Christmas time again

Sreepur Cards

I was going to urge you to buy these beautiful cards for Christmas, but they are sold out. Maybe next year. What an amazing set up though, I would have bought the cards just to frame them for myself.

I always make my own cards and am trawling for ideas as we write, luckily I have pared my card list to the bone so I only have to make around 20.
My present list is pretty minimal too, as I go away I tend to only give to those I see i.e, colleagues in my department and close family. This year is as follows;

• Daisy, tickets to see an Inspector Calls plus a meal out
• Kitty, trip to Lille Christmas market plus spending money.
• Lucy, tickets to see The Priory at The Royal Court, plus lunch in the wonderful cafe below.
• Mother, I have bought some fair trade beads from Africa to make her a necklace, plus hopefully a small still life painting.
• Julia, she is a tough one, she does have an Amazon wish list cluttered full of some of the worst DVD's you could ever hope to find at the bottom of a jumble sale box of left overs. The list is sprinkled liberally with books from her other two passions in life, witchcraft and cooking roadkill* I did try to locate a book that would maybe combine these skills something like 'How to spit roast the local witch' or 'pickling toads and broom sticks' sadly such a book is still waiting to be written. Last year I ended up buying her daughter a very generous voucher to a gruesome Goth shop on Goodramgate, when I presented it Julia's bottom lip quivered and she actually asked where her present was, so this year sod it I will buy them both a crate of local Meade!

Daisy and Kitty had initially opted for a new phone and an iPod respectively, I told them to smile sweetly at their father who told me only a few weeks ago that he was broke and was saving to buy a house and a car. Two weeks later I discover he has high tailed it to Vietnam on tour with his friend. bear in mind he has just spent a month on honeymoon in Australia and you will see why I sent them in his direction. It is his job to spend the big bucks, if he has any left!

*Julia is really brilliant at making edible the stuff from hedgerows and fields. Clear jelly's and various cordials are her speciality. She is also a BIG fan of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall having been to two of his teaching days at River Cottage

Jean Francois Rauzier

This show is about to open at Waterhouse & Dodd, it looks stunning. I love the setting and the style is not dissimilar to the Jane and Louise Wilson image I saw at Frieze, which also had that hyperealist feel to it.

A week in the life of food

I take the train to work every day which gives me time to read The Guardian. I love skimming through the articles in a way I could not do on the web. However I was left speechless by this trite piece of crap, which despite the papers mantra, smacks just a little too much of the incoherent babbling of a self satisfied middle class white boy, so far removed from reality it defies belief that this paper pays his wages.
If ANYONE needs to write this article it should be a parent, (the one that cooks when they get in from work) because we all know that you could never substitute a shepherds pie with kedgeree! seriously my children can detect an undercooked onion before the fork hits the mouth let alone swapping beef for smoked haddock! Despite all three having the same upbringing they all have very, very different tastes. A more useful article would be ' how to feed three children the same food without cooking three separate meals'.
I am also hamstrung by the following;

• No cooking with alcohol.
• No pork of ANY kind.
• No mince.
• The au-pair using the last of any ingredient I planned to use that night ( I know you will not sympathise with that one but she is a serious pain in the butt and her food inedible)

Now read his suggestions again and you will see why I would like to punch him.
The reason I work with a very narrow repertoire of dishes is
a) they work
b) they are quick
c) they can be adapted.

Monday: Leftovers from Sunday roast re heated in gravy and poured into a large Yorkshire pudding.
Tuesday: Chicken curry, (although Leyla will not eat this, I can adapt it by leaving off the sauce and doing it with egg fried rice)
Wednesday: Burgers made with homemade chopped beef mixed with fried onion breadcrumbs and an egg. If they are really lucky now the oven is fixed I may serve them with oven chips!
Thursday: Homemade pizza made with a packet bread mix, this is easy because you can adapt the toppings, with a prevailing wind I have been known to get away with tuna and sweetcorn.
Friday: either a ready meal, or if that option has been used up then the easiest stop gap is pasta. I fry an onion with garlic then blend them into a tin of tomatoes and mix that into the pasta with a couple of spoons of marscapone cheese.
Snacks include eggy ,scrambled egg on toast or fried egg on toast. Kitty is addicted to Super Noodles which she is allowed once a fortnight!
Weekend, I am FREE, because they go to their nans/dads and GORGE on all things piggy.
Leyla then eats her favourite food in the world, and it is surprisingly delicious, jacket potato cooked in the microwave and then peeled and mashed with butter with cold tuna and sweetcorn mayonnaise folded in. Don't knock it till you've tried it!
Emin likes my seafood pasta, and I do a mean one pan roast, which gets us through the weekend.
Last night I pushed the boat out and made spag' bol' from scratch.
I have tried other foods but get short shrift from the kids.
So you see Mr Fort, we stick to what we know because it works, so shove it.

Talking of food, if you have made it this far, I am in complete awe of Simply Breakfast
I eat the same breakfast everyday, seriously for 5 days I wrap in a paper towel 2 toasted teacakes smothered in butter and eat them cold, washed down with a coffee. How on earth she conjures up such a range of different breakfasts is a source of wonderment to me. I guess time is one factor. Between 6am and 7am I prepare two packed lunches and 3 breakfasts before running upstairs to get ready in 15 mins. but I am pretty sure even with the whole morning stretching ahead I would revert to type and just eat them hot instead!

The view from here

Driving to Crawley for Leyla's competition we passed through some amazing sky's as dawn broke. We have to be there for 8am despite the fact they do not fight until after 11am.

After Friday's storms the trees are nearly stripped naked now.

I am a very happy passenger, I am very lazy and prefer to let others drive, I find driving quite stressful especially in London where everyone seems to want to be somewhere yesterday. My sister says I drive like an old lady and frankly I am happy to be that way.

I learnt to drive very late. It was only after having Kitty that I could not face using public transport with two children under the age of 3. I do not think it is much easier now, but then you had to collapse the buggy, which when you are trying to coax a recalcitrant 3 year old to behave plus grapple with the greasy maggot that was Kitty getting on a bus was way too stressful. So I bit the bullet and passed my test. From day one I felt like I was driving a loaded weapon, I always expect the worst, but despite a prang or two my few years behind the wheel have been uneventful.

I did for the first few years drive around England a lot. I hate being in the house and loved the freedom of the open road, I would take Daisy and Kitty to the seaside or for walks in the country. Now petrol is too expensive and I can no longer afford a car. but sometimes it is nice to sit back and enjoy the ride.

What I wore in the rain today

What I wore in the rain today
Originally uploaded by theviewfromhere indigo16

As you can see I am as snug as a bug!

Finally I am warm

I know talking about the weather makes me sound like my mother, but hey if the cap fits... 5inches of bloody rain meant I just had to have.. This coat. Thank GOD for Uniqlo I had lent my rain proof +J coat to daisy and then went to Bromley to finally pick up my boots. The cobbler had done an amazing job, buoyed up by this I spent £50 on the dog, a rain coat a fleece and a new lead. he has chewed up 2 so far. What is it with dogs and their need to chew all but the toys they are given?

So too scared to ruin my wool coat I wore my mac, it was FREEZING and very wet, we went into Uniqlo to buy his niece a fleece, I saw this and worried I might look like this but my fears were unfounded, even Emin gave it the thumbs up, and so I have lived through the weekend toasty and warm. Walking the dog in his smart new coat is a pleasure....a very warm one for now.

Spent Sunday watching Leyla fight at a Taekwondo competition, she came second, yeah, she has finally cracked it I think. I 'filmed' it.. not. I actually must have not pressed the right button and so all we have is a brief snippet and then nothing. Guess who is in the dog house?

I took an amazing book to read to stave off the boredom and take my mind of the thrashing she was going to get. It is not pleasant watching your own child fight, other children are quite amusing especially the very small boys, but it is a very aggressive sport, with a LOT of casualties.

The book is called Seven Days In The Art World. a brilliant read, I am half way through and will be regaling you with snippets for the foreseeable future.

Wish List

I have only just cleared my last wish list and now it is rapidly filling up again. One of the people that showed us around the flats in Berlin remarked that when in London he fell in love with all the bookshops. I was surprised, as there seemed to be plenty in Berlin, especially art book shops in the galleries.
I have often envied anyone who lives in America, Photo-eye is a classic example of all that is good about books available in America, luckily some seem available here too and so... this one will probably be bought fairly soon

This one sadly will not, it is a lovely book with some beautifully evocative images. I must thank What Possessed me for finding this artist.

I covet the classics too, like this beautiful book on Sudek's still life photography.

I have been a huge fan of Bert Teunissen's work in the past and this book really resonated with me. Not dissimilar to some of my images, it has helped me realise that I need to find my creative MoJo.

Last but by no means least, I covet this book A LOT. The Guardian is currently running a photography supplement in sequential order of each decade. I had no idea these images were taken such a long time ago. You have to hand it to Sander, they look far more contemporary than date they were taken.