Round About a Pound a Week

My thoughts on Round About a Pound a Week have been circling and now I think they have settled. I've been living my twenty first century life and thinking about their lives, seeing where my thoughts fit into their lives.

My first jolt was when house hunting last week. We're thinking are they big enough for us and maybe more if we were to grow as a family? Yet how many people lived in these same terraced houses? How large were the families? How many families - perhaps two to what were then two up two down. When they were built were the property developers aware of the cramped conditions people would endure? If the government had played a more central role would larger houses have been built? Would they have limited the sub letting?

"But, when all is said and done, these reforms could do very little as long as most of the present buildings exist at all, or as long as a family of eight persons can only afford two, or at most three, small rooms to live in. The rent is too dear; the houses are too old or too badly built, or both; the streets are too narrow; the rooms are too small; and there are far too many people to sleep in them."

Many of our blogs, my conversations with friends and family about cooking. I love having the time to sit and read cook books to decide what to cook or bake, yet as Maud Pember Reeves notes

"So much has to be done each day. The Lambeth woman has no joy in cooking for its own sake."

These are the women who enable the Jocelyn Playfairs to write the books we read. These women still have hopes, dreams, intelligence yet no time or space or materials to share them. Our female authors may feel trapped - how more so do these women feel. Can there be differing levels of feeling trapped and if so does it make any difference?

"All these women, with perhaps, the exception of Mrs K., seemed to have lost any spark or humour or desire for different surroundings. The same surroundings with a little more money... and a little less to do, was about the best their imaginations could grasp. Mrs K. liked being read to... It roused her imagination in a way which was astonishing. She questioned, she believed, she accepted."

There is so much to say about this book but I'll finish by saying read it and keep this quote in your mind as you read it.

"They are respectable men in full work, at a more or less top wage, young, with families still increasing, and they will be lucky if they are never worse off than they are now."

First Signs of Spring

It's coming... We can feel it in our bones...

'First signs of spring. Thaw. The sleepy air smells of buttered pancakes and vodka as at shrovetide. A sleepy, oily sun blinking in the forest, sleepy pines blinking their needles like eyelashes, oily puddles shining at noon. The countryside yawns, stretches turns over and goes back to sleep.' Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago

springtime

Hope you enjoy the first signs of spring this weekend.

Women and the War

Having had Virago Reading Week and Persephone Reading Weekend so far this year and Tuesday being International Women's Day. A passage about Women, home and wartime from A House in the Country, by the ever wise Tori.

"Everyone speaks of the test of war, which takes many different forms. For women there is the test of courage, to go with men into danger, bear hardship and discomfort, to work all days in factories, to be tired and perhaps afraid. But for me I think that to stay at home, to be unnoticed, to do the same things, to be bored, to be tired by work which no one sees, to live in the same way that you have always lived, with only the difference that it is upon you that all the work will now fall, there, I think, is the most severe test of all." Jocelyn Playfair A House in the Country

Phenomenal Woman

So here was the poem that they posted, more for my archives than anything else.

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms,
the span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally,
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
....
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally woman,
That's me.

....

I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun in my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Maya Angelou
jump balloons, wind

Wishing you a phenomenal day x

Phenomenal Woman

To celebrate International Womens' Day Clare, Aisling and Angie asked a variety of women to send in their thoughts. Do pop along and read the thoughts offered.

How will you be celebrating International Women's Day?

I hold her heart in mine

Great Uncle Henry is GreyGran's brother in law. Alas she was unable to make the celebrations. She's too frail and suffers from dementia. My soft spot for her grows each time I see her, and it was pretty big to begin with. Even though dementia was setting in when Warmth and I married it was the one piece of current information which she knew. She celebrated our wedding day with us. And that memory is one that makes the day even more precious. Her last family event.
Last time we saw GreyGran we sat and held her hand for an hour. Each of us with one of our hands in hers, sometimes she stroked our hands, sometimes we stroked hers. Words don't come easily any more so holding hands said more than any words could possibly have said.

"I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine." Charles Dickens David Copperfield

it's mary ruffle
Yes, as we held each other's hands. We held each other's hearts too.

Great Uncle Henry

So today we're off to celebrate Great Uncle Henry's 100th birthday. He still lives by himself in the home he and his wife bought over fifty years ago in Bow, East London.

A quotation about how we change through life seems appropriate today.

..."there is no such thing as a coherent human personality. When you are forty you have no cell in your body that you had at eighteen. It was the same, he said, with your character. Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old persona, renewing and moving on. You are not who you were, he told her, nor who you will be." Sebastian Faulks Charlotte Gray

we heart it

Happy Birthday Henry x

The Month of February

A relaxing Kentish Countryside weekend at home. Popping in to see Granny - holding her hand for an hour. A 'Clear up Christmas' Saturday lunch, clothes shopping with mum, A 'Chinese New Year' takeaway followed by playing Chinese Chequers. A brisk Sunday morning walk followed by coq au vin and Queen of Eve's pudding.
The first farewell for a dear friend who's leaving for New York at Bedford and Strand for old times sake and then Great Queen Street for a British food extravaganza.
A Forest Hill supper with friends who live here too. How lovely to be able to walk there... and back. I'd decided to make Florentine's - oops should have made them a little earlier. Touch and go whether the chocolate would have hardened enough in time...

Valentine's Day
Eating Julia Child's Beef Bourginon - oh it is delicious. Exchanging bookish gifts. From me to Warmth The Food Thesarus (well that was more a joint gift) and Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel Garcia Marguez. Warmth to me Julia Child's Cookbook and my very own copy of Julie and Julia.
Buying a new camera...
Finding a great pair of purple suede LK Bennett kitten heels for £60.
A great Friday night out. I started out wishing we were staying in, this increased when entering the bar but then... We had a seat. And the in house band started playing and it was just a great evening.
Final farewell for the dear friend, who's leaving for New York, at The White Swan a lovely small pub that she hired out for the evening.
Visiting other dear friends and their three week old baby...
Eating alot of cake in one day - four slices of four different types - oops! Delicious.
Oh the joys of Liberty Stationery room.....
Off to Worthing to visit Granny Warmth and delve into the Warmth family archives. Looking at very old marriage and birth certificates. Enjoying finding out about their family history.
On to Brighton Hotel du Vin and the most gorgeous hotel room with roll top bath and walk in shower. I didn't want to leave...
A Persephone Reading Weekend. We were out alot but it was still a PRW. One of the house viewings we went on had a row of Persephones. On Saturday we visited Twin and the Blessings and she has most Persephones and is the reason I know about theme too. Although I couldn't read many posts on the internet I joined in by reading my book!

Reading A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair for Persephone Reading Week. Sense and Sensibility for Book Club. Round About a Pound A Week by Maud Pember Reeves for Persephone Reading Weekend.
Films watched Milk
Baked - Delia's Ginger Nut biscuits - most eaten that night. ooops. Nigella's Florentine's. Eat Me Cookie Girl's Chocolate and Hazlenut muffins. A repeat of Hummingbird Bakery Fruit Nut Loaf.

Round About a Pound a Week

I haven't finished Round About a Pound a Week yet but I'm already finding it fascinating.

"Had they been well housed, well fed, well clothed, and well tended, from birth, what kind of raw material would they have shown themselves to be?" Maud Pember Reeves Round About a Pound a Week

This was first published in 1913. Polly Toynbee's 2008 introduction to this book.

'Social mobility has ground to a halt in the last twenty-five years. Birth is now almost certainly destiny. Some people may escape - but only in the same sense that some people may win the lottery....Britain now has the same distribution of wealth as it had in 1937 - and it's going backwards. At the present pace of growing inequality, we will return to 1913.' Polly Toynbee

A House in the Country

I think I can now answer the 'Who are your most likeable characters in a Persephone novel?'

Cressida and Tori

'Kindness.' Cressida echoed his words. 'But it is so easy, Tori. Kindness is the simplest thing in the world.'
'For you, yes!' Tori said ... 'For you it is easy to love, to be kind, because always you have the will towards kindness. But for everyone it is not so. I would say that there are a thousand, a million persons in the world for each one who is truly kind. For kindness means more than just - just the absence of unkindness! There are, perhaps, not as many as one unkind person in every million. But it is not enough just to be not unkind.' Jocelyn Playfair A House in the Country

The Steward

They are both kind. They are both intelligent. They both love. They are both welcoming.
Who is your most likeable Persephone character and why?