New perspectives

 

Ive known Swine Church since 1953. Across the fields and the Golf Course it was a special landmark . As five year old I had to stand tall to spot it from my bedroom window as my head barely reached the glass of the window , not double glazed , but in the very latest Crital frames my father was so pleased with . ‘I shall never have to paint the window frames’ he said to my mother as they planned their build with Mr Sewell , the builder from the village , Sutton Village that is, or as we proudly say with Thomas Blashill “Sutton in Holderness”. 

So in 2025 I finally get to see the church that was my familiar landmark . It  was locked, we could have got the key from the name on the outside board , but I also wanted to revisit my own church , St James in the village , and look at Church Mount again through the shrubbery. 

There was wonderful Holderness waiting to be rediscovered as we drove to Sunk Island , Patrington  for the Queen  of Holderness,and Hedon for the King  and enjoyed the refurbished Trout Inn at Wansford. Was ever a place called Emmotland , never heard of that one until we got back home and a friend told us of all the great fishing trips he used to have there. Not so for me, my father fished the grayling from Hempholme certainly but mostly the Yorkshire Derwent near Kirby Moorside. I had three days of nostalgia in August then , and only an hour from home, staying in a huge house at Beeford with all 3 generations of our Filey Family . Reuben drove us to another church I had never visited, the welcoming St Augustines Skirlaugh. I’d been to that village many times with mother when we renewed her Blue Badge at the East Riding Offices. I had cycled to Hornsea with schoolfriends , the back way through Sutton to Benningholme , that land of ditches and low hedges and fields and fields of potatoes and wheat and field beans , no traffic and innocent adventure . 

The East Riding villages are still delightful , we spot the gable ends built with the feather pattern of the bricks , the local way,  remember to train to Hornsea , also spotted from my bedroom window , the steam trains and the exciting day when we saw our first Diesel.

My perspectives have changed . I rarely go more than 10 miles from our cottage these days, except the monthly visit to the Eye Hospital with Hull sister when she has her injection.I look from the train window from Filey and still spot lovely cottages, trackways and becks, and on a good day Herons and Little Egrets near Arram ,  and new crops like Miscanthus ,  the Christmas tree plantation  has gone now near Nafferton , but the rabbit warren certainly hasn’t. I always sit on the left hand side of the coach form Filey To Paragon and the right hand side going home . 

I was unable to use my childhood purchase of a secondhand copy of Palgraves Golden Treasury  , a beautiful bright turquoise binding . The book is dropping to bits, much written in from grammar school with many of the poems with little marks in pencil above each word showing stresses.I haven’t binned it .It has string round it . Last night I couldn’t sleep and had just finished the brilliant book by RamornaAsh . She talks much about Gerald Manley Hopkins so was trying to find a poetry book at 4.30 this morning, and eventually found one poem by him in my Mothers “A Modern Anthology “from 1924. I have given away most of my books now for friend to sell for for charity on a stall outside his house on the Cleveland Way , but just kept a newer Palgrave (no GMH of course , not published then ). What a lovely surprise , had never opened it before but inside was my father’s name , and it had all his pencil notes. What treasure for me.

Reuben and I like the Jesuits, and GMH

and we like Iona , both lauded in the book “Don’t forget we're here for ever  “

this book has changed my perspectives .

Road Kill

 

Daughters friend celebrates the Seasonal festive meal every year with what I presume is a roast pheasant. 

I’m told she has roadkill ,but can’t imagine there are any chickens on the rural ride following the Gypsey Race to Duggleby barrow from Boythorpe. Very occasionally one sees a badger or a fox, more often it is a pheasant, which straight after the kill is easily recognised by the tail feathers 90 degrees to the tarmac. 

I’m thankful for our turkey with legs from Adrian Colling, I do not have to draw and pluck it , as I used to watch my mother do with one of Mr Bastons chickens, or the pigeons and squabs (from Mr Christopher, ) often  still replete with shot. A couple of years ago I was offered a couple of hares, but couldn’t face skinning and drawing them, even though I know I could do it.These days I only dress Crabs, and even that pleasure is denied me now that our Filey fishmonger has closed his doors.

Mr Christopher 1961 Sutton in Holderness

I remembered to look through the jpegs of  the 35mm slides I digitalised years ago, throwing away hundreds and just keeping some family milestones. My father took hundreds of slides, and yet 60years on , the interesting ones are of people and buildings. Our education often consisted of talks on why Agfa was better than Kodak or Ektachrome, and years later as the Agfa slides are all blue, and the Kodak are all red, I know the use of photo editing software would have improved many an evening round the fire with the screen and projector. We were allowed to comment and criticise but father could not improve on his work, and used to bore us talking about fstops and timings. My sisters will remember all the times we stood on a ladder with our head in the Cherry Trees for him whilst he took ages to adjust his light meter.

He never took a photograph of Mr Baston whose smallholding backed our land. Infact I think Mr Baston sold us the acre near the road , of which we had one third, Mr Bruin one third and Mr Kirby the other third.  Mr Baston came up from the village every day to his pigs and chickens, and often the field was pasture  as well for the bullocks of the nearby farm .We loved being allowed to see the piglets when a sow had farrowed, after strict warnings about her demeanour. Here I record that Mr Christopher was a retired policeman , and came every week to cut the grass and tend the  large garden. He used to shoot , and bring us his surplus game. I rarely buy rabbit now after the memory of it .

I cooked our turkey Breast down as always, then turned over for the last hour. Family commented on how moist it was. I am writing my notes for next year in my Christmas book, almost 50 years of shopping lists and to do lists. 

The most useful page is the what to do next year list.

It says 

• do not  make much bread sauce as only Colin loves it
• do not buy any chocolate biscuits
• do not buy many "nibbles"
• Buy plenty of roasted pistachios in their shells however
• only 3 of us like Sprouts
• cooked red cabbage with Cyder Vinegar next year not balsamic, was much better

I leave you with a prospect of May , my first photo being December , views of my beloved Yorkshire Wolds.

 

What to do with Spanish onions

I have a few old Recipe books which have been handed down to me: 

Last outing to Waitrose*

My grandmothers "Mrs Beeton",
the handwritten "receipts" of the Misses Hair, circa 1893 which includes the fascinating recipes entitled "What to do with Spanish Onions", and  "How to wait at table single handed" which ascertains in its opening sentence that any "intelligent person can be taught the art", 
and a couple of the recipe books belonging to my Mother , Margaret Viola Bruce nee Holding .

Interesting to me is the wedding present from her next door neighbours in  her home in Birkenhead . It is entitled "Advanced Cookery Recipes". She had just completed a cookery course on her engagement , or had maybe just bought the book, of the renowned Liverpudlian,  Fanny Calder , for it was "Recipes from the Calder School of Cookery "or some such title, I can't find the book .

My mother brought to her marriage , in 1946, to Yorkshireman Harold Gower Bruce always known as Bengy, a scant and basic knowledge of the culinary arts. She had of course watched her mother cook , and so knew perfectly how to order meat and cook it to perfection . 
I recall all she taught me too on buying meat . We have a great Butchers in Filey , whose meat is locally sourced and the producer named . 
Mother  loved a good butcher, and could talk Beasts kidney , skirt , feathering ,Aitch Bone and undercut to me well into her last months  . Beef of course was the flesh of choice , legs of lamb appeared on our Sunday Table occasionally in the Spring , Pork rarely , bacon every day , Black pudding often , and a a real treat would be a chicken , but these always came from our neighbour Mr Baston who was an egg producer. Our Butcher was Mr Hickey , whose van came up to our house a couple of times a week , or we would go to the village for mince or stewing beef. 
Mother had a limited range of "dinners"and all included meat  or fish .Cauliflower Cheese and Macaroni cheese did feature occasionally as meals.
We had

• a wonderful joint of meat or a fowl on a Sunday
• reheated meat and gravy on Monday (Daddy hated this)
• Minced meat on Tuesday if any joint left
• Braised steak -her favourite for visitors, served with Yorkshire Pudding , as was mince
• Corned beef hash occasionally
• Hash on Ash Wednesday (about 4 oz beef in a huge stew with potatoes and carrots and swede, not thickened, eaten in bowl with Brown or Worcester sauce to make it palatable)
• Fish often , Fish pie, or Smoked Haddock with an egg on top, Fried fish often , lots fish caught by Daddy in season (and when he actually came home with some), which had to be eaten immediately as we had no fridge  , Trout or Grayling fried whole .

Sunday lunches were mother's triumph . We three girls will never forget them , or our childhood Sundays. Church in village with Daddy , drink at Church Mount afterwards , Sunday lunch , sometimes with rows about how  Daddy carved, and a pudding a crumble or a pie.  After the washing-up a walk up the lane to Fewlass' farm ,watching the Skylarks and Yellow hammers as Mummy had a quiet sit at home . Obligatory and awful Sunday School fitted in too , but not sure when in the afternoon that came.

AS a header on this post is a treasure for me on this day when Mummy would have been 100 years old  . Typical Mummy literacy , she had Dyslexia we now realise, as could not spell well, lots of underlinings, her characteristically stylish and bold handwriting and the recipes she wrote in the note section of  her wedding present  book,  her Mothers recipe for Fudge or Tablet as its called in Scotland . I can't make any today girls, as I'm not going to Spar for non essential Condensed milk , but we may all think about it !!





*been thinking about Michael Gove on TV the other day , talking to Jo Public about supermarkets with Waitrose as his example. Mr Gove, most people DO NOT GO TO WAITROSE