My Own Private India

'People have been drawn to India for centuries for reasons that still excite travellers today; for legacy, for colour, for the opportunity to stand before something that is bigger than yourself.  When EM Forster wrote that India is “not a promise, only an appeal,” he summed up something that Hunt herself acknowledges implicitly. “Be brave,” she says, “but be careful.” The beauty is in exploration but also in reserve. Fresh from her latest trip to the country, Hunt spoke to us about India’s siren-song appeal and its particular relationship with Jac+ Jack.' 

I interviewed Jac + Jack designer Jac Hunt about her own private India for Brace magazine. You can read the whole article here. One of my oldest friends is in India now, having the time of her life. I want to go, I want to go, I want to go. 

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team nigella

I'm so team nigella it's not even funny. If we can forgive Kate Moss for years of drug use I'm not sure what's stopping us from doing the same for Nigella. Maybe because she's up on a pedestal, and we take some of perverted pleasure in watching heroes - but in particular, heroines - fall. But we have to remember, it was us that put her up there. Us that made her the Domestic Goddess par excellence. She gave us the term, but we applied it to her, she who from the start just wanted women not to be afraid of the kitchen, not to be afraid of being domestic, not to label ourselves or let ourselves be labelled un-feminist because we enjoyed such a simple, traditional thing as cooking. There are so many women who owe their love of food and cooking to Nigella, but I just want to talk about one - me. It was to Nigella that I turned when I made my first home-baked birthday cake all on my own. I banished my mother from the kitchen and fuddled my way through a recipe with the most deliciously written introduction I have ever seen. It was Nigella that I ripped open the wrapping paper to on Christmas, and spent whole nights with the light on low, devouring recipe after luscious, effortless recipe (linguine with pancetta and lemon oil! if only it could always be this good!) long into the night. It is Nigella that I have to credit for my greatest culinary successes; to this day I am renowned amongst my friends for Cloud Cake, a flourless chocolate torte that is so gloriously balanced it gives 'intensity, and then relief, in every bite'.

Time passed and Nigella, domestic goddess that she is, was relegated to just that. Goddess status. My mum and I found new foodie crushes, who seemed to speak to the simple, casual way we had grown to eat (nigel, hugh, sophie, I am speaking of you). We took out her books to consult recipes that we adored and those alone. But we never stopped loving her. How could we? How could I? When she taught us not to feel ashamed at sneaking a spoonful of clotted cream from the fridge at 3 in the morning, when she insisted we not be afraid to take short cuts in the kitchen, when she showed us just how much pleasure - is there a better word for nigella than that? - we could get from cooking.

As I finish writing this I can see so many Nigella books in my mum and I's groaning cookbook shelf. Without pausing to get one down and check I would be able to tell you where all my favourite recipes are (Cloud Cake, page 110 in Nigella Bites, covered in flecks of chocolate and with the page slightly ripped, not that I need the recipe anymore though, the devils on horseback from Nigella's Christmas, the one pan cherry chocolate cupcakes from domestic goddess, the easiest, simplest, BEST TASTING cupcakes I have ever had). I could even tell you the occasions we had all her food, too. Because, as she says in Feast, she makes food that celebrates life. That's why all of her books have sections for the festive season, for parties, for entertaining, for sharing. Her food is about love. It's not really about expedience, or restraint and it's certainly not about health. Just plain old love. That's worth something, in my eyes.

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well read

Out-takes by Rachel Kara for Brace . See the full article here.

Working with RKB is always a dream. There's an instinctiveness to the way she shoots that makes her the ultimate partner in crime; who would you rather have driving the getaway car? The person who asks you if it's time to go or the one who's had the engine running since you ran into the bank? This piece we shot for Brace Digital with Brenda, the creative director behind my favourite Australian label Benah, was my favourite kind of work. Friends coming together, talking about nothing but books, bottomless pots of tea and wishing hopelessly for cake. I feel like I always say this when Rachel is involved, but if only it could always be this good.

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the start of things

'I remember the rain - how it hammered day and night against the windowpanes; how my grandmother left a hay bale outside the back door to act as a dam; how Mrs Maddox came to us for buckets when her porch began leaking... My grandfather's hair plastered itself down over his forehead, like weed. And I remember how, by Valentine's Day, the heaving ewes were huddled in the barn, the Brych finally burst her banks, and the mud came. Mud - such a small word. It looks weak, bashful, what harm can three letters do? The answer is more than you think. That mud was the start of things.' 

Susan Fletcher, Eve Green

vanessa jackman

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Stay IN BED

IN BED

I wrote a profile on new lifestyle store IN BED for Broadsheet, and I fell completely, unashamedly in love. If you - like me - are a fan of clean sheet days, cottony throws that double as wraps that double as towels that double as blankets, breakfast in bed and spending whole weekends in your pyjamas, this is the site for you. Dreamy.

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I just don't know

'I wrote my first novel because I just got married and I was living in Stratford-upon-Avon and there was nothing else to do. I was very bored. I had no particular friends there. I'd been very busy up until then—at university, passing examinations—I very nearly took a job that summer and if I had taken a job, I probably wouldn't have written the book. So in a sense it was accidental. Whether I would have written a novel later, I just don't know.'

Margaret Drabble, The Paris Review The Art of Fiction No. 70

kinfolk 

Just thinking.

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lonely girl

'Already a vital conflict had set in, which frightened them both. But he was alone, whilst already she had begun to cast round for external resource. When Ursula had gone, Gudrun felt her own existence had become stark and elemental. She went and crouched alone in her bedroom, looking out of the window at the big, flashing stars. In front was the faint shadow of the mountain-knot. That was the pivot. She felt strange and inevitable, as if she were centered upon the pivot of all existence, there was no further reality.'

D.H Lawrence, Women In Love

source

Spending the last dregs of sunday doing a little bit of healthy, 'me, me, me' moping. 

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on the end

the new yorker

This post has been in the works for a while. You could even say it's been in the works for five years. Five long-but-oh-so-short years of my degree. Five years of sore shoulders, five years of smudged nail polish, five years of bad coffee and burnt noses. Five years of studying in the nooks and crannies of old forgotten buildings on campus, five years of running for the bus, five years of making friends with girls who had designer handbags in lectures (there are worse things, right?). When I sat back to think about it, and I mean really think about it, recently, I worked out that this is the first time since I was four (four!!!!) that I haven't been studying. I started school at four, I moved through junior to high until I was eighteen, I went straight into university without a gap year. The result has been eighteen continuous years of education. So really, you could say this post has been in the works for eighteen years. Eighteen long-but-oh-so-short years.

Saying that my education is over would not be strictly true, it would be like saying that no-one could possibly learn outside the classroom, and we all know that to be false. But this is the end of formal education, or at least it is from where I stand right now, and even if I start studying later (I feel like my life is peppered with 'even ifs' at the moment) it's going to be different. Right now I feel this odd sensation of rudderlessness, combined with the lingering thrill of the adrenaline rush I was running on all of last week after handing in my thesis, the ever-present fear of the future only compounded by the dreaded 'and what are you going to do next?' question, and the dull thud of exhaustion pulsating in the background. I spent all of last week catching up on my sleep debt, cooking lunch for my mum and reading. Unsurprisingly, I still feel like a student. I wonder when that feeling goes away? When you get a job? When your life starts to come together? And when is that going to happen, hmmm?

What can I say. I have just finished five years of university and come out on the other side unscathed, but also resolutely unemployed. I studied journalism and spent most of my degree sure in the knowledge that that was what I wanted to do, but now I'm not so sure, or at least I'm not so sure that the traditional, tried-and-tested way I wanted to go about it is the best way. I'm going away to America for a bit and that will take care of some of my anxiety and idleness, but there is still that worry, that nagging fear, that concern about what is going to happen when I come back, and after that after that, every day for the rest of your life. It's not supposed to be easy, I know that. It wouldn't be called 'life' if it was supposed to be a walk in the park. So yes, I am scared. Or to be more correct, I'm nervous. But, for me, nervousness has always walked hand in hand with excitement. How do you know if the butterflies in your stomach are floundering or flying? I wish I had an answer for people - and for myself - better than 'I have no idea' but I've always thought honesty was the best policy. I don't have a grand master plan. Sometimes I wish that I did. But the rest of the time I realise that not having a grand master plan is actually a blessing in disguise. I didn't go through eighteen long-but-oh-so-short years of education to jump headfirst into the next long-but-oh-so-short phase of the rest of my life. So here's to the future - my future! - in whatever form it takes, and no matter how long it takes for me to get there. I've got time. In fact, I've got a lot of it. I've got every day for the rest of my life. And that's scary, yes, but my god, isn't that exciting!

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