A Little Bit of Chocolate Does You Good: Marmite Chocolate

At first taste this is a very ordinary milk chocolate.
Not even so fancy as Cadbury Dairy Milk. But... it has a very interesting after taste.
Of Marmite.

Yum!
If you don't fancy the chocolate version try the crisps.

And if you don't know what Marmite crisps are about read this.

Switzerland: Lake Thun (possibly with a few references to the Chalet School books of Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

Map of the Thunersee

Last summer we went twice to the Thunersee which is one of the two lakes on either side of Interlaken. And yes, if you never thought about it before, Interlaken is between two lakes. Lake Thun is the left hand one. OK, the western lake. And Lake Brienz is the other one. Which I've seen but not visited properly and which, you have no doubt noticed, is not featured on this map.

Fans of the Chalet School books will know that Lake Thun is where the girls swim and boat in the summer term. They are regularly described as taking the mountain train down to Interlaken and then a ferry to a suitable beach.

One of the charms of the early Chalet School books is the detailed setting. They are set in the Austrian Tirol where Elinor Brent-Dyer spent an obviously happy holiday. She fell in love with the Achensee (Tiernsee in the books) and wrote vividly and convincingly about the countryside, the lake, the surrounding villages and the people.

Sadly when she decided to move her fictional school to the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland she didn't visit the area. Whether through lack of money or time, or whether she thought she could manage with guide book research I don't know. But it shows.

I have been reading these books since I was 10 and I really wanted to see Interlaken and Lake Thun. And now that I've been there I'm fascinated not so much at the number of mistakes (although there are plenty of those - like the railway line along the north shore of the lake rather than the southern side) but the number of omissions.

For example I don't recall the girls taking a proper trip on the lake; a ferry to Thun or Spiez and train back or vice versa. This is odd because the Chalet School books are full of expeditions: day trips, or half-term visits to places much further away than Thun. What a shame; there's so much to see.

Embroidery showing Schloss Thun

The only time I do remember a visit to Thun it was in the Chalet School & Barbara; the first Chalet School book proper to be set in Switzerland. In Barbara there was a series of trips arranged on the first Saturday of term.

The Lower Fifth form takes the ferry to Thun (that's about 2 hours on the boat) and then walks back to Interlaken "by degrees". Did Elinor know Lake Thun is 17.5 kilometres long (nearly 11 miles) I wonder? That's a long day for a group of schoolgirls.

Obviously there's no time for Lower Fifth to take in the town which is a shame because it's rather pretty and has a lovely castle.

We didn't spend very long in Thun itself partly because the centre of town was closed off for a music festival. However, after a bit of a battle with police barriers and having to turn back several times, we discovered the steps up from the old town, and the rather lovely pedestrian walkways around the castle, and eventually struggled up to the castle itself.

The castle is fascinating. It's full of all manner of stuff about Thun and the surrounding area from mediaeval weapons and coats of arms to modern artifacts. The embroidery shows not only the castle but also the arms of the town (the single star on a white band) and the arms of the canton of Berne.

And the castle is precipitous. Wow: there was no place for vertigo in the 12th century when they built this place! It was a wonderful hot sunny day and the views were just stunning in all directions but I'm afraid I couldn't drag myself up to the very top floor even for one more fabulous view. But then I had to struggle all the way down again. I'm just not made for climbing mountains and that's certainly what it felt like. Oh dear. I do wish they had lifts in mediaeval castles. Never mind a lift: a better hand rail on the stairs would have been a help.

One day we caught the ferry from Spiez, on the southern shores of the lake, to Thun. And the second day we caught the ferry from Thun to Interlaken. Such fun! It's lovely sitting on a comfortable boat with a glass of wine and a salami sandwich watching the world go by.

From the boat we saw the weird Niesen which is a small pyramid-shaped mountain that looms over the lake. It's really quite unusual and looks just like a mountain drawn by a child.

This is definitely somewhere to visit properly. There's a funicular railway which is bound to be scarey, and (and this is pretty amazing) the longest staircase in the world!

Trust me I'll be taking the funicular to the top even if it is scarey. But the staircase would certainly be worth a look. Whoever built a staircase up a mountain I wonder?

We were on a modern boat each day, but the ferry company also operates a traditional paddle steamer. The DS Blümlisalp was built in 1906. I found an interesting blog about her history and you can read it here. I've been on a paddle steamer on Lake Geneva and they really are beautiful boats. Lots of polished brass, and the huge engine that operates the paddles was fun to see.

The Blümlisalp was very popular  and very crowded on an August weekend. The modern boats were much less full and so more comfortable for us as we dawdled over a lazy lunch. There is one other advantage in taking the modern boat of course; you get a very nice view as you pass the paddle steamer.

DS Blümlisalp

   I had gained the impression from reading the Chalet School books that the Thunersee is hemmed in by mountains. It's not; it's a much softer landscape as you can see from my photographs. But the Achensee is and possibly Elinor just assumed the Thunersee would be the same.

Spiez with its castle and vineyards

It's a shame there was quite a lot of cloud because we couldn't work out which mountains these are in the distance. One of them must be the Monch because that's in the middle of a group of three: the Eiger, the Monch and the Jungfrau. I think we decided that on the left is a tiny glimpse of the Eiger, and then rather more of the Monch.

When I was reading the Chalet School books as a child it never occurred to me that it was pretty odd we only ever hear about the Jungfrau which features a lot. Everyone who sees it sighs about its beauty. As an adult it bothered me a bit, and since I've been to this part of Switzerland I have really wondered how come Elinor simply never mentioned the Eiger or the Monch. Even the most basic map shows all three of them. And if you go up to, say Grindelwald (an expedition for another day), it is impossible to miss the bulk of the Eiger. It does seem odd. I can just see some of Elinor's characters talking about how grim the mountain looks.

Anyway, the Thunersee is a great place to visit and we had two wonderful days on the lake but we have to go back. I really want to visit the Niesen and I really want to visit the gorgeous little Schloss Oberhofen. Neither of us managed to take a satisfactory photograph of this lovely building so I have borrowed this image from Wikimedia Commons. A friend who used to work in Adelboden tells me the garden is worth a visit too. And if you're lucky with the weather (we weren't quite lucky enough) there are some terrific mountains as a backdrop to this very pretty landscape.

You can see why we need to go back!

Paper Bags: Lord & Taylor Christmas

Lord & Taylor Christmas bag.

This was sent to me by my dear friend Lynn in Buffalo.

I'm afraid the photograph isn't very good. It was such a dark day I had to have the spotlights on and however I tried the light was reflected in the glass. I suppose I could have taken this down from the bathroom wall and found somewhere with better lighting, but I'm sorry to say that laziness and other tasks got in the way of that plan.

Anyway, Happy Christmas to everyone.

A Little Bit of Chocolate Does You Good: Nestlé Quality Street

Our stationery supply company sent us a tin of Quality Street for Christmas.

The waft of Christmassy chocolatey goodness when we opened it for the first time was amazing.

Quality Street was launched in 1936 by Mackintosh's but of course Rowntree Mackintosh was bought by Nestle in 1988. There are 12 different varieties in the tin, so something for everyone.

The Quality Street brand was named after a play by J M Barrie who wrote Peter Pan.

Books to Read Again: Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster

Daddy-Long-Legs (1912) is such a charming book. I found it in the school Fiction Library when I was about 14 and read it, and read it again. And I keep going back to it because it's such fun. Written in 1912 it's obviously going to be very dated, but it is so obviously a period piece that the sometimes strange details are interesting rather than annoying.

My current copy is a little Hodder & Stoughton hardback dated 1917. It once belonged to J Vernon Hean of Ashton-under-Lyne, who taught elocution and drama. He or she marked the opening chapter to show the LAMDA approved passage.

Daddy-Long-Legs was made into a movie in 1955 starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron. The film is really nothing at all like the book - for a start our hero finds our heroine in France (presumably to explain why Leslie Caron is French) rather than in an institution for orphans in Dutchess County New York state, and I found it a great disappointment. Maybe if I hadn't read and loved the book I would have enjoyed the film but it's too late now. Mary Pickford made a silent movie of the book, and another version starred Janet Gaynor and Warner Baxter. And weirdly (OK, weirdly to me) it seems to be hugely popular in South Korea! Who knew? Although, the plot of the 2005 Korean film that I read about on Wikipedia is (how can I put it) not even remotely like the book. Oh yes, and there's a Korean anime TV show from 1990 as well. 

To the book: Jerusha Abbott is brought up at the John Grier Home for orphans run by the unsympathetic Mrs Lippett. When she is 16 she is given the chance to go to college by one of the Trustees. He (we only know it's a he because he wants to be known as Mr John Smith and, of course, in 1912 Trustees would all have been men) only asks that his protégée write to him once a month to let him know how she is getting on. Jerusha reckons that John Smith is a name sublimely lacking in imagination and, having caught a glimpse of him leaving the John Grier Home, and seen his long thin spindly shadow, she nicknames him Daddy-Long-Legs. And once she gets to college she renames herself Judy.

Judy's adventures at college include playing basketball, studying english and chemistry, geometry and latin, reading Little Women (an American staple which I never read until I was older than Judy but then I'm not an American) and many other books for the first time, and suffering from a rather dreadful sounding sublingual gland swelling. Daddy-Long-Legs has not previously responded to any of her letters but sends a box of pink rosebuds when he gets her letter about the glands. I must say, I'd rather like to be sent a box of rosebuds if I were feeling ill. She enjoys herself enormously and does very well in her studies, winning and accepting a scholarship much to her benefactor's displeasure. He's a little bit too managing and obviously wants to be solely responsible for her upkeep.

Kite day at the orphanage

Judy spends her summers at Lock Willow Farm in Connecticut where, as it so happens, her wealthy room-mate Julia Pendleton's Uncle Jervis Pendleton spent much of his childhood. Fancy! And Uncle Jervis somehow creeps into the plot. Quite a lot in fact.  When I first read this I was caught by surprise at the end of the book but on re-reading it is quite obvious what's going on. Or maybe I am just a lot older now and it's less likely that a plot will sneak up on me....

Daddy-Long-Legs manipulates Judy in a way that modern readers may find distasteful. However, the plot has a very happy ending and there is a sequel in which it is obvious that the happy ending was no mere plot device. Well, obviously it was a plot device but it continues happy. And you can't really ask for more.

So, the sequel is Dear Enemy (1915) in which Judy's other college room-mate Sallie McBride is convinced to take on the massive task of managing of the John Grier Home. Sallie writes to Judy (spoiler: now Mrs Jervis Pendleton), to her admirer and sometimes fiance, Gordon Hallock, an aspiring politician, and to the local doctor Dr Robin MacRae who she finds extremely annoying and often addresses as her 'Dear Enemy'.

No prizes for guessing what happens in the end but along the way we have plenty of adventures with

orphans and Sallie is an interesting correspondent who finds (much against her initial judgement) that

Sallie institutes gardens for the orphans

she enjoys running an orphan asylum and very much wants to improve matters for her small charges. Sallie has a maid, Jane, and a chow chow called Singapore, and is not altogether approved of by most of the Trustees, but against all the odds she makes a terrific job of sorting out  the JGH and ends up enjoying the job far more than she expected.

When I bought this book and re-read it for the first time in years I was a bit staggered to notice how much the book focuses on health: fresh air (rather too much for my taste!) is all important, as is diet, and exercise but also there is much discussion of heredity. Well obviously it must be a good thing to have healthy parents, but to expect a small baby of 2 or 3 to have problems because his mother was an alcoholic, or to report that - of course - the daughter of a chorus girl flutters her eyelashes to get what she wants strikes me as going a bit too far. I have read other early C20th books where heredity and health are all important but this book takes things to extremes with poor Sallie forced into reading a great many improving books (which were highly thought of at the time) by Dr MacRae. I found it really annoying. However, on second re-reading (some years later) I brushed past all the improving thoughts and focused on the stories of the orphans and changes to the dreadful old regime at the orphanage which Sallie tries so hard to implement.

Jean Webster had a great friend who died of TB. She also fell in love with a man whose wife was a manic depressive and he was an alcoholic. They had a child who "showed signs of mental instability" whatever that meant. So obviously all these health matters very important to her, as well as being fashionable at the time she was writing. She was interested in women's suffrage, prison visits and orphanage reform. Very sadly she died in childbirth in June 1916. She was not quite 40.

Like Daddy-Long-Legs, Dear Enemy is very dated. But still very charming, full of great characters and a good read. Both books were illustrated by Jean Webster herself and the drawings, while not perhaps of great artistic merit, are full of life. Daddy-Long-Legs was supposed to have been illustrated by Judy as part of her letters to her benefactor, but no such claims are made for Dear Enemy.

If you come across either book do give it a try.

Sadie Kate, one of the orphans, has just had her pigtails chopped off by Jane

Tree Identification № 2: Cotoneaster



Cotoneaster is a genus of flowering plants with between 70 and 700 species. This seems a hugely vague thing to say but there's obviously something highly technical that makes plants possibly Cotoneaster and possibly not. And I probably don't know what it is.

At any rate there are a number of different types of Cotoneaster (and for those of you who don't know it is pronounced kəˈtoʊniːˈæstər rather than coton-easter) which flourish in this part of London.

There's the flat kind that grows along the ground or up walls which has tiny leaves and flowers on very straight stiff twigs, Cotoneaster prostratus. It seems to grow in every second garden around here. It's happy growing up against walls or under hedges and this year has produced a bumper crop of berries and some gorgeous autumn colour.

Then there's the sort that makes a very handsome hedge. I think it's probably Cotoneaster franchetii because that's what is usually sold as a hedging plant these days. It makes a beautiful hedge with tiny flowers much sought after by bees, and brilliant red berries. You'd think that the berries would be snapped up by the birds but they are usually to be seen well into the winter, even if it has been very cold and food must be scarce. The leaves are quite tough and leathery and about the size of a finger nail (although narrower) and have quite a pronounced point. The central vein is obvious but the lateral veins only really show if you hold a leaf up to the light. Some years C. franchettii has vibrant red autumn colour; this year many local plants have turned a rich crimson.


You can see that the year I took this photograph our hedge produced no autumn colour at all. But we did have a frost.

Many roads in Hampstead Garden Suburb still have the original hedges which were planted in the early years of the 20th century so Cotoneaster hedges can be spotted in Oakwood Road, Denman Drive, Blandford Close and Westholm. They are a welcome change from the now ubiquitous Privet and in fact make a good choice for a small front garden as you get a narrow hedge that doesn't bush out and take up too much room. Impatient modern gardeners want fast growing hedges of Laurel or Photinia or worse, Leylandii. Laurel and Photonia have large leaves which don't look good when you clip the hedge regularly, and as for Leylandii - there's no stopping it. Before you know where you are it's as tall as the house. But plant a little row of Cotoneaster and in a couple of years you'll have a well-mannered hedge that won't need cutting back every week, won't overwhelm your garden, and will benefit the local wildlife.

Also to be found in the Suburb are Tree Cotoneasters. This is simply a term for species of Cotoneaster

which will, as the word suggests, grow into trees. There are some planted as garden trees, but the most obvious are to be found in the section of Asmuns Hill between Willifield Way and Erskine Hill. When these houses were built in about 1909 - 1910 the street was planted with Tree Cotoneasters. No record of the Latin name was kept so it's not clear exactly which species was planted. However, these are quite short-lived trees and by the time I was taking an intelligent interest in street trees there were none left. The road was planted with a mix of pink flowering cherry and crab apples and birch; whatever happened to be available.

When the local Trees & Open Spaces Committee agreed a plan for street tree planting with Barnet Council, high on the list was replacing lost planting schemes so in the late 1990s first one, and then two or three Cotoneaster frigidus were planted in Asmuns Hill. I think C. cornubia was also planted. The planting is still mixed because you don't fell a perfectly healthy tree simply because it doesn't fit your planting scheme.  One day perhaps the road will look as originally intended.

                              

Tree Cotoneasters have narrow strap-like leaves (although essentially, er, leaf-shaped), perhaps 7cm long and quite leathery. The veins are quite pronounced giving a slightly quilted effect that doesn't really show in photographs. The white flowers come in clusters and are followed by bunches of pinkish red or bright red berries. The bark is a little like Cherry bark but it's not what you really look at. This is a handsome tree; its main attraction the mass of leaves and fruits although sometimes they seem too heavy for the slender trunk. 

Plenty of autumn colour this year

A Little Bit of Chocolate Does You Good: Villars Lait Café

Milk chocolate with coffee crispies.

Each square of chocolate has an edelweiss pattern on it.

Found at Geneva Airport.