Pop!

Amaryllis, colour and bubbles down a bright stream

My amaryllis have finally started popping, and coincidentally I am reading A Little History of British Gardening by Jenny Uglow - a joy of a book and full of pictures (hurrah!) - which tells me about how many a royalist, back in the commonwealth years used gardening to stay sane and steady. She mentions Sir Thomas Hanmer, whose wife was a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria. He had a private ‘wynter house’ in which he kept his exotics, and these included the amaryllis ‘which he watched, holding his breath in amazement in 1656 as its tall stalk with the two heavy buds suddenly exploded into the huge lily-like trumpets of orangey pink’

Same Sir Thomas. SAME.

I’m not sure if I’ve seen an ‘orangey pink’ amaryllis but then colour nomenclature is a wriggly beast isn’t it. My mother has been staying with me for a bit, because my father is away, and she doesn’t like being alone at home. (I long to be alone at home, but anyway) she always brings things with her, and this time she brought a punnet of grapes and the most wonderful book called ‘The Secret Lives of Colour’.

I love this book. The word ‘puce’ - for that lovely dusty rose shade - was coined, it tells me, by Louis XVI who, exasperated by Marie-Antoinette’s lavish clothing proclivities, announced that the taffeta gown she was wriggling into looked like the colour of ‘puces’ (fleas) before he flounced off and, no doubt, wriggled into something equally over-the-top. He got his comeuppance the following day when every lady in court emerged wearing the new flea shade, and this colour was one of the very few that made its way into her sad trousseau at the end of her life, as the slightly grubby colour was forgiving of the grime of her reduced circumstances.

Lovely black cat print by Cally Conway

I recently learned that this cover for the book Hamnet was created by Cally Conway (honestly, I am so behind). I immediately went to her website and found an absolute treasure trove of joy which I just HAD to have. I mean, the otter! How lovely is he?

Swimming River Otter print, by Cally Conway

We are mad keen on otters here. I long to have an otter and had thought this was a pipe dream until my Rotter (who is also otter-mad…clue in name) showed me this instagram account and I am unDONE.

@otter_kotaro_hana

カワウソ コタロー&ハナ on Instagram: "Otters Having Breakfast with Dad
父ち…

How is it that an otter eating salmon very loudly doesn’t bother me in the slightest and yet I cannot deal with my own Rotter breathing??? Very odd. I am getting all of these framed and the otter is going to Rotter’s place of work with him, to remind him of our priorities….which are, put simply, to have an otter. Cally’s substack is here.

beautiful owl print, by Cally Conway

That’s almost enough, except I can’t leave you without showing you the marvellous other thing my I found the Rotter looking at the other day, which is the Excel awards which are just TOO GOOD on so very many levels. The music, the competitors, the audience, the comperes…and also, what on EARTH are they actually DOING???? It looks to me as though they are just copying and pasting numbers. I’m aware it’s much more complicated than that, which is why this entire thing is, for me, exquisite ASMR. This is a funny intro clip…

…but if you want the full FOUR HOUR thing (and why on earth wouldn’t you?), go here.

Michael Jarman…World Champion supreme Excel ATHLETE. Look at him! As he says to the audience, he’s ‘over the moon!’ I love this whole thing. Long live the geeks. Adore.

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x Laetitia