Beautiful candlelight

One of the loveliest discoveries I have made recently has been candle shades. I came across these while having dinner with my son in Peterhouse, Cambridge. My memory is that the dining hall in Peterhouse uses almost no electricity. Instead, the tables sport candles which have been made far softer and more elegant by shades. The candles wear an ingenious metal collar which follows the candle down as the wick burns. The shades sit on these.

Gone is the glare of a flame in your face so you can't see the person opposite.

Once you try eating to this beautiful soft light, nothing else is as relaxing. As candle light is to electricity, so these are to candlelight...

If you plan a warm, rich wedding in the middle of winter, these are a must.

Here are silver-plated "followers," with silver-themed shades, from Frolic Lighting +44 (0)118 974 4305.

Please note: it is absolutely vital to use these according to the instructions given, and particularly with the correct candles as indicated on the website.

These are so lovely, it's almost worth getting married in winter specially to use them.

And if, like me, you wed in summer, then you'll just have to have plenty of dinner parties...

How to Test the Respectability of the Hen-Do

Anne:

A week or two ago I  listed our house on Airbnb, as being available when we're going all to be away at the seaside this summer. It is a rather ridiculously large house, mostly because we have a rather ridiculously large family.

I've been inundated, as it happens. Mostly by prospective hen parties, all falling over each other to tell me how respectable they are. One evidenced the fact that one of the bridesmaids is pregnant.

Ah good, that's all right then.

Can you imagine explaining this to your great-grandmother?

"Great-grandmother, we're thinking of letting our house out for a hen party."

"That's nice. A what, dear?"

"A bunch of girls all getting together for a little houseparty. To celebrate the fact that one of them is getting married. How can I explain...? You know how a bachelor will sometimes go out for a last evening with all his unmarried chums? Before settling down to look after his bride, eschew his bachelor ways, share his wife's friends and spend cosy evenings at home by the hearth with her. Used to be the night before the wedding, I think."

"Y-y-yes. I think I remember my cousin Goofy telling me his nephew Chip spent the evening at his club before he was married, and then got nabbed for pinching a policeman's helmet in the Strand. He was a rather wild young man though. So girls do that too, now, do they? Good idea: I'm all for this egalitarian thing. My own mother fought for the vote, you know? I'm sure they'll have a simply lovely time. What will they do with themselves, do you suppose? Have tea on the lawn? Play the piano, perhaps?"

"Well, we know they won't go out and get blind drunk and be sick in the gutter and trash the house. We've been reassured."

"It never occurred to me for a moment they would dear: a bunch of unmarried young ladies. But since the idea was obviously in your mind, I'm intrigued to know how you're so confident they are respectable girls. Are they from good families? Do you know their mothers?"

"Not as such, no. Actually, we don't know anything about them except that one of them is pregnant. So we thought it's bound to be ok."

"I beg your pardon, dear: I must be getting hard of hearing. For a moment I thought you said, 'One of them is pregnant.'"

"That's right."

"Oh, I see! So that would be a reputable matron, looking after the blushing bride and her bridesmaids and chaperoning them. An expectant mother and experienced wife herself. Yes, I can see how that would probably make it all right. A Matron of Honour."

"No, great-grandmother. One of the bridesmaids is pregnant."

"That's impossible, dear. Bridesmaids aren't married. That's why they are called 'maids'. You must have misunderstood."

"'Fraid not. I have the email here: 'Although it is a hen do we aren't a rowdy group: we have one pregnant bridesmaid so we won't be going overboard!' So you see: she wanted to reassure me that they won't be doing anything indecorous."

"I see. Perhaps I'd better stick to something you can explain to me. What's an email again?"

 

 

 

Four weddings? That's nothing

A couple of years ago I moved into a flat shared by 3 other girls my age - just one of whom was engaged. By October last year, every one of us was wed.

Is it something in the water? I can't count of the number of weddings we've been to in the last few years. Really; I just tried. My Facebook friends list is full of women whose presence there is a complete mystery to me - until I remember that I met them under another name. There have been two pairs of sisters - and twin brothers - getting hitched within a few months of each other (at least their mothers already had a hat!); several confirmed bachelors achieving a U-turn in an impressively short period of time; weddings arranged within the space of a few weeks; weddings of couples who'd been engaged for years. There have been Scottish weddings, a military wedding, an Indian and an Armenian wedding. There was a Vegas wedding, announced to the couple's friends and family after the fact. There were soft cones served by a bridal couple from the neighbour's Mr Whippy van before the newlyweds cycled off into the sunset, white dress trailing (on a bicycle built for one!)

Very sadly, when Abdul and Humna got married in Lahore I was self-employed, and it would have meant the loss of two week's income on top of the eye-watering cost of flights in December. But we did make it to the wedding in Poland, and I think I made up for missing out on Pakistan when Natalia got married.

Natalia is from Russia. The turning point of our own Baltic honeymoon cruise was St. Petersburg, and I think that trip may have given me a rather false idea of the ease with which one can travel to and around that country. I certainly didn't realise that after all the rigmarole of getting a visa, flying for ten hours to Moscow and then catching another flight to Krasnodar, my destination - a popular holiday resort, with a population of a quarter of a million - would still be five hours away, with a taxi driver who didn't have a clue where to go at the end of it (nor speak a word of English, though I can scarcely blame him for that). So just in case anyone's considering Russia as a honeymoon destination - fabulous idea, but do find out a little of what's involved first:

Getting a Russian tourist visa will provide hours of entertainment. You first have to get an 'official invitation' from somebody in Russia. This is not, as you might mistakenly assume, an invitation from the friend you are visiting; it's from a hotel or tourism business that you are not visiting at all, but to whom you have paid £30 to issue said invitation. First hurdle cleared, you may then fill in a beautifully impressive visa application form. Among the standard questions ("are you a member of any terrorist organisations?" "Yes; my terrorist organisation is so fiendishly cunning that we admit to our membership on visa application forms") this will ask you to fill in details of every job you have ever been in, and the same for your spouse (whether or not he's travelling with you, incidentally); followed by details of every country you've visited in the last 10 years. Naturally of course, you have no idea which countries you've visited in the last 10 years except by checking all the stamps in your passport - hoping that EU countries don't count. Naturally too, you will miss one by turning over two pages at once, so that when you are in the visa centre and the lady handling your application is checking the destinations, using as reference the same source material that you yourself used (ie, your passport), she will ask you sternly why you left out the USA; leaving you wondering if it would not be rather more efficient for her to cut out the middleman in this operation and simply obtain the list of countries straight from your passport, rather then make you do it so that she has to check your work and send you away for corrections, before checking it again and entering the information into her computer.

The really impressive questions, though, relate to the hotel you'll be staying at in each city you have admitted intending to visit. If you are not planning to stay in a hotel, you will be given the following official advice:

• google hotels in that city
• pick one at random
• fill in the details for that hotel

Only after passing every test will you be granted the privilege of paying another £80 for your visa.

If you have chosen wisely, the visa ordeal will serve as a useful appetite-builder allowing you to appreciate the comforts of your flight. This is going to sound rather silly and trivial; but I am firmly of the Budget Jetting generation. I'm used to queuing for hours at a check-in desk, arguing about my baggage being a kilogram over, elbowing through a scrum for a window seat and then sitting with my knees up to my chin and my elbows clamped to my ribs, while aeroplane staff desperately attempt to convince me that the difference in price between my ticket and a British Airways flight should all be spent on orange teddy bears.

I'd honestly forgotten that flying could be any different. It was halfway through my BA flight (when I'd already luxuriated in the comfy seats, space to jiggle my feet a bit and free blanket) when I realised with delight that I had a DVD player at my seat, on which I could watch in-flight movies (remember those?). And while I probably won't go as far as to eschew affordable airlines in future, I did really really enjoy travelling with BA (which, incidentally, is actually pretty competitive when it comes to Moscow flights).

Which was just as well, because after touchdown in Moscow I would still have some way to go...

 

My travel to Natalia's wedding was very kindly sponsored by BA and S7. Any opinions I express about these airlines are entirely my own. Click here to book flights with BA.

One Year On

It is a year since that glorious day last June, the day Serena and Christian were married.

As well as wonderful memories of the day itself, I have memories of revisiting the day in recent months.

I went back to Trinity in the spring, ironically to preach. (An irony because I’m not a preacher at all... and am married to a rather good one.) Most annoyingly, I had forgotten what I learnt reading the lesson at the wedding, which is that the microphone at the lectern doesn’t work if you turn to look at the congregation – which of course you do, if you want to communicate with them.

But I am nitpicking. Setting aside the fact that I was preaching, it was a blissful evening. The service, the hospitality and food, the people, the conversation.

Naturally Serena, as a member of the College, is entitled to dine on High Table, and was given permission to bring Christian. My father was invited by a friend too, so we were quite a family party.

As we came out into the dark spring night (seems dark now, by midsummer standards) I remembered how much I love Cambridge and long to be there again.

Sermon, Evensong, Trinity Cambridge 9th March 2014

Then a few weeks ago back to Oxford, to preach in Worcester. Also lovely, also a sublime choir, also wonderful company and food.

Sermon, Evensong, Worcester Oxford, 25th May 2014

And then a few nights ago I was back to Trinity again, a guest of the generous May Ball Committee, because the first chapter of my next novel (working title: As Beautiful As You) starts in Trinity, on the night of the May Ball 2015.

What a night that always is! Shaun and I were lucky enough to go together a few years ago, as Serena’s guests. I still picture the vivid fireworks, the coveted oysters, the gorgeous gowns and beautiful people...

Now here’s a thing. Every year the papers are full of Cambridge undergraduates disgracing themselves at May Balls, privileged gits, getting drunk and making asses of themselves as the sun rises the next morning. Apparently. Fair cop: the other morning I saw a terrifyingly chiselled Porter strong-arm a young gentleman into the arms of the hired Security, at about 5.30 ac emma, because he was a little wobbly on his pins.

I didn’t see or hear anything offensive, but I agree he was the worse for wear.

Consider this. There were two thousand revellers at the Trinity May Ball this year, par for the course. Almost all of them were under the age of thirty, as they usually are. There was free champagne available all night, from when the Ball started at nine or so, until just before the Survivors’ Photograph at six am. Unlimited, for each and every guest.

I’m willing to wager any amount you like that if you took a random selection of two thousand British under-thirties and told them there was free bubbly, as much as they could drink, all night... well, the scenes you would get anywhere else would be pretty ugly, wouldn't they?

(I probably don’t need to wager anything, if you’ve ever watched Big Brother.)

So... where were the riots? Where the fights? Broken bottles? Knifings? Violence, sexual and other kinds?

Where, even, was the foul language? I heard none. Not a single word of swearing, from two thousand students on free champagne all night long.

They may be a privileged bunch, as our papers like to suggest. Perhaps they inspire the envy of journalists who went to younger universities, and readers who went to none. Presumably this is why, every year at this time of year, we have to hear of Cambridge students disgracing themselves at dawn. Though in my experience, though – and I have known dozens, probably hundreds, of students, from having lived many years in both Cambridge and Oxford – the only privilege which top undergraduates share is brains. Not class, not money, and not even a good previous education (my husband Shaun is not the only one who boasts of having attended the worst school in the country).

But it’s true, I admit, they may have been brought up by people who own books, who care about education themselves and perhaps even care about manners. If this is privilege – and of course it is – many of them are probably privileged.

And they wear their privilege well.

The Perfect Daughter

So it’s now official. There is such a thing as a perfect daughter. According to a survey reported in the Mail a few days ago http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2626978/Speak-mother-day-lunch-week-share-love-soap-operas-Survey-reveals-takes-perfect-daughter.html there are thirty things which characterise a mother’s perfect child.

She sounds a bit of a loser, to be honest. The perfect daughter sends text updates to her mother every day, offers her frequent lifts, watches the same soaps, takes her out for lunch once a week and has another day in the week when she always visits, such as Sunday.

I’m trying to envisage this. I mean, I have the perfect daughter, right? I’ve known that for decades. (Not many decades because, being the perfect human being, Serena is in a perpetual state of being 21. I don’t even stop at having one perfect daughter... but Serena’s sisters are not the subject of this blog.)

Nevertheless, we live in Bedford. Serena and Christian in Kennington.

Serena has a busy job as Educational Consultant for the new and exciting London tutors site, Tutorfair. So incredibly busy, in fact, that she never seems to take a lunch hour or even brief coffee break, nor finish work before about seven.

She then frequently does another job in the evenings and weekends, working as a Tutor herself. Good for her day job, because she keeps in touch with the challenges her colleagues are managing. Essential for the finances, if she and Christian are ever to buy a home.

They also Have a Life. They go to Bible Study on Thursday evenings and Church on Sundays, and quite often out to parties, receptions, the theatre or dinner with friends on the other nights. They live in London for goodness' sake.

She also has a garden she is putting work into, and another new project which, I've just realised, deserves a posting all of its own.

Not surprisingly, if Serena and I need a few minutes to talk about something absolutely crucial it can be days before we can find a window in her schedule; and then we frequently get interrupted and have to have several goes. (My schedule, by contrast, is all window: being a writer I do nothing all day except stare out of the window sharpening pencils. As I’m not very good at multi-tasking, I don’t sharpen the pencils very well.)

If Serena started sending me daily text updates and offering me lifts around the place – not to mention finding time to watch soaps of an evening – I would think she’d gone stark raving bonkers.

This aside, however, Serena does match up pretty well to the description of the perfect daughter. Let’s consider some of the traits:

1. "Is honest on shopping trips." Yup, I think I could give a big tick to that one. After she told me what I could and couldn’t wear to her wedding. (And, darn her, was right – as she always is.)
2. "Gets on with mum’s friends." My friends all adore Serena. Of course they do. Everyone does. If they were daft enough not to like my daughter they wouldn’t be my friends. But hang on, they aren’t my friends anyway. They are our friends. I can’t think of any friends I have, off-hand, that aren’t also hers. 
3. "Lends mum clothes and accessories," point 29, and "lets her use her makeup," point 30. Well, I’m sure I’ve got some of Serena’s cast-offs and she has certainly borrowed my makeup. Does that count?

Oh look, I’m getting bored of this. Serena is the perfect daughter so there’s an end of it. She and Christian comes here for weekends whenever they can, which is glorious and always puts me in the happiest mood ever. If I have to go to London (and remember to tell her) she always urges me to see her and usually buys me lunch, which is also always fun.

She had the wonderful sense and good taste to marry a man who, the moment he walks into our house, takes over the cooking and copes with feeding any number of people. I'm sure providing the perfect son in law must be one of the characteristics of being a perfect daughter.

“Crucially,” the article says, “the perfect offspring will let her mum take over wedding preparations when the big day comes around, according to the poll.”

She certainly did that. And quite right too. Like me in the run up to my wedding, Serena was far too busy to organise her own wedding...

Spring in the step

Though to be honest (following on from last time) there’s a great deal to be said for having to memorise something anyway, contact lenses or no.

Aside from it exercising the mind while not making you as boring as someone who does crosswords; impressing uncles at Christmas; and all that stuff, it gives you something to fall back on when words fail you.

Such as, Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. (Part of the lesson I read, or rather recited, at Serena's wedding.)

Instead of, thank goodness all that bloody rain has stopped, which comment is getting a bit boring.

And now that the spring is here, I’m remembering what it was like this time last year when we were getting ready for The Wedding, and doing all sorts of things I never used to do before.

Like enjoy clothes again. When I say again, I mean the last time was when I was a student. On which topic (which no doubt I’ll come back to) here are some more boots. Aren’t they divine?

Winter ones, which I’m packing away.

And summer ones, which I’m getting out.

Yay, summer...

I've even started buying handbags, which I've never done in my life before (surely one is enough? I always thought).

I was in a shoe shop yesterday buying the most boring of utilitarian shoes because my everyday shoes have fallen to bits. Only, trouble was, there was this gorgeous little dinky totally impractical handbag in summer blue leather. And it was £10 off...

Boots from: Castle Footwear

A new me

I have discovered a new me. My life has changed. If only I’d known this before... particularly before The Wedding.

When we’d been married a short while – I suspect Shaun was in his very early thirties – he happened to wander into an optician’s, I have no idea why, and ask for an eye test. Where he was paid a backhanded compliment I have remembered to this day.

“Well sir,” she said, after all her fiddling about with charts on walls and whatnot, “your eyesight is extremely good,” and just as he was preening himself and preparing to brag to me when he got home, “for someone of your age.”

So it was I who preened and silently bragged that my vision was twenty twenty (I’ve never known what that means), always had been and always would be. Eventually Shaun bought himself some half moons, which I found surprisingly aluring, while my eyesight continued perfect.

Until suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, a few years ago I went virtually blind overnight. I whipped out my A to Z one dark evening in London when I was lost, as I frequently am, and couldn’t read that ruddy index designed for someone about the size of a Borrower. I boiled. Soon I couldn’t even read it if I stopped pedalling, pulled into the curb and stood under a lamppost.

I started pinching Shaun’s spectacles to read. One day I found I couldn’t read the tiny lists of ingredients on things in supermarkets; I never had spectacles on me when I shopped so I just had to guess.

The rot had set in. I could rage as much as I liked – and frequently did – but I started buying my own spectacles. By the dozen, from Poundland. I scattered them about the house like confetti, though I still often couldn’t find any of them. I couldn’t see to find them, of course, without another pair of spectacles to look for them. And yes, frequently they were on the top of my head, thank you.

The offspring kept offering to buy me one of those strings that Really, Really Old People Wear so as not to lose specs. No, thanks. Then I started catching sight of myself on Skype, wearing specs as I had to in order to use my computer, looking at least a hundred and nighty eight and almost a grandmother. Yuk. I would whirl them off immediately: ok, I couldn't see the keys but at least I couldn't see what I looked like either.

I was even beginning to wear spectacles to chop vegetables, so as soon as I opened the oven they would steam up and I’d be blinder than ever.

Naturally therefore, when Serena and Christian asked me to read a lesson at their wedding, I started learning it about ten months before the day. No way was I going to wear spectacles at my daughter’s wedding. Absolutely no way no way no way.

To be honest, it was no burden to me to learn a chapter of scripture, but don’t tell them that. I was an actor before I was a writer and wouldn’t mind learning a book of scripture. A Shakespearean play a year wouldn’t do me any harm at all. I would have learnt it anyway, as the best way of preparing a reading. But the spectacle-issue guaranteed it, word perfect. Which meant that when, a few weeks before The Day, Serena dropped the bombshell that she only wanted four verses not the entire twenty or whatever I’d learnt the previous autumn, I had the moral high ground and was able to negotiate a few more, but that’s another matter...

(The funny thing is, when I looked at the wedding photographs, without any doubt whatsoever the moment in the whole day when I looked happiest, most animated, most joyous and most myself was when I was at the lectern. I really did enjoy being an actor, I realised.)

Anyway, moving swiftly on to the present day which is what this post is about, a few months ago Alex asked me whether I’d ever had an eye test.

“Of course not,” I said scornfully. “I’m not that blind.”

“Please do,” he said. “I’ll pay for it. Really.”

My father is rather harder to ignore than my son. As he says, he wasn’t a head master for two decades for nothing, and when he gets an idea it’s almost impossible to shake him off.

It had got to the point where I was wearing two pairs of spectacles, one in front of the other, while he gave me my daily Greek lesson, and I still couldn’t tell whether that was a rough breathing or a soft over the initial vowel.

He didn’t just offer to pay for it. He made the appointment and put the cash in my hand and shooed me out through the front door.

They tested and inspected and shoved excessively bright lights in my eyes and tested some more, and told me for the umpteenth time that no, laser surgery wouldn’t help (I’ve asked numerous people in recent years) and no, they’d never heard of those whacky Traynor Glasses with which you’re supposed to be able to cure your eyes organically by driving yourself nuts reading through pinholes for several years...

And guess what? No, guess, really!

They said I could wear contact lenses. All the time. All day and all night, so I don’t have to fiddle about with little pots of liquid in that boring way that people with contact lenses do. And they are invisible to the person talking to me, so I don’t have to wear the hateful granny face.

There was a moment – a week or so – of panic when the optician asked if I’d had laser surgery after all because my irises are very flat so I probably won’t be able to wear contacts, but I suspect he says that to everyone as a way of amusing himself on a Friday afternoon.

For the first day or two I couldn’t see anything at all. It was as if I’d had several triple gins without the warmth in the belly. I couldn’t work. Without spectacles, all was a blur: with them, I had to hold my laptop about two inches from my nose which causes RSI after about eight hours.

But it’s settled down a bit now. I mean, I’m actually writing this without spectacles, and there aren’t too many typos, are there? Now, I don’t care if I lose three or four of the last handful of specs I bought from Poundland. I can cook. I can see the television if I want to, so now that I can, I realise I don’t.

They have changed my life. I am fifteen years younger.

And when I’m reading Ancient Greek, I only need one pair on my nose, not several, to read the breathings. So my excuse to my father, “Oh, is it? It’s so small, I must have misread,” doesn’t wash at all any more.

Not for nothing was he a head master for two decades.

Plus ca change...

Some years ago now, Serena's parents – Shaun and I – were married in a Cambridge college, on a lovely summer's afternoon. We too had tea in a courtyard. We too punted away into the early evening along the river Cam.

And funnily enough, we too saw our wedding written up in the Cambridge News afterwards. Though it was the Cambridge Evening News in those days. And it was a black and white photograph, not a colour spread in a glossy magazine.

Still, I find the cycle of similarity remarkable. And deeply touching.

Here is Serena's and Christian's wedding: 

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?pnum=84&eid=e22b45c0-2abd-4701-a6b9-18f244216443&skip=true

Ahh. Lovely, innit?

Beautiful Burns’ Boots

Are you going somewhere exciting for Burns’ Night? Has your hostess suggested you aim for a tartan theme? And you're stuck?

Thanks to the author's meticulous research on your behalf, you, dear reader, can steal the show...

Let me tell you how...

It is six months since we married off our daughter, and I’m picking over the flotsam and jetsam. What is left behind for me to treasure now?

Beautiful memories, of course, and beautiful pictures. (And a beautiful relationship between them – too much subject for this posting.)

And far more trivially, something I am beginning to find very useful indeed: a directory of people. What my mother would probably have called tradesmen – or possibly craftsmen – but who, in this egalitarian age, are now “suppliers”. (After all, modern tradespeople earn far more than a humble “professional” like me.) People with their own businesses. Solo, some of them; or perhaps with one or two employees.

Abigail, for instance, who works for herself. She made my hat, and I now love to pop in on her for a mug of tea after an early broadcast in Cambridge. Admittedly, I don’t just call for a chat about our children: thanks to Abigail, I’ve fallen in love with hats and she has made me several since.

The incomparable Melanie, who employs two or three people, and is, quite simply, the best dressmaker I’ve ever known.

A number of invaluable people I now love to use. All British. Indeed all, apart from one (Sheila, who made Serena's Shetland shawl) English.

There were a few, a very, very few, awful ones. The local Irish band which let us down at the last minute. The makeup artist who made us look like circus clowns. The cakemakers who turned out to be quite the most awkward people in the world: as Christian very rightly pointed out (he’s always right, blast him) we should have let them go the first time they pulled out.

One of the most tucked-away finds I’ve particularly enjoyed finding out about is Castle Footwear in Rochdale, Lancashire.

I came across them because they made me the most gorgeous boots for the evening family party of Serena’s and Christian’s wedding. For the first time since I was a student (when my body was far less fussy) I was wearing footwear that was both elegant and comfortable: with gorgeous sexy heels, which didn’t make me long for a mustard foot bath and chaise longue within half an hour.

So obviously, come the autumn, I tried to order another pair, only to find the shop I had bought them from before had stopped supplying them.

Don’t you love the internet? I asked the name of the company and found them within minutes, and soon was on the telephone to Andrew Towers, director. He explained that he had recently bought up the tiny company which previously made these fabulous bespoke boots, along with the lasts and equipment, and my wedding boots had been one of the first pairs he had made.

Would he make more? He would be delighted to...

Mr Towers is the third generation of shoemakers, and his company was started in 1989.

Soon afterwards, in the mid 1990s, English footwear faced a challenge in the face of cheap imports from China, Brazil and Portugal, where labour costs far less and a pair of slippers can be made and sold for about £3. It may fall apart within weeks, but that doesn’t mean the customer immediately realises it’s worth spending five times as much.

Thousands of employees in the shoemaking Rossendale Valley area of Lancashire were laid off, and Andrew Towers had to rethink his business quickly if he wasn’t to go under too. He decided to concentrate on orthopaedic footwear, making practical washable slippers for the NHS, and also comfortable wider-fitting shoes for more mature customers.

His company survived, and soon he was looking at sourcing other small businesses to acquire. In August 2010 he bought a small orthopaedic company, reducing their 80 styles on offer down to a dozen or so.

And then last year a shoemaker five miles away, making ladies’ shoes and boots, announced its closure due to retirement. To set up such a business from scratch would cost tens of thousands; if it wasn’t bought up, the traditional equipment would go for scrap. Thus Castle Footwear acquired a business with the potential to make strappy sandals and dainty wedding shoes... starting with the manufacture of one-off boots I had fallen in love with.

Which is very fortunate, for anyone who wants a to-die-for leather button boots in a gorgeous Edwardian style, comfortable as your own feet, almost.

Or indeed, lace-up tartans for Burns' Night...

 

(Cat not for sale.)

If you buy a pair for yourself (why wouldn’t you?) let me share my experiences. The boots I had for the wedding were easy to wear from the moment I put them on. I walked and then danced for hours in them, the first day I wore them, with not a twinge.

The next pair, in tougher leather for the autumn, were rather different.

Equally gorgeous of course...

... but needing a bit more breaking in. These are individual, handmade items with all the uniqueness and variability – and customer care – of true craftsmanship. I tell you this so you know it's worth every minute of getting them used to your feet.

I love them. And I love supporting proper English workmanship, I hope helping it to continue for another three generations and more.

Go on, get yourself a pair for Burns' Night.

Though of course, because they're bespoke, it would have to be for Burns' Night, 2015...

Castle Footwear: info@castlefootwear.co.uk, telephone: 01706 854408.

Leather (leather boots only) from GH Leather.

Cleaning (Episode 2)

I know you’ve all been sitting on the edges of your seats waiting to know whether Serena’s and her bridesmaids’ gowns ever got clean. I know this, because a number of you have written telling me so.

The reason for the delay is as follows. As you know, Serena was dressed on the day she took her vows in a garment whose history went something like this: first, many silk worms had to labour night and day to spin the silk, giving up their lives to clad her beautifully; then, little old ladies in tiny white cotton bonnets and obscure French villages with impossibly unpronounceable names sat making lace with it under vast Gothic cathedrals; finally an inspired English dressmaker cut it and caught it, swagged it and stitched it into an exquisite creation which took her many months to design and dart, to fit and fashion. Until it looked gorgeous.

Now, obviously, when everyone has gone to so much trouble to make you something to keep you decent on a lovely summer’s afternoon, there are a number of things it is absolutely imperative that you do with it. It is not enough just to glow into it. That would hardly show that it had been worn at all. Nor is it adequate to slosh champagne on it: champagne doesn’t stain until it’s been left there for a while... possibly for decades.

To show your appreciation for this lovely item, you must sit in a punt with it, preferably ensuring some of it is dipped in the green water of the River Cam on your way in. Next, you should step out of your punt into a meadow full of green-staining fresh grass and perhaps one or two cowpats. Then, walk along the muddy bank of the river for a good longish while until the hem has taken on the colour of the English countryside, before dancing the evening away barefoot except for your eyewateringly expensive sheer silk stockings.

The piece de resistance, however, is the moment when you walk through a few brambles in it. I don’t remember Serena doing this, but she obviously did because as well as being covered in mud, blood, strawberry juice and river water, the lace on Serena’s gown was torn too.

And this was absolutely nothing to what her child bridesmaid Rosie did to her dress.

Let's just see a close-up of all its gory glory...

Which was simply amateur to what Serena's grown up bridesmaid, Bink, did to hers. She got an entire regiment of paratroopers to work on it...

Impressive, isn't it?

Now, when a beautiful dress gets dirty, it is urgent to get it cleaned. As I hope I made clear in Cleaning (Episode 1). We, alas, lost a precious two or three weeks sending the gowns to several conventional dry-cleaners in order for them to waste time telling us they couldn’t clean them before posting them back again, so by the time we sent them to Ludovic Blanc they’d already had a little time for the dirt to settle in.

Giving him even more of a challenge.

However, what is not urgent at all is getting the lace mended. As far as I’m aware, Serena and Christian are not yet planning a “Renewal of Vows” – despite these being so popular nowadays. And although the etiquette is that a bride can properly wear her wedding gown to social events for up to a year after her wedding day, obviously that requires a social event posh enough for her to wear it to. For which, Serena is still waiting...

So the gown is still waiting at Melanie’s for a window in Melanie’s time for the lace to be mended. And Melanie's having a new bride who needs dressing every other moment as she does, the long winter evening in which to mend the lace hasn’t yet come about.

All this being an somewhat long-winded way of saying that I wanted to photograph the effect Ludovic and his process had on Serena’s gown so I could show it to you, and I can’t because it isn’t mended yet but is sitting in Melanie’s workshop.

Why did I? Because it has to be seen to be believed.

Let’s just recap a little shall we? I sent all three dresses – Serena’s, Bink’s and Rosie’s – off to what I believed to be the best dry cleaner in the country. They certainly talked the talk. Several generations, unique cleaning machine they’d invented themselves, gentlest process, etc.

They didn’t promise to be able to clean anything and everything, but they did promise to look at them. Which they did.

“These are the dirtiest gowns we’ve ever seen in all our joint experience,” they told me. I felt as i used to at school when, yet again, I’d been sent to sit outside the headmistress’s study. “The gowns are really, really, seriously filthy.”

All right. No need to rub it in. “Anyone would think you’d rubbed it in.”

I get the message. Thank you. “So, um, you can’t get them completely clean, then?”

“We can’t do anything with them at all. Anything we tried would just move the dirt around and make them worse.”

What do you want me to do? Walk from here to Canterbury barefoot in penance? "Please could you very kindly send them back?"

So I sent them to a more expensive dry cleaner’s, who was even ruder about them.

And then I sent them to Ludovic.

Ludovic doesn’t use petroleum. He doesn’t use harsh spirits or harmful chemicals. He doesn’t chuck toxic substances on your wedding gown or into the world’s waste systems. He cleans your clothes gently and naturally, with water and soap, as your great-grandmother probably did.

And what do you know? Ludovic got them clean. Serena’s beautifully, perfectly clean.

Even at the bottom, where it had been painted with cowpat.

And Rosie’s and Bink’s very nearly so.

Certainly clean enough to wear and enjoy again.

Though perhaps, if Bink ever wants to wear her beautiful bridesmaid’s dress as a wedding dress which option Serena wanted her to have when she designed it for her, Ludovic said he would have another look at it: in some places it is very slightly whiter than others, if you look very carefully indeed.

So if you are planning on getting wed or you just have been, and you've kept the silk worms and the tiny French peasant great-grandmothers and your diligent English designer working night and day for months beforehand, then ask your mother, the moment you’ve stepped out of your gown and almost before she has thrown rose petals over you, to do one essential thing:

Take your gown to Ludovic Blanc’s: http://www.blancclean.com