 8am, to do a couple of hours – and they were still there to do the clearing up at 8pm that night.

So, now she is one of those who joined in and is in charge of traffic marshalling and do you know what, it was very well organised this year.

(PS I heard that my predecessor drew up his plan of the stalls’ whereabouts the night before after having a few pre-Festivities drinks and again, do you know what, apparently, it worked fine…)

Two:

In order to be able to shut the main street for a day, we have to ensure that emergency vehicles have another route through.

Which in turn means we have to have marshalls at either end of the street to re-direct people – despite the signs people want to ask someone which way to go.

So, my in-charge neighbour was at one end of the street making sure cars were diverted when a woman approached with a car full of plants for the plant stall – she was at least a hour later than was specified by my email for getting vehicles unloaded and away from the street.

Now, the plant stall is a great seller and are usually cleared out by lunchtime – all locally grown and organised by the village horticultural society, so generally a good thing but some of the people who run it do seem to think they are exempt from the rules which work, apparently, perfectly well for the rest of us.

The driver was told she couldn’t go through because she had arrived after the street was shut, and every stallholder had been told to get their goods and cars off early before the march – and so she would have to park elsewhere.

The driver said (rudely) she was having none of that and drove at my marshalling friend, just by-passing her, and parked where she fancied.

There is a strata, or should it be stratum, of villagers who clearly view the hardworking volunteers running the festivities as the lower orders.

Welcome to village life.