Come up smelling of roses

We went for a long walk around Harleston in the Waveney Valley on the weekend and
chanced upon an open day at a rose nursery.
Acre upon acre of roses scented the air with their subtle perfume. 

36 hours in London with mum

2 days in London isn't long but with careful planning I managed to squeeze in lots of treats I hoped mum would enjoy.

Wild plums

The hedgerows are offering up a bumper crop of wild plums this year. I'd barely noticed them in previous Summers but this July/August they are everywhere, hanging from the trees like Christmas baubles and gathering on the ground like wedding confetti. Colours range from yellow trough orange to red and deep plum and they all taste slightly differently. Unlike damsons they are fortunate to scape the ravages of mould and grubs so scrimping and instant scoffing is an absolute pleasure. When mum was over on holiday we went plum gathering after dinner. Our roadside dessert was enhanced by the etiquette of seed spitting which she soon got the hang of.

Wild plum coulis

Stew the fruit with cloves and cinnamon then sieve. Reheat this juice with enough sugar or syrup to taste and allow to thicken to the right consistency.

Wild plum sorbet

Same as for the coulis but it doesn't need to be sieved as thoroughly. I also threw in some blackberries and various other mixed spices. This one was quite sweet so only a little extra sugar was needed. Put in freezer-proof container. Depending on quantity, it will take around 5 hours to set. Fork it every couple of hours to break up the ice crystals.

Serve it in cocktails, with plain yoghurt or on its own. The spiced give it a mulled flavour so it's like Christmas in August.

Istanbul 2014

I love this city and my recent visit was all the
more special for introducing mum to its charms. 

Stuck in a lift with balloons

Norfolk & Norwich Festival May 2014, stuck in a fake lift
with strangers whilst silly people stuffed it full of balloons and then popped them. Why?

Good reads

Here's something I wish I'd started years ago: a list of good books I've read.

When immersed in a good book it can become all-encompassing, moving, life affirming and affecting. But when it's over I find that its contents start to fade all too quickly. At least paper versions can be kept on a shelf, annotated and flicked through from time to time. I know electronic books have similar capacities but, let's admit it, it isn't the same, is it.

Will Self's view of Englishness - revised in 2014

How has England changed since 1994?

Twenty years ago Will Self wrote a long essay about English culture: how has the nation changed since then? And do the old cherished ideas of Englishness bear any resemblance to reality?
• Read Will Self's original 1994 article

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• • Will Self
  • The Guardian, Friday 17 January 2014 13.30 GMT
  • Jump to comments (762)

Fish and chips … an inspired example of English praxis: Belgian fried potato mixed with Ashkenazi fried fish. Photograph: Martin Parr / Magnum

Nearly 20 years ago I wrote an essay for the Guardian on English culture– and by extension, Englishness. I entitled it "The Valley of the Corn Dollies". Returning to it and the consciousness it exhibits I am struck by the many obvious continuities – the sense I have of Englishness enduring – but also by the transformations that have taken place in England, and by extension within English identity, over the last two decades, and that were quite unforeseen by me. Not that in 1994 I was in the business of writing futurology, still, any attempt to fix a culture in time must pay due heed to the particular nature of its fluxions. This lack of foresight is also matched by the essay's comparable lack of hindsight; I don't mean by this that it displays no concern with where the ideas and practices associated with Englishness may have come from, only that as its author I seem to have had little precise sense of their evolutionary timescale. This is understandable, I suppose; the concerns of a 32-year-old are, one hopes, different from those of a quinquagenarian. I say "one hopes", although the very adoption of the impersonal first person and the continuous present relocates the aspiration to a nebulous cultural realm, not this England at the beginning of this particular year: the 2014th of the Common Era.