Honoré Daumier at the Royal Academy of Arts

One of my very favourite places in London is the Royal Academy of Arts on Piccadilly.

Do you know it? If you don’t, you can find it here: Royal Academy of Arts

I joined up as a friend way back when I first moved to London, and I can honestly say that I’ve learnt more about art within the walls of Burlington House than they ever managed to teach me at school.

These days I’m a huge fan of the visual arts and of art history, but when I arrived in the Big Smoke for the first time I didn’t know a whole lot about any of it. You see I’d grown up in a very rural corner of the world where we didn’t have a lot of access to museums and art galleries. At school I’d taken maths and the sciences to A-level so I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to lose myself in fine art.

All that changed, big time, when I  came to live in London. One of the many, many things I love about living here is having such fabulous art collections on my doorstep.

The Royal Academy is special, however, as its exhibitions encourage you to focus on stuff that you may not have paid much attention to before. I’ve discovered so many fabulous artists just by going along and having a look.

At the moment they have an exhibition up in the Sackler Galleries of the work of Honoré Daumier.

‘Who he?’ you ask.

I’ll confess that I’d never heard tell of him before either, but I can tell you he was a total Rock Star of a painter. He lived from 1808 to 1874, and his work reminded me very much of that of my great hero William Hogarth in that he saw things from the perspective of the little man/ woman, the normal guy, rather than the Duke or aristocrat. His work is infused with sympathy for the working poor. His brush strokes are brave and sparse, and painted with the satirical eye of a Hogarth, and in many ways anticipating the work of the impressionists.

I won’t talk on about his work, because you can read all about it on the RA website from people who know far more about him than I do, but, if you get a chance, do pop by and have a look for yourself. You’ll discover a fascinating window into the prejudices and pre-occupations of people living in nineteenth century France, but please go soon, as the exhibition closes on 26^th January.

Enjoy!

Bonny x

Wibble wobble jelly on a plate …

There’s something incredibly satisfying about a good, old-fashioned jelly on a plate. Don’t you agree? It sort of adds an air of celebration to a very modest after-dinner treat.

Ta-dah!

See what I mean? It looks like I went to a bit of an effort, whereas in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Jelly is a doddle to make with one of those jelly-cube jobbies that you simply dissolve in water, leave in the fridge for a bit, and then love the result.

Emilio, my son, is particularly enthusiastic about jelly. He’s got an egg-allergy, which tends to rain a lot on his pudding parade. However, one thing that he can (and does) enjoy is jelly.

My Mum and Dad recently gave me these wonderful old jelly moulds. I’ve had fun making regal-looking jellies with them for Emilio and his friends. We had a sleepover in our house with three of his best friends at the beginning of the month. After dinner the boys had ice cream and jellies made up in their team colours, which went down a treat.

One trick that I’ve learnt is to coat the mould in some cake-release spray so that the jelly comes out a bit easier. Alternatively you could use a sweet-tasting oil, such as almond oil, to coat the tin, or you could dip the mould quickly into some hot water to loosen it up around the edges if it’s being stubborn about coming out – just be careful not to leave it in the hot water for too long or to get any of the hot water into the jelly, otherwise it’s liable to go pear-shaped.

It’s a really simple, easy, every-day treat that helps brighten up the January gloom. Go on, have a go, and make a little person smile. 

Bonny x

Retail therapy at the London Designer Outlet Village

 I don’t know about you, but I love to bag a bargain.

From time to time I like to motor up the M40 with a girlfriend in tow, for a bit of retail therapy at Bicester Village. It takes me about an hour to get there from where I live in Ealing. The parking is free and easy, and the get-away out of West London is usually uncomplicated. There are some acceptable pit stops for lunch in the retail village itself, and there’s a pretty good play area for the little ones if they are in on the action as well. All in all I find going to Bicester easier and less stressful than a trip to the Oxford Street, with the prospect of a good deal thrown in to add to my enjoyment.

If you've not been before, you can find out all about Bicester Outlet Village here: http://www.bicestervillage.com/en/your-visit/your-visit.

Today, however, I am happy to report that we have our very own discount shopping centre under development at Wembley Stadium. I went there yesterday with a view to doing a little bit of market research. The people in the shops told me that they’d only opened a couple of months’ ago, so it’s all pretty recent.

You can find their website here: http://www.london-designer-outlet.com/

Now I have to say straight out, and without wanting to belittle this newcomer to the shopping scene, that it’s not in the same league as Bicester. It doesn’t have any of the fancy-pants, high-end labels, but if you fancy a bit of cut-price, mid-market, everyday clobber it’s not a bad place to go.

Speaking for myself I was happy to stock up on some jeans from Gap, and a couple of cashmere jumpers from M&S. I bought my usual ‘Premium Skinny Cut’ jeans at Gap for about half of what I’d have had to fork out on the High Street, and who could complain about M&S cashmere jumpers for £29.99? Not a lot wrong with that, if you ask me.

I’m a bit of a cookshop junkie, and was happy to find four places selling cooking stuff: Denby, Villeroy and Boch, Procook and Viners. I’d been looking for some traditional icecream sundae dishes, which I scored in Viners for the princely sum of £1.40 a pop. What do you think of this little ensemble?

As you can see one of them was quickly pressed into service for an end-of-the-school-day jelly treat. Someone in our house is very keen on jelly.

Nike, Adidas and Asics all have shops there for your jogging gear. As do Trespass and Tog24 for walking/ outdoor wear.

As with most of these retail villages there are no interesting, independent stores in the line-up.  I was, however, taken aback to see a Björn Borg outlet (do you remember him of hippy hair and tennis fame?). Anyway, it seems that he is now busy designing very brightly coloured (and I do mean ‘very’) underwear for both ladies and gents – or maybe they just sell his very brightly coloured range at the outlet, and he’s got some tasteful whites and pastels on sale elsewhere. 

There’s lots of building work going on out front at the complex, and the place has a just-moved-in vibe. A window cleaner, brandishing his squeegee mop and bucket, asked me how he could get to the first floor to clean the windows. I must have looked like I knew where I was going.

There are still loads of empty units. Several looked as though they were being prepared for new tenants, so I imagine that the line up of brands is set to grow.

In addition there are stacks of places to eat with a cinema complex somewhere on the upper floor that I didn’t try and visit. If you come on a Saturday morning you can leave your little ones at the football academy (open between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m) and have a peaceful, child-free shop, which seems like a good plan.

Parking (head for the Red Car Park, which is closest to the shops) was easy and freely available – but at a price that seemed a bit steep to me. My little jamboree ran into a third hour for which I had to pay £5.50. I don’t want to sound like a tightwad, but that seemed a bit steep for where I was. Bear in mind that Ikea is at the end of the road, where the parking is free, and there’s a huge Tesco Extra not far away, where they also have free parking. All things told I felt the fee for the car park was a bit more Westfield than Wembley Outlet, and on match days the rate goes up even higher.

So what’s the verdict? Not a bad place to snoop around for a bargain, with the prospect of more and better to come.

Bonny x

The gardener stirs from her winter slumbers

What a lovely day we had yesterday in West London. The sun shone, the sky was blue, the temperatures were mild and, all of a sudden, it felt positively spring-like, which was a bit mad given how the day before we’d been hiding indoors from hailstones the size of Mint Imperials.

Anyway, I have a confession to make: I’m still a country girl at heart. I grew up in the beautiful rolling hills of South Tyrone, and every spring-time, when the sap starts rising in the hedgerows, I get a rush of something primitive in my veins that drives me out into the garden.

I know. I know. ‘Steady on, it’s only the middle of January,’ I hear you say, but yesterday’s burst of primal enthusiasm produced enough momentum to turn the pot of gloom that resides in my front porch into a pot of something approaching welcome cheer.

The problem is, at this time of the year, the garden centres and plant sellers don’t have much to offer in the way of plants for creating pots of welcome cheer. All the red and white Christmas cyclamens and berry-laden plants have gone, and there’s not a whole load of anything colourful left behind to use until the spring bulbs make their debut.

In the end I got some sweet little matching/ clashing garden primroses from the flower stall just outside Sainsbury’s in West Ealing. I’m very keen on matching/ clashing pinks, reds and oranges at the moment. But the resulting ensemble is only OK rather than eye-catching. I’ll blame the lack of choice for my failure to deliver pizzazz, and move on quickly without a photograph.

On our mini-plant hunt Maxi and I trawled through the Osterley Park, Wyevale (dog-friendly – hip hip hooray!) garden centre, where they have quite a decent half-price sale on pretty nearly all of their outdoor plants. We came home with this little trove: a blackcurrant bush, a loganberry bush, a white clematis that promises to have attractive coppery leaves, a buddleia bush that promises to attract swarms of butterflies in summer, a bag of seed potatoes, a tray of curly kale plants and some seeds for salad greens.

I’m looking forward to making preserves with the loganberries and blackcurrants.  I’m already imagining a rich blackcurrant jam, delicately flavoured with star anise and a hint of vanilla … . Hopefully they won’t wither and die in the meantime, or chose to do all their fruiting when I’m on my summer holidays!

We’ve already planted the white clematis to grow through the (rather bare) under parts of an old climbing rose that’s gone a bit leggy at the front of our house. With any luck it will do a good job of hiding the ‘bald’ bits.

Every year I get a few seed potatoes and plant them in patio containers to harvest in June/ July. It's like some kind of earth-magic how they multiply and grow in the soil when no one's looking. You see, you can take the girl out of Ireland, but you can’t take the Irish potato-mania out of the girl!

My garden isn't huge, but it's big enough for me to grow a few crops of this and that for the kitchen, which I find hugely satisfying. I love to be outside surrounded by greenery and birdsong. It's such a great stress-buster, and I've noticed that Emilio, my eight year-old son, gets a bit of a buzz out of it as well.

I've just learnt on my travels about the 'Edible Garden Show', a not-to-be-missed event that's taking place at Alexandra Palace from 28th to 30th March.

'Perfectly timed for the beginning of the growing season, the show is buzzing with tips on keeping bees, raising chickens, brewing beer, saving energy, mouth-watering baking and dishing up delicious meals using home-grown ingredients,' according to the website.

Sounds good to me!

You can check it out for yourself here: Edible Garden Show

Anyway, happy gardening, and maybe I'll see you at Ally Pally come March!

Bonny x

Puppy Angel

Do you believe in angels?

I  do. They walk amongst us every day. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they have a tendency to show up and help us out when we least expect them to.

A little furry angel recently entered my life. He's a puppy, and is just the gentlest, sweetest little person you could ever hope to meet. Forgive me, but when I talk about my dog, ‘he’ can never be an ‘it’. His name is Maxi, as in Maximus, even though he’s really a bit of a Minimus, standing the height of a decent bottle of red to the top of his curly brow.

The idea was that he would be my son’s dog. And my son loves him, and truly believes that he is his dog. At night they even snuggle down and go to sleep together, but you know, on the quiet, he’s really my dog.

All day long, he’s there by my side. I type away, and he snoozes on his beanbag, chews on random objects - my slippers/ bookcase (bizarre)/ the leg of my desk or plays with his toys as we listen to playlists on Spotify.

When it’s time to do the school run I pull on my boots and we take a detour through the park. I’ve never been much of a Gym Bunny, but I’m always up for a walk in the fresh air, even when we have a grey West London drizzle. It’s great. He chases around, barks at the big dogs and then runs behind me for safety when they bark back. As angels go, he's definitely one of the cheekier ones.

Maxi fills my days with fun and affection, and he has slowly reinforced my faith in humanity. You know that people aren’t that bad when they can't help but smile with delight at a cute puppy romping along the pavement. And the number of folk who want to stop for a chat … ‘How old is he?’ … ‘What’s his name?’ … is unbelievable. All that big city reserve just melts away.

So here’s to you Maxi, my very own little household angel.

Bonny x