pumpkinstrokemarrow

The baker tells me that all of them are made out of the same stuff, the only variation being his baguettes (vide supra). The only ingredient differance being that some are glazed, some have flour sprinkled on them at some point and some have seeds sprinkled on them at some point. It seems that essentials oils or omega numbers in the seeds can, due to the high temperature of a bread oven, seep into the bread. So there can be a flavour differance on that account. But I think, most of what I am tasting is more a texture than a taste differance, in so far as it is possible to disentagle the two things. And this might reasonably be accounted for by the temperature dynamics varying with the shape of the dough and according to whether the dough is in a tin or not.

Having sorted out this knotty problem to my satisfaction, had a go at Elizabeth Bowen, bought from a charity shop somewhere, prompted by the review in the TLS of the book of her correspondance with her long time lover, a correspondance in which, it seems, she dropped the reserve charactaristic of her published prose. I don't think I have ever read her before, although I think my mother did. This book, a collection of short stories, with the title story being 'A day in the dark', used to be the property of Surrey Libraries and was based in Leatherhead, a few miles from the library headquarters, which I now know is in Esher. The book appears to have been taken out very regularly, maybe 100 times in all, between the beginning of 1971 and the autumn of 1977. At which point the record stops with annotation 'sold with all faults'. I wonder what prompted the sale? Did the borrowings suddenly come to an end in 1977 or do Surrey Libraries have some arcane book replacement policy? The copy in question being worn, but in perfectly readable condition.

Or so I thought after the first couple of stories. Very taken with one about the horrors of breakfast in the sort of genteel boarding houses that people moving from nice homes to London to work were apt to wind up in until fairly recently, the story being published in 1923. But then I started to get bogged down. The stories all seemed terribly faded genteel and fifties and despite including a fair amount of sex, at least according to the standards pertaining (or perhaps obtaining) when they were written, a long way away from the needs and issues of our dashing 21st century. Maybe of more interest to ladies, so now passed onto the BH for the testing of that hypothesis. I shall return to my Gloucester Road Mauriac. Also rather dated, very wrapped up in the crises of faith and fashion of the young in France 111 years ago, but it all seems so much more glamorous in French which one only partly understands.

Then last week we saw a film, on television that is, it being quite a long time since we got as far as a cinema. Not helped by our local multi-screen being firmly middle of the road. Maybe if we lived in central London we would still bother. Anyway, this film was called 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'. A good example of how much can be achieved with lashings of costume and settings, little plot, virtually no sex and no violence. We do not learn much about Vermeer, beyond the fact that he mixed his own paint and that he needed rich patrons to survive. But we do learn that the life of a maid in a middling sort of household must have been a precarious and wearing business when she had to triangulate between the various founts of power. Head of household, wife, chief cook and so on. Watchable enough, although a bit unsatisfying after the event, one wondering why one had bothered. Should have stuck with Mauriac, only one was a bit tired for that.