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I have a new teapot. And hard-won it was too. I took a day off on Friday, and rather than do some new collage sheets as I’d PROMISED myself (I’m allergic to anything resembling responsibility or efficiency these days), I did a tour of the St Ives charity shops. There are rather a lot of them – at least eight at last count. (Not as many as there are hair salons, though. There are SO MANY hair salons in St Ives. There are hair salons next to hair salons. How many haircuts can a town of 15,000 people need?)

I’ve been casually looking for a teapot for the last year or so: I drink a lot of tea, like A LOT of tea, and one of my Weird Things is that I actually prefer to drink it lukewarm or cold; so I was looking for a stonking great hulk of a teapot wherein I could allow several gallons of Rooibus to slowly grow tepid to my liking and nourish me throughout the day.

On Friday I found just the thing in the Help the Aged charity shop: a gigantic teapot, kinda funky and vintage. See? How cool!

It was on sale for £5.99 as part of a really rather enormous set, including not one but several creamers, various differently sized plates, and a bunch of smallish teacups. I didn’t want the rest of the bumpf, just the teapot. Bravely, I took it up to the counter and asked the clerk whether I could buy just the teapot on its own. The clerk of course was a little old lady volunteer, sweet as you like, but not the quickest thing on two legs in any sense of the word.

“Can I get just this teapot?” I said.

The little old lady took it slowly from my hands, and slowly examined the barely legible handwritten price tag. “It’s part of a set,” she said. “For £5.99.”

“Yes, but I don’t want the whole set. Can I get just the teapot?”

She peered at the sticker again. “It says £5.99 for the set,” she repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t have room in my cupboards for all those dishes. I really just want the teapot. Can I just get the teapot, if that’s OK?”

She looked dubious. “I’ll have to think of a price.”

“OK,” I said.

Thus followed the Longest Pause in the History of the World. I mentally debated offering a starting price to get things going, but I hate haggling and I feared it might throw yet another stick in the old lady’s mental spokes. While I continued to wait, I saw some Help the Aged propaganda next to the till, proclaiming in excited capital letters, “The Bold New Face of Age!” “Not this one,” I thought.

“£1.99?” she volunteered eventually, justifiably hesitant and timorous in the face of the huge responsibility of deciding a price ALL ON HER OWN.

“Sold!” I said, and smartly handed over a two-pound coin. She then proceeded, in the manner of little-old-lady charity shop volunteers all across this great nation, to peel off the price tag, fetch some newspaper, and carefully, painstakingly wrap up the teapot in super slow motion. It was like watching a replay on Sky Sports. “Let’s look at that again. Notice how long it takes her to separate a single sheet of newspaper from the stack. Magnificent form.” Inevitably during the proceedings she made some idle chitchat about the weather, because if she hadn’t, the world would have spun off its axis and fire and brimstone would have rained down from the heavens. I love this country. And I love my teapot!

Yes, that’s right…I abandon you for a month, and when I return it’s only to post more crap about Iris bloody Murdoch. I seem to be sort of, obsessed with Iris Murdoch? I guess it could be worse, obsession-wise – I could be obsessed with the Twilight books or something (except that JUST KIDDING I totally couldn’t) – but it must be pretty annoying for the rest of you. I am sorry about that. I made some typical comment to Simon yesterday along the lines of “Iris Murdoch was such a GENIUS I mean totally OMG” (because that is how I talk), and he asked if I thought he should try reading one of her books.

I scrunched up my face. “Well…hmmm. I’m not sure you’d like her stuff. Her prose is very…strong-flavoured.” I think that’s a very good way of describing it: a bit like smelly cheese. You either love it or you hate it. Either way it stinks up the fridge for weeks. Am I pushing this analogy too far? Probably.

Anyhooz, I’ve been reading this biography, by the same dude who did a critical analysis of Murdoch’s novels and their relationship to her philosophical ideas, which I also read and enjoyed very much. And the biog is a cracking read so far. You know sometimes when you read the biography of somoene you really admire, and it lets the air out of the balloon a little bit? I read a biography of Katharine Hepburn recently, who I think is fabulous, and was very disappointed to learn that she a) was completely obsessed with fame and with manipulating her public image, and b) deliberately exaggerated the duration and significance of her relationship with Spencer Tracy after his death in order to capitalise on the aura of tragic romance. Naughty Katharine! (Still, I think I have to forgive her just on the grounds of the awesomely awesome Philadelphia Story.)

Iris Murdoch, happily, is turning out to be EXACTLY the sort of person I thought she should be: bohemian, magnetic, passionate, a bit scary. She has so far become a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, hobnobbed with the Existentialist literati in Paris, conducted doomed love affairs with Eastern European exiles, and broken the heart of pretty much every man in Oxford. And we’re not even into the 1950s yet! Hooray, hooray, hooray. Also there are lots of photos, all of which reinforce my conviction that Iris Murdoch looks uncannily like a female Malcolm McDowell. Observe. Discuss.

And now…some new collage sheets! See my Etsy shop for purchase information.

Dress Forms with Butterfly Wings

Vintage Cars

Edwardian Corsets

Steampunk Mechanical Diagrams

Christmas was…Christmas. It happened. We spent the day itself in Wales, lounging next to the fire on my father-in-law’s UNBELIEVABLY enormous and comfortable sofa, occasionally rousing ourselves to fuss the two matted mudballs with eyes that I think may have been collies, or else possibly some species of dog-golem. Well. I say ‘we’ – I relaxed, and Simon cooked all sorts of food. As usual. He likes it, OK? At least I think he does. Anyway, it was all fine and festive; at about four o’clock the FIL started playing his punk records, and we had a real Christmas moment when we realised we both know all the words to ‘Jet Boy Jet Girl’. Magic, baby.

On Boxing Day, Simon and FIL were both stricken down with some sort of horrible intestinal bug. But I was fine! And so I laughed! I laughed until the next day, when fate wreaked its hideous revenge. I will spare you the extremely gory details, except to say that it was the least fun I’ve ever had lying down. There was a bucket beside the bed. I used it. It wasn’t pretty.

So I spent a fun couple of days trying to keep solids down, and was mostly recovered in time for New Year’s Eve; not that you could tell, as I spent the holiday horizontal on the sofa looking like shite, much as I’d spent the previous week. (Much as I’d spend my entire life if I wasn’t forced to go to work now and then.) We tried to watch It’s A Wonderful Life, but the copy we’d downloaded purchased didn’t work properly: boooo! So we watched The Big Lebowski. I’m happy to watch TBL anywhere, anytime. It has become part of the wallpaper in my brain. (“‘Fuck the tournament?’ OK, I can see you don’t want to be cheered up. C’mon Donnie, let’s go get us a lane.”)

Simon did manage to get It’s a Wonderful Life working the next day, which was ace as he’d never seen it before and I really wanted to see the film work its magic on a newcomer. NOBODY can resist the evil heartwarming mojo of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. In fact, I think the word ‘heartwarming’ should be redefined to apply ONLY to It’s a Wonderful Life, because Frank Capra owns the de facto copyright on heartwarming, and also because the word in any other context makes me want to sick up.

I did get some fairly awesome pressies, which I will try to take some pictures of this week. In the meantime, here’s a new collage sheet of one-inch circles, available now in my Etsy shop…

Last weekend we went down to London to see my mom, who was in the country for half a day on a stopover on her way to a friend’s wedding in India (she is SO excited – she’s wanted to go to India for ages). We met her at Heathrow and took her out for a nice walk in Kew Gardens and a pub lunch to help get her over the trauma of the first nine-hour flight and ready to face the second leg of her journey. Personally, I wouldn’t have been in a fit state to do anything at all except lie on the floor curled up in a ball and whimpering (long haul flights are horrible – horrible and evil), but my mom is a trooper. She was annoyingly un-dishevelled and even cheerful. I’m really not convinced that I’m actually related to her.

Anyway, here are a couple of the photos I took at Kew. The crocuses were absolutely glorious!

And here are some of the pressies my mom brought me for my upcoming birthday…an antique medicine jar (I love blue glass!), and a 1945 printing of Wuthering Heights with woodcut illustrations. Yay! My mom is great.

I’ve been a real whiz in the kitchen this past week. Recent menus have included…

1. Greek squid and prawn stew, with waxy potatoes and smoked paprika
2. Curried arctic char with homemade naans and pilau rice
3. Miso-marinated grilled tofu with lemon pepper crust, sweet onion mash and mustard sauce
4. Vegetarian moussaka with pine nut cream
5. Samosa stuffed baked potatoes
6. Antipasto with garlic flatbreads (made from leftover pizza dough), sundried tomato dip, white bean aioli and quinoa pilaf

I RULE. I’ve been very inspired by this cookbook, which I bought on impulse recently. I was vegan for a long time, and really loved it – I gave it up mostly because travelling in Europe is SO inconvenient when you’re trying to maintain a vegan diet (especially if you can’t afford to eat in fancy restaurants all the time). The French don’t actually have a word for ‘vegan’. Even when I explained to a waiter in a VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT in Paris (one of a whopping three that I could find on the internet), in coherent French, that I didn’t eat meat or eggs or dairy, he looked completely baffled. I mostly survived on falafel from street kiosks in Montmartre. Thank god for immigrants.

Anyway, since my life has become relatively settled, I’ve really wanted to go back to eating more vegan food. I’m currently vegetarian-except-fish, which is sort of necessary if I want to share any meals at all with my enthusiastically carnivorous husband. However, I’d like to start having a couple of ‘vegan days’ a week, partly because it’s very healthy and I enjoy it, and partly because it’s CHEAP. I can make a delicious gourmet meal for less than a fiver if I’m not paying for any meat. Also I’m a big softie and generally prefer not to eat anything with feelings. Also it’s better for the environment. Sorry, I’m done now.

‘Veganomicon’, I say without hesitation, is the best cookbook I’ve ever owned, vegetarian, vegan or otherwise. It’s an all-round cookbook, so there are recipes for everything, from breakfast to brunch to salads to entrees to puddings. It also has advice on cooking techniques, like how to prepare all sorts of different vegetables, grains, and pulses (it’s amazing how hard it is to find good instructions for basic things like roasting aubergines or cooking wholegrain rice). It’s written in a very informal style, too, which actually manages to come off as relaxed and informal, rather than coming off as patronising and affected (I’m looking at you here, Jamie – please start using proper verbs instead of “bang” and “chuck” and “whack”. You are not Batman).

And every single recipe from Veganomicon that I’ve tried (about six now) has been DELICIOUS. Especially the moussaka. It was probably the best moussaka I’ve ever had, ever, including expensive restaurant stuff. The pine nut cream is beyond description. Seriously. If I could pick one dish to make to impress a vege-sceptic, it would be this one. Come round for dinner and I’ll show you.

In non-gastronomic news, I’ve created a couple more fairy tale collages. I’m planning on putting them all together in a calendar very soon…

Mother Holle
“Only you must take care to make my bed well, and shake it thoroughly till the feathers fly – for then there is snow on the earth.”

Jorinda and Joringel
“Joringel looked for Jorinda. She was changed into a nightingale, and sang, jug, jug, jug. …At last Jorindel dreamt one night that he found a blood-red flower, in the middle of which was a beautiful large pearl. Then he picked the flower and went with it to the castle, and that everything he touched with the flower was freed from enchantment.”