Preparations for my Opa's Birthday

Still alive, dratted diss still not finished, hence still slaying dragons. *sigh*

In August my grandfather will celebrate his 90th birthday and we'll throw a party for him in our backyard (will the duckies & the ducky-poop be gone by then?). I'm responsible for the cake (or at least that's what I'm trying to tell my Mom - the whole party-planning thing is freaking her out). And because I've got those very, very cute tea cake & petit fous tins, I've decided I am going to bake several kinds of mini-cakes (red wine cake, egg liqueur cake, coconut & white chocolate cake, redcurrant cake) and some tartlets (oreo tartlets filled with tangerine cream, orange curd tartlets) as well as a big fruit cake. The great thing about those itty-bitty mini cakes is that you can bake them in advance and put them in the freezer. Take them out an hour or so before serving, let them defrost a little, then pop them into the oven for 5-10 minutes, and voilà - the fresh cake taste has been magically restored. :)

And because it's Opa's 90th birthday, I need some kind of elegant cake stand and colour-coordinate all the displays, right? Soooo .... have you ever seen those old, English folding cake stands? Well, I've just won one of those on ebay, and it's very pretty indeed, if you can trust the picture (well, I do hope you can trust the picture!) Have a look:

Isn't it pretty?

And now I have to slay some more dragons. Wish me luck!

Marginalia

As an academic you're supposed to underline passages in the books you read and scribble notes in the margins. So when you open my copy of Gaskell's North and South on page 66 (= end of Chapter VII), you'll find the following:

But when they removed to their new house in Milton, the obnoxious papers were gone. The landlord received their thanks very composedly; and let them think, if they liked, that he had relented from his expressed determination not to repaper. There was no particular need to tell them, that what he did not care to do for a Reverend Mr Hale, unknown in Milton, he was only too glad to do at the one short sharp remonstrance of Mr Thornton, the welathy manufacturer.

writes Gaskell, and Sandy has underlined the last sentence of this paragraph and added

shows Thornton's power in Milton
+from the very beginning he
cares :) & takes care of the Hales

I used to think that I had to make serious comments in the margins, comments that showed my academic insight. Notes in the margins, I believed, had to be serious and reflective, proof of my excellent understanding of the text. Perhaps you've already guessed from the smiley-face in the comment above that somewhere along the way I ditched this calm & serious approach. Therefore you'll also find comments like this in my copy of N&S:

Henry is a jerk!

serves as a commentary on this passage from Chapter L, when Henry Lennox tells Thornton:

"You think Miss Hale looking well," said Mr Lennox, "don't you? Milton didn't agree with her, I imagine; for when she first came to London, I thought I had never seen any one so much changed."

And,

Awww

was my comment on this sentence from Chapter XXVI, when Thornton has just been rejected by Margaret:

It would have been a relief to him, if he could have sat down and cried on a door-step by a little child, who was raging and storming, through his passionate tears, at some injury he had received.

Awwww, indeed!

The comments in the books for my romance seminar next semester are bound to be interesting. *ggg*

~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

My marginalia don't look quite as pretty as the one pictured above from the Gutenberg Bible of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. :)

Romance Goodies

Romance goodies are things like

• North & South + Richard Armitage
• Pride & Prejudice + Colin Firth
• North & South + Richard Armitage
• Northanger Abbey + JJ Field
• North & South + Richard Armitage (oops, I've already listed that one, haven't I? Oh yes, looka here; I've already listed it twice. My, my .... *g*)

And, of course, this:

• Georgette Heyer + Richard Armitage (Oh look! There's that name again! What a coincidence! *ggg*)

RA has a very pleasant voice and he's a fantastic reader and it's Georgette Heyer (!!!), so this audiobook is a real treat. Now I just have to figure out how to order the long audiobook version of The Lords of the North ...

Waaaargh! I wish, I wish, the stupid dragonz were all dead already!!!

Fantastic Finds

Remember my lovely new armchair for the library?

All this time I protected its seat with a pink woolly blanket from kitty claws. A very, very pink woolly blanket. In a lovely shade of pink which clashed uncomfortably with the reddish fabric of the armchair. Not goodz.

So I was on the look-out for another blanket when I found this lovely Clayre & Eef quilt on ebay:

This is the picture from ebay, which was originally even darker than this copy here. As a result the quilt looked somewhat drab, but! those itty-bitty flowers on the backside looked as if they just might be the same shade of red as the fabric of my armchair. Furthermore, the quilt was only 19,99 € (instead of 70 €). And so I finally bought it (took me three days of carefully thinking it over *g*).

Half an hour ago it arrived and, oh my gosh!, it's gorgeous! And the itty-bitty flowers on the back? They *are* exactly the same shade as the reddish colour of my armchair. :)

Me iz happy.

Blurb

'Tis the blurb for my romance seminar next semester. What do you think of it? Would it induce you to attend my class?

Every three seconds somebody in Britain buys a romance novel. In the USA romance regularly outsells every other genre, and while overall booksales are currently on the decline, romance sales are not only stable, they are rising. Nevertheless, until recently academia has either ignored romance as a genre of popular fiction, or has approached it with an appalling amount of ignorance and prejudice. However, things are changing: earlier this year a romance conference was held at venerable Princeton, and only a few weeks ago the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance was founded.

In our seminar we are going to explore the history of the genre in Britain, starting with the grandmother of modern romance fiction, Jane Austen's PRIDE & PREJUDICE. We will see how her world was later reinterpreted by authors such as Georgette Heyer, and how new subgenres of romance emerged in the twentieth century, making romance an ever more varied and complex cultural phenomenon. Special attention will be given to Britain's largest romance publisher, Mills & Boon, which celebrated its centenary last year.

Introducing ...

... Miss I-was-once-a-dishtowel Chiby-Kitty. She has got a sunny disposition (See her wide smile? That's how you can tell!) and likes romance (perhaps she secretly dreams of finding a handsome Signor I-was-once-an-dishtowel-with-pictures-of-rosemary&thyme-on-it Chiby-Cat!) (not that I have a dishtowel with pictures of rosemary and thyme on it. Poor little chiby kitty, she's in for a disappointment ...).

She is also musical.

See? There she is, sitting on the piano.

In the last picture it becomes also apparent that she isn't quite finished yet because stupid me threw away all my stuffing wool when we moved houses four years ago. Hence poor Miss Chiby-Kitty's flat appearance. But never fear, that's going to change in the hopefully not-too-distant future. :)

From Fiction to ... eh ... Fiction

The opening paragraph of the excerpt in the last post is closely modelled on the opening paragraph of the first chapter of Thackeray's VANITY FAIR. There are also echoes of something else, but I'm not going to gell, because that would be spoiling the fun. *g* So for now, here's what Mr. Thackeray had to say:

While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshinymorning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of MissPinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a largefamily coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by afat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of fourmiles an hour. A black servant, who reposed on the box beside thefat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drewup opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulledthe bell at least a score of young heads were seen peering out ofthe narrow windows of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acuteobserver might have recognized the little red nose of good-naturedMiss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over some geranium pots in thewindow of that lady's own drawing-room.

Miss Jemima is the nice younger sister of the nasty Miss Pinkerton, and I decided she should have a school of her own. Hence my Miss Pinkerton is Miss Jemima Pinkerton (not that she'll have a big part in either story, but still!).

Psssst ...

Do you wanna know a secret? Then come a little closer ...

... closer ...

*whispers* There it goes.

Spring 1817, somewhere north of the Tweed

When the century was still in its teens, and on one surprisingly sunshiny day in April, there drove up to rusty gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Lane, a large, battered coach, with two fat horses and a rotund coachman, his face mottled with hectic red. A scrawny youth, who sat on the box beside the rotund coachman, bit his nails, tugged at his sweaty hair, and scrambled down the box as soon as the coach drew up opposite Miss Pinkerton's spotted brass plate. St. Cuthbert's Academy for Young Ladies, it read with old-fashioned, un-neoclassical flourish. One corner was dented, and below the letters somebody had scratched a leering face. It might have been the depiction of a gargoyle, or perhaps the scratcher had simply not been used to working with brass. But the scrawny youth ignored these artistic endeavours altogether and instead pulled the bell, hard enough to make it bleat like a Doomsday trumpet. At the din, at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of the once stately brick house.

Indeed, the bell sounded loud enough to be heard even in Miss Pinkerton's private upstairs parlor, where she was presently entertaining two of her hopeful pupils with seed-cake and her usual parting speech. The latter typically covered topics such as The Evils Of The World Outside, Be True To Thyself, and Upholding the Spirit Of St. Cuthbert's Even & Especially In Times Of Adversity (this part also involved a discourse on the importance of Carrying Your Needlework With You At All Times).

Hope you liked it. :)



P.S.: You can sort of tell that I taught Thackeray last summer. *g*

Scholarly Weekend Activities

Researching English mummers' plays!

The English folk play dates back to the early eighteenth century. It's a seasonal visiting custom, which means the same play was performed on or around the same day year after year and the performers went from house to house and from pub to pub in their area. Most plays were performed between Christmas and New Year, but there are also records of Easter plays (Pace-Egg plays) and of Halloween plays (Souling plays). The latter are also characterised by the appearance of a Wild Horse character towards the end of the performance (in the Souling plays two different visiting customs have fused into one: the mummers' play and the hobby horse).

Mumming used to be a working-class custom and the participants were all men. In towns there were also boy teams, and in addition, larger towns and cities seem to have had more than one team (as you can imagine, each team tried to best the other *g*).

The most wide-spread type of mummers' play was the so-called Hero-Combat play ('cause there were characters with each other - obviously!) and guess what! St. George appears in most of them. :)

Here's a modern-day example of a Souling play. (Love the Wild Horse!!!)

Scholarly Weekend Activities

Spent the day reading Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT and brushing up my knowledge about Elizabethan theatre.

Monday Morning Musings

When I went through the blog listings of Sew, Mama, Sew!'s May Giveaway Day, I was struck how extraordinary this all is: here we are, in the middle of a world-wide economic crisis, when you hear nothing but more bad news on the news, and yet over 400 women from all over the world got together in order to give away handcrafted goodies and/or bits and pieces from their sewing/knitting/paper-crafting supplies. They gave away cute bags, adorable children's clothes, frilly tutus, pretty aprons, sweet stuffed toys, old lace and buttons, and brightly patterened fabrics for quilting. Many of these 400 women didn't even know each other, but they all hopped from blog to blog, left encouraging comments, praised each other's crafting results, and create warm, fuzzy feelings all around.

Female communities rock. :)

The big May Giveaway Day organised by Sew, Mama, Sew! has been wonderfully life-affirming, and I felt that in a way all the participants thumbed their noses at the flow of bad news that constantly surrounds us these days. You can bet that I'll take part in the next big Giveaway Day. Embroidered napkins, anybody?