At Home in 1903

You know the view from my kitchen window almost as well as I do. Over the past few years, I have struck up a soft of friendship with the elderly lady whose house and garden I see. She sometimes rings me on a Saturday morning and brings me flowers from her garden, to thank me once more for the wall calendar I had made for her a few years ago with photos of her garden.

The other day, she rang to ask whether I would like to come over and have a look at the dolls house and kitchen she and her siblings used to play with when they were children.
I didn't have to think twice and was over at her house a few minutes later.

We climbed the stairs to the attic room where she had it all set up. She explained that the kitchen and house had belonged to her mother before her, and was originally from 1903. (My neighbour is going to be 85 years old this summer.)
Of course not everything you see here is from 1903. Typically, bits would be added as Christmas or birthday presents, or when something would break beyond repair and need replacement. The latter happened very rarely, as the children who played with this kitchen and house loved their toys and handled them very carefully.

Looking at the kitchen in detail, you can detect many things that were in use in real life not only in 1903, but for decades afterwards.

This little "cage" was for storing fresh eggs:
 

"Zwiebel" means onion, and "Wischtuch" means cleaning cloth.
The metal dustbin is very similar to the life-sized one we still used when I was a kid, to put the ashes from our bathroom stove in.
 

The kitchen is a stand-alone one, but the "house" consists of two rooms. Here is the bedroom:

Things such as the wash bowl and water jug, hot water bottle (on the little bed) and chamber pot (in the nightstand) were familiar household items in 1903.

The living room:

A bird in a cage - all so very detailed! And look at  that mirror, a real piece of Art Deco art! It is relatively heavy, because the figure holding the mirror is solid bronze. The entire thing is less than the length of one of my fingers. (Sorry - you can see my camera's handle in the mirror; I didn't mean that to be seen!)

There is even a small balcony at the side of the living room, and all windows and doors open and close properly. The roses were put there by my neighbour and her sister much later, as the original flowers had fallen apart long ago.

The house hosts a big family of dolls. My neighbour told me all their names, but I can't remember all of them. I know that one of the girls is Liesele, and the one in the green dress is Dorothee. The dresses were made by my neighbour and her sister when they were little girls themselves, about 8 years old, and copied from the clothes the dolls originally wore.
Look at the little horse - it is covered in real horse fur, and the mane and tail are real horse hair. The little boy must have been for a wild ride just before we came up, judging from his hair :-)

The house holds a nice collection of books - tiny calendars from 1903 to 1917, with a few missing in between. These were meant to be kept in people's wallets. They had a tiny space to write in for each day, and showed all Christian and Jewish holidays. Each book is less than the size of my thumb.

I felt very privileged to be allowed to look at and touch everything! My neighbour told me lots more than I am repeating here; each piece, each doll has their own little history.
It was a lovely glimpse into the past in general, and into my neighbour's childhood in particular.

(Don't worry - I had asked her permission to take pictures and show them here. My neighbour does not have a computer, and I am not sure she can really imagine what a blog is, but she likes the idea of many other people being able to see her precious dolls house and kitchen.)

Read in 2017 - 10: The Mystery of Smugglers Cove

When you were a kid, did you read the "Famous Five" and other books by Enid Blyton, or similar mystery series aimed at your age group? Did you watch them on TV, and did you sometimes play at being part of just such an adventure? I did all of it, and loved every minute.

Hardly surprising, then, that I downloaded "The Mystery of Smugglers Cove" by Paul Moxham when I found it as a free ebook at Amazon's kindle shop. Every now and then, I enjoy reading books meant for children or young people, and I did enjoy this one.
Although set in Britain in the 1950s, the books were all written and published relatively recently. "Smugglers Cove" is the first book in the "Mystery" series, and it was published in 2014.

The series has siblings Joe, Sarah and Amy at their core. Together, they get into all sorts of trouble, but of course always come out victorious - the Bad Guys are caught, the Good Guys win. Isn't that how we all would want the world to be like?

In "Smugglers Cove", the three children arrive at the village of Smugglers Cove to spend the summer holidays there. As the story is set in the 1950s, there are no computers or mobile phones, and the term "helicopter parents" does not yet exist - the kids are pretty much free to do whatever they want all day, provided they are home in time for their tea.
But instead of picnics on the beach and bike rides in the countryside, the siblings get involved in an adventure that finds them exploring an abandoned manor house, tunnels and coves used by smugglers in the past, chased and captured, locked up on a boat and riding out a storm at sea while solving the case of a counterfeiting gang step by step.

As is typical for such stories, adults do play a role, but it really is the children who do all the hard work and solve all the clues. It was fun to read, fast-paced, with very few typos - not enough to spoil the fun.

Paul Moxham is Australian, hailing from Melbourne. His website is here.

Read in 2017 - 9: Mr. Mortimer

"Mr. Mortimer" by Neil Bastian is what my blogging friend Nan would probably describe as a quiet book, although some of the events are rather dramatic.
 

Samantha and Frank, a married couple in their forties, have been living next door to an elderly couple for five years when one night their neighbour calls to inform them that his wife has been found dead at a place popular for suicide.

Mr. Mortimer has no nearby relatives or friends to turn to. Samantha, who is known in her family for "fussing", takes it upon herself to support the widower when it comes to making meals, organising the funeral and so on.

At first, everything seems innocent enoough, but then she realises she keeps finding reasons and excuses for seeing Mr. Mortimer on his own, without her husband present. But she loves Frank, doesn't she, and not only is Mr. Mortimer still grieving the loss of his wife, he is also considerably older.
Frank, a long-distance lorry driver, becomes suspicious, and things culminate one day.
I won't tell you what happens, I will just tell you that I found the end bitter-sweet and in spite of the drama, still had the impression of a quiet book, throwing light on the everyday lives of ordinary people.

This was a story I really liked reading. The characters grew on me, and I did want to know what was going to happen to them. Also, when Frank suspects his wife of having an affair with the elderly man, he behaves in a way that made me cringe - I could really feel Samantha's embarrassment and despair. In my opinion, it is a sign of good writing if an author manages to make you feel what his characters feel.

It was my first book by Neil Bastian. According to Amazon, he has written two more books which both sound good. His homepage is here. Something interesting for Kay: The author is a songwriter as well (maybe even more so than an author of novels). You can find out more about that also on his homepage.

Read in 2017 - 8: Roll Up the Wallpaper, We're Moving

Part autobiography, part comedy: "Roll up the Wallpaper, We're Moving" by William Charles Anderson was fun to read and offers a glimpse into a decisive period in the lives of author William C. Anderson and his family.

Written in 1970, the book tells the adventures of the Andersons upon moving from their home in an affluent L.A. neighbourhood to the fresh, clean air of the mountains above Lake Arrowhead, a two-hours-drive away.

William and his wife see the need to downscale and are lured into buying a plot of land high above the lake. To save money, they try to do as much as they can with their own hands, including drawing the architectural plans for their new house.
Nearly everything they do is accompanied by minor (and sometimes major) mishaps - fun for the reader, fun for the protagonists maybe only in retrospect.
Eventually, though, not only do the Andersons get to live in their beautiful new house, but they get accepted into the rather exclusive circle of permanent mountain-dwellers, as opposed to summer guests who are looked upon as some sort of nuisance; to be tolerated because they do bring money and create jobs, after all.

As a sideline to the main story, we learn about the author's constant battle with his agent, the growing pains of his teenaged children, his lovely wife's efforts to keep everything together and his creative idea about how to make his neighbours accept, even love, the slobbering monster that is their new dog.

I did greatly enjoy reading this real (if slightly exaggerated, I suspect) story of the Anderson's move. Dialogue is witty, descriptions of people and places are so that one can easily imagine everything, and I found hardly any typos - always a plus in my eyes!

Before this book, I had never read anything by William C. Anderson. Wikipedia tells me that he wrote more than 20 novels, some of them true life stories, as well as numerous screenplays for film and television. He died in 2003 at the age of 83. You can find out more about him here (I imagine Kay will want to look up what screenplays he wrote - you probably know most of the movies!)

(A Kind of) Guest Post: Pancake Day

Did you know that today (Shrove Tuesday) is Pancake Day in many Commonwealth Countries? You probably did, especially if you live in one of said countries.

Well, I didn't know that until yesterday, when George Pickles, Ripon's former Hornblower, told me about it in an email. 

Here is what he wrote, and I am adding a photo he sent with the email:

"So here in Ripon, tomorrow is Pancake day. I don't think this is an event celebrated in Germany?

I have attached a picture of a typical Shrove Tuesday Pancake race, setting off in relays from the front of the Cathedral, running up the length of Kirkgate. Each race would be arranged according to ages, or the representatives of various City groups. All very good fun.

I would usually be involved with the Dean helping to set off the individual races. The Dean and I would then have a two man race at the end, to much cheering and laughing. The Hornblowing is not involved these days as the role is shared by a team."

George is right in thinking that this is not celebrated in Germany, at least not to my knowledge. But many places here have their own traditions for Shrove Tuesday. I will simply go to the office, as I usually do on Tuesdays, and work on whatever our customer sees fit to set before me. 

If you wish to know more about Shrove Tuesday, the meaning of the word and some of the traditions around the world, click here for the wikipedia article.

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Spring has really showed its face last weekend, and yesterday! It was so mild I did not need gloves or a scarf for the first time in months. Already the weekend before last, it felt very much like spring. O.K. and I were on a walk between his and the next village, and he took these pictures for me of hazel trees along the path:

Don't they look beautiful against the blue sky? You should have heard the bees humming - a sound that was completely absent for months, too.  

Warum ist es am Rhein so schön?

"Warum ist es am Rhein so schön?", literally "Why is it so beautiful by the Rhine?" is a German folk song praising the beauty of the Rhine, Germany's longest river. I've done what Kay (Georgia Girl with an English Heart) often does on her blog and did a bit of research about the song. One Adolf von Bergsattel wrote both the music and the lyrics. He was possibly helped with the latter by Franz Suppan, and the website I found this information at dates the song as "before 1928".
That's about all I could find out, except for a differing claim on youtube saying that the music was written by someone else.

Today's post is not really about music, though. It is about the Rhine's beauty and how impressive this majestic stream can be even on a somewhat dull winter's day.

When I was 5 years old, my parents, my sister and I lived in a small village close to the river. We often drove across to France, both for groceries shopping (some things were considerably cheaper there than on our side of the water) and for holidays. Going for walks with our parents where the river was still more or less in its natural state (we call these parts the "Old Rhine") was always something of an adventure.  

About a year later, we moved back to Ludwigsburg, almost 100 km away, too far for a quick stroll along the river. My parents kept going back to visit the friends they had made during our short stint at the village, and the love for that particular landscape has stuck with us.

O.K.'s home (about 70 km south of the village we used to live at in the early 1970s) is not all that far from the Rhine. And yet it took almost a year of regular visits at his place before we went to the river for the first time!

At the end of January, we were invited to join a group of friends and acquaintances for a winter BBQ in the woods. The woodland borders the Rhine, and while the barbeque was still in full swing, we snuck away on a little walk.

Here are the pictures O.K. took with his mobile phone. To enlarge them, simply click on them. Have a look, and you'll be able to answer the question in the song title:

This is not the Rhine, of course. Just a small canal behind the dyke.

The land on the other side is France.

This type of woodland is very typical for the area.

You can read all about the Rhine here on wikipedia.

Read in 2017 - 7: Mothers, Daughters, and other Mysteries

"Mothers, Daughters, and other Mysteries", a detective story by Heather McPhaul, was unusual for me in that it is written almost like a screenplay.

It was (very) fast-paced, witty (if you don't mind sarcasm) and surprising enough to keep me going.

The story is quickly told: A young woman finds herself, as so often before, between jobs and decides to work as a private investigator. Her first case proves to be as dangerous as can be expected (otherwise, it would not have been turned into a book, would it?), but in the end, the results are worth all her efforts: Not only does Leann solve the case (surprise, surprise!), but she also (re-)gains the love and respect of her somewhat estranged mother AND walks off the set with a wonderful new boyfriend at her side.

Does this sound banal? It is, and it isn't. The quirky dialogue and surprising twists in the story, combined with quick changes of perspective between Leann, her mother and their adversary, make for an entertaining, if rather short, read. 
It was a free ebook, and the few typos I noticed weren't too bad.

After I have looked up the author and found out that she is also an actress, the screenplay-style of her writing is less surprising.
Here is her website, if you are interested.