Table of contents for January 2018 - Issue 67 in The Simple Things

Nick James’ handmade furniture, lighting and home accessories are an antidote to today’s mass-produced versions. His studio in Newcastle creates furniture that lasts a lifetime. “A machine can’t pick up a piece of wood, study the flow of the grain, or make a decision about how to use it,” he says. Top of our wishlist is the Oak Stool, £285, and Oak Bench, £495, above, but smaller products such as lamps, from £50; clocks, £35, and a framed woodcut of the iconic Tyne Bridge (£35) are also very tempting.jamesdesign.co.uk…

We are made up of stories; they shape our imaginations and help describe the way we fit in to the world. In this fascinating book, Professor Martin Puchner heads off on an a whistle-stop tour of the world on a mission to discover how literature came to be – from the epic tales of the ancient world, to the compendium of tales in Scheherazade’s One Thousand and One Nights, to the elegant insights of courtly medieval Japan, gleaned from one of the world’s first novels – Tale of Genji by Murasaki. Puchner also looks at how advances in technology, such as the invention of paper, and today’s modern tablets (an update of the clay tablets of Ancient Mesopotamia), have made stories today more accessible. (Random House)…

“These days it’s all about the loose dangle, preferably in multi-coloured stripes” Whatever the vagaries of fashion throw at us, during the winter months scarves remain steadfastly looped around our necks. This is mostly because they are very good at doing what they do best: keeping the wearer warm by withstanding chilly gusts. But it is also because they are an affordable and easy way to update a weary winter wardrobe. Easy, that is, if you know the right way to wear one. The scarf is a versatile garment and can be worn in countless ways – it can be draped, tossed over one shoulder, tied in knots, or simply dangled – but the danger is that not all of these are fashionable. The days of wearing your scarf folded…

LIA LEENDERTZ is a freelance garden and food writer and was recently shortlisted for Cookery Writer of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers. Her new book, The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2018, is out now. Pick a leaf of bay and give it a good, deep sniff and you will get... nothing much. Bay is the most impenetrable of herbs. Where others send tempting wafts your way if you so much as brush past them, bay keeps it all locked away, looking and smelling perfectly leafy, but that’s about all. But, given heat and a little time, it reveals hidden depths. Bay contains all sorts of subtle flavours that emerge in layers, most often uncovered when incorporated in a long-cooking stew or soup. There are eucalypt and…

Diaries. We’ve all used them, whether a secret journal with a lock, kept under the bed, or a slick, small scheduler to record appointments. It might be started in earnest, only to be forgotten about by 8 January, or become a trusted friend for many years. Diaries are places to plan the future, or record the past. As both schedules of practicalities and explorations of the personal, diaries have appealed to us for centuries. Each is unique and as fascinating as the life from which it is drawn. Early diaries were less about a place to explore feelings and thoughts, and more tools for information. Almanacs, meaning ‘calendars’ in 12th-century Latin, became popular in the late 16th century. The almanacs have more in common with a modern planner. They were…

Is there anything more delicious than curling up in bed and falling into deep, sweet sleep? On the other hand, is there anything more hellish than tossing and turning all night in the grip of insomnia? Shakespeare called sleep “nature’s soft nurse”, which is true on all levels. Our bodies use sleep to repair and replenish while our minds spend it processing, preparing, organising memories and clearing out toxins. No wonder everything feels better after a good night’s sleep. We spend, on average, about a third of our lives asleep, but what actually is sleep? In prosaic terms, it involves a period of extended rest: our nervous system is inactive, our eyes closed, postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness suspended. In reality, it remains one of the most mysterious aspects of…

For pure home-making satisfaction, little beats making the furniture that you use each day. Every morning, Valesca and Dennis van Londen eat breakfast with their children Boaz and Indy at the table Dennis fashioned from wood reclaimed from the floor of a bowling alley. “It feels really good to build the things that surround you, and to see your family using it,” says Dennis. “And it’s even better when the material to make that furniture has been recycled. If you keep your eyes open, you can find reusable timber in all sorts of unlikely places. I made the cabinets in the kitchen from a wooden church floor and, in a previous life, the beds were scaffolding planks.” Dennis also uses scaffolding planks for the furniture business, Van Londen (vanlonden.com),…

“Serenading a tree does have something of that peculiar English eccentricity” For many of us, Twelfth Night signifies little more than the deadline for taking down the Christmas decorations. For others, however, it’s an occasion to pull on the wellies, head out into the cold and wake the fruit trees from their winter slumber through songs, offerings and some cider-fuelled revelry. In orchards and allotments across the country, the ancient tradition of wassailing is making an unexpected comeback. The term ‘wassail’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon greeting ‘waes hael’, meaning ‘be well’. Not to be confused with the house-visiting wassail, which was essentially an early form of carolling, the apple wassail began in the cider-producing regions of southern England, where on Twelfth Night, the country folk would visit the orchards and…

This is as much a gag as a trick – making it an ideal interlude to perform between other tricks. EFFECT: Grabbing hold of his head, the magician gives it a quick sideways twist. A loud and certainly unnatural “CRACK!” is heard, as if his impromptu demonstration of chiropractics has gone wrong. After the laughter and worried expressions subside, the entertainer grins, and continues with his performance. REQUIRED: A jacket and a hard plastic drinking glass. The cup must be stiff, so that when squeezed it will crack easily – and loudly. PERFORMANCE: As you address your audience, feign a cramp in your neck. “Give me a moment to work this out,” you say, as you grab the sides of your face with your hands. Giving your head what appears…

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MARMITE & CHEDDAR WELSH RAREBIT Winter comfort food doesn’t get much better than this Serves 2 4 slices sourdough 20g unsalted butter 20g plain flour 200ml amber ale 100g mature cheddar, finely grated, plus extra for sprinkling 1–2 tsp Marmite, to taste 1 Preheat grill to high. Toast the sourdough, either under the grill or in a toaster. 2 Put the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat. Once the butter has completely melted, add the flour and beat to a thick paste with a wooden spoon. 3 Still on the heat, add a splash of the ale and beat in. The mixture will turn into a very thick paste but just keep beating. Add the ale gradually, beating well after each addition. As the mixture gets looser,…

ALL-DAY MENU Pizza for breakfast Hearty oxtail soup with parsnip & potato mash Twilight apple-ginger toddies Baked veg crisps with sour cream dip Citrus & pomegranate salad Goats’ cheese & walnut salad Roasted cherry tomatoes Homemade chocolate You don’t need to be in the depths of snowy Norway to appreciate that some January days are just made for hunkering down and staying cosy indoors. Let this be your excuse to dedicate time to small pleasures – a good book, a long-awaited boxset and, of course, sharing good food. Our menu shouldn’t eat into your sofa time too much. There are tasty snacks, salads and slow-cooked soup that’s worth the wait. Less a gathering – more like an indulgent retreat for one, or two… Good morning pizza START THE DAY WITH…

YOU MIGHT THINK there’s little point in going on a vegan cookery course if you’re not even vegetarian but if, like me, you want to include more plant-based foods in your diet and cook more imaginatively without using meat, then you’ll find inspiration in bounds. For an education in meat-free cooking, you can’t get much better than Demuths Cookery School in Bath and my course mates came from far and wide. Our day course was ‘Vegan Gourmet’ and we were given the task of creating a restaurant-standard menu with a mix of demos and plenty of practical work in the spacious, light-filled kitchen. We started by chopping and pickling veg for kimchi (a great thing to have in your fridge to give stir fries and soups extra oomph) and a…

*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 armchair travel. How long have you lived in Perth? Always. My family spent every holiday and long weekend swimming, fishing and crabbing when I was a child – I may have salt water running through my veins! The beach is only five minutes from my house. What makes your city unique? There is so much space.…

The Cinderella of Ferndale Simon Armitage It was all about shoes. In that small town there was hardly a foot she hadn’t dressed or clamped and sized in the Brannock Device, and barely a toe that hadn’t blenched at the force of her thumb as she prodded and pressed. Not known for her lightness of touch, riding home one night at the back of the bus she’d bungled a big tin of Dulux gloss and a lurid delta of scarlet sludge had fanned as far as the driver’s heels to be walked by passengers onto the street. Fifty years later those footprints still stand: on pavements and kerbs, over zebra crossings and under the bridge, round the boating lake, across the surgery’s waiting-room floor, through the chapel gates; footprints in fading red…

My almanac was inspired by a holiday to Cornwall. We were staying in a tiny shack with big views, in the dunes at Hayle. The windows framed a view of the estuary one way, and out across the bay towards the headland of St Ives, the other. As I drank tea on the sofa, or sat at the table colouring in with my daughter, or washed up at the sink in the little kitchen, I could watch the playing out of massive cosmic forces: the tide coming in and shrinking the beach to a strip, or going out and leaving the sand flats wet and shining; the moon rising and laying me a silver pathway across the sea. I wanted to take that connection home with me, so that when…

SUPPORT YOURSELF Spend as much as you can afford on a mattress. It’s a myth that the firmer the mattress, the better for your back. The aim is correct spinal alignment so look for a high spring count plus natural fillings (wool/cotton/silk) to help regulate body temperature. It’s a cliché but Millbrook Beds’ Perfect mattresses (from £2,000; millbrook-beds.co.uk) really do feel like floating on a cloud. The Hilary Devey collection from Duvalay (from £650; hilarydeveycollection.co.uk) is handmade and princess-worthy. SWITCH OFF Every sleep hygiene programme recommends a digital detox for at least an hour before bedtime. Turn off your backlit devices and switch off the television. Don’t be tempted to check emails on your phone and don’t even think about watching movies on your tablet in bed. The light on…

The story so far I spent 12 years working in advertising but eventually the fun had been had, so I quit. I started my blog, Gluts & Gluttony, which was born out of a passion for growing food organically and an inability to grow sensible quantities of it. The ‘gluttony’ bit came from the food and recipes that resulted. During this time, I retrained as a cook and worked at Daylesford Organic farm for three years, before going full time with Gluts & Gluttony. As the business grew, I needed more room to grow veg. My neighbour let me use a patch on his farm. Now I have six 8x4m beds and two 1x8m beds in a greenhouse. We’re not registered organic, we’re too tiny for that, but we use…

“Bear in mind that this is a place to curl up rather than to sprawl” There are moments in the depths of winter when even the thought of leaving the house seems ridiculous. As the rain pelts the windows and the wind whips in under the front door, the call of the sofa is irresistible. Who needs to go out when everything you require is right there, and can be enjoyed in your slippers? How pleasing to listen to the rain from the warmth and comfort of indoors, wearing your favourite jumper and no make-up. Once you accept that putting on a coat and stepping outside is just not going to happen, your thoughts might turn to making your home even cosier, more cocoon-like, more seductive. What you need is…

“A purring cat on the lap is a restful thing, as is a dog slumbering on a rug beside you” Answer in brief: create boundaries, either real or perceived. This depends on whether the inhabitants are animal or human and what sort of behaviour is involved. No one welcomes a cat persistently pestering to be fed, or a dog bounding all over them when there is a book to be read. But a purring cat on the lap is a restful and companionable thing, as is a dog slumbering on a rug beside you. Train your animals and they will respect your quiet time. Alternatively, shut the offenders in a different room. Human beings with their constant demands, however, are trickier to control. Some people (children, husbands, we’re looking…

Attempts at dream decoding date back centuries – think of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream in the Bible (or, indeed, in the Lloyd Webber musical), for example. Although there are hundreds of ‘dream dictionaries’ available, they are generally lacking any factual back-up – very broad links is about as far as scientists have got. But while you might not figure out exactly what that particularly vivid dream was supposed to mean, there are other useful ways to consider our dreams that can help us in our everyday (real) lives: • Because most believe dreams provide insight, they do affect our behaviour. For example, people asked to imagine they dreamt about a plane crash the night before a trip were more likely to cancel than if a real crash had happened. The…

JD Salinger Holden Caulfield’s 1951 debut gave voice to the teenager. He revealed what they’d suspected all along – the adults are all phonies anyway. Virginia Woolf Thank heavens Woolf could afford a room of her own. This modernist was a pioneer in stream of consciousness and many feminist matters, too. John Steinbeck In 1939 The Grapes of Wrath shocked with its “earthy” language and was widely banned and burned. It’s a masterpiece of the depression era. Margaret Atwood Atwood’s speculative fiction, The Handmaid’s Tale explores when, “you’re just ahead of reality, but sometimes reality is just ahead of you”. Ernest Hemingway Hemingway makes it look so easy. His secret? “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” James Joyce Ulysses(1922) charts…

Anna Hart has a fondness for travelling to gritty destinations. “I’ve come to relish that askance glance, which I now see as a harbinger of a memorable trip” when she reveals that she’s heading for Manila or Detroit, Naples or Belgrade. A firm believer that travelling is one of the very best things you can do, her book is a rallying cry to reluctant adventurers – an honest, funny account of the challenges that might be faced, especially if you’re a woman heading off alone. It’s also an inspiring reckoning of all the benefits to be gained from arriving somewhere new and exciting – the trips covered in this book include Poland, the Amalfi Coast, Glasgow and Holland – and seeing all there is to see. (Sphere)…

1 Blood orange sage margarita Makes 1 125ml blood orange juice 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice 1 tbsp hibiscus syrup (see below) 2 sage leaves, plus another to garnish Ice cubes A wedge of lime Himalayan salt For the syrup (makes 500ml) 500ml water 90g granulated sugar 35g light brown sugar 12g dried hibiscus flowers Zest of 1 lemon You will need Cocktail shaker Chilled coupette 1 First make the syrup. Add all the syrup ingredients to a pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until sugars dissolve and the flowers soften (about 10 mins). 2 Remove from heat and steep for 5 mins until the flavours combine. Strain into a sterilised bottle* through a fine-mesh sieve. Press any solid bits with the back of a…

SPINACH AND LEMON BARS Makes 16 75g spinach leaves75g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing2 tbsp caster sugar, plus extra to finish115g plain flour FOR THE FILLING 4 large free-range eggs200g granulated sugar150ml lemon juice (from about 4 lemons)3 tbsp lemon zest40g plain flour1 tbsp butter1 tbsp icing sugar, to serve 1 Preheat oven to 180C/Fan 160C/350F. Grease and line a 20cm square baking tin. 2 Wilt the spinach in a pan with a small amount of boiling water, then run under cold water to refresh, before squeezing out the moisture. Purée with a hand blender until smooth. 3 In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until smooth, but not too fluffy and aerated. Add the spinach pureé and beat well. Sift…

Favourite shop CRYSTAL REFLECTIONS Have your fortune read, buy gemstone jewellery or joss sticks. Gothic dragons and castles are also available. A fairy figurine and her wolf sit on my bookshelf.crystalreflections.com.au Favourite gallery THE ART SPACE COLLECTIVE Exhibitions by local and international artists as well as life-drawing classes, kokedama lessons or macramé in a friendly, community environment.theartspacecollective.com Favourite bar CLANCY’S FISH BAR Only metres from the waters’ edge, watch the sunset from the alfresco area or through the huge windows with a large glass of crisp, cold semillon.clancysfishpub.com.au Favourite restaurant MIA CUCINA Generous portions of delicious food. Intimate and relaxed, everything on the menu is cooked to perfection.miacucinawa.com.au Favourite market Wander the markets for clothes, food, art, soaps and crafts, buy fresh produce and then rest your legs in the…

Oxalis For a plant with such theatrical qualities – its purple leaves track the light and fold up at night like butterfly wings – an oxalis is remarkably low maintenance. Alice Howard, owner of Botanique Workshop, artisan store and flower shop, recommends adding grit to the pot, and feeding every so often. And don’t give up on it during winter when it dies back – it will recover in spring and reward you with pretty lilac flowers in summer.…

PROUDLY HOMEMADE After all the glitter of Christmas has been packed away, things can seem a bit bare and it becomes all about finding little ways to brighten up the short days. This project is a simple way to make the everyday a bit more special – it only takes a few minutes to dip dye paper (and just a bit longer to dry). So, whether you intend to use it for thank you notes, to keep a resolution to write to people more or for your own notes and observations (see page 36), a little splash of colour can go a long way. You will need A selection of paper, envelopes and postcards Hand fabric dye powder (we used Dylon) Warm water Measuring jug Vessel for holding your dye…

When it comes to creating a place to curl up, getting the chair right is a big deal. Fortunately, today’s high-street retailers offer many options, and a return to old-fashioned styles has seen the return of high-backed chairs and love seats which have plenty of room to nest in. Here’s a brief guide… Wing chair With a high back, side pieces at head height and padded arms, this is the ideal curl-up-to-read-in chair. Try ikea.com (Strandmon, £179); tesco.com (Carrington, £349); made.com (Kubrick, £399). Club chair The comfiest versions are the vintage ones with soft, battered leather that look like they came from a gentlemen’s club. Slouch here after a meal with a brandy. Try argos.co.uk (Salisbury, £449.99); arloandjacob.com (Pembroke, from £850); sofaworkshop.com (Whipper Snapper, from £1,469). Cuddler sofa or love…