As many of you may know, Simon of Savidge Reads and Polly of Novel Insights are hosting Discovering Daphne this month. When they first announced it many, many months ago, I wasn’t really thinking too much about participating. For some reason I have had a bias against Daphne du Maurier for as long as I can remember. I have never read anything she has ever written so I wasn’t quite sure where the bias came from.

But then I remembered an incident in high school. In the spring of my senior year I had a class on European literature. It was supposed to have been an advanced placement class but what happened in class that trimester couldn’t really have been called much more than advanced loafing and advanced lameness. At first it seemed like it was going to be a great class. The  class was a little smaller than most and most of the students in the class were friends of mine or were at least fun and friendly. And most importantly, given the supposedly advanced nature of the class, there weren’t any bullies in class–at least not the kind that made picking on me their life’s work.

I was also kind of excited because the teacher had always been billed as one that students just love. And at first she did seem like a lot of fun. But it didn’t take long for the lameness to kick in. First off, she didn’t have much of a syllabus for the course, and what little outline she did share with us was fairly quickly abandoned in favor of a general aimless drift in her teaching methods and subject matter. There was a literature anthology for class and there were days when, in lieu of doing any real teaching, she would sit in front of the class and page through the anthology until she found something that caught her eye and then she would read a sentence or two and then move on. This was all interspersed with lots of chit-chat and stories that had nothing to do with anything.

Now don’t get me wrong, in the final months of high school, I didn’t care too much that she was being totally lazy and not teaching us a thing. But then there was a bit of a situation. We had been waiting to get back a graded assignment for some time. She kept telling us we would get it back tomorrow, and then the next day, and then the next week etc. Well, we only had one other large assignment that was going to count for the majority of our grade and feedback on the earlier assignment seemed pretty crucial in knowing how to move forward. So one day, after many, many delays in returning our graded assignments she delayed yet again. So I chimed in: “How do you expect us to be responsible to keep deadlines when you aren’t responsible to us?” (I still remember the exact words to this day.) So how did she respond? She burst out crying (somewhat of a put on in my opinion) and gives us a big sob story about how she is going through a divorce.

So half the class, taken in by the sob story, look at me like I am evil. Like I had been the one who had said something out of bounds and inappropriate. But being roughly the age now that the teacher was then I still don’t have much sympathy for her. I can’t imagine a grown adult thinking it appropriate to burst out with such a story in a classroom full of 16 and 17 year olds. And I have a hard time believing that she had no family, friends, or co-workers in whom she could have confided and let off emotional steam related to the divorce. But why did I expect much from a teacher whose popularity was high among jocks, cheerleaders, and legions of underachievers who thought she was such a great teacher that she was our graduation commencement speaker?

What does any of this have to do with Daphne du Maurier? Well, that very same teacher went on and on about how much she loved du Maurier (pronounced “do more-year”). So you can imagine that I didn’t feel much of an urge to discover what this lame teacher thought was so great.

But now. 24 years later, I know so many readers whose taste in fiction I trust who also love du Maurier. So maybe it is time to give Daphne a try.  About 40 pages into Hungry Hill I am beginning to think that my lame teacher may have been right about at least one thing.

   

With all the posts observing Banned Books Week, I couldn’t help but imagine what books SHOULD be banned. (Of course I don’t believe in banning any book for any reason, so save your opprobrium for another day.)

1. Self-Help books. Need some perspective on life? Read a novel.

2. Anything “written” by a politician that wasn’t actually written by said politician. If you can’t articulate your point of view on your own you don’t deserve to have your name on a book. (I accept ghost writers for other types of books like gossipy celebrity autobiographies. Their stories must be told!)

3. Books about websites or iPad apps. As in, The Best iPad Apps or Travel Resources on the Web or other such dated-before-the-ink-dries kind of book.

4. Tuesdays or any other day with Morrie and anything with Chicken Soup in the title.

5. A memoir by anyone under 60. (Unless you have lots of gossipy, snarky things I need to know.)

What would you add to the list?

   
Recently I stumbled across the BBC show “Outnumbered”. Most of you in the UK probably know what I am talking about, but for those who have never seen this brilliantly cast comedy, “Outnumbered” is based on the lives of three precocious children and their haggard parents. And it is hilarious. I like the middle to later episodes where the children are slightly older, but I haven’t seen an episode that I haven’t liked.

Karen’s take on Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson

Ben and Karen frustrate a man of the cloth

Colonoscopies and 9/11

Karen takes on door-to-door sales

Airport Security

   

There is nothing that better complements a homemade scone with strawberry jam than a dollop of double cream or clotted cream.* The combination is a truly astonishing taste treat. I love it so much that whenever I go out for tea I could easily pass up all the other treats on offer in favor of more scones with jam and cream.

Oddly enough, when I had my first scone with cream and jam on my first trip to England in 1989 I didn’t really like it. When I bought it, I assumed (wrongly) that the cream would be sweet like American whipped cream or the kind of cream you might find in a filled doughnut. So when I bit into it, I was somewhat startled and disappointed by the taste. (In retrospect I think this particular scone–bought in a cafeteria like cafe at the Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham may have had too much cream on it, overwhelming the sweetness of the jam.) Not having enjoyed that scone experience, I didn’t bother to try it again for the rest of my six weeks in England.

And then.

On the flight back to the U.S. they served a mass produced, cellophane-wrapped little scone already pre-jammed and creamed. Being someone who worries I am never going to get enough to eat on trans-Atlantic flights, I tend to eat everything I am given. So I popped that scone in my mouth despite my previous bad experience. Much to my surprise it was amazingly good. It was like the clouds parted from my palate and I finally understood what a scone with jam and cream was all about. As I looked around the cabin of the plane hoping someone might hand theirs over for me to eat, I began to think of the fact that I could have been eating scones everyday for six weeks. Oh the humanity! What a lost opportunity.

How exciting then to see jars of Devon Double Cream for sale in a grocery store in Minnesota a year or two later. It wasn’t even a high-end, or speciality grocer. It was just your normal, everyday, run-of-the-mill grocery store. Being able to find the cream in the US meant that I didn’t have to wait around for trips to England to satisfy my craving for a cream tea. Since that first siting I have noticed the inroads that The Devon Cream Company has made in the U.S. market as it began showing up in more and more places.

This summer I was astonished at the number of places I saw it for sale. I’ve tried to make sense of its apparent ubiquity. Here in DC, I reasoned, there are lots of foreign nationals from all reaches of the once vast British Empire. Perhaps they are the ones buying all the double cream. After all, an Anglophile baker like myself only buys it maybe twice a year. But then on our road trip up to Maine this summer, it seems like I saw it everywhere we went–even in rather small retail outlets that have a limited selection of products. I even found it on the island of Islesboro with its tiny (albeit somewhat gourmet) grocery store. (Even more interesting is the fact that I totally took it for granted that I would be able to find it while we were in Maine. Even though I measured out the dry ingredients for scones at home and took the mix along with me to Maine, I just assumed that I would be able to find double cream and that I didn’t need to buy it in DC ahead of time.

As I rejoiced in being able to find the product so easily while travelling this summer, I couldn’t help but wonder who in the US is buying this stuff other than me, and what are they using it for? Are there really that many Americans baking scones**? Or maybe it has a really long shelf-life*** and low turnover so its ubiquity doesn’t necessarily mean that tons of units are being sold.

Perhaps I shouldn’t even be asking why. I should just be thankful that it is.

* Clotted cream is 55% milk fat, whereas double cream is 48%. (Either one is gorgeous on a scone.)

** Americans baking scones frighten me a little. To me a scone is a rather plain affair. I usually make mine with dried currants (never raisins). They are meant to be tasty vehicles for jam and cream. They are not meant to be the star of the show. No giant triangles laden with blueberries or chocolate or other nonsense for me.

*** I just found out on The Devon Cream Company’s website that the product does indeed have a long shelf-life of twelve months. UPDATE: It is specially vacuum-packed so its unopened shelf life is 12 months. Once opened the decay process begins like with any cream.

[9/24 Update: I just discovered a blog actually called My Life in Scones]
  

  
Number 252: Be a submariner.

I spent three and half claustrophobic, seasick hours watching the film “Das Boot” last night. Although it depicts the mission of a Nazi u-boat during World War II, I am sure things weren’t much  better on U.S. submarines. When watching World War II flicks I have often wondered what would have happened if I had every been drafted into the Navy. Does one “get over” seasickness? Would I have spent my tour of duty barfing my way across the  world, or would they have shipped me off to be cannon fodder in the Army?

  
As one who gets not a little pleasure from tidying things, this story about Swiss artist Ursus Wehrli caught my eye.  Here are two “after” photos. To see the “befores” and more check out the link.

Ursus Wehrli

Ursus Wehrli

   
I know that not all of you can remember the 1980s….

Fleur Fisher recently posted The Dream Academy’s 1985 music video for “Life in a Northern Town”. This was one of my favorites in high school and it brought back a flood of memories. The song always made me melancholy–but that good kind of teen angst melancholy that was fun to wallow around in from time to time. Regardless of what the words of the song actually mean to convey, for me it was about getting out of a small town where I wasn’t exactly popular and getting to a big city. And I was crazy for anything English yet couldn’t imagine actually getting to England one day.

I wouldn’t want to relive those years, but sometimes I do wish I could go back and change a few things knowing what I know now. But I guess that would change the present, and I have no desire to do that.

So grab your leg warmers and enjoy a good laugh at my expense.



1984 (15 years old) My last crush on a girl was the girl in the pink dress. The girl serving the punch was my best pal.

 

1985

1986 This was one of he photo proofs for my senior picture. This picture was taken less four hours after a late night in Minneapolis with my first boyfriend – and a college boy at that.

1987 Last day of high school.

1988 My hair grew for about another 8 months before I got it cut off. And yes, those are Girbaud jeans.

1989 Much to my surprise, just four years after The Dream Academy song I managed a trip to the UK. Here I am on a train from B’ham to Glasgow.

   
I am not sure if his book We the Animals is my cup of tea, but new author Justin Torres in my new author crush…

  

Munching through blog posts.

[Note: I wrote the following post a few weeks ago in a fit of something. I wasn’t quite sure if I should post it. My intent on My Porch is not to offend–So far I think I have only inadvertently offended my mother and one Meryl Streep fan who didn’t like what I had to say about Sophie’s Choice. But then I was thinking that because I like all my blogger friends, I sometimes over-edit my point of view. So, in honor of the recently departed Hurricane Irene, I am throwing caution to the wind. ]

As I mentioned previously, after two weeks without the Internet I came home to over 1,000 new blog posts in my Google reader. JoAnn at Lakeside Musing commented on that post writing that she was surprised I was able to get through them all so quickly. Which is true, I did blow through them pretty quickly. But in reality it wasn’t that difficult because for every grain of blogging wheat there was a bushel of blogging chaff.

Now, before any of you get upset, I think you can safely believe that your blog is one of the exceptions. My blog roll is quite different from the blogs I keep an eye on in my Google reader. [I need to up date my blog roll, there are some great blogs I haven’t added yet.] And I am fairly confident I know who my regular readers are. Of those, the ones who have blogs, have blogs that I like. Sure, we all write a boring post from time to time (perhaps this one), but somehow I picked up a long list of blogs over the years–mainly through various challenges and such–that I realize now are pretty damn boring on a regular basis.

Of course it is all subjective. In some cases I find them boring because of the kind of books they read. In other cases I don’t like them because they are written by boring, humourless writers. And in other cases some bloggers write as if they are trying out to be the book critic for their local newspaper–with lots of hand wringing when they feel like they are somehow not living up to some imaginary standard. I suppose I do a certain amount of hand-wringing myself, but I hope to goddess I do it with a proper sense of perspective and (fingers crossed) humor. No one is paying us to blog so why make it seem like a job?

So why do I try to keep up with these blogs? Like a four-year old refusing to go to sleep I am, no doubt, worried that I might miss out on something. But after facing down those 1,000 posts I think I may need to grow up and get over that. Time to weed the reader.

If you think I am throwing stones dangerously close to my own glass house drop me a note and let me know I am full of shit. It is highly possible I just felt like using the word ‘chaff’.
   

  
I don’t normally post much about a particular book until I finish reading it, but Miss Buncle’s Book is so infectiously charming I couldn’t resist.  I am sitting here on my lunch hour grinning while I read. Makes me want to read everything DE Stevenson has ever written.

This is DE Stevenson, but in my mind Miss Buncle probably looks a lot like this as well.

I don’t have this copy. I am reading the Persephone edition.

Miss Buncle does NOT look like Margaret Thatcher circa 1982.