Summer Sundae days......

It's still festival season here in the UK...every weekend there is a music festival somewhere... a chance to relive your youth, listen to some great music and chill out with friends. Oh and dodge the rain.....it's been that kind of summer.

Over the years I've been to many, but there's one particular festival in August that I go to without fail. It's called Summer Sundae and it's held in the grounds of the rather lovely DeMontfort Hall here in Leicester.

The whole weekend passes in a smiley faced blur of contentment.




The concert hall   holds 2,400, there's a big outdoor stage too plus two stages in marquees and an outdoor bandstand. Over the years, artists such as Joan Baez, Steve Earle, Bon Iver, Macey Gray, Keane, Seasick Steve, Mumford and Sons, Noah and the Whale to name but a few have played at the festival. Summer Sundae also showcases the wealth of local talented bands and acts here in Leicestershire such as By the Rivers, Mahalia, Park Bench Society, Charlee Drew, Kyte, and many others..

This year, a different headliner for each day...Friday it was Katy B, Saturday ..Ocean Colour Scene
and Public Image for Sunday.There were a hundred and three other acts...reggae, ska, folk, rock, electronica, indie, you name it, we heard it.

Bands flew in from all over the world...Willie Mason and the Bower Birds from the USA, Dan Mangan from Canada, and the band to travel the furthest were the wonderful Black Seeds from New Zealand.

There's a lovely feel to the festival....it's very popular with families., with lots of activities for children. This year's hits were a safari and Monsieur Mouse's Puppet Theatre and there's also lots of oddities to get caught up in and watch including this lepoard....

Nichola Wood is a sand sculptor.....it's amazing what she can do with five tons of sand!

What I love about Summer Sundae is that it's a festival in a city, on a site that's not too big, where you don't have to trudge miles from stage to stage, where there's always somewhere to hide from the rain and there's flushing toilets too. Now that's what I call heaven at a festival!

And I love the way the atmosphere changes as night falls.....the little ones are tucked up in tents or at home..and everything changes. And after the stages have closed, there's always a silent disco or the comedy tent for even more entertainment.

That's not to say that I just sit around on the grass watching my favourite bands by day, or party all night....

I may snatch a moment doing just that(well 60 minutes actuually on Sunday out of a thirteen and a half hour day).....but primarily I'm there to work. And it was a busy three days ...

....the sun shone...in fact it was very hot.....and I was there to record a documentary on the festival, and broadcast live.. Not to just feature the bands...but rather the whole feel of the festival ,with stories from the back room staff, and the audience too.


Simon Fowler from Ocean Colour Scene and me with my ancient...but trusted Marantz!

If you'd like to listen,  you can do until next Monday morning

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00xpry5

What's your favourite music festival?

The track for today? It's from the Black Seeds.....I first heard their music in Australia four years ago...and I finally saw them at Summer Sundae! Lovely guys...and you can hear their music on the documentary too. This is "So True"...one of my favourites...and I was standing just behind the person who filmed this....

Lazy days

There is always something to do in a garden. Something for every mood. If I'm feeling like a workout....digging.  Feeling peeved? Weeding. Feeling like I want to take out my bad mood on something....having a good old go with the secateurs.

But there's something I'm never in the mood for ...and that's mowing the lawn. Hate it , won't do it. In fact there's three things that I avoid as much as humanly possible - reversing the car, morris dancing and mowing the lawn.

However, I digress.

On Friday afternoon I was at home. I didn't feel like doing anything- I wanted to lay in the garden.In fact I'd wanted to do just that last weekend too, but we had rain....and a storm or too....

Look at this storm about to come in.....

But on Friday afternoon I felt so tired, I just wanted to lay in the garden and do nothing. I'd been awake since 5am, at work since 6am doing live inserts into the breakfast programme followed by a stint in court. I wasn't in the dock you understand....just reporting from there,  in case you were wondering.

Anyway I got home just before three and  the sun was shining, so.....

I lay in the garden reading....

under the old ash tree

Looking up into the sky..just thinking and listening to the drone of a plane flying over, and the thrum thrum thrum sounds of Mark or Phil three fields away in their combine harvesters.....

It was all very peaceful until I was joined by my furry faced, faithful little friend....









who wanted to play



For once , I declined her offer of a romp around the garden, and so Boo decided to join me and have a doze in the sunshine.....



Peace , perfect peace, doing nothing, lying with my dog in the sunshine. And it was perfect...

Moments captured from a busy week, sunshine stolen for an afternoon from a miserable summer weatherwise...it made me realise how I don't do this often enough.

Today's track is Summer Time..I love this song - always have. There's so many versions....but here's one of my favourites featuring Billie Holliday......





cinq jours francais part deux

Gosh, this time two weeks ago I'd just  arrived in Ceret, in the south of France for Jenny's party.

Now, I have to tell you, Jenny and her husband Phil put on exceedingly good parties. Wherever they are, there are always lots of laughs, loads of wine, and there is always ...how should I put it ...an incident. Or two.

Ten years ago, at another of Jenny's special birthdays....(ones ending in 0) there were several incidents worthy of note. The party was in several parts -her parties are always long and complicated. No arriving at 7.30pm and leaving at 11.30 type of nonsense, oh no.

The party was near Parthenay in France. Lunch for about forty in a chateau.A posh do, canapes and champagne on a terrrace followed by a slap up lunch . It was a long lunch.

Followed by a barbecue for about eighty at their cottage nearby in the evening. A different vibe, jeans, barbecue , music, lots of booze and franglais as the mixture of English and French guests got more creative with their language as the night rolled on.
This was the night of the lavatory incident. Phil and Jenny's house had an indoor loo. Just. It had a roof, but not a door.A swishing curtain to protect modesty and a hand painted sign saying "Vacant" on one side and "Occupied" on the other which guests would have to move accordingly.

At one stage, desperate for the loo, and observing the occupied sign, I was getting restless. " Come on , hurry up "I shouted. Not one but three people came out. The first two had been helping the third who had fallen asleep on the loo. That third person had woken up with a start and fallen headlong into the strimmer and lawnmower which were also in the loo.....( well , where else would you keep your gardening equipment?)

The two good samaritans were trying to patch him up in there...but it looked like a crime scene...a blood bath..and when his wife caught sight of him....let's just say she was not best pleased.

So the scene was set for another legendary party lasting four days. There were seventeen of us for the weekend....two , Bob and  Mavis live in Ceret, Jenny and Phil have an apartment there so they had already arrived, and the rest of us flew in on different flights  .

By Friday night we were all there...so a quiet meal in Ceret's lovely main square was planned

and went ahead

with music which wasn't booked....



and although very jolly, there's only so much accordion music I can personally take before wishing certain things...unprintable things.....apologies to accordion players worldwide but that's just the way that I feel....

Anyway, I could hear a live band starting up jsut at the back of the square...so I went to investigate....and there was a really good covers band playing in the next street.

I went back to get the others...the next thing, we found ourselves singing and dancing for the rest of the night....

Oh dear, the photos were getting blurry by this stage, but hey ho....

On Saturday morning some of us were up bright and early for the market.....hundreds of stalls selling baskets (yes I bought one), clothes,jewellry, ornaments, chickens, plump salamis, the freshest vegetables and rather a lot of goats cheese.

So hot though , so we escaped to the lake ...for a swim, a chat and a beer.......until it was time to get ready for drinks and present opening in Jenny and Phil's apartment,.followed by the birthday meal itself.

 A delicious meal....serrano ham and melon, fish baked to perfection with an aoli accompaniment and lots of roasted courgettes, peppers and tomatoes, followed by Catalan Creme. Imagine creme brulee with a twist.....I'm salivating just thinking about it.....

Everything eaten,several games of Chinese whispers were played which became increasingly bizarre and filthy.....

We then decamped to a bar ...I can't remember the name....where there was a lock in . More drinks, more dancing.....and male bonding...



and dancing of a different kind....Bob, one of the more diminuitive of our gang...and the lovely, tall Vera.....

I love this photo even  though it's blurry!

Bridget, Dave and I left about 1.30 am I believe...details are rather hazy. What was certain was how difficult it was to get Dave back to the house we were sharing.It took us half an hour to walk down the hill with the dead weight which was Dave......it was exhausting. Halfway home we had to lean him against a building so that I could draw breath and burst into fits of giggles.....

There were fewer laughs further down the hill....we came to a rather lovely fountain....which Dave was nearly pushed into ....not by me I hasten to add!

The fountain by daylight......and on the Sunday lunchtime, a recreation of how we got him back to the house the night before...

And by Monday, most of us had left -flying back from Girona in Spain, or from Perpignan...back to work after perfect days of partying....I just wonder what the next party will be like!

Today's music is from St Germain....It's called Pont des Artes off their 2000 album "Tourist".... I always have to play this when I'm in France... it brings back such great memories of a hot garden ten years ago in France...this was playing as we all sank orange juice and ate croissants in an attempt to liven ourselves up after the night before......





Blackcurrants are best

Slugs and snails have put paid to my pea and bean growing this year at the allotments this year. Despite multiple sowings of both, I've given in. Lost the battle.  But not graciously...

I could rant for ages about how much I hate slugs....in fact I have...at the allotment. Last week, when I arrived  to find every single one of my peas gone, I literally jumped up and down in annoyance and my dears........I uttered swear words I've never used before, and some I didn't even realise I knew!
Fortunately, I was the only one at the whole site at the time so no one heard - but it did make me feel better

So, no supplies of peas and beans to help my food challenge this year .

But bless my fruit bushes. Epecially the blackcurrant bushes...which produced pounds and pounds of fruit. I picked most of them the other week.....

Sitting there in the sunshine picking fruit has to be one of the loveliest experiences.....daydreaming of making jam, blackcurrant coulis to spread over ice cream and all those packs of blackcurrants in the freezer ready for the fresh tasting tartness of blackcurrants in heartwarming crumbles and pies in the dark days of winter.



I love blackcurrant drinks too,  both alcoholic and non acoholic...and I always have a bottle of cassis in the cupboard to splash into a blackcurrant tart or crumble.  But it's not just the taste of blackcurrants that I like....they are very good for you.

They contain high levels of vitamin C and anthocyanins  which help fight against cardiovascular problems, ageing, urinary tract infections and  mantain healthy vision.

All the more reason to smear lashings of blackcurrant  jam on my sourdough  toast in the mornings...

Later this winter, I'll definitely going to be planting more blackcurrant bushes but in the meantime here's an easy peasy but oh so gorgeous recipe for blackcurrant coulis which I've been making for years....slather it over ice cream, or swirl some in some creamy greek style yoghurt.


Blackcurrant coulis.

Ingredients
500 gms blackcurrants
100 gms sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
200 mls water

How to make

Put blackcurrants into a  small pan with 200 mls of water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes until the fruit is soft.

Stir in the vanilla extract and cool a little.

Put into the blender, whizz to a puree and then strain through a sieve. Do strain darlings...most imperative - you don't want to sit there with black bits in your teeth afterwards!

This coulis will keep for up to 3 days in the fridge if you put it into an airtight container....or 3 months in the freezer.

cinq jours francais

I popped down to the South of France last weekend. Now that sounds fancy doesn't it? And it was....but it's not something I'm prone to do on a regular basis  you understand. I was there for a special party for my very close friend Jenny.

More about the party (and wow what a party!) in the next post....I'm still thinking about what I leave in or out? Should I protect the guilty? Should what happened in Ceret stay there?

Meanwhile, I love this town near the French/Spanish border. A walled town oozing charm and history, I first came here on holiday eight years ago, staying in a maas three tmiles away. This time I was staying in the town itself....full of tall, narrow houses built higgledy piggledy on narrow streets.

Many of them don't have gardens, just  a roof terrace or a balcony. But however small the space,  there is always room for a pot or two ....or ten....

As well as pots of flowers and herbs everywhere, you can't fail to miss the magnificient oleanders spilling out of gardens, being used as tall edging by the roadsides - the oleanders reign supreme here....in light pink and cerise.....

I adore seeing so many of them under bright blue skies basking in the sun. I know they can grow in England further south, but I've never wanted to buy one. The thought of them in the pouring rain, under leaden grey skies seems wrong somehow....it would be cruel to transplant them.


And do you know what, I felt just like an oleander by the time when I arrived back at Stanstead Airport...within half an hour I was driving home in squally heavy showers. I wanted to be back in the sunshine under shimmering skies....for at least the rest of the English summer......


I wanted to be back here at the lake near Ceret...at the Plan d'Eau......having lunch, a swim, and a gossip with some of the gang...like this time last Friday!



And the track for today... having being forced to listen to Francois Hardy for three days in the car out and about  in Ceret, I'm not choosing one of her tracks!

How about one of my favourite French groups...Phoenix...with "If I ever feel better"....

Social life of a dog days......

My dog has a better social life than me at the moment....granted, it's a slower pace of life, but then she doesn't have to go out to work.

Boo is now four months old now and a really sociable little soul. She loves to go out to meet other other dogs...even though she's never met them before..

.and even though they're bigger than her....

Her new best friend is Roxy (occasionally known as Poxy Roxy when she comes to defecate on our lawn) who lives next door.....

Roxy is a Staffordshire Bull terrier who thinks she is working cocker spaniel, but who has a body builder's shoulders. She also has jaws which could snap my arm in half if she chose to, but she's as soft as butter.

Boo loves going out to see Roxy, and they really are funny to watch....mind you Boo has learnt to be respectful, mind her ps and qs...and then everything in the garden is lovely.

But Boo's other close friend also lives in the village...and I've never seen such a close friendship between a goat and a puppy before.

Boo adores Billy, and Billy seems to know we're on our way.He whizzes upto the gate, puts his head down, so that I can scratch that spot between his horns....and he simply adores Boo licking the top of his head.

Boo's evening walk is similar to an Italian passegiata...she strolls around the village graciously allowing everyone to stroke her, and then she forgets to put an act and tries furiously to jump into everyone's arms for a cuddle.

Her favourite walk lies beyond the gate about  a hundred feet from our cottage. Across the fields, on what used to be the main road to London.......well, I am talking in mediaeval times!

Her other favourite walk is the mile long walk to the next village..by the fields

where there is a pub we can sit outside to chat to other dogs and humans....here's my eldest son marching purposefully to the pub on Sunday.....

Every day brings a new meaning now that Boo is in our lives....and  who'd have thought that Boo and I would be best friends with a goat?

But for Boo, every day is a new adventure...what's next?

She's out walking with my husband at the moment....I wonder where they've got to?


Today's track is Take a Walk by Passion Pit....love, love , love

other days at the Botanic Garden

Imagine the early years of the twentieth century. Four houses being built in the Arts and Craft Style, each with four acres of gardens for wealthy merchants and industralists. It was a golden age for plantmanship, and I'm sure there must have been some upmanship between the owners of those houses called Beaumont, Southmeade, The Knoll and Hastings.

 Here's one of them.....Southmeade

Fast forward to 1947 when all all the separate gardens were merged into one sixteen acre garden and became the University of Leicester Botanic Garden.The houses became halls of residence for students.

 Fast forward again to when my three children and I  spent hours here over the years, learning, sharing, playing and yomping around the garden in every sort of weather.  Different spaces for different seasons....in summer on dry days, the children would all spend an hour or so roly polying down the bank in front of The Knoll.

The lawns weren't just a place to romp around though....they learnt which trees were which, to estimate...how tall do you think that tree is.? How many times bigger than you is it?

 There's some silver birches in the distance, and one day my daughter who was about six then, suddenly starting singing a lovely Canadian song "Land of the silver birch" which she'd learnt at school that day. And I still start humming that song to myself even now, years later as I walk past them.....

This is one of my favourite places ...so tranquil, so pretty in high summer, a place to sit and reflect....when I'm on my own that is.When the gang were younger , this was a place where I was always on tenterhooks - my hyperactive eldest son had a habit of falling in water anywhere....

But it was also where he and his brother and sister learnt about nature, about life cycles...they would  sit for ages looking at the frogspawn...and demand to go back each week by week to wait to see frogs.My youngest boy learnt to count here, by seeing how many fish he could find....

Meanwhile I would just enjoy the view....but it winter when the pond froze over they found out how dangerous the ice could be....thanks to my friend (another Bridget) who, warning our huge gang of nine children, accidentally putting her foot through the ice..accompanied by hysterics from everyone else there.

On  cold winter walks around the gardens , so icy you could see your breath in the air, and the children barrell shaped with so many layers of clothes on.....this was the place to warm up ...the cacti and succulent house...or the cowboy house as the boys would call it...

My eldest son would dive in, and start speaking in an American accent, using his fingers as an imaginary gun...and would pretend he was in the wild west. He loved it in here....but he also learnt about the real history of the wild west and geography.

The glasshouses belong to Beaumont House. In it's glory days it was known as the finest garden in and around Leicestershire; it employed ten gardeners - five outside and five in the greenhouses. Nowdays, there's four gardeners....for the whole sixteen acres.


I've learnt so much from this garden too.....in  the herb garden, the herbaceous borders, and it's always lovely to see the national collections of Skimmia, Aubrieta, and hardy Fuchsia .To see mature plants in all their glory and what plantings work together.

But in this garden that I learnt to sit and really look, to relax in the tranquil gardens and appreciate the legacy of those gardeners from Edwardian times.This is an absolute jewel of a garden....

Ahem,....but when I said really relax.....I also learnt what it's like to lose a child here...and minutes and minutes of panic seemed like hours as I frantically searched for the eldest boy...........I found him here, hiding.....grinning away as he thought it was the best game of hide and seek ever. The thing is, we weren't playing that game at the time!

And when I found this place again the other week, I couldn't help but smile ...even so, my heart began to beat faster as I remembered the sheer fear of thinking he'd disappeared....

The Botanic Garden is open 10 until 5pm in the summer, 10- 4pm in the winter and it's free to get in.
University of Leicester Botanic Garden,Stoughton Drive South,
Oadby, Leics.
LE2 2NE

Back to the silver birches  for today's track....This is the song my daughter sang EVERY time we visited the garden....!

This version is by Michael Mitchell...Land of the Silver Birch