Überlingen

I have been so busy baking that I've hardly had time to write this blog. However, I can't leave it another day without describing briefly my wonderful trip to Überlingen in Southern Germany. I was invited to visit by my friend Sonja who recently moved there from London. We go back a long, long way and have known each other since art college days. We have both often discussed the idea of leaving London and moving somewhere more peaceful where the frantic pace of life doesn't leave one feeling quite so frazzled. She's done it and I'm impressed. The quality of life she's experiencing in this part of Germany is having a marked improvement on her well being. She exudes happiness. It must have something to do with being so close to the most beautiful lake I have ever seen. Lake Constance is a vast expanse of beautiful tranquil water surrounded by Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Its beauty has inspired poetry and the father of psychoanalysis Carl Jung was born in Kesswil, a small Swiss village on the lake. It is a place of introspection but in a pleasant and calming way. It lifts any kind of depression.

Although I was visiting Sonja I was actually house sitting for another friend Steffi, who has the most gorgeous walled garden. My job was to make sure the garden plants were watered daily. Not too onerous a task and in fact a real pleasure. The roses were a total joy and I loved them.

One of the best bits of my stay in Überlingen was going to the Bodensee Therme. It's described as enjoyment for all the senses and it's pretty good! Basically everyone strips off for the regular sessions in the sauna of which there are at least three, a Turkish steam bath, a wellness area with four cascade pools where you get massaged by powerful torrents of clear mineral water. It's fantastic! Each sauna session offers a different experience and my first involved sitting with my friends Sonja and Catherine and about a dozen others while we were fanned with a wet towel by the sauna master to increase the heat. Half way through we all left to smother ourselves with honey and some kind of exfoliatior all of which makes your skin silky soft. The heat was intense but immediately afterward we all strolled towards the lake and immersed ourselves in the freezing cold water. Other treatments included doing the same thing with white chocolate, salt and being thrashed by the sauna master with birch leaves! Not all at the same time I should add. These are all meant to encourage relaxation and spread a delicious sense of well being. I must admit that I like the Germans' attitude towards health and fitness. There's no sense of obligation towards maintaining healthy living. They genuinely love being fit and healthy. I nearly called this post "Alex gets naked" but thought better of it...

Tea with Alex

I will be selling my yummy bespoke cookies outside Books for Cooks for one day only. Each design is individually iced on to rich, super-chocolatey or vanilla, traditionally baked biscuits. I'm going to create some of the iconic landmarks of Portobello Market - the Travel Bookshop, the Blue Door, street signs... and not forgetting my very first commission celebrating the beautiful and extraordinary jewelry of Sophie Harley.

Saturday 2nd July, 2011

10.00 - 18.00

BOOKS FOR COOKS

4 Blenheim Crescent, London W11

Look forward to seeing you there!  

India

My interest in yoga began when I was in my twenties looking for an alternative to aerobics and sports. I had always been drawn to the mystery of the East and yearned to go to India and experience some of the strangeness of mysticism for myself. My chance to go came about once I had become a student and had the time carved out for me to travel during the summer holidays. I had been going to yoga classes regularly for about a year and I felt ready for a five week trip to Northern India. I planned to go for two weeks to Kashmir with my cousin and stay on a houseboat on one of the lakes in Srinagar. Based on the experiences of various friends who had "done" India I decided it would be a breeze to travel around India on my own and explore for the remaining three weeks alone... the only problem was that I hadn't factored in a shoot on sight curfew in Kashmir the day we arrived, due to the sudden death of President Zia of Pakistan who had just been assassinated.

Nothing prepares you for the chaos of India and had I known quite how mind blowing it would all be maybe I would have planned it differently. Anyway that first time in India taught me to learn to work with adversity if I still wanted to experience the highs and lows of being in such an extraordinary place. Although India could feel quite desolate to me at times there were also exquisite moments of stillness, beauty, richness and warmth. I think that's probably what drew me there. I wanted to feel the intensity of the place.

The snapshots above show the range of my experiences in India but I can't pretend I wasn't relieved when I stepped onto the safety of the British Airways plane on my way back to England. After three weeks on my own in such a strange land I felt I had had enough of the extremes and was ready for a little more normality again. Little did I know that that would be quite hard to achieve.. but that's another story. I don't know whether that first trip to India helped my yoga practise at the time but over the years I've been able to draw from my experiences there to shape my understanding of yoga.

The reason I'm writing about this now is that I've decided to teach yoga again. For the first time I feel that I'm ready to give much more of myself as a teacher and can enjoy the experience. When I first trained as a yoga teacher I felt as though I was winging it slightly and I never felt totally prepared. My knowledge and understanding of yoga seems to have deepened recently and I actually feel as if I can offer my students something quite worthwhile. Details are below for anyone interested in coming to my class

Lunchtime Yoga

Mondays from 1.00 to 2.00pm

St. Peter's Hall, 59a Portobello Rd, London W11 2DB

We are above Charlie's Cafe situated in a pretty courtyard on Portobello Rd in the heart of Notting Hill.
6 Classes £55 - Drop in £10. Beginners welcome

Scrumptious Tea

Michal, Tonja and I had an intensive baking session starting at 10am and ending at around 10pm. We made bread, a unique battenberg cake, macarons, opera cake, maids of honour tarts, apple tart, cookies... it was a total feast! My kitchen didn't know what had hit it as we had several things on the go simultaneously and took it in turn to use the KitchenAid mixer, which was having its own baptism by fire. I realize that I need to buy certain things like a professional rolling pin and a nice slab of marble on which to roll out pastry and keep everything cool. I'm learning so much from diving in and baking all kinds of things I would never have thought of a few months ago. Michal is very encouraging and he obviously loves baking as he joined us in his spare time outside of his busy job as a chef.

There was quite a serious blip half way through the day. Michal suddenly announced that the fan oven seemed to have gone rather quiet and, with most of the cakes ready and waiting for their space in the oven, it had indeed stopped... PANIC! WHAT TO DO? Keep calm and carry on of course and ask around my neighbours  to see if anyone could help. We had a giggle transporting trays of batter up and down the stairs and next door to my neighbours Joel and Julian who stepped into the breach and offered up their oven. Fortunately I discovered that the bottom oven still worked so we managed to utilize that and bake some of the remaining cakes there. Actually it was a perfect way to get to know my neighbours and the next day with so much cake on the table I arranged a tea party for everyone and we had a very jolly time. Tonja's macarons were a big hit and the opera cake was sublimely delicious and lasted for days... My bid for glory came in the form of the battenberg cake which was a huge version of the usual one and was very satisfying to make. Michal insisted that we make our own marzipan and I have to say it tasted wonderful.

Spring Fling

Yesterday I had a really lovely day at an Open Studio & Garden Party in Hammersmith. There was an assortment of paintings, ceramics and prints on sale, an eclectic mix of musicians, bric-a-brac, stalls, refreshments and a raffle. It was the sort of thing I would expect to find in rural Dorset but was a total surprise in the heart of London.  Although, as someone pointed out, Hammersmith was once countryside too. Anyway the atmosphere was very jovial and it was a lot of fun. The last musical act played Greek love songs and some brave girls even got up and danced as the music got faster and more excitable! The whole event was a delight and I came away with some beautiful ceramics and a real sense of bonhomie.

Spring Fling was organized to raise money for InterAct Reading Service which provides a one-to-one reading service by actors to people who have had a stroke.

Summer

I have been feeling sad and melancholy over the last couple of days and feel the need to remind myself of the good things I can look forward to over the Summer. So here are a few images that I find particularly refreshing... Provence, I love it!!

Loss

Several of my close friends are attending the funeral of photojournalist Tim Hetherington in London today. He was killed suddenly last month on 20th April 2011 while covering the conflict in Libya. Although I didn’t personally know him I have been affected by the tragedy of his death because my friends are suffering and it is a sad reminder of loss which I have experienced in my own life. No family wants to bury one of their children and I feel for his parents who must dread today like no other. My own parents had to bury my younger brother Charlie when he was thirteen years old and died very unexpectedly from lymphoma. To say it turned our lives upside down and inside out is an understatement and I don’t think one ever really recovers from the experience of loss. The pain is immense and the sense that nothing will ever be the same pervades your every thought for a very long time. You just cannot believe that the person you love will not walk through the door and say hello to you again. It’s horrible. And the trouble is that they really are gone – forever – and that is the hardest thing to face. 

I wish we didn’t have to deal with loss in life but it is part of the experience of living and is one of the things I have had to learn over the years to accept. It acts as a sharp reminder to live in the moment and it forces one to seize the day and live life as fully as possible because one never knows when it may disappear. I wish this made me feel heroic but it’s simply the way I approach life. It’s not always easy to be positive as life often throws awful curved balls at one and I have often felt profoundly depressed and overwhelmed by the uncertainty of life. But this aspect of life has definitely taught me to be spontaneous and to run with the ball when it comes my way. These painful experiences, although not welcome, do give a certain depth to my perception of what life is all about and I am deeply grateful and happy about all the good things that have happened to me as well.

Oh yes and Tim’s work was brilliant! He was extremely talented. That’s the other thing that hurts about someone like Tim dying at such a young age. He was 40 years old. As a picture editor I really appreciate seeing good work and his was outstanding. Intelligent and perceptive he certainly knew how to create a powerful image. He won the World Press Photo Award in 2008 for his work documenting a unit of American soldiers in Afghanistan and earlier this year he was nominated for an Academy Award for his documentary film Restrepo, which centred on the same American unit in Afghanistan. According to my friends Tim was a very charismatic and charming fellow and of course everyone who met him was a little bit in love with him. 

This poem by Ben Johnson was given to us by a close friend of the family when Charlie died. Sometimes it helps to know that it is the quality of life that matters and not the enduring length that we normally expect for those we love.

The Turne

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three-hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere.

A lily of a day,

Is fairer far in May,

Although it droop and die that night,

It was the plant and flow'r of light.

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures, life may perfect be.

My thoughts are with Tim’s family and friends today.