Looking ahead

January 1, 2009

The new year feels like a fresh start as I walk through silvery streets in the early hours to meet daughter number two off the free New Year’s Eve night bus.

The garden is preserved in ice like frozen aspic. And the late rose I snip before breakfast, in thermal socks and clogs, is a frosted powder puff of petals. The earth is hard, but I’m not unhappy the squirrels find it challenging to dig up the tulip bulbs. I will be generous though and put out nuts and seeds for the undeserving beasts.

I don’t compile lists of new year’s resolutions because there are too many elements of my life that could do with fine tuning and better application. I am going to settle for just one: a bicycle. It will keep me fit and get me from A to B in a slow and carbon friendly way.

The bike must be the sit up and beg variety, even though it’s more the maiden aunt going out for a sedate pedal-look, rather than the groovy young thing on fast and smart alloy wheels. I’m going the secondhand route, but if I had the funds, I’d be on a spanking new Pashley Princess, complete with gold lined mudguards, ding-dong bell, leather sprung saddle, skirt guards and a wicker basket.

Dodging the sales crowds, and ten deep queues outside Yves st Laurent, on a trip into town the other day, it seems that Londoners are heeding mayor Boris Johnson’s declaration that it is our patriotic duty to keep shopping throughout the recession. I’m not so sure if it means yet another designer handbag. Even if it’s 75% off, what’s the point when there are already three more clogging up the wardrobe?

I think it’s the small luxuries, that cheer you up in hard times. Indeed, recent sales figures from the world’s big cosmetic companies, L’oreal, Beiersdof and Shiseido, confirm the so-called lipstick effect has returned with consumers increasing their spending on cosmetics even while economising on everything else.

Barry M, No52, lip paint (shocking pink) and a good read are favourite pick-me-ups. I am gripped by Wendy Moore’s Wedlock an intricately researched tale about the terrible marriage made by the Countess of Strathmore. It lives up to the blurb on the jacket ‘how Georgian Britain’s worst husband met his match’ with bloody duels, great hairstyles, abduction, deception and betrayal in every paragraph.

The Maurice Sendak inspired drawing is fabulous in An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton who encourages children and adults to follow their dreams of rocket powered unicorns, and magic watermelon boats rather than mobiles and matching sets of silverware.

There is pear and ginger cake for pudding:

CAKE
125g softened butter
125g caster sugar
125g self raising flour
2 large eggs
4 tbsps ginger syrup
4 knobs preserved ginger, chopped
9-16 inch cake tin

SYRUP
90g butter
90g sugar
2 tbsps ginger syrup
4 large pears
juice 1 lemon

1 Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the syrup and sugar. Beat until creamy and a pale toffee colour. Pour into the cake tin lined with grease proof paper.

2 Peel, core and slice the pears, turning them in the lemon juice. Arrange the slices around the base of the tin .

3 Pour all of the cake ingredients, except the ginger, into a mixer and whizz until smooth. Add the chopped ginger and spread the mixture over the pear slices.

4 Bake at 190C for 45 minutes (approximate, as this will depend upon your oven). If the top browns reduce the heat. A skewer plunged into the middle will emerge clean if the sponge is ready.

Remove from the heat and cool on a rack. Serve with lashings of cream , creme fraiche, or ice cream.