talking points

[Wednesday]

Every week or so I have a one-hour French lesson in which my teacher and I chat about whatever subjects happen to interest me on the day. It allows me to feel European for a while, cross linguistic borders, and pretend Brex(sh)it didn’t happen.

It’s a bit like writing this newsletter, only I have to be sure I use the subjunctive correctly, and remember genders of nouns so that the adjectives line up nicely.

[Sunday, Bramley apple blossom and primroses courtesy of our allotment neighbour]

Obviously - it amuses me the way ‘obviously’ is so overused now that it’s often blindingly obvious that something is not at all obvious - there were tulips in this week’s conversation.

[Thursday]

It’s so hard to predict when peak tulip season will happen, but this week has been a pretty good one. We had a disaster last spring when many bulbs seemed to just disappear, but this year we have CCTV, electric fences and barbed wire round the raised beds. Just kidding, but we do have protective netting held up by a few sticks.

[Friday]

Although I ordered the bulbs myself, I am always surprised by what comes up. The previous September is so far off that I can’t remember what I ordered and we never manage to place labels or markers. I have to admit I do get ‘what was I thinking?’ moments when I see a tulip I consider to be boring, but once they are in a mixed bunch, I forgive them - and myself. I keep my tulip orders from year to year to see what worked and what didn’t, and I write myself memos on colours such as ‘more peaches’, ‘yellow!’, ‘mundane red’, ‘no such thing as too many Queen of Night’. I never get it perfect, but that means I can try again, fail again, and fail better, as Samuel Beckett no doubt wrote on his own bulb orders.

The daffodils have again been amazing, and I find I love them more and more each year. They don’t have the element of jeopardy that tulips bring, they are just incredibly sweet-natured, often sweet-smelling, and reliable. I add a few (obviously, my definition of a ‘few’ may not be everyone’s) each year so now we have really lovely mixes of creams, whites, lemons, oranges, pinks, limes in most bunches. I buy from Gee Tee, Peter Nyssen and the local garden centre where, if you hold your nerve in November, they eventually sell off huge sacks of daffodil bulbs at ridiculously low prices.

Apart from tulips, there’s been socks and suspense. It’s been a long time since I enjoyed a series on TV (too much misery and mumbling for me), but Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? was perfect viewing to accompany some sock knitting. Clever, witty, faithful to Agatha Christie’s work, with a great cast and some superb knitwear.

In fact, all of Will Poulter’s outfits were brilliant, so I looked them up and discovered they were off-the-peg from Stanley Biggs who also make a very appealing gansey.

I finished these socks as the tension ramped up and I lost the plot, as ever. (I stopped worrying about my tendency to lose plots after reading Raymond Chandler’s books - plot? what plot? - and decided it was the dialogue and details that mattered more.)

They go with the other pair in Paint Sock yarn which I knitted while watching the Beatles.

[1963]

I have regular phases of living and breathing Beatledom - obviously it’s a phase I am not going to grow out of, and nor do I want to - and this week has been full-on Fab Four whilst smocking in the studio. I could watch them all day long; the Christmas before I last I did just that and binge-watched the 7.8 hours of the Get Back documentary in two days. It’s also amazing what you can find on YouTube: hours and hours of footage and interviews and performances. As with tulips, though, I don’t love it all. I go for the 1963 to 1966 period with the best songs, the best hair, the best jokes, the best laughs (I supplement this with a selection from the White Album). I adore A Hard Day’s Night which was on TV recently - I think this is what triggered this latest phase - and am fascinated by their early years and how John and Paul wrote their songs. Craig Brown’s book is good on these bits, and stands up to a second reading.

Another Factory Dress has just come off the production line as has, quite appropriately, a Foreman jacket for Simon.

[Crossley’s, Halifax, 1959]

The Factory dress is probably my favourite pattern ever, and always makes me think of mill and factory workers in the 1940s and 1950s in Lancashire and Yorkshire. I once worked in a Reddish mill packing anoraks, and spent several university holidays in an Eastlight factory putting together files for filing cabinets. I can’t say I wore anything as nice as Factory dress to work there, though.

There we are, then. A few of this week’s talking points.

There may not be a newsletter next weekend. If not, I’ll be here again the week after.

Happy Sunday!