Monday September 25, 2006

A bag of culture and flour

We visited a friend who lives near St Albans last weekend. On arriving we wizzed off to a nearby watermill that was going to be open for a few minutes more on the Saturday before closing. RedBourne Mill is a lovely old mill that mills local corn to produce flour and bakes its own bread in a nearby building. I bought a nice bag of malted grain flour for the breadmaker and we popped in to see the bread being baked. The baker on his own bakes around five hundred loaves which are at he moment sold in Farmers Markets. The smell as we walked in was wonderful. He was reasonably impressed that we baked our own bread albiet in a breadmaker and suggested we bake it in our oven after allowing the machine to make the dough. He of course had the proper thing and he showed us a tip to get really nice crusty bread. After he has put the bread in his oven he pressed a button that released steam into the oven. This makes the bread really crusty. For domestic users a mister spray does the job just give it a good misting and quickly close your oven door afterwards he said.

In the afternoon we went to see George Bernard Shaw's house in Ayot St Lawrence. It is called the New Rectory and was built in 1902. He lived there from 1906 until he died in 1950. In his will he left the property to the National Trust. He added a few modern touches like running water but his wife was not keen on the idea and used an old fashioend bath filled by hand by servants. He was a vegetarian and teetotaller. The rooms are rather spartan and it must have been a very cold house in the winter. He died in the dining room and in it on the mantlepiece is a very odd selection of photos of Stalin, Gandhi and Lenin and a few others I did not recognise. The workroom had his old typewriter and other items that he used to use in his writings. Upstairs the couple had separate bedrooms - his was intact but hers was stripped and turned into a museum she did not want the public to see how she lived and slept it seems. She died before GBS of a very painful illness related to a bone disease. He used to play the piano to her which was in the entrance hall. The garden is very nice and looks over open countryside. In it was a shed that could be turned to face the sun. It was used by GBS for writing and had a small bed in it too. It was linked to the house by a phone and electricity. One thing I did not know about him was his idea for an easier English Alphabet which has not really caught on.

In the evening we went to Milton Keynes to see a new production of the The Hollow by Agatha Christie. I wrote about this book before and this new version kept to the book quite well. A new agreement with the Agatha Christie Ltd means a new theatre company called the Agatha Christie Theatre company will hopefully be acting out several of her books in the future. The only change to the book was the lack of Hercule Poirot in the production. It featured one set, an odd room in a house with the walls and ceiling slanted to one side. As each scene progressed a large branch in the background moved farther to the ground - not sure why. Lots of TV actors were in the production and Kate O'Mara was excellent as the dotty Lucy Angkatell.