November 2008

November 24th, 2008

The Alchemists

Such magic has been around me this week. Knitting time. Time to meditate. Winding time. Time for calm. Time for patience. A time to begin, slowly slowly, to transform what resides in the mind. There is simply no arguing with, nor hurrying along, tangled silk.



A green, forest path, an enchanted forest, an emerald forest, with paths of lichen and moss, willowy branches laden with crystalline leaves, rustling ever so gently as they sparkle on by. This magical silken forest will become a cardigan to drape the shoulders of a soon to be born daughter.



A favourite flower, the wild purple lupin, is the colour for Astrid. Hand dyed with natural dyes, a fine merino in dusty purple. The purple that sits at the edge of the sky waiting to become night. The purple before darkness. The purple before sunrise. A mysterious purple, a shifting purple, one of nature’s secrets. The bearer of the night. The bringer of the dawn.



And something for their mother, cashmere wrist warmers for winter, in the colours of deepest forest berry, colours for being stored away by winter squirrels. Colours for family from far away to gather, colours of mulled wine on Christmas eve, colours of baked fruit pie with vanilla ice cream, with cinnamon and spices. Richest deepest plum for winter warmth.

Somewhere I’ve read, maybe a few places I’ve read – one of the secrets of the Alchemists was that the turning of base metal into gold was a metaphor for the transforming of the mind, of turning the contents of the mind into ‘gold’. Imagine an empty mind, a still, quiet vessel  – containing but a pool of marvellous colours, shifting and changing. A deep pool of tranquil peace. A deep pool of serenity and beauty.

As I’ve walked over the Heath this past week I’ve been thinking about the dyers of these yarns and the beauty of the colours they create. That’s what’s been in my mind this week. A little bit of alchemy perhaps.

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November 14th, 2008

Astrid’s first (proper) word

Yesterday Astrid said her first word while they were all out at the zoo. She said Tiger. And she said it again last night just before seven when daddy asked if she said Tiger that day. Astrid said Tiger! And it was a real, proper, audible word!



Mornings before daddy goes to work and before Astrid gets dressed and has breakfast with mummy she sometimes has some of daddy’s cornflakes.

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November 13th, 2008

immer hin

There’s a phrase in german, immer hin, which means something along the lines of always going there, always getting there, always moving towards it. Immer hin. Yeah. Things might take a while but you’ll get there in the end. A little conversation @N00/2475855322/" target="_blank">about rhubarb cake reminded me of it recently.



I like immer hin you know. I like the idea of not giving up, unless something really is worth dumping by the wayside, but other things, other important things, to keep on doing them, working towards things, even if it’s just a bit every week; it all adds up over the years.

So this last week I’ve talked to the blog a lot. I’ve started thinking again. And I’m glad of that. Astrid and I have been out walking. Walking around the Heath. Over to Swain’s Lane, around past the ponds, up the hill, through the glade, traverse kite hill, down by the terrace houses, over the railway bridge and back home. I’ve given up on coffee for the time being. My nose has been blocked and my energy levels plummeted and I’ve been huffing and puffing barely really pushing the pram. Feeling as fed up as fed up can feel.

We watched a rainbow kite scoot across the cold blue sky. We watched it till the path curved around and we couldn’t crane our necks any further. We watched parched autumn leaves trip across the path, tumbling over and over, their journeys still underway as they pass us. We watched the wind blowing in the trees and we watched the leaves raining down. We saw green leaves, yellow leaves, brown leaves, grey path, happy dogs, barking dogs, playful dogs, blue sky, windy sky, grey clouds, white clouds, big fields, green grass, muddy paths, groves of trees. We ate exciting pan au raisin and we ate not as exciting carrot cake.

Astrid points while I narrate. Most sentences end in little pot, or little chop. Look! It’s a rainbow kite little pot. Shall we get you a kite for christmas little pot? Astrid will point. Yes, it’s brown leaves little pot. In the back of a kubota mini truck thing, little chop. Do you know mummy knows the 1970s theme song from the Kubota ads little pot? Mummy knows a lot of jingles from new zealand from the 70s and 80s. She must have watched an awful lot of television, little chop.

And so the blocked nose just got all too much and the tiredness and the puffedness and the running up and down the stairs and shouting every time the phone went and being bloody fed up and being in a really bad mood. A Really Bad Mood. Saturday morning I decided I was a complete failure so the heath walk narrative to Kevin as we walked past the running track, began this week, this morning as I lay on the sofa not wanting to get up and move I decided I was a complete and utter failure because I’ve never finished anything and I’m always just ok at everything, never really really good. Always quite good, but never really great, I can just never be bothered putting in enough effort to be really fabulous at anything. But Kevin got me up off the sofa and out of the house, and up the road where the narrative begins, and I said well, it’s these stupid damn new age books I was brought up on that tell you you can do anything if you put your mind to it. And you can be the greatest at everything in the world if you want to and Kevin said well, that’s true, which I suppose it is, but I was just so pissed off that there’s all this stuff that says you’re meant to be so great all the time. And you can do anything you can dream of (which I agree with). Anything – but so often these were suggested as being such lofty goals. So you’re meant to be a multi millionaire with your own empire and this and that.

So there’s this great big tug of war where I have set my ambitions a bit lower than best in the entire world firewalk with me Antony bloody Robbins and I’m wrestling with myself that maybe I’ve set my ambitions too low, or that I failed because I haven’t got my empire yet. And I’m not a multi-millionaire when i really should be, because if I am supposed to be able to have everything I can dream of then why am I not all this stuff? And this all boils down to Charlotte in her previous life taking the red pill and her ambitions changed although the mind hasn’t really caught up yet. Charlotte used to be a very good corporate cog, taking her sharebroking papers, wearing nice Charles Jourdan boots, with Lisa Ho black outfits, driving her shiny blue Fiat uno with a personalised plate, working late, feeling happy for giving her soul to a company so she can get given flowers for working late and being a Very Good Girl. And finding herself several years later at a company dinner at The Banqueting House in Whitehall standing up clapping for a Very Right Wing Politician, having no idea who he is, only to find out later and feeling horrified she didn’t actually walk out then and there.

So back to the running track, and the narrative. And this week pondering all these thoughts, the blocked nose, the draining of all the energy. And all this mad running around without stopping to think about anything. And realising I’ve not really thought about much of anything for many many years. And thinking that winging it on my intuition would be fine. When really it was just winging it. And being too lazy to think. (And also being saved as if by magic by my intuition on many an occasion. So thanks intuition. You do deserve credit.)

And I was so annoyed at myself for having given away all control of my life to other people, happily being told what to do, being told what’s important to me, where I should live, why I need to do this and that. And I was so mad with myself, because I had just gone along with it – and never really stopped to sit down and decide what I wanted. So it was high time I came up with my own life plan. To really decide what I want. Where I want to set my ambitions. What I want to do. Things I want for our family. And I must remember for next time the story of the humble japanese potter and gardener. And those kind of ‘ambitions’. That kind of philosophy. And not the grandiose new age you can do it book ambitions. Because that’s what I want to think about. That’s what I want to base the life plan on.

I remember when I was eighteen, my life plan was to be an interior designer. I would have a simple modern clean all white home, and a yellow porsche. A 911. Nothing fancy. A bit of rust would be fine. And I’d still like that (although I might change some of my colour preferences). So this week I decided to work out my life plan. But first I needed to recover. So I sat down yesterday evening and just breathed through my nose, and made myself do it. And eventually I could breathe through my nose again. This morning I had enough energy to go up the road twice in a row because Astrid needed her warm coat for the zoo. And today I’ve knitted on the sofa and drunk tea. And eaten oven fries with tomato sauce and mayonnaise.

Tonight I will roast organic beef from Pomona and cook using the new cast iron pans that arrived yesterday. I will practice my breathing. I will focus on slowing down. I will do my life plan over the next few weeks, but my immediate goal is to simply breathe and to slow down.

We’ll get there in the end. We are here now.

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November 6th, 2008

just in case anybody wants to know

We left all our pots and pans behind in the assumption we’d magically be able to afford a set of Le Creuset when we got here. Instead we’ve been living with a £5 set of crap from IKEA, which keeps food colder than the plates do.

Anyway, they must be discontinuing the colourway, but the satin blue range is all half price at amazon. Yesterday I picked up a couple of casseroles (I’ve been told not to buy the saucepans due to rusting handle inners), ramekins, a frying pan, two baking dishes and a mixing jug for just over a hundred quid.

This is all part of The New Interest In Food that is taking place in this household, since again, with this pregnancy too, I completely forgot how to cook around 22 weeks. So I am very excited about new pans and baking things, ready for a bit of a food blogging run perhaps.

Right. I’m going downstairs to rug up and knit a little cardigan.
Still haven’t shaken this cold.

note: I am not resting downstairs at all – I have now decided to have a massive clear out.

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November 3rd, 2008

us and the bump we go walking

Lovely Shops has been updated including Yvestown + Shinzi Katoh, an amazing exhibition of creatures, the new Cath Kidston site and some rather delicious body creams at Beauty Expert.



Did I mention I now have a terrible cold? This is on top of losing my voice a few weeks ago, not to mention the nocturnal vomiting and daytime nausea of last week. As Lorraine said this morning as I dropped the newly emerged devil-child off – “Welcome to London”. I’d forgotten my New Zealand immune system took some building to get back to UK levels. Astrid got the cold last Tuesday. I got it on Saturday. And yes, Astrid is now totally grown up and doesn’t need the highchair which means she can run around whilst eating dinner, or, if we do decide she does after all *have* to sit in the high chair, she can scream at a pitch that rattles the rafters until she’s nearly sick, pause to ensure she isn’t sick, then resume screaming.

We know this will only last a week or two – as did the “I’m never ever ever going in the pram again I am going to walk everywhere, no, no actually you are going to carry me everywhere even if you are six months pregnant” phase. You see she does get her stubbornness from somewhere, and for now grown up fish beats baby goat – although I will not be rating my chances much when she’s got a bit more heel-digging practice in. Did I mention babychops ii is also destined to be a little goat?

This is all a lot of fun with a cold and a huge bump that is now requiring quite a bit of effort to carry around all day while we walk across the Heath – up to Kenwood – up through the woods to Hampstead. To buy lovely paperwhites and hyacinths for the kitchen. At a lovely little shop in Flask Walk, who so loved my little card purse they would now like to stock some please. Then down the hill a bit for coffee from Carluccio’s and three slices of ham to go with the baguette bought earlier from Forks in Swain’s Lane before we got our morning coffee from Kalendar – home of the divine redcurrant cheesecake.

So much coffee I’ve decided to buy an espresso maker after I left mine – along with some very beautiful handmade plates I bought at Liberty back in the late 90s when Liberty Had Really Good Sales – at my old flat over the road. For some peculiar reason I forgot to pack properly and left all sorts of nice things behind. Or was it that I did a bit of shedding, some leaving-behind on purpose of many worldly posessions, of reminders of my previous life. I even left a name behind when I left that flat. While I’m in random thought mode I have in fact been thinking about that phase of my life a lot lately. I was talking to Kevin about it as we walked over the heath to Swain’s Lane. But that really is a story for another day. In fact it’s a thousand stories. It’s another blog. With another name. The name that got left behind that day. The day I left my plates behind. The day the espresso maker was abandoned, along with nearly everything else bar a few boxes of fabrics and clothes and photos. The day, dare I say it, the day I grew up.

So where were we? Yes, baguette and ham, paperwhites and hyacinths. And now while I miss Auckland a bit – I do – I miss our friends and the beach and I miss that they are now having Spring and we’re not. But I love that we can walk one way to one little village, then through what is in effect countryside in the middle of London, up to another lovely village – and it’s all marvellous and civilised and pleasant and pretty. And we are all quite content on our little walks. Us and the bump.

And all that delicious coffee.

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