It is December, my descendants have snow, so it must be time for something seasonal. Last year I shared some of my favourite historical novels in my blog ‘advent calendar’; this year it is the turn of non-fiction. Family historians, historical novelists and history fans in general need to immerse themselves in the past; these are books that help you to do just that. For the next twenty four days I will share with you a book that has helped me to evoke a past era. I have just pulled volumes from my bookshelves, so the historical periods will be varied and the choices eclectic. Some of the posts will be very brief and they will be interspersed with other randomness but here goes.
![Food In England: A complete guide to the food that makes us who we are by [Hartley, Dorothy]](https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5117KWdpwQL.jpg)
Today’s offering is Dorothy Hartley’s Food in England: a complete guide to the food that makes us who we are. The book was first published in 1954 but unless you are interested in food history in the later twentieth century, this does not matter. The fact that it is still in print underlines the value of Hartley’s work. If you want to know what we used to eat and how it would have been cooked here is a substantial 676 page volume that will come to your aid. There is a chronological thread throughout the book, beginning with the contribution of the Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans to our diet. There are line drawings to illustrate, amongst other things, cooking methods, breeds of sheep and techniques, such as scalding a pig. In addition there are plates showing kitchens an dining through the ages. There are also chapters on various groups of ingredients, including meat, vegetables, bread, dairy produce and drink. It is no secret that my culinary ‘skills’ are minimal and that I have no interest whatsoever in food preparation in the present. I do however find historic cookery fascinating. So although this is a book that the cooks amongst you will enjoy, it is also valuable if you want to know what your ancestors ate and how they would have prepared it. If you are an historical fiction writer and you want to make sure that the characters in your novel aren’t eating an anachronistic meal or if you are staging an event that involves period food, this book is highly recommended.
In other seasonal news, I thought that I would relate the saga of the flu injection. I am officially too young for this – just thought I’d make that point – but various health weirdnesses mean that I get invited by a disembodied, automated voice to have a needle jabbed in my arm. In fact no one seems to have told said automaton that I have actually now had my injection, as she is still ringing me up at various intervals. I digress. My appointment is for 10.41. I turn up at 10.30 to be told that the staff are about to have their coffee break but I can be booked in. ‘Booking in’ involves a tick being put against my name and being handed a piece of paper listing potential nastinesses associated with said injection. I sit down and the receptionist disappears for her caffine fix. A man comes to sit in her place. I have no idea of his rank but clearly most things are above his pay grade. He spends the next fifteen minutes repeating 30-40 times ‘I can’t book you in please take a seat and wait. The receptionist will be back in 15, 14, 13 (whatever) minutes. What is so difficult about ticking a name and handing over a piece of paper? Is the receptionist’s union going to object if someone usurps her role? It can’t be a data protection thing because everyone is here for a flu injection and they all go to reception and give the chap their name. Why have a person there at all? Why not just write a notice? During the next fifteen minutes forty people enter the surgery and no one leaves. The patients’ nearest and dearest, sat in cars outside, must be wondering if we are all being swallowed up in some vaccinatory black hole. I begin to feel quite sorry for the guy on the front desk. In the end the ‘audience’ are giggling hysterically as he repeats his message, using exactly the same words and intonation, for the umpteenth time. The joys of getting old.
Yes, geese are signing up for Weight-watchers in flocks as I type. I kid you not, the ‘Back to School’ shelves have not yet been cleared and the Christmas cards are on sale. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, with the dark evenings on the horizon, this means our thoughts turn to digging out our virtual or literal family history files and promising ourselves that this year we really will create some order out of the chaos that is the fruits of years/decades of research. Maybe we would like to tempt our dearest and not so nearest to take an interest in our obsession with a yuletide gift of a family history, or we would like to share family stories over turkey and tinsel. Now let’s be honest here, ‘would you like to see my spreadsheet of baptisms?’ just isn’t going to cut it. I can feel the glazed over looks from 100 paces. That fascinating story of great uncle Fred’s bigamy, or auntie Alice’s spell in jail, though, that could just raise a flicker of excitement. Even if your family is devoid of all black sheep, set their lives in the local and social historical context of their time and you could be on to a winner. ‘Did you know great-granddad was the local rat-catcher?’ ‘Granny served tripe twice a week’ or ‘Great great grandma died of cholera, did you know she would have passed 20 litres of diahorrea a day?’ (good one for the gore hungry children that) – so much more engaging than a list of names and dates. If you want some motivation then can I humbly recommend that you take a look at my five week online ‘Are you Sitting Comfortably: writing and telling your family story’ course that starts on 17 October. Details are on the 
#Daisy is making some progress. Some lovely friends have read a chapter and didn’t hate it, which was encouraging. I am currently immersing myself in suffragette activities, purely in the historical sense, though I am not adverse to a bit of banner waving. Next on the list is research into the wartime experiences of a new character who has forced his way into the narrative. This did lead to that exciting moment when your ‘based on fact’ historical novel requires you to research someone new and you find that he attended a school that has an archivist. Better still, said archivist responds to your email (written after office hours) within minutes with information and a photograph. Ok, so he wasn’t the heart throb I was hoping for but I can get round that with a minor re-write!
Well, what a busy week it has been. Firstly, preparing my presentations for the 
Before anyone suggests that I am not wearing well, or wishes me Many Happy Returns (do people still say that?), I am, sadly, not celebrating my 40th birthday. This week I enter my fifth decade of serious family history research. It was March 1977 when I took myself off, alone, to Cornwall to visit my father’s ancestral village for the first time. I arrived by public transport at a B & B some six miles away. All I can remember about this was that the proprietor chatted incessantly about her late husband’s role with the electricity board. The next day was Sunday. Said small ancestral village not being overly well blessed with Sunday public transport links (there weren’t any) I decided I would walk. I am still of the opinion that Cornish miles are longer than those elsewhere. I plucked up courage to enter the local pub (think lone female, 1977, rural pub) and ask if there was anyone of my surname living locally. It turned out that half the village were related and I was ‘adopted’ by members of the family instantly. They even had a car to take me back to the B & B.
I have done some #Daisy writing, honestly, I really have. Whisper it quietly, one chapter even got finished. For reasons best known to myself I decided that I wanted to insert an anchor symbol into the text. This was not as easy as I feel it should have been and in the process of attempting to use the ‘special characters’ function, my screen turned on its side. Not wishing to adopt a permanent crick in the neck, I had to work out how to undo whatever I had just done. Let’s just say it took a while and at one point I was standing on my head but normality has returned to the screen of my laptop. The publicity flyers have arrived to advertise our Writers in a Cabin weekend. Do come and say hello. If you want to chat to a particular one of us, watch out on individual writers’ websites for when they are ‘on duty’, as there isn’t space for us all to be there all weekend.
At the age of twenty one I took a solo trip and visited Cornwall for the first time. I arrived at the nearest railway station on a Saturday evening. I stayed in a lovely B & B, which sticks in my memory because the proprietor was obsessed with recounting how her late husband had worked for the electricity board. On the Sunday, I obviously wanted to go ‘home’. The village was seven miles away and there was no public transport. Undaunted, I set off to walk. Since then I have firmly held the belief that Cornish miles are longer than those elsewhere. The local shop, which bore the family surname, was shut. I eventually wandered in to the local pub, not the easiest thing for a lone female in the rural Cornwall of 1977. I asked for relatives and met several fourth cousins. For the first time I saw someone of my own generation from my father’s side of the family. Despite being a clone of my mother and maternal grandmother, others perceived a physical resemblance. I was, naturally, very excited.
The History Interpreter - Janet Few 