Highgate Cemetery ... an autumnal walk amongst the tombstones ...

One day last week I took a tour of the most famous cemetery of them all. I'd expected it to be amazing ... and it certainly didn't disappoint.

Highgate Cemetery is divided by Swain's Lane into the East Cemetery, where you are free to wander around on your own (after you've paid the £4 entry fee) and the older, West Cemetery, which you can only access on a guided tour.

There were a number of other people there when I arrived, not many, but enough for the whole thing not to feel too uncomfortable. Call me a numpty, but I was glad to have the company of the living as I walked amongst the massed ranks of the dead. The sun was shining, and the leaves were gently tinged with autumn. A small funeral party were bidding their last farewells to an elderly relative whilst a silent multitude of stone angels watched from every corner as we all went about our business.

The West Cemetery was opened in 1839, and the East Cemetery was added in 1860. Most of the funeral architecture is high Victorian, and packed full of symbolism, with more than a little bit of middle-class snobbery on display too. In London they say that only three things matter when it comes to property: location, location and location. And that rule also seems to have applied to the Victorian dead. The objective was to bag yourself a plot on the edge of a main path, and then build something that was more eye-catching than anything the neighbours had put up. The plots further back were much less desirable given the greater likelihood that your mortal remains would languish unseen and forgotten in the shadows: eternal oblivion in obscurity was definitely not the way to go; gone but not forgotten was the credo.

Death was an opportunity to show-off. The Victorians loved the Grand Tour and were in thrall to classical culture, so many chose to demonstrate their learning and refinement by borrowing symbols from antiquity for their graves. There are any number of classical funerary urns, broken columns and obelisks. Over in the West Cemetery someone has gone the whole hog and built themselves a pyramid; admittedly it's not a very big pyramid and, sadly for them, it's set back just a little too far from the main path for it to be unmissable.

In the West Cemetery the Victorian love affair with the world of classical antiquity reaches its climax in the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon. These two features are truly spectacular in a very other-worldly, this-can't-possibly-be-London sort of way.

The Entrance to the Egyptian Avenue, Highgate Cemetery, London

Lining either side of the Egyptian Avenue, like terraced houses, are a series of private vaults, where whole families were laid to rest. Some still display their street addresses in life: one announced proudly that it was the final abode of one Jeremiah Dummet of Bayswater House, 34 Porchester Terrace.

The Egyptian Avenue, Highgate Cemetery, London

It's a sombre place, with each vault pretty much the same as its neighbours. This sameness made it a slightly less attractive option for the Victorians who relished making their final resting place as unique and individual as possible.

The Egyptian Avenue, Highgate Cemetery, London

This part of the cemetery feels like a remnant of some long-forgotten civilisation. It's got a touch of Karnak or Pompeii or Angkor Wat about it: like it belongs in a different place and to another time. 

Each door of the Avenue is adorned with two up-turned torches of life, symbolic of the lives that have ended. 

Tomb door, The Egyptian Avenue

The Avenue leads on to the Circle of Lebanon, which also has the air of an abandoned city, forgotten by time and misplaced in North London.  

The Circle of Lebanon, Highgate Cemetery, London

In my mind's eye I could see the very grand Victorian funeral cortèges of long ago driving up to the outer gate of the Egyptian Avenue, where the coffins would be unloaded and borne by pall-bearers the last few yards to their final resting places in this amazing necropolis.

The Circle of Lebanon, Highgate Cemetery, London

The magnificent Cedar of Lebanon in the centre is thought to have been there for more than 100 years before it became the focal point around which the circle was constructed.

The Circle of Lebanon, Highgate Cemetery, London

The Circle of Lebanon, Highgate Cemetery, London

Not surprisingly, given that the Victorians were responsible for the Gothic Revival, there's quite a lot of Gothic funeral architecture on display. The most impressive of all is perhaps this amazing monument on the Mears family plot over in the West Cemetery.

The Mears Memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

The Mears family owned the Whitechapel Foundry from 1781 until 1865. The foundry had been established way back in 1570, and still survives to this day, making it Britain's oldest manufacturing company. It was there that the Liberty Bell of Philadelphia and the hour bell of Big Ben were cast.

 Gothic Memorials at Highgate Cemetery, London

Within the cemetery there is little uniformity, but there is a common symbolic language used in the architecture to express the feelings of loss and bereavement of those left behind.

Take a look at this beautiful, grieving widow. She's laden with symbolism.

The Grieving Widow at  Highgate Cemetery, London

She is carrying an inverted torch, symbolic of the life that has been extinguished. She holds a funeral wreath, a symbol of the circle of life, and she leans against a wreathed urn, which symbolises the soul of the deceased with the draped material marking the divide between life and death. With all these different accoutrements she is a classical image of grief and mourning.

Some of the graves have been inspired by matters closer to home, and bear representations of what the deceased did in life. The man buried in the grave, shown below, with its plinth and rather sad-looking horse, owned a knacker's yard where horses were put down when they were no longer able to work.

The Knacker's Memorial,  Highgate Cemetery, London

The knacker's grave sits in a corner of the cemetery where they seem to have been very taken with plinths and urns. They all looked rather splendid amidst the autumn leaves.

In a similar vein the concert pianist, Harry Thornton, who died in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, has a tombstone over in the East Cemetery that represents his occupation very nicely.

Harry Thornton's piano memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

And then there's the grave of a famous bare-knuckle boxer called Thomas Sayers. Sayers had been a hugely successful prize fighter. By the 1850s he was the undisputed English champion. The sport of bare-knuckle boxing was illegal, but, driven underground by the authorities, it remained enormously popular with substantial amounts of money being bet on the outcome of each bout.

Thomas Sayers' memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

Sayers' most celebrated encounter took place on 17th April, 1860 when he took on the American champion John C. Heenan in what many regard as boxing's first world championship. Sayers went into the fight as the underdog. The other man was eight years his junior, 40 pounds heavier and 5 inches taller. Early on in the competition Sayers lost the use of one arm through injury, but he carried on regardless. Heenan was dealt a nasty blow to the face, which blinded him in one eye for the duration of the fight. Undaunted by their injuries, the one-armed man and his half-blind rival slugged it out for 42 rounds before the contest descended into chaos. The crowd waded in, fighting amongst themselves and the police had to stop Heenan from strangling Sayers with the rope that encircled the ring. The fight was declared a draw in the end.

Thomas Sayers' memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

Sayers never fought again, and he died five years later. He was an enormously popular figure, and 100,000 people attended his funeral. Given that he had fallen out with his wife, his beloved bull mastiff, Lion, played the role of chief mourner, riding alone in an open carriage directly behind the hearse. A beautiful statue of Lion guards his tomb to this day.

And then there's the grave of the menagerist, George Wombwell, who must go down in history as one of England's great eccentrics. Wombwell started out as a cobbler in Soho, but one day, acting on a strange impulse, he bought a pair of boa constrictors down at the docks from some sailor, newly arrived from South America. By this stage strange and exotic animals were being brought into the country from all corners of the globe, and the public were curious to see them. Wombwell started showing people his snakes and charging them for the privilege. Business went well, and he added some other creatures to his collection. By 1810 he had given up shoe-making and founded Wombwell's Travelling Menagerie, which quickly grew to become a successful business. By 1839 he was touring the country with 15 wagons packed with exotic animals, and accompanied by a full brass band.

George Wombwells' memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

Many of his animals suffered in the comparative cold and damp of the English climate and, when they died, the indomitable Wombwell sold their bodies to taxidermists and natural scientists, who were keen to dissect their cadavers. On one occasion when he was attending the annual Bartholomew Fair in London his prize elephant died. His rival, who was also there with a menagerie, seized the initiative and put up a sign informing the public that his display had the only live elephant at the fair.  Not to be outdone, the resourceful Wombwell quickly produced a sign announcing that his menagerie was exhibiting the only dead elephant at the fair. The ghoulish Victorian public were much more taken with the idea of poking a dead elephant than feeding a living one, so Wombwell did a roaring trade whilst his rival languished with scarcely a soul coming his way.

Wombwell was the first person in England to breed a lion in captivity; he called it William after William Wallace. The lion on his tomb, incidentally, is not William, but another chap called Nero, who was a bit of a star for being so docile that they were able to offer children rides on his back - for a fee, of course.

One day Prince Albert asked Wombwell for his advice. The prince's dogs kept dying for no apparent reason. Wombwell discovered that their water supply was being poisoned. A grateful prince asked Wombwell what he could do for him in return. As it happened Wombwell had his eye on some of the timber that had been salvaged from the Royal George. Once the largest ship of the line, the Royal George sank whilst  anchored off Portsmouth for some routine maintenance. Over 800 lives were lost making it one of the worst maritime disasters ever to take place in English coastal waters. The prince saw to it that Wombwell was given some planks, from which he had a coffin made. His coffin was then rather sensationally included as an exhibit with his menagerie for a number of years before he needed to use it. And it is in this coffin, made from the timbers of the famous warship, that he rests in his grave today.

 George Eliot's grave in the East Cemetery is, on the other hand, marked by a rather understated (by the standards of the day) obelisk.

George Eliot's memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

She's not very far away from Karl Marx. His funeral, on 17th March,1883, was a small affair attended by only eleven people, one of whom was has friend Frederich Engels. He was laid to rest in his wife's grave, which was in an unobtrusive spot on a small side path. However, in 1954, the Communist Party launched a memorial fund for him, raised a ship-load of money and had both bodies exhumed and reburied in an altogether grander and more prominent tomb beside the main path. I’m not sure that Marx, the great communist, would have approved of all his new-found grandeur; I’ve got a feeling that his first, modest plot may have been more to his taste.

Karl Marx's memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

That corner of the cemetery holds a number of other notable Communists. Yusuf Dadoo, the South African communist and anti-apartheid activist, Claudia Jones, the Mother of the Notting Hill Carnival and Mansoor Hekmat, the Iranian Marxist theorist are all close neighbours of Marx.

I was taken with the gravestone of the artist, Patrick Caulfield. Caulfield designed it himself, clearly intending for it to stand in stark contrast to all the sentimental ostentation of his Victorian neighbours.

Patrick Caulfield's memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

And then there's the headstone of Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a triology in five parts. People in the cemetery were asking whether the pens and pencils were meant to be there ... . I understand that fans come to his grave and pay their respects by leaving pens in the pot in front.

Douglas Adams' memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

Malcolm McLaren's headstone feels very modern. I wonder if that’s the way he used to doodle his initials on the back of his exercise books at school. I'm not sure that I go along with his epitaph: Better a spectacular failure, than a benign success, but it certainly made a statement.

Malcolm McLaren's memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

One of the most beautiful headstones has to be that of Philip Gould, the labour peer.

Philip Gould's memorial, Highgate Cemetery, London

I was also impressed by the exquisite headstone of the Austrian sculptor Anna Mahler, daughter of the composer, Gustav Mahler. It's a copy of one of her works.

This wonderful place fell into neglect during the middle years of the last century. The appetite for ostentatious memorials died in the wake of the First World War. It seemed self-indulgent to make such a song and dance about a single death after people had witnessed mass slaughter on an industrial scale. Cemeteries and funeral architecture became more uniform and subdued, influenced no doubt by the war cemeteries. 

As a result Highgate was largely abandoned. Vandals broke in and colonised the tombs. The undergrowth grew out of control, and the place came pretty close to being lost forever. The Friends of Highgate Cemetery, a group of volunteers united by their love of the old cemetery were formed in 1975. Since then they have run the cemetery and have managed to turn things around with an extensive programme of repair and restoration. 

In my view they're a bunch of heroes who have saved a unique and wonderful part of our heritage. They are not government funded, and instead rely heavily on the money raised through their paying visitors. So please, if you've enjoyed reading about the place do go along, have a look round for yourself and give them your support. 

You can find the website for Highgate Cemetery here: Highgate Cemetery

All the best for now,

Bonny x

As shared on Our World Tuesday and Friday Finds

The ancient Church of Saint Alfege, Greenwich

On Monday I happened to be in Greenwich, kicking my heels, with half an hour to spare. As I was wondering what to do I saw this amazing building: the Church of Saint Alfege, designed by none other than Nicholas Hawksmoor. As luck would have it the door was open and the welcome mat was out for anyone who wanted to come in and have a look around. 

So who was Saint Alfege? 

Alfege was ordained Archbishop of Canterbury in 1006. In those days the good folk in the County of Kent lived in constant fear of Viking raids. The pagan Vikings would show up, loot, rape, pillage and destroy, leaving a trail of death and devastation in their wake. When the Danes raided Canterbury in 1011, Alfege was betrayed by one of his own monks, and carried away by the Danes as their prize hostage for whom they hoped to extort a huge ransom.

They took him to their stronghold beside the river at Greenwich, whilst they sent their demands to the cash-strapped English. They wanted £3,000, a king's ransom, but Alfege was having none of it. He knew that the English were already over-taxed and struggling to survive so he refused to do anything that might have encouraged them to cough up the money.

Six months into his captivity feelings were running high in the Danish camp. Many remembered how their comrades had been massacred by the English on St Brice's Day (13th November) 1002. Matters came to a head when they went on a Saturday night bender on 19th April, 1012. The fatted calf was killed, the liquor flowed and the captors got to talking about their hostage and grumbling about how his ransom still hadn't been paid. One thing led to another, and before long they had poor old Alfege dragged up from whichever pit they'd been keeping him in. Using the bones of the oxen they'd just been feasting on they set upon him beating him savagely until one of their number put him out of his misery with an axe blow to the back of the head. He was 58 years old.

Soon miracles started happening. A Danish oar dipped in his blood sprouted leaves. Alfege was canonised in 1078, and the church here in Greenwich, reputedly constructed on the site of his martyrdom, was built at about the same time. The medieval building erected to the saint's memory stood here for over five hundred years.

It was here in this parish church dedicated to Saint Alfege that Prince Henry (later King Henry VIII) was baptised in 1491.

Baby Henry had been born just down the road in his father's Palace of Placentia, as the old Tudor palace in Greenwich was known, and a few days after his birth he was brought here to be baptised. In those days they didn't like to leave it for too long as infant mortality rates were high, and there was a fair old chance that the newborn mightn't survive long enough to be welcomed into the Church.

Later, Henry's younger sister, the beautiful Princess Mary Tudor wed her true love, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk in this church. Princess Mary had always loved Brandon. Brandon had been her brother, the King's best friend, and she had been the jewel of her brother's court. She was the youngest child of the old king, Henry VII, and had been doted on and indulged by her brother, the new King, Henry VIII. When her brother, Henry VIII, came asking her to make a great dynastic marriage to the ailing King of France, Louis XII, the eighteen year-old princess agreed on the understanding that when her frail, elderly husband (of 52) died she would be allowed to marry Brandon, the man she really loved. Henry agreed, and young Mary became the Queen of France. The marriage lasted for a total of 81 days. The old king died on 31st December, 1514 and, when the niceties of mourning had all been conducted, Henry sent Brandon to fetch her home to England.

Mary, fearful that her brother might not keep his word, refused to leave French soil until Brandon married her. She must have been very persuasive. Brandon had promised the King that he wouldn't enter into a secret marriage with Mary, but whatever she said, he was prevailed upon to forget his promise to the King. He agreed to Mary's demands and they wed in secret sometime in February 1515 in the royal chapel at Cluny.

As they returned to Greenwich they were fearful of how the King would react to their union, but Mary was his favourite sister and she worked her magic on her brother. He gave them his blessing and they had a second, public marriage ceremony here in the Church of St. Alfege on 13th May, 1515. The King and Katherine of Aragon attended, and afterwards there was much feasting and celebration. A few in the court disapproved of how the young pair had married in secret, disobeying the King's wishes and without having obtained his permission to do so, but they made a handsome couple and then, as now, few people could resist such a grand love story. They had risked everything to be together and there weren't many who didn't wish them well with it.

The great Tudor composer, Thomas Tallis, the Father of English Church Music, also has associations with the church. Tallis was sent to Court as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in 1543. In time he became the Master of the King's Music at Greenwich Palace, and often played the organ here at the Church of St. Alfege.

Have you heard the old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times? Well poor old Thomas Tallis would appear to have been thus cursed many times over, but somehow he managed to keep afloat through all the changing religious tides of the Tudor dynasty. Maybe it was his wonderful music that kept him safe, although that self-same music must also have put him at the very eye of the storm.

He served Henry VIII, through the last years of his reign. Henry, having ushered in the Protestant Reformation, remained pretty traditional in his own personal observance. He was succeeded by his son, Edward VI, who was something of a Protestant firebrand. Next came Queen Mary (named after her beautiful aunt, the Princess Mary as it happens), who, being a Catholic firebrand, turned things round completely and brought the nation back to the Church of Rome, and finally there was the wonderfully pragmatic Elizabeth I, a Protestant, who famously dismissed all the theological hair-splitting of her day as a dispute over trifles.

Through all of this Thomas Tallis, an unconformed Catholic, managed to keep his place at court, not to mention his head, whilst serving so many, very different masters. Being tasked with writing church music for such a disparate group sounds like it could easily have turned into a death sentence. Somewhere down the line you'd think someone would have taken theological exception to something that he wrote, especially as he liked to compose in Latin, which many of the Protestants denounced in favour of the vernacular.

Maybe he was a very agreeable fellow, who excelled not only at writing music, but also at keeping people happy. Whatever the way of it he lived to be very old, and died happily in his bed of natural causes.

Thomas Tallis may well have agreed with Elizabeth. His thoughts on the matter were never formally recorded as such, but in the beautiful strains of his music I think we hear the most eloquent argument of all in favour of transcending the inconsequential and embracing the sublime. He died in 1585, and both he and his wife were buried beneath the Chancel. Sadly in the course of the church's reconstruction their remains were mislaid, and no one seems to know what became of them.

In one corner of the church there's an eighteenth century organ keyboard that came to light when they rebuilt the church organ in 1910.

The experts believe that the octaves in the middle are from the Tudor period, and as such are likely to have been played by our friend, Thomas Tallis, and by the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth when they were living at their father's Palace of Pacentia in Greenwich.

The demise of the old medieval church came when a terrible gale struck the building in the early morning of 28th November, 1710 causing the roof to cave in. People blamed the extent of the funeral excavations both within and around the old church, which they said had undermined the foundations.

The present building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren's pupil, Nicholas Hawksmoor. It was the first church to be erected under the New Churches in London and Westminster Act of 1711, which sought to build fifty new churches for the growing conurbation of London to replace those that had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. They only ever managed to build a dozen of those fifty churches, which became known as the Queen Anne Churches.  The whole enterprise was funded by a tax levied on coal coming into London.

Work on St. Alfege's started in 1712 and finished in 1714. Hawksmoor had planned to replace the surviving medieval spire with a new one, but the Church Commissioners could not be persuaded to fund that part of the project. In 1730 another architect, John James, encased the tower and added a spire, leaving the church pretty much as we see it today.

And there you have it: the Church of St. Alfege. If you're passing, do pop in. It oozes history and the volunteers who run the place are just about the friendliest bunch of people you're ever likely to meet. You can find the website here: St. Alfege, and if you'd like to listen to something by Thomas Tallis I'll leave you with his wonderful Spem in Alium.

All the best,

Bonny x

As shared on Our World Tuesday, image-in-ing and Friday Finds

Autumn 2014

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. ~ Albert Camus

I've moaned a lot recently about how I don't want to let summer go, but the other day I took a walk through woodlands that were starting to show their autumn colours against a clear, blue sky. It was … well, it was simply sublime, and I started to appreciate exactly what Albert Camus had been on about.

Down in Devon there are ploughed fields aplenty as the farmers plant their winter crops. The wonderful, red soil looks as though it were designed that way to showcase the glorious reds and ochres of the season.

Emi and I are feasting on hazel nuts foraged from the hedgerows.  He’s very keen, and it’s carries a resonance from my own childhood, out roaming around in nature’s larder. 

I’ve been making chutney and jam, and I’ve even started knitting a scarf for Emi. 

There’s something about the evenings drawing in, and the mellow light of September that always gets me back to my knitting. Maybe it’s another resonance from my childhood; a precious memory of sitting round the open fireside in the evenings with my mum, my grandma and their friends as everyone told stories and worked with their needles. 

My grandma’s stories were always the best; she had an endless store of tales. She claimed that every one of them was true, but I've long suspected that she was accomplished in the art of fiction. Although, to be fair, whenever we'd ask her to tell us the story about whatever-it-was again, she always managed to re-tell it exactly the same each time. 

I miss her now she's gone, and as the year moves through another season it underlines how nothing ever stays the same. We too have seasons in our lives, and with every passing summer I can't help but pause and consider how the sands of time are moving in my own mortal plain. 

And, on a less maudlin note, it's a year to the day since a certain fluffy, little fellow joined our family circle.

And this morning, in a fit of glee, he celebrated his anniversary by digging up all my daffodil bulbs! 

All the best, 

Bonny x

Christmas Chutney ...

Now I know that I’m liable to court your wrath by mentioning the dreaded C-word in September … and I’m really not the sort of person who starts her festive countdown months in advance. Quite the contrary: I’m the demented woman who shops-against-the-clock on Christmas Eve. The thing is we had a surplus of apples from an old heritage-variety apple-tree - with a name that I just can’t remember. 

These apples look fabulous: all red and glossy.


And when you cut them in two the lovely blush of the skin goes all the way into the white of the apple’s flesh. 


They look divine - both inside and out, but they have a really strange texture: kind of spongey, and a slightly tart aftertaste, which means that they are less than fabulous to eat.

Now over here at Talk-a-Lot Towers we are idealistically opposed to wasting stuff, so, rather than composting them, I decided to use them to make chutney. Now here’s the thing: with any good chutney it only really comes into its own if it’s left for at least a couple of months to mature in the jar. So, doing the maths, if you want to make some chutney for Christmas ... now would be a really good time to get going.

This recipe of mine is very simple to make; it tastes divine: not too sweet, and beautifully aromatic; and when it’s cooking your kitchen smells like heaven. Want to give it a go? Well here’s what you’ll need:

Ingredients


500 g/ 1lb 2oz red onions
1.5 kg./ 3lb 5oz eating apples
600 ml/ 1 pint malt vinegar
400 g/ 14oz unrefined Demerara sugar
20 g/ 3/4oz salt
160 g/ 5 1/2oz  dried white mulberries
160 g/ 5 1/2oz dried barberries
160 g/ 5 1/2oz  golden raisins
160 g/ 5 1/2oz  chopped dried apricots
20 g/ 3/4oz  cumin
20 g/ 3/4oz cinnamon
20 g/  3/4oz mixed spice


And here’s what you need to do:

Method

1. Peel the onions and chop them very finely.


2. Wash the apples, removing any stems and leaves. Core and coarsely chop them, leaving their skins intact. Take care to cut out any damaged parts.


3. Place the chopped apples, onions and all the other ingredients in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Stir carefully so that they don’t stick on the bottom, but be careful not to mush the apples up while you’re stirring. And, yes, mush is a technical, culinary term. When they start to bubble, turn the heat down and keep on a gentle simmer for an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half - until the mixture reaches the right consistency for chutney. You should be able to drag your spoon across the bottom of the pan and leave a furrow in its wake when the chutney has reached a perfect chutney-consistency. Be careful to keep stirring all the while so that you don’t get a burnt layer on the bottom of the pan.


4. In the meantime, whilst the chutney is cooking wash and sterilise your jam pots. Depending on how things boil down you'll need 6 to 7 medium sized jam pots. You need to wash them thoroughly in hot soapy water. Rinse them well with fresh, clean water and dry the outsides only. Heat an oven to 150 degrees C, and place the washed jam pots inside on a baking tray - open side up. Place the washed lids on another tray, facing up. Bake in the oven in this way for at least 15 minutes to sterilise.


5. When your chutney is ready, take it off the heat and leave it to stand for a few minutes so that it cools down a little. This will help with the distribution of the various ingredients i.e. you’re less likely to get all the heavier stuff at the bottom.

6. Stir gently to ensure an even consistency and then spoon the mixture into the jam pots, place a wax paper disk in the mouth of each pot and close the lid.


7. Leave to cool and then apply the labels and any decorative paper tops.

I ended up with seven medium-sized pots of chutney in all - about 2.1 Kg/ 4 1/2 lb. of chutney.

Now, as these little mammas are not all going to be consumed here, I’ve prettied a few of them up to go as gifts to friends and family. You can buy all the bits and pieces ready-made to jolly them up, but where's the fun in that?

I find that a few hand-written labels announcing that the jars contain “Christmas Chutney” and circles cut out of festive wrapping paper trimmed with contrasting ribbon or ric-rac work quite well. If you have some wrapping paper that’s a reasonably weight, it should make first class jar-topping prettifiers. All you need to do is turn it face-side down on the kitchen table. Using a saucer or plate of a size that will work with the height of the jam pot being decorated, draw a pencil circle on the back of the paper and carefully cut it out. Place this over the top of the jam pot, and hold in place with a transparent elastic band. If the paper is beautiful but a bit too light and flimsy you can add a bit more body with some sticky-back plastic. Apply the plastic to the wrong-side, and cut out to fit. 

Sometimes a bit of brown paper with a contrasting paper doily makes for a good look.

Whatever you go for, top it off with a bit of ribbon or ric-rac and you’ll have a good-looking, super-tasty present all ready to go when the time comes. Job done!

As I've explained, the chutney works best when it’s left to rest and mature for a few months. Then, when you open a pot, it will be all rich, and unctuous and delicious.

Enjoy with your Chrimbo dinner!

All the best,

Bonny x