Table of contents for April 2018 in The Simple Things

After a winter spent bundled up in cosseting-but-shapeless jumpers, it feels good to wear something more structured, more tailored. A garment that has actual shoulders, boasts several useful pockets and transforms any outfit from scruffy to smart. It is time to put on a blazer. Fortunately, this spring there are many blazers to choose from. Designers and high-street shops have rediscovered this most useful garment. Fashion editors have adopted it like a new uniform and lined up at front rows in matching blazers like they were posing for a school photograph. If you actually wore a blazer to school you will be familiar with its component parts: it is cut more casually than a suit jacket, has three patch pockets (the breast pocket sometimes adorned with a crest), lapels and,…

Day is dawning… and what are you up to? I’m first up on school days, dragging myself out of bed at seven, and attempting to wake the children with varying degrees of success before drinking my first cuppa (English Breakfast) by the Aga. It’s the only time I take sugar – just a quarter of a spoon but it makes the difference. Where do you like to do your writing? I used to work in a room where I could touch all four walls without moving my chair. We’ve spent the past year renovating a Georgian manor house and, when we moved, I took a double bedroom as my office and filled it with bookshelves. The house is beautiful, but draughty and rattly, so I keep a hot water bottle…

Favourite shop POST One of my favourite bookshops. It also has a small gallery with prestigious collections. post-books.info/about/ Favourite gallery THE CANON GALLERY A great find, tucked away in Shinagawa’s Intercity development. There are two galleries across two separate floors of the Canon offices. Favourite café/ restaurant A nice little area off the beaten track is Togoshi Ginza. Here Tori & Deli serves great kara-age fried chicken (en.toriand.com). Ryuki is a great place to buy Chinese dumplings and beer. Uokei fish shop does a good sashimi buffet. Favourite markets Nakano Broadway is best for vintage, with a great selection of knick-knack shops, vintage cameras, toys, comics and clothes. Best for food are the areas around Shin-okubo Station. Good for Indian, Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese food and a great atmosphere. Favourite…

GARDENERS’ WORLD The grounds of great houses are often worth a visit alone, making the landscape gardeners behind them names to note. Gertrude Jekyll, a contemporary of William Morris in the late 19th century, was known for creating banks of planting like drifts of colour, which you can see at the fully restored gardens at The Manor House at Upton Grey in Hampshire. In the 1700s, Capability Brown was a popular choice among the Georgian gentry, the mind behind the gardens at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, Croome Park in Worcestershire, and Harewood House in West Yorkshire, where his ambition was to make the gardens as imposing as the house. ADMIRE THE GRANDEUR Sometimes it’s the pomp, size, and occasionally ostentatious architecture of grand houses that really make the statement. Acton Court…

Espresso Colette Bryce A minuscule birdclinging to a twig is shredding a loopof knotted string to a fibre-fuzzymist in its bill, a haze as softas cotton wool with which to linea nest no bigger than this small cupI lift to my lips while I wait for youin this little coffee shop on the avenue,for such is April. About the author Colette Bryce was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. She is a poet known for her acute observations of the cadences of everyday life, and here she tenderly transforms a few solitary minutes waiting in a coffee shop into a song celebrating the resourcefulness of nature. ‘Espresso’ is taken from Self-Portrait in the Dark (Picador)…

There is something marvellous about the best microfiction. They are, mostly, just 100 words long, but manage to hint at whole worlds in just a few sentences. Insightful and observant, they can capture fleeting moments – the look of a flower in sunlight, or the shape of clouds in a morning sky – and describe why they are so important to the storyteller. They can conjure the emotional weather in a relationship or tell a tale of intrigue, filled with plot and peril. Microfiction can be about anything at all; the tone sad, funny or intense, but what all the stories have in common is a wonderful sense of economy; every word has to count. Fancy having a go? We’re looking for stories on the subject of SUMMER – and…

Pilea Once a rare sighting, the round, glossy leaves of pilea are now seen increasingly in our homes. This is largely because they are so easy to propagate. Plantlets that spring up around their base can be snipped off and potted on in a twinkling, with the resulting plants dispersed among friends. “They’ll lean towards the light,” says Alice Howard of Botanique Workshop, artisan store and flower shop, “so keep them out of direct sunlight. Otherwise, they are as easy to care for as they are to propagate.”…

• Decide how you are going to use your greenhouse before you plan it. I like to grow flowers in a greenhouse bed, so only have staging (a shelf on legs) down one side. You might want more floor area for seating or more staging for seed sowing. • Choose your site carefully. My greenhouse faces south but is shaded by a tree on summer afternoons so it doesn’t overheat. • Try to include water and electricity in your plan. Being able to have lighting and a heat mat or propagator will extend the winter use of your greenhouse greatly. • If your budget extends to blinds, fit them on the outside of the glass. Your greenhouse will be much cooler if you can stop the glass from heating up…

On winter nights, drawing the curtains marks the end to the day as the cold and darkness is shut out. Curtains provide both a buffer – actual and emotional – against what lies outside. They make life indoors feel warm and secure. Now, as the days grow warmer and longer, the pleasure of curtains lies in the morning, when they can be thrown open wide in the manner of a song by Elbow, and the light allowed to pour in. Life beyond the window is no longer avoided but welcomed. A home without curtains, or some form of window dressing, on the other hand, is a bleak place of dark windows and swinging lightbulbs; cheerless and neglected. And badly hung curtains strung up higgledy piggledy, gaping and forlorn, are too…

My kitchen is at the front of the house, which means that as I cook or stand by the sink, I am visible to anyone walking along the street. Can you suggest a neat and clean way of obscuring the view of passersby? I don’t want to hang net curtains, as they’ll get grubby and are old-fashioned. And I am not a fan of blinds as I would have to have them down the whole time, which would be gloomy indeed. Answer in brief: disregard fabric options and go for a frosted pane. Is your window double-glazed? If it isn’t and you are thinking of making it so, choose frosted glass. This will screen your activities without blocking the light. If replacing a pane of glass is unnecessary or…

Real Flower Company An award-winning nursery founded by Rosebie Morton, making bunches of David Austin roses, herbs and sweet peas grown in Hampshire and West Sussex (May–November); realflowers.co.uk. Flowers from the Farm For flowers with no air miles and very few road miles, try this not-for-profit network of flower farmers and smallholders. See the website for blooms grown near you; flowersfromthefarm.co.uk. Common Farm Flowers Somerset grower Georgie Newbery offers what she calls “classic country house flowers” and runs regular workshops on starting your own cut flower patch, flower-farming and posy-tying; commonfarmflowers.com. Vervain Floral designer India Hurst describes her style as “a little orchestrated chaos”, growing and styling flowers for UK and destination weddings. She also teaches bridal classes at her Worcestershire studio; vervainflowers.co.uk.…

“That’s a big question, I’d have to think about that.” Charlie pauses, resting on the handle of his spade. “That’s OK,” replies his grandson Ted, plunging his bare hands into the earth in search of weeds, “I can wait.” “Oh.” Charlie isn’t used to spending time alone with his grandson. It is widely acknowledged by the family that he is a grumpy old man and needs supervision with both the young and the elderly (there was an unfortunate incident involving Great Aunt Pat’s 90th birthday and a tactless comment about her plunging velvet jumpsuit). But today, both Charlie’s wife, daughter, son-in-law and even his daughter’s neighbours are busy. There was no choice but to leave Ted with Charlie. Working together in the garden was Charlie’s idea, to avoid too much…

THAT’S ALL FOLK Exploring the extraordinary in A Treasury of British Folklore by Dee Dee Chainey Cornish pixies, sleeping giants and shape-shifting water sprites are all part of folkloric Britain, a world that’s chock full of superstition and ancient beliefs. Author Dee Dee Chainey, a folklore curator, wanders through this world collecting up wonderfully strange tales from our past – from wart sufferers in Gloucestershire cutting notches in ash trees in search of a cure, to the bedevilled denizens of Scotland who hoped the hanging of trousers from the foot of the bed would form a supernatural boundary to fairies, goblins and other provoking spirits. Chainey tackles phenomena from our present, too, such as orchard wassailing and the Straw Bear Festival in Cambridgeshire. (National Trust) MAKER OF THE MONTH Surface…

1949 Born in Cornwall. Marion grows up in Kent, and goes on to read zoology at Oxford University. 1970s Works for the Council for the Protection of Rural England. 1980 Publishes her first book, The Theft of the Countryside, shortly after the birth of her daughter, Catherine. 1987 Marion’s book on land ownership in the countryside, This Land is Our Land,comesout.Shealsopresentsa documentary on the theme, Power in the Land, on Channel 4. 1999 A Right to Roam is published. A year later, the Government passes the Countryside and Rights of Way Act. 2004 Following a struggle to secure good care for her mother in her final years, Marion publishes her first handbook for older people and their relatives: A Survival Guide to Later Life. 2006 Is named one of The Guardian’s top 100 green…

CURTAINS The cost of curtains, combined with the choice of fabric, linings, poles, tracks, pleats, pelmets, rods and tie-backs makes choosing them for one room a challenge, never mind the entire house. Best to take a deep breath, think of them as an investment, and head to John Lewis. Or buy ready-made curtains and adjust where necessary (see next page). BLINDS Blinds can roll away to near-invisibility (roller blinds), fold up in concertinas (Roman blinds), or tilt to filter the light (Venetian blinds). They suit smaller rooms that could feel overwhelmed by curtains, but can also be used as an additional layer to curtains. Try hillarys.co.uk or luxaflex.co.uk. WINDOW FILM One way to retain privacy without plunging the house into gloom is to fit translucent window film. Cut to your…

BOOK A CAMPING TRIP If still too chilly to pitch the tent, check out Canopy & Stars’ latest spring-friendly additions (think hot showers, duck-down duvets and four-poster beds).canopyandstars.co.uk 6 April Dust off your trainers – it’s Walk to Work Day. Why not aim to walk every Friday this month (to the shops/school/pub)? ‘The best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain’ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet Create a meal using food that could have been binned, take a photo and post the recipe on social media, #RecipeforDisaster, with a donation of £5 to combat food waste. insight.wfp.org 1 April Play a trick on someone for April Fools’ Day and start the month with a smile. Note the time the sun rises and sets on the…

These days, people take traditions – such as marriage, sharing dinner times and everyday eating – lightly, but these experiences are the things that make up life. Not in a ‘you must wear a white dress’ or ‘you must eat dinner before dessert’ kind of way but in a ‘it means something’ kind of way. When you have a connection with what you are eating each day; when you make meals from the produce you grow; when you share the things you love and the things that other people love, each experience means something special. It’s just a more fulfilling way to live, a deeper kind of happiness. Our experience is about what it means to eat a natural, regional diet. It’s about observing, growing, gathering, nurturing, trading, seeking and…

Even if you don’t grow your own, you’re likely to come across a glut from time to time – from a friend’s allotment perhaps, in your veg box, or a greengrocer keen to shift a load of in-season produce. Finding varied ways to eat and to store this seasonal bounty is satisfying to mind, appetite and pantry. Spend a few hours with your glut and make a dish to eat right away, another for the next day, and a little something for the larder as a future treat. Cauliflower, in one sense, cannot be considered seasonal as it is so rarely out of season – farmers and skilful gardeners juggling winter and summer types so that there is a near continual overlap of creamy curds. However, this is the start…

BROWN BUTTER & TOFFEE COOKIES Makes16 150g unsalted butter ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda ½ tsp mixed spice 300g plain flour ½ tsp salt 150g light brown soft sugar 100g caster sugar 1 egg 1 egg yolk 1 tbsp maple syrup 2 tsp vanilla extract 3 tbsp whole milk 150g chocolate-covered toffees, such as Fazer’s Dumle*, or white chocolate, chopped Sea salt flakes (optional) 1 Melt the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat until it starts to bubble noisily. Eventually the bubbles will become smaller and stop. Swirl the pan – you will see and smell the change from yellow butter to brown. Immediately remove from the heat. Transfer to a bowl and leave to cool a little. 2 In another bowl sift together the bicarbonate of soda,…

* There’s no better way to get to the heart of a city than through the people who live there. Every month, we ask someone, clearly in love with their city, to take us on a personal tour and tell us what makes it so special. You may feel inspired to visit one day or to rediscover the charms of a city closer to you, but for now just sit back, relax and enjoy some vicarious travel. How long have you lived here and where are you from? I was born in Canterbury, Kent. I met my Japanese wife in the UK, we married in 2001 and would travel each year to Japan for several weeks or more. We moved to Tokyo permanently in 2007. Tell us what makes your…

When the desire to get away for a couple of days arises, it’s good to really get away and find somewhere to stay that feels different. The Isle of Wight might not seem like the most exotic of locations, but in a field near Cowes, three little houses have been built that offer something a step away from the ordinary. The brainchild of Helen and Fraser Cunningham (who also run Airstream campsite Vintage Vacations), these holiday homes follow the principles of the US Tiny House movement. With living simply and efficiently as guiding principles, they are powered by solar panels, heated by wood-burning stoves, and have composting loos. After a couple of days living off-grid, we wondered why more houses weren’t built like Tiny Homes and why we weren’t living…

1 MAKE The secret to instant, no-sew curtains are curtain ring clips. These clever gadgets clip on to a piece of fabric then slip onto a curtain rod. Find a piece of fabric that does not require hemming (a blanket to cover a drafty door, for example, or a pretty lace table cloth for a bedroom window), fix curtain ring clips at evenly spaced distances along one edge – the more clips, the more gathered it will become – then hang from a rod or pole. You can buy curtain ring clips, above, which come in a variety of colours, £5.79 for 10, at curtainringclips.co.uk. 2 BUY There are plenty of ready-made curtains out there. Fabric quality varies widely, but all will protect your privacy if nothing else. The chances…

When I got married 20 years ago, I abandoned my florist-bought bouquet in favour of a hastily picked posy of mallow, lavender and pink penstemon. The traditional bouquet of ivory roses was spectacular, but it wasn’t very me. I was looking for something real and fun and full of life – just like I wanted my marriage to be. These days I’m always on the lookout for sprigs and foliage to steal from the garden; a caramel twig of winter honeysuckle or the first precious daffodil of spring to pop in a jar. To meet this need to forage, I dedicate a small patch every summer for sowing annuals – a few square metres gives me flowers almost for free. It also frees me from the guilt of flower air…

Money plant This thick-branched evergreen is also known as the ‘Friendship Tree’. Yet it’s poisonous. With friends like these… String of buttons Clusters of yellow leaves, with blue-green stripes and red edges. Older leaves darken to gentle blue-green. Aloe vera Ancient Greeks thought it cured baldness – don’t give your plant that fate. Cut only a third of its leaves for their healing gel. Fishhook cactus Known for its fishhook-shaped spines. Your catch? Hopefully a delicate pink flower from the crown of its head. Old Man of the Andes Old, and wise, too. The wispy white fur offers protection from the light frost and searing sunlight of South America. Moon cactus Has to be grafted atop a friendly host. After a few years, the plants grow apart and it needs…