Newsletter

So much for the mention last month of my upcoming April interview with virtuoso author Anna Hope at the wonderful FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival, which is now like every other such event across many countries cancelled due to COVID-19. Can we do anything to counteract this crisis apart from frequent hand-washing, wearing a face mask, staying six feet away from others and not hoarding groceries? I think we can—turn the tide and dissipate the fear. Or at least, I am willing to try.

One of the great perks of living in Oxford is having the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival, which runs from March 27th until April 5th, on your doorstep.

Continuing with last month’s “eat, sleep, work and play theme,” I want to introduce you to the fun-loving soccata. Apparently it’s similar to an Italian frittata, a dish made from beaten eggs with the addition of other flavourings such as cheese, peas or potatoes. A soccata, however, replaces the eggs with chickpea flour to form a pancake-like base known as socca.

Happy New Decade! 2020. While I always celebrate a new year, the prospect of a new decade leaves me simply awestruck. A ten-year span? That’s room to breathe, to think, to grow, to imagine; to create and recreate. In ten years’ time, anything could have happened.

Recently, a friend and past teacher of mine from Oxford University Continuing Education, award-winning author Rebecca Abrams, spoke and read from her brilliant new work before an audience at Brasenose College.

A “wake-up call” is what the newscaster said this morning in reference to the horrendous fate suffered by 39 Vietnamese migrants found dead in a refrigerated container on 23 October in Purfleet, Essex, England.

October! The last quarter of 2019 already, and what a tremendous year it has been. I love this month because now we see the very last of the summer light while the gold and red of the turning leaves heralds the soon-to-be holiday festivities…

Last month I wrote about a Japanese measurement: handheld. Having not thought about this in ages, I revisited it again. Handheld—simple, small, intimate, caressing. It reminded me of my netsuke, a gift, an afterthought really, bought for me in an antiques shop in St Anton, Austria, from a proprietor who momentarily eyed me, weighing the odds. Was I the rightful owner?

“Fancy a cuppa?”
The first time I heard that was from an English friend, who had to say it twice before I realised she was essentially asking me if I wanted to take time out for a cuppa tea and, as she would say, “a chin wag.” (I found it so easy to fall in love with English colloquialisms.) Obviously, over time, I learnt that you never take tea on the run. In fact, there is an entirely separate entry on the menu of almost any decent English café or hotel entitled “Afternoon Tea,” which, if you don’t know already, involves thinly sliced sandwiches, scones (with jam and cream), and of course cakes. (This is where every British pastry chef cuts her teeth.)

Cicero observed in the first century, “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Does what Rome’s greatest-ever orator believed still hold true today? A garden and a book – everything I need?

Well, maybe. Gardens, and flowers in particular, have been brought into sharp focus for me recently. In one of the two manuscripts I am attempting to complete, it was pointed out that the small and seemingly inconsequential, but recurring, details about geraniums in the story might be important…