I hope you all had a lovely weekend. This week’s piece is written by fellow writer, Susan Batten. Thank you, Susan, for sharing your holiday memories with us.
HOLIDAYS IN SIGHT
Everyone has different expectations of holidays: some long for lazy days lying on a sunny beach, some look forward to authentic cuisine and local wines, some of us just want to escape the tyranny of the clock.
For me, the best holidays have been the ones with pleasant surprises: places and events which have not been googled into my agenda.
I still have a carved shell from a little workshop I found on the Île d’Aix, opposite La Rochelle in France, where they specialize in working with mother of pearl. This mysterious substance, produced naturally by certain molluscs such as oysters, is prized for its durable decorative properties. We know it from the classic shirt button, but it also makes an appearance in jewellery, home decoration, time pieces and musical instruments. I had never seen such a display, or even thought about this shimmering, luminous material, so the discovery of this collection made for a memorable visit.
In a nearby town I found, quite by accident, a perfumery which had, on the first floor, a room dedicated to a collection of perfume bottles of every shape and size, complete with references and anecdotes. We’re familiar with modern – sometimes eccentric – designs for scent bottles, but the forerunners of these models, in such profusion in a small space, made a wonderful, bewildering exhibition.
Changing the holiday venue, I once went to an exhibition in Logroño, in the Rioja in Spain, where they had on display a weird collection of old-style cooking utensils. I say “weird” because at first glance I couldn’t be sure that these antique waffle-makers or cookie cutters were not some Spanish instruments of torture… They were not in mint condition, but this meant I could imagine generations of stay-at-home mothers labouring over their open fires and rudimentary ovens to produce some of the cakes and confectionery still popular today. The video that was running showed women working at a kind of horse trough where they were bent over, kneading and mixing the ingredients by hand to make the famous Spanish “turrón”, a Christmas sweet made with almonds and sugar. Often this large scale production was undertaken in convents and then sold in the district as a seasonal treat.
These are a few of the discoveries I have made, exploring as I travelled around. Because they were unexpected, they gave me a lot of pleasure, though idle sunbathing also had its place in my holiday plans, of course.
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