Worlds Apart

It's hard to believe, listening to radio and TV reports right now, that there are other worlds where financial stabililty treaties, bondholders, austerity policies and bank bailouts have no place. There are worlds where creatures live unworried by mortgage foreclosures, changing political policies or pointless class divisions.

I am reminded of this when I open W.H. Hudson's 'Adventures Among Birds', published in 1951 by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. of London. It was actually first published in 1913, according to what I read on the back cover. Once again, this is an old library book, with the usual stamps and marks where labels were wrenched off none too gently. Like most other people, I love birds, and this book reminds how much there is about them to love. Much of the author's prose is delicious, the words spilling out like long phrases of birdsong, the descriptions of these little feathery personalities bringing them immediately to view even to those who have never laid eyes on them. Well before linguists started to study bird-song as language, this writer understood it as that;  even when he is overcome by emotions regarding them, when his writing may seem a trifle flowery or sentimental, his love for them cannot fail to stir similar emotions in the reader. In a chapter entitled 'The Marsh Warbler's Music' he says:

“One of the greatest pleasures in life – my life I mean – is to be present, in a sense invisible, in the midst of the domestic circle of beings of a different order, another world, than ours. Yet it is one which may be had by any person who desires it. “

Naturally the writing is in many ways old-fashioned, and now that we are spoiled with recorded bird-song and countless DVDs about the life of birds, it is hard to imagine exactly how much this book about them must have meant to Hudson's contemporaries who shared his love of bird life, For that reason alone, this book should be spared becoming wastepaper. But, I ask myself, for how long? The boxes and boxes of most wonderful books at various sales or on the shelves of the recycling centres tell me that for such volumes, not first editions, not collector's items, defaced methodically in order to be scrapped, their day is done. The world of financial value is the only world in which they could survive, and if they have no monetary merit, they, and all they speak for, are as good as dead.


I don't know what to say about the Penguin Book of Lies. It is edited by Philip Kerr and published by Penguin Books, England, in 1990. It is a paperback, in very good condition, and I cannot recall where I got it. Most of the pieces included are about fairly well-known historical events, distorted at the time for public relations purposes; others deal with letters or works of literature later discovered to be forgeries. In those days, as indeed in these in some parts of the world, people went to the gallows or were otherwise executed for other people's lies. This is the problem, the real lies have probably never been discovered. At this very moment, we are in the midst of lies, told to advance political, religious or commercial ends It is chilling to consider how little of the truth may be in everyday life. Then, on the other hand, that so-called 'real life' is only one of many parallel universes. We can live in one of those and never allow ourselves to be contaminated by the evil 'society' lays us open to. Of course we will then seem peculiar or odd, but we will be freer. Thinking about this, I hope that neither animals nor birds ever learn to understand our speech. At the moment, they remain incorruptible, innocent. Some of the discourses in the book discuss what exactly a lie is, often giving various categories of lies, and even opining that a lie told for the good of another is not a bad thing. So how do we decide what is another's good? And how real is that aim, how genuine the sentiment? I am particularly thinking here of political or religious propaganda. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Plato, Samuel Johnson, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Wesley, Immanuel Kant are just some of the countless famous persons who have an opinion on the matter in this not very cheering book. The truth is, you don't have to be famous or infamous to know what a lie is. When you are telling one, you know, unless you are dreaming or hallucinating. Others may not know, of course, that is the problem, for them.

This book is probably of use to those who like history. They, or their like in future generations, will be able to read of this year's, this decade's lies. We are not so fortunate.

I am a vegetarian, the dairy-consuming type, and 'Vegetarian Cheese Cookery' by Jo Marcangelo fell into my arms when I was retrieving books today. It describes “Making and Using Rennet-free Cheeses”, I read inside, and is published by Thorsons Publishing Group in the U.S.A. In 1987. There are lovely little illustrative drawings in it of the type I always love, by Kim Blundell. The first part of the book is about cooking with soft cheese, and the second describes how to make cheese for oneself, the equipment needed, the ingredients, and finally, recipes for the different cheeses. . I thought it was much older because it is a bit worn in appearance, the pages yellow and somewhat foxed; of course this can mean it has been very much loved and used before it turned up on the shelf of the recycling centre. One unusual thing about its recipes, including various cheesecakes, is that the ingredients are given in two lists, one for imperial and metric measurements, with the metric in brackets beside the imperial, and the other for 'American' iingredients. The puzzle is that I can see almost no difference between the lists, except sometimes 'cups' are used on the American list instead of imperial or metric measurements, and 'top of the milk' on the first list is 'half and half' on the American one. This seems rather pointless, but the recipes are nice. Here is a recipe for cottage cheese you might like to try your hand at:


Cottage Cheese

(Makes 8 oz/225g/1 cup)

Imperial (Metric)                                                                            American


2 pints (1.12 litres) skimmed or whole milk                                 5 cups skimmed or whole milk

1 tablespoon cultured buttermilk or natural                                  1 tablespoon cultured buttermilk or

yoghurt (optional)                                                                             plain yogurt (optional)

2 teaspoons vegetarian junket                                                        2 teaspoons vegetarian junket
rennet                                                                                              rennet

1. Heat the milk gradually to 100oF (38oC) and stir in the starter, if using, and the rennet. Cover and leave undisturbed in a warm place, to coagulate – up to 2 hours.

2. When the curd has set, cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) cubes with a knife; cut it vertically and then

turn the curd over carefully with a spoon and cut it the other way.

3. Slowly re-heat the curd to 100oF (38oC), stirring all the time to keep it from sticking

together. Remove from the heat and allow to stand for 15 minutes.

4. Line a colander with a square of scalded muslin (cheesecloth) and stand it over a bowl.

Ladle in the curds and leave to drain for about 10 minutes. Hold the colander under a
running, cold water tap, and literally 'wash' the curds, to rinse off the whey. This process
produces the traditional lumpy texture associated with cottage cheese. Stand the
colander over a bowl and leave to drain for a few minutes.

5. Put the drained curds into a bowl. For a richer flavour, the cottage cheese may be 'creamed'

by mixing in a little single (light) cream or yogurt depending on taste. It may also be salted
and any flavouring added at this stage. Home-made cottage cheese does not contain
preservatives, so does not keep as long as the commercial variety. Keep in the refrigerator
and eat within 2-3 days.




I read in the foregoing chapter that “in order to make cheese from pasteurized milk, you must first reintroduce the appropriate bacteria into the milk. This is known as adding a starter – a special culture of lactic acid-producing bacteria – to sour and curdle the milk” The author says that “The best alternative”(to commercial starters) “is to use commercially cultured buttermilk.......”You can flavour your cheese with fresh herbs such as parsley, marjoram or thyme, garlic, chopped nuts, whatever you like. So there's something to do for the next rainy day.


Flora Thompson wrote “Lark Rise to Candleford”, described as a trilogy in this Penguin Books edition, England, 1973. It was published first in three parts – 'Lark Rise', 'Over to Candleford' and 'Candleford Green' in 1931, 1941 and 1943. It's a chatty book about life in England from the late1800s to the first years of the 20th century, and is in fact an autobiographical work, although it is as much the story of neighbours, villages and villagers, schools and other institutions known to the author as she grew up. Reading it is like listening to old people talking about their lives; descriptions, smalll anecdotes, philosophical asides all combine to make a work that can be opened at any page and still be full of interest, even delight. This book was made into a TV drama in the last few years, but the glimpse I took of one episode showed me that it was worlds apart from the book; there are some things that TV and movies cannot do, and conveying the joy, the feeling, the atmosphere of books like this is among them.

What I really like about 'The Woman's Day Book of Annuals and Perennials' (besides the fact that it is about plants, which straight away makes it a favourite for me) are the lovely coloured drawings of flowers of all kinds, pansies, morning-glories, poppies, forget-me-nots, many many more; these are by Fritz Kredel, and the book is written by Jean Hersey and published by Simon and Schuster of New York. There is a lovely dedication inside to a namesake of the author -
For Joan, Who grows flowers wherever she is -The work is divided into two main parts, One Hundred Annuals, and One Hundred Perennials, and describes the appearance, origins, and cultivation requirements of these lovely and well-loved cottage garden plants. At the end of the book are given diagrams with planting suggestions. It is the perfect book for a new gardener, not grandiose, lecturing nor pompous, and it is as pretty as the gardens it hopes to produce. It is in such good condition that it is amazing it came from a box of miscellaneous books at a car-boot sale.

I kept my favourite of all until last. This is such an amazing book that it is surprising to have found it at a library sale. Entitled 'Weather Lore', it is a compilation from all over the world of quotations, old sayings, proverbs, all to do with weather. Richard Inwards made the compilation and arrangements, we are told, and it was “Edited, revised and amplified by E.L. Hawke” and “republished by S.R. Publishers Limited 1969 from the Fourth Edition published for the Royal Meteorological Society, London, by Rider and Company of London, New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Cape Town 1950”. What a mouthful. But believe me, it lives up to all expectations stirred by the title page. All the weather phenomena are dealt with under chapters with names such as Sun, Moon and Stars, Wind, Clouds, Mists, Haze, Dew, Fog, Sea, Tide, etc., Rainbow, Frost, and so on. Every page is full of interest. Some might seem simple, such as, under the heading 'Insects', “Early : bees early at work will not go on all day” or “A bee was never caught in a shower.” No doubt many will be able to challenge these sayings, but that does not make them any less interesting. All the other usual insects, such as ants, spiders, wasps and so forth are mentioned. Somewhere in these sayings may well be a lot of truth, the kind of truth that we are able to test for ourselves, without worrying about the outcome.